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him and all his family. His friends all turned their backs on
him. Then I took my first step. I met Agafya Ivanovna, with
whom I’d always kept up a friendship, and said, ‘Do you
know there’s a deficit of 4500 roubles of government money
in your father’s accounts?’
‘What do you mean? What makes you say so? The general
was here not long ago, and everything was all right.’
‘Then it was, but now it isn’t.’
‘She was terribly scared.
‘Don’t frighten me!’ she said. ‘Who told you so?’
‘Don’t be uneasy,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell anyone. You know
I’m as silent as the tomb. I only wanted, in view of ‘possibili-
ties,’ to add, that when they demand that 4500 roubles from
your father, and he can’t produce it, he’ll be tried, and made
to serve as a common soldier in his old age, unless you like
to send me your young lady secretly. I’ve just had money
paid me. I’ll give her four thousand, if you like, and keep
the secret religiously.’
‘Ah, you scoundrel!’ — that’s what she said. ‘You wicked
scoundrel! How dare you!’
‘She went away furiously indignant, while I shouted after
her once more that the secret should be kept sacred. Those
two simple creatures, Agafya and her aunt, I may as well say
at once, behaved like perfect angels all through this busi-
ness. They genuinely adored their ‘Katya,’ thought her far
above them, and waited on her, hand and foot. But Agafya
told her of our conversation. I found that out afterwards.
She didn’t keep it back, and of course that was all I wanted.
‘Suddenly the new major arrived to take command of the