Here lives, and has lived for many years, Ivan Ivanovitch K——­, a gentleman of the old school, and a very worthy man of his kind.  If we look at him as he sits in his comfortable armchair, with his capacious dressing-gown hanging loosely about him, we shall be able to read at a glance something of his character.  Nature endowed him with large bones and broad shoulders, and evidently intended him to be a man of great muscular power, but he has contrived to frustrate this benevolent intention, and has now more fat than muscle.  His close-cropped head is round as a bullet, and his features are massive and heavy, but the heaviness is relieved by an expression of calm contentment and imperturbable good-nature, which occasionally blossoms into a broad grin.  His face is one of those on which no amount of histrionic talent could produce a look of care and anxiety, and for this it is not to blame, for such an expression has never been demanded of it.  Like other mortals, he sometimes experiences little annoyances, and on such occasions his small grey eyes sparkle and his face becomes suffused with a crimson glow that suggests apoplexy; but ill-fortune has never been able to get sufficiently firm hold of him to make him understand what such words as care and anxiety mean.  Of struggle, disappointment, hope, and all the other feelings which give to human life a dramatic interest, he knows little by hearsay and nothing by experience.  He has, in fact, always lived outside of that struggle for existence which modern philosophers declare to be the law of nature.

Somewhere about seventy years ago Ivan Ivan’itch was born in the house where he still lives.  His first lessons he received from the parish priest, and afterwards he was taught by a deacon’s son, who had studied in the ecclesiastical seminary to so little purpose that he was unable to pass the final examination.  By both of these teachers he was treated with extreme leniency, and was allowed to learn as little as he chose.  His father wished him to study hard, but his mother was afraid that study might injure his health, and accordingly gave him several holidays every week.  Under these circumstances his progress was naturally not very rapid, and he was still very slightly acquainted with the elementary rules of arithmetic, when his father one day declared that he was already eighteen years of age, and must at once enter the service.

But what kind of service?  Ivan had no natural inclination for any kind of activity.  The project of entering him as a Junker in a cavalry regiment, the colonel of which was an old friend of the family, did not at all please him.  He had no love for military service, and positively disliked the prospect of an examination.  Whilst seeming, therefore, to bow implicitly to the paternal authority, he induced his mother to oppose the scheme.