I do not know why my companions ceased talking, but I stopped because my eyes had suddenly paused on three dusty portraits in black wooden frames. The colours had been rubbed off, and here and there the canvas was warped, but the faces could still be distinguished. The middle portrait represented a woman, young in years, in a white gown with lace borders, and a tall coiffure of the eighties. On her right, against a perfectly black background, was visible the round, fat face of a good-natured Russian landed proprietor five-and-twenty years of age, with a low, broad forehead, a stubby nose, and an ingenuous smile. The powdered French coiffure was extremely out of keeping with the expression of his Slavonic countenance. The artist had depicted him in a kaftan of crimson hue with large strass buttons; in his hand he held some sort of unusual flower. The third portrait, painted by another and more experienced hand, represented a man of thirty, in a green uniform of the period of Katherine II, with red facings, a white under-waistcoat, and a thin batiste neckerchief. With one hand he leaned on a cane with a gold head, the other he had thrust into his waistcoat. His thin, swarthy face breathed forth insolent arrogance. His long, slender eyebrows almost met over his pitch-black eyes; on his pale, barely-perceptible lips played an evil smile. "What makes you stare at those faces?"--Piótr Feódorovitch asked me. "Because!"--I answered, looking at him. "Would you like to hear the whole story about those three persons?" "Pray, do us the favour to tell it,"--we replied with one voice. Piótr Feódorovitch rose, took a candle, raised it to the portraits, and in the voice of a man who is exhibiting wild animals, "Gentlemen!" he proclaimed: "this lady is the adopted daughter of my own great-grandfather, Olga Ivánovna NN., called Lutchínoff, who died unmarried forty years ago. This gentleman,"--pointing to the portrait of the man in uniform,--"is sergeant of the Guards, Vasíly Ivánovitch Lutchínoff, who departed this life, by the will of God, in the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety. And this gentleman, to whom I have not the honour to be related, is a certain Pável Afanásievitch Rogatchyóff, who never served anywhere, so far as I am aware. Please to note the hole which is in his breast, in the exact place of the heart. This hole, which is, as you see, regular, and three-cornered, probably could not have happened accidentally.... Now,"--he went on in his ordinary voice,--"please to take your seats, arm yourselves with patience, and listen."