baby. He hated that thick-lipped baby of a greyish colour like asphalt, but he obediently nursed it, meditating in the depths of his soul on the possibility of dropping it suddenly on the floor.
After long vacillation and hidden sighs he wrote to his mother in the country about his marriage, and to his surprise received from her a most joyful answer. She also was pleased at having such an original for her son, and that his Excellency himself had given away the bride. But with regard to the colour, and other disabilities of the bride, she expressed herself thus:
"Let her face be that of a sheep, if only her soul be human."
At the end of two years Semyon Vasilyevich died of typhus fever. Before the end he sent for the parish priest, who looked with curiosity on the quondam Miss Korraito, stroked his full beard, and said meaningly, "N . . . y . . . es!" But it was evident that he respected Semyon Vasilyevich for his originality, although he looked on it as sinful.
When his reverence stooped down to the dying man, the latter gathered together the remnants of his strength, and opened his mouth wide to cry:
"I hate that black devil!"
But he recalled his Excellency, and the help from the reserve fund, he recalled the kindly Anton Ivanovich, and Nastenka, and looking at the black weeping countenance, said softly:
