thoughts (for I ought to have seen, but I did not see, for I was trying to look in another direction), and rules our actions; for why did I make the girl stay in her 'cellar' a week longer, when the matter ought to have been foreseen and provided for long ago?"
But he remembered nothing of that kind, and it did not occur to him because he had to wrinkle his forehead, and while wrinkling it to think for an hour and three-quarters on the question, "Who will marry us?" and there was only one answer all the time, "There is no one to marry us." But suddenly in place of the answer, "No one to marry us," the name of Mertsálof came into his head; then it was that he struck himself on the forehead and swore with good reason. "How is it possible that I did not think of Mertsálof at the very beginning?" And to a certain degree he was wrong in his wonder; he was not accustomed to think of Mertsálof as of a man who marries.
In the medical school there are a good many people of all kinds; there are among them some seminarists; these men have acquaintances in the theological seminary, and through them Lopukhóf had also made acquaintances there. One of the students whom he knew at the theological seminary—not an intimate, but a friend—had graduated a year ago and had become a priest, and was living in a certain building with endless corridors on the Vasilyevsky Island. To him Lopukhóf went, and as it was an extra occasion and a late hour, he took an izvoshchik.
Mertsálof was sitting alone in his room, and was reading some new book—possibly by Louis XIV., or some one else of the same dynasty.
"Such and such is the state of things, Alekséi Petróvitch: I know that it is a very serious risk for you to undertake; it is right enough if we get reconciled with the parents, but suppose they begin a law-suit? There may be some trouble for you, and there probably will be; but—"
Lopukhóf could not find in his mind anything to attach to his "but," for how in the world can you persuade a man to put his neck for your sake into a noose?
Mertsálof was also in a quandary, and tried hard to find a "but" which would authorize him to run such a risk, and he had no better success in getting beyond the "but."
"How can we arrange this matter? I should certainly
