In my novel surroundings I felt very uncomfortable for the first week at Orlov’s before I got used to being addressed as “thou,” and being constantly obliged to tell lies (saying “My master is not at home” when he was).  In my flunkey’s swallow-tail I felt as though I were in armour.  But I grew accustomed to it in time.  Like a genuine footman, I waited at table, tidied the rooms, ran and drove about on errands of all sorts.  When Orlov did not want to keep an appointment with Zinaida Fyodorovna, or when he forgot that he had promised to go and see her, I drove to Znamensky Street, put a letter into her hands and told a lie.  And the result of it all was quite different from what I had expected when I became a footman.  Every day of this new life of mine was wasted for me and my cause, as Orlov never spoke of his father, nor did his visitors, and all I could learn of the stateman’s doings was, as before, what I could glean from the newspapers or from correspondence with my comrades.  The hundreds of notes and papers I used to find in the study and read had not the remotest connection with what I was looking for.  Orlov was absolutely uninterested in his father’s political work, and looked as though he had never heard of it, or as though his father had long been dead.

III

Every Thursday we had visitors.

I ordered a piece of roast beef from the restaurant and telephoned to Eliseyev’s to send us caviare, cheese, oysters, and so on.  I bought playing-cards.  Polya was busy all day getting ready the tea-things and the dinner service.  To tell the truth, this spurt of activity came as a pleasant change in our idle life, and Thursdays were for us the most interesting days.

Only three visitors used to come.  The most important and perhaps the most interesting was the one called Pekarsky—­a tall, lean man of five and forty, with a long hooked nose, with a big black beard, and a bald patch on his head.  His eyes were large and prominent, and his expression was grave and thoughtful like that of a Greek philosopher.  He was on the board of management of some railway, and also had some post in a bank; he was a consulting lawyer in some important Government institution, and had business relations with a large number of private persons as a trustee, chairman of committees, and so on.  He was of quite a low grade in the service, and modestly spoke of himself as a lawyer, but he had a vast influence.  A note or card from him was enough to make a celebrated doctor, a director of a railway, or a great dignitary see any one without waiting; and it was said that through his protection one might obtain even a post of the Fourth Class, and get any sort of unpleasant business hushed up.  He was looked upon as a very intelligent man, but his was a strange, peculiar intelligence.  He was able to multiply 213 by 373 in his head instantaneously, or turn English pounds into German marks without help