When they left off crying, she wrapped them up and took them out for a drive.  They stopped near the Iverskoy chapel, put up candles at the shrine, and, kneeling down, prayed.  On the way back they went in Filippov’s, and had cakes sprinkled with poppy-seeds.

The Laptevs had dinner between two and three.  Pyotr handed the dishes.  This Pyotr waited on the family, and by day ran to the post, to the warehouse, to the law courts for Kostya; he spent his evenings making cigarettes, ran to open the door at night, and before five o’clock in the morning was up lighting the stoves, and no one knew where he slept.  He was very fond of opening seltzer-water bottles and did it easily, without a bang and without spilling a drop.

“With God’s blessing,” said Kostya, drinking off a glass of vodka before the soup.

At first Yulia Sergeyevna did not like Kostya; his bass voice, his phrases such as “Landed him one on the beak,” “filth,” “produce the samovar,” etc., his habit of clinking glasses and making sentimental speeches, seemed to her trivial.  But as she got to know him better, she began to feel very much at home with him.  He was open with her; he liked talking to her in a low voice in the evening, and even gave her novels of his own composition to read, though these had been kept a secret even from such friends as Laptev and Yartsev.  She read these novels and praised them, so that she might not disappoint him, and he was delighted because he hoped sooner or later to become a distinguished author.

In his novels he described nothing but country-house life, though he had only seen the country on rare occasions when visiting friends at a summer villa, and had only been in a real country-house once in his life, when he had been to Volokolamsk on law business.  He avoided any love interest as though he were ashamed of it; he put in frequent descriptions of nature, and in them was fond of using such expressions as, “the capricious lines of the mountains, the miraculous forms of the clouds, the harmony of mysterious rhythms . . . .”  His novels had never been published, and this he attributed to the censorship.

He liked the duties of a lawyer, but yet he considered that his most important pursuit was not the law but these novels.  He believed that he had a subtle, aesthetic temperament, and he always had leanings towards art.  He neither sang nor played on any musical instrument, and was absolutely without an ear for music, but he attended all the symphony and philharmonic concerts, got up concerts for charitable objects, and made the acquaintance of singers. . . .

They used to talk at dinner.

“It’s a strange thing,” said Laptev, “my Fyodor took my breath away again!  He said we must find out the date of the centenary of our firm, so as to try and get raised to noble rank; and he said it quite seriously.  What can be the matter with him?  I confess I begin to feel worried about him.”