During her father’s lifetime, Liza was left in the hands of a governess, a Mademoiselle Moreau, from Paris; but after his death she passed under the care of Marfa Timofeevna.  That lady is already known to the reader.  As for Mademoiselle Moreau, she was a very small woman, much wrinkled, and having the manners of a bird, and the character of a bird also.  In her youth she had led a very dissipated life; in her old age she retained only two passions—­the love of dainties and the love of cards.  When her appetite was satiated, and when she was not playing cards or talking nonsense, her countenance rapidly assumed an almost death-like expression.  She would sit and gaze and breathe, but it was plain that there was not a single idea stirring in her mind.  She could not even be called good; goodness is not an attribute of birds.  In consequence either of her frivolous youth or of the air of Paris, which she had breathed from her childhood’s days, there was rooted in her a kind of universal scepticism, which usually found expression in the words, “Tout ca c’est des betises.”  She spoke an incorrect, but purely Parisian jargon, did not talk scandal, and had no caprices—­what more could one expect from a governess?  Over Liza she had but little influence.  All the more powerful, then, was the influence exercised over the child by her nurse, Agafia Vlasievna.

That woman’s story was a remarkable one.  She sprang from a family of peasants, and was married at sixteen to a peasant; but she stood out in sharp relief against the mass of her peasant sisters.  As a child, she had been spoilt by her father, who had been for twenty years the head of his commune, and who had made a good deal of money.  She was singularly beautiful, and for grace and taste she was unsurpassed in the whole district, and she was intelligent, eloquent, and courageous.  Her master, Dmitry Pestof, Madame Kalitine’s father, a quiet and reserved man, saw her one day on the threshing-floor, had a talk with her, and fell passionately in love with her.  Soon after this she became a widow.  Pestof, although he was a married man, took her into his house, and had her dressed like one of the household.  Agafia immediately made herself at home in her new position, just as if she had never led a different kind of life.  Her complexion grew fairer, her figure became more rounded, and her arms, under their muslin sleeves, showed “white as wheat-flour,” like those of a wealthy tradesman’s wife.  The samovar never quitted her table; she would wear nothing but silks and velvets; she slept on feather-beds of down.