"In Moscow he against his uncle's will left the army," continued the one whose memory and knowledge had been attested, "and there he gathered around him a second society, of which he was the progenitor and the heart, if it be possible so to express it. He was rich, handsome, clever, educated; they say he was exceedingly amiable. My aunt used to tell me that she did not know a more bewitching man. Here he married Miss Krínski, a few months before the revolt broke out." "The daughter of Nikoláy Krínski, the one of Borodinó fame, you know," somebody interrupted him. "Well, yes. Her immense fortune he still possesses, but his own paternal estate passed over to his younger brother, Prince Iván, who is now Ober-Hof-Kaffermeister" (he gave him some such name) "and was a minister." "The best thing is what he did for his brother," continued the narrator. "When he was arrested, there was one thing which he succeeded in destroying, and that was his brother's letters and documents." "Was his brother mixed up in it, too?" The narrator did not say "Yes," but compressed his lips and gave a significant wink. "Then, during all the inquests Peter Labázov kept denying everything which concerned his brother, and so suffered more than the rest. But the best part of it is that Prince Iván got all the property, and never sent a penny to his brother." "They say that Peter Labázov himself declined it," remarked one of the hearers. "Yes; but he declined it only because Prince Iván wrote him before the coronation, excusing himself and saying that if he had not taken it, it would have been confiscated, and that he had children and debts, and that now he was unable to return it to him. Peter Labázov replied to him in two lines: 'Neither I nor my heirs have any right, nor can have any right, to the property legally appropriated by you.' That was all. How was that? And Prince Iván swallowed it, and in delight locked up that document with the notes in a safe, and showed it to no one." One of the peculiarities of the intellectual room was that its visitors knew, whenever they wanted to know, everything that was taking place in the world, no matter how secret the event might have been. "Still it is a question," said a new interlocutor, "whether it was just to deprive the children of Prince Iván of the property, with which they have grown up and have been educated, and to which they thought they had a right." Thus the conversation was transferred to an abstract sphere, which did not interest Pákhtin. He felt the necessity of communicating the news to fresh people, and so he rose and, speaking to the right and to the left, walked from one hall to another. One of his fellow officers stopped him to give him the news of Labázov's arrival. "Who does not know that?" replied Iván Pávlovich, with a calm smile, turning to the exit. The news had had time to complete its circle, and was again returning to him.