PART FIRST.
THE LIFE OF VIÉRA PAVLOVNA IN HER PARENTS' FAMILY.
I.
Viéra Pavlovna's training was very ordinary. Her life, up to the time when she made the acquaintance of the medical student Lopukhóf, was rather remarkable, although it was not singular. But in her actions even then could be seen something singular.
Viéra Pavlovna grew up in a many-storied house on Gorokhovaïa Street, between Sadovïa Street and the Semyónovsky bridge. At the present day this house is marked with its appropriate number, but in 1852, when as yet the streets were not numbered, it bore the inscription, "The house of the Actual State Counsellor,[1] Iván Zakharuitch Storeshnikof."
Such was the inscription; but Ivan Zakharuitch Storeshnikof had died as long ago as 1837, and since that time the proprietor (khozyáïn) of the house was his son Mikhaïl Ivanovitch (thus said the documents); but the tenants knew that Mikhaïl Ivanovitch was merely the son of his father, and that the real proprietor was Anna Petrovna.
The house was at that time just as it is now, large, with two gates and four entrances on the streets, and with three yards (dvors) in the rear. At the principal entrance on the street, on the belétage, there were living in 1852, just the same as at the present time (1860), the khozyáïka and her son. Anna Petrovna is now, and she was then, a lady of distinction. Mikhaïl Ivanovitch is now an army officer of distinction, as he was then a distinguished and handsome officer.
I do not know who is now living on the fourth floor apartment, on the right hand, as you enter from one of the innumerable dirty back entrances of the first dvor; but in 1852 there were living there the manager of the house, Pavel Konstantinuitch Rozalsky, a hardy and representative man, his
- ↑ Dyeistvitelnui Statskui Sovyetnik corresponds in the civil rank of the Tchin with that of general of the army.
