‘Well, if you will kindly listen,’ answered Nikolai Artemyevitch, still with the same dropping of the corners of his lips, ‘I will tell you plainly, without beating about the bush. I have made acquaintance, I have become intimate with this young man, Mr. Kurnatovsky, in the hope of having him for a son-in-law. I venture to think that when you see him, you will not accuse me of partiality or precipitate judgment.’ (Nikolai Artemyevitch was admiring his own eloquence as he talked.) ‘Of excellent education--educated in the highest legal college--excellent manners, thirty-three years old, and upper-secretary, a councillor, and a Stanislas cross on his neck. You, I hope, will do me the justice to allow that I do not belong to the number of those _pères de famille_ who are mad for position; but you yourself told me that Elena Nikolaevna likes practical business men; Yegor Andreyevitch is in the first place a business man; now on the other side, my daughter has a weakness for generous actions; so let me tell you that Yegor Andreyevitch, directly he had attained the possibility--you understand me--the possibility of living without privation on his salary, at once gave up the yearly income assigned him by his father, for the benefit of his brothers.’ ‘Who is his father?’ inquired Anna Vassilyevna. ‘His father? His father is a man well-known in his own line, of the highest moral character, _un vrai stoïcien_, a retired major, I think, overseer of all the estates of the Count B----’ ‘Ah!’ observed Anna Vassilyevna. ‘Ah! why ah?’ interposed Nikolai Artemyevitch. ‘Can you be infected with prejudice?’ ‘Why, I said nothing----’ Anna Vassilyevna was beginning. ‘No, you said, ah!--However that may be, I have thought it well to acquaint you with my way of thinking; and I venture to think--I venture to hope Mr. Kurnatovsky will be received _à bras ouverts_. He is no Montenegrin vagrant.’ ‘Of course; I need only call Vanka the cook and order a few extra dishes.’ ‘You are aware that I will not enter into that,’ said Nikolai Artemyevitch; and he got up, put on his hat, and whistling (he had heard some one say that whistling was only permissible in a country villa and a riding court) went out for a stroll in the garden. Shubin watched him out of the little window of his lodge, and in silence put out his tongue at him. At ten minutes to four, a hackney-carriage drove up to the steps of the Stahovs’s villa, and a man, still young, of prepossessing appearance, simply and elegantly dressed, stepped out of it and sent up his name. This was Yegor Andreyevitch Kurnatovsky. This was what, among other things, Elena wrote next day to Insarov: