Arriving at St. Petersburg, and stopping at his aunt’s, the wife of an ex-Minister of State, he found himself in the very heart of the aristocratic circle.  It was unpleasant to him, but he could do no different.  Not to stop at his aunt’s was to offend her.  Besides, through her connections she could be of great service to him in those affairs for the sake of which he came to St. Petersburg.

“What wonders I hear about you!” said Countess Catherine Ivanovna Charskaia, while Nekhludoff was drinking the coffee brought him immediately after his arrival.  “Vous posez pour un Howard.  You are helping the convicts; making the rounds of the prisons; reforming them.”

“You are mistaken; I never had such intentions.”

“Why, that is not bad.  Only, I understand, there is some love affair—­come, tell me.”

Nekhludoff related the story of Maslova, exactly as it happened.

“Yes, yes, I remember.  Poor Hellen told me at the time you lived at the old maids’ house that, I believe, they wished you to marry their ward.”  Countess Catherine Ivanovna always hated Nekhludoff’s aunts on his father’s side.  “So, that is she?  Elle est encore jolie?”

Aunt Catherine Ivanovna was a sixty-year-old, healthy, jolly, energetic, talkative woman.  She was tall, very stout, with a black, downy mustache on her upper lip.  Nekhludoff loved her, and since childhood had been accustomed to get infected with her energy and cheerfulness.

“No, ma tante, all that belongs to the past.  I only wish to help her, because she is innocent, and it is my fault that she was condemned, her whole wrecked life is upon my conscience.  I feel it to be my duty to do for her what I can.”

“But how is it?  I was told that you wish to marry her.”

“I do wish it, it is true; but she doesn’t.”

Catherine Ivanovna raised her eyebrows and silently looked at Nekhludoff in surprise.  Suddenly her face changed and assumed a pleased expression.

“Well, she is wiser than you are.  Ah! what a fool you are!  And you would marry her?”

“Certainly.”

“After what she has been?”

“The more so—­is it not all my fault?”

“Well, you are simply a crank,” said the aunt, suppressing a smile.  “You are an awful crank, but I love you for the very reason that you are such an awful crank,” she repeated, the word evidently well describing, according to her view, the mental and moral condition of her nephew.  “And how opportune.  You know, Aline has organized a wonderful asylum for Magdalens.  I visited it once.  How disgusting they are!  I afterward washed myself from head to foot.  But Aline is corps et ame in this affair.  So we will send her, your Magdalen, to her.  If any one will reform her, it is Aline.”

“But she was sentenced to penal servitude.  I came here for the express purpose of obtaining a reversal of her sentence.  That is my first business to you.”