Vanka gave a look towards the window in which shone the reflection of his candle, and vividly pictured to himself his grandfather, Konstantin Makarych, who was night-watchman at Messrs. Zhivarev.  He was a small, lean, unusually lively and active old man of sixty-five, always smiling and blear-eyed.  All day he slept in the servants’ kitchen or trifled with the cooks.  At night, enveloped in an ample sheep-skin coat, he strayed round the domain tapping with his cudgel.  Behind him, each hanging its head, walked the old bitch Kashtanka, and the dog Viun, so named because of his black coat and long body and his resemblance to a loach.  Viun was an unusually civil and friendly dog, looking as kindly at a stranger as at his masters, but he was not to be trusted.  Beneath his deference and humbleness was hid the most inquisitorial maliciousness.  No one knew better than he how to sneak up and take a bite at a leg, or slip into the larder or steal a muzhik’s chicken.  More than once they had nearly broken his hind-legs, twice he had been hung up, every week he was nearly flogged to death, but he always recovered.

At this moment, for certain, Vanka’s grandfather must be standing at the gate, blinking his eyes at the bright red windows of the village church, stamping his feet in their high-felt boots, and jesting with the people in the yard; his cudgel will be hanging from his belt, he will be hugging himself with cold, giving a little dry, old man’s cough, and at times pinching a servant-girl or a cook.

“Won’t we take some snuff?” he asks, holding out his snuff-box to the women.  The women take a pinch of snuff, and sneeze.

The old man goes into indescribable ecstasies, breaks into loud laughter, and cries: 

“Off with it, it will freeze to your nose!”

He gives his snuff to the dogs, too.  Kashtanka sneezes, twitches her nose, and walks away offended.  Viun deferentially refuses to sniff and wags his tail.  It is glorious weather, not a breath of wind, clear, and frosty; it is a dark eight, but the whole village, its white roofs and streaks of smoke from the chimneys, the trees silvered with hoar-frost, and the snowdrifts, you can see it all.  The sky scintillates with bright twinkling stars, and the Milky Way stands out so clearly that it looks as if it had been polished and rubbed over with snow for the holidays...

Vanka sighs, dips his pen in the ink, and continues to write: 

“Last night I got a thrashing, my master dragged me by my hair into the yard, and belaboured me with a shoe-maker’s stirrup, because, while I was rocking his brat in its cradle, I unfortunately fell asleep.  And during the week, my mistress told me to clean a herring, and I began by its tail, so she took the herring and stuck its snout into my face.  The assistants tease me, send me to the tavern for vodka, make me steal the master’s cucumbers, and the master beats me with whatever is handy.  Food there is none; in the morning it’s bread,