Not long afterwards a tall man with a grey beard and a straw hat came along the walk.  When he came up to the princess, he took off his hat and bowed.  From the bald patch on his head and his sharp, hooked nose the princess recognised him as the doctor, Mihail Ivanovitch, who had been in her service at Dubovki.  She remembered that some one had told her that his wife had died the year before, and she wanted to sympathise with him, to console him.

“Doctor, I expect you don’t recognise me?” she said with an affable smile.

“Yes, Princess, I recognised you,” said the doctor, taking off his hat again.

“Oh, thank you; I was afraid that you, too, had forgotten your princess.  People only remember their enemies, but they forget their friends.  Have you, too, come to pray?”

“I am the doctor here, and I have to spend the night at the monastery every Saturday.”

“Well, how are you?” said the princess, sighing.  “I hear that you have lost your wife.  What a calamity!”

“Yes, Princess, for me it is a great calamity.”

“There’s nothing for it!  We must bear our troubles with resignation.  Not one hair of a man’s head is lost without the Divine Will.”

“Yes, Princess.”

To the princess’s friendly, gentle smile and her sighs the doctor responded coldly and dryly:  “Yes, Princess.”  And the expression of his face was cold and dry.

“What else can I say to him?” she wondered.

“How long it is since we met!” she said.  “Five years!  How much water has flowed under the bridge, how many changes in that time; it quite frightens one to think of it!  You know, I am married. . . .  I am not a countess now, but a princess.  And by now I am separated from my husband too.”

“Yes, I heard so.”

“God has sent me many trials.  No doubt you have heard, too, that I am almost ruined.  My Dubovki, Sofyino, and Kiryakovo have all been sold for my unhappy husband’s debts.  And I have only Baranovo and Mihaltsevo left.  It’s terrible to look back:  how many changes and misfortunes of all kinds, how many mistakes!”

“Yes, Princess, many mistakes.”

The princess was a little disconcerted.  She knew her mistakes; they were all of such a private character that no one but she could think or speak of them.  She could not resist asking: 

“What mistakes are you thinking about?”

“You referred to them, so you know them . . .” answered the doctor, and he smiled.  “Why talk about them!”

“No; tell me, doctor.  I shall be very grateful to you.  And please don’t stand on ceremony with me.  I love to hear the truth.”

“I am not your judge, Princess.”

“Not my judge!  What a tone you take!  You must know something about me.  Tell me!”

“If you really wish it, very well.  Only I regret to say I’m not clever at talking, and people can’t always understand me.”