'I was coachman before.' 'Who dismissed you from being coachman?' 'The new mistress.' 'What mistress?' 'Oh, that bought us. Your honour does not know her; Alyona Timofyevna; she is so fat ... not young.' 'Why did she decide to make you a fisherman?' 'God knows. She came to us from her estate in Tamboff, gave orders for all the household to come together, and came out to us. We first kissed her hand, and she said nothing; she was not angry.... Then she began to question us in order; "How are you employed? what duties have you?" She came to me in my turn; so she asked: "What have you been?" I say, "Coachman." "Coachman? Well, a fine coachman you are; only look at you! You're not fit for a coachman, but be my fisherman, and shave your beard. On the occasions of my visits provide fish for the table; do you hear?" ... So since then I have been enrolled as a fisherman. "And mind you keep my pond in order." But how is one to keep it in order?' 'Whom did you belong to before?' 'To Sergaï Sergiitch Pehterev. We came to him by inheritance. But he did not own us long; only six years altogether. I was his coachman ... but not in town, he had others there--only in the country.' 'And were you always a coachman from your youth up?' 'Always a coachman? Oh, no! I became a coachman in Sergaï Sergiitch's time, but before that I was a cook--but not town-cook; only a cook in the country.' 'Whose cook were you, then?' 'Oh, my former master's, Afanasy Nefeditch, Sergaï Sergiitch's uncle. Lgov was bought by him, by Afanasy Nefeditch, but it came to Sergaï Sergiitch by inheritance from him.' 'Whom did he buy it from?' 'From Tatyana Vassilyevna.' 'What Tatyana Vassilyevna was that?' 'Why, that died last year in Bolhov ... that is, at Karatchev, an old maid.... She had never married. Don't you know her? We came to her from her father, Vassily Semenitch. She owned us a goodish while ... twenty years.' 'Then were you cook to her?' 'At first, to be sure, I was cook, and then I was coffee-bearer.' 'What were you?' 'Coffee-bearer.' 'What sort of duty is that?' 'I don't know, your honour. I stood at the sideboard, and was called Anton instead of Kuzma. The mistress ordered that I should be called so.' 'Your real name, then, is Kuzma?' 'Yes.' 'And were you coffee-bearer all the time?' 'No, not all the time; I was an actor too.' 'Really?' 'Yes, I was.... I played in the theatre. Our mistress set up a theatre of her own.' 'What kind of parts did you take?' 'What did you please to say?' 'What did you do in the theatre?' 'Don't you know? Why, they take me and dress me up; and I walk about dressed up, or stand or sit down there as it happens, and they say, "See, this is what you must say," and I say it. Once I represented a blind man.... They laid little peas under each eyelid.... Yes, indeed.' 'And what were you afterwards?' 'Afterwards I became a cook again.' 'Why did they degrade you to being a cook again?' 'My brother ran away.'