“Is that so?  Where is the case now?”

“In the Senate.”

“In the Senate?  Why, my dear cousin Levoushka is in the Senate.  However, he is in the Heraldry Department.  Let me see.  No, of the real ones I do not know any.  Heaven knows what a mixture they are:  either Germans, such as Ge, Fe, De—­tout l’alphabet—­or all sorts of Ivanvas, Semenovs, Nikitins, or Ivaneukos, Semeneukos, Nikitenkas pour varier.  Des gens de l’autre monde.  However, I will tell my husband.  He knows all sorts of people.  I will tell him.  You explain it to him, for he never understands me.  No matter what I may say, he always says that he cannot understand me.  C’est un parti pris.  Everybody understands, only he does not understand.”

At that moment a servant in knee-breeches entered with a letter on a silver tray.

“Ah, that is from Aline.  Now you will have an opportunity to hear Kisiweather.”

“Who is that Kisiweather?”

“Kisiweather?  Come around to-day and you will find out who he is.  He speaks so that the most hardened criminals fall on their knees and weep, and repent.”

Countess Catherine Ivanovna, however strange it might be, and how so little it agreed with her character, was a follower of that teaching which held that essence of Christianity consisted in a belief in redemption.  She visited the meetings where sermons were delivered on this teaching then in vogue, and invited the adherents to her own house.  Although this teaching rejected all rites, images and even the sacraments, the Princess had images hanging in all her rooms, even over her bedstead, and she complied with all the ritual requirements of the church, seeing nothing contradictory in that.

“Your Magdalen ought to hear him; she would become converted,” said the Countess.  “Don’t fail to come to-night.  You will hear him then.  He is a remarkable man.”

“It is not interesting to me, ma tante.”

“I tell you it is interesting.  You must come to-night.  Now, what else do you want me to do?  Videz votre sac.”

“There is the man in the fortress.”

“In the fortress?  Well, I can give you a note to Baron Kriegmuth.  C’est un tres-brave homme.  But you know him yourself.  He was your father’s comrade.  Il donne dans le spiritisme.  But that is nothing.  He is a kind man.  What do you want there?”

“It is necessary to obtain permission for a mother to visit her son who is incarcerated there.  But I was told that Cherviansky and not Kriegmuth is the person to be applied to.”

“I do not like Cherviansky, but he is Mariette’s husband.  I will ask her; she will do it for me.  Elle est tres gentille.”

“There is another woman I wish you would speak to her about.  She has been in prison for several months, and no one knows for what.”

“Oh, no; she herself surely knows for what.  They know very well.  And it serves them right, those short-haired ones.”