In the course of the first year after he had settled down upon the highway, Akím was so occupied with the building of his inn, with the installation of his establishment, and with all the worries which are inseparable from all new households, that he positively had not time to think of women, and if any sinful thoughts did enter his head, he promptly expelled them by the perusal of divers holy books, for which he cherished a great respect (he had taught himself to read and write during his first trip as carrier), by chanting the Psalms in an undertone, or by some other pious occupation. Moreover, he was already in his forty-sixth year,--and at that age all passions sensibly calm down and grow cool; and the time for marrying was past. Akím himself had begun to think that that folly, as he expressed it, had broken loose from him ... but evidently no man can escape his fate. Akím's former owner, Lizavéta Prókhorovna Kuntze, who had been left a widow by her husband, a staff-officer of German extraction, was herself a native of the town of Mittau, where she had passed the early days of her childhood, and where she still had a very numerous and needy family, concerning whom, however, she troubled herself very little, especially since one of her brothers, an officer in an army infantry regiment, had unexpectedly presented himself at her house and on the following day had raised such an uproar that he had all but thrashed the mistress of the house herself, and had addressed her, into the bargain, as "_du Lumpenmamsell!_" while on the preceding evening he had himself called her in broken Russian: "sister and benefactress." Lizavéta Prókhorovna hardly ever left the nice little estate acquired by the efforts of her spouse, who had been an architect;[37] she herself managed it, and managed it far from badly. Lizavéta Prókhorovna did not let slip the smallest source of profit; she derived advantage to herself from everything; and in this point, as well as in that of remarkable cleverness in making one kopék serve instead of two, her German nationality betrayed itself; in everything else she had become extremely Russified. She had a considerable number of domestic serfs; in particular, she kept a great many maids, who, however, did not eat the bread of idleness: from morning until night their backs were bowed over work.[38] She was fond of driving out in her carriage with liveried lackeys on the foot-board; she was fond of having people retail gossip to her and play the sycophant; and she herself was a first-rate gossip; she was fond of loading a man down with her favours, and suddenly stunning him with disgrace--in a word, Lizavéta Prókhorovna conducted herself exactly like a nobly-born dame.--She favoured Akím,--he paid her a good round quit-rent with punctuality,--she chatted graciously with him, and even, in jest, invited him to be her guest ... but it was precisely in the manor-house that calamity awaited Akím.