Nikolai Artemyevitch was twenty-five years old when he ‘hooked’ Anna Vassilyevna; he retired from the service and went into the country to manage the property. He was soon tired of country life, and as the peasants’ labour was all commuted for rent he could easily leave the estate; he settled in Moscow in his wife’s house. In his youth he had played no games of any kind, but now he developed a passion for loto, and, when loto was prohibited, for whist. At home he was bored; he formed a connection with a widow of German extraction, and spent almost all his time with her. In the year 1853 he had not moved to Kuntsovo; he stopped at Moscow, ostensibly to take advantage of the mineral waters; in reality, he did not want to part from his widow. He did not, however, have much conversation with her, but argued more than ever as to whether one can foretell the weather and such questions. Some one had once called him a _frondeur_; he was greatly delighted with that name. ‘Yes,’ he thought, letting the corners of his mouth drop complacently and shaking his head, ‘I am not easily satisfied; you won’t take me in.’ Nikolai Artemyevitch’s _frondeurism_ consisted in saying, for instance, when he heard the word nerves: ‘And what do you mean by nerves?’ or if some one alluded in his presence to the discoveries of astronomy, asking: ‘And do you believe in astronomy?’ When he wanted to overwhelm his opponent completely, he said: ‘All that is nothing but words.’ It must be admitted that to many persons remarks of that kind seemed (and still seem) irrefutable arguments. But Nikolai Artemyevitch never suspected that Augustina Christianovna, in letters to her cousin, Theodolina Peterzelius, called him _Mein Pinselchen_.