“But what is this I have heard about your intention of marrying her?”

“Yes, it was my intention, but she does not wish it.”

Katerina Ivanovna looked at her nephew with raised brows and drooping eyeballs, in silent amazement.  Suddenly her face changed, and with a look of pleasure she said:  “Well, she is wiser than you.  Dear me, you are a fool.  And you would have married her?”

“Most certainly.”

“After her having been what she was?”

“All the more, since I was the cause of it.”

“Well, you are a simpleton,” said his aunt, repressing a smile, “a terrible simpleton; but it is just because you are such a terrible simpleton that I love you.”  She repeated the word, evidently liking it, as it seemed to correctly convey to her mind the idea of her nephew’s moral state.  “Do you know—­What a lucky chance.  Aline has a wonderful home—­the Magdalene Home.  I went there once.  They are terribly disgusting.  After that I had to pray continually.  But Aline is devoted to it, body and soul, so we shall place her there—­yours, I mean.”

“But she is condemned to Siberia.  I have come on purpose to appeal about it.  This is one of my requests to you.”

“Dear me, and where do you appeal to in this case?”

“To the Senate.”

“Ah, the Senate!  Yes, my dear Cousin Leo is in the Senate, but he is in the heraldry department, and I don’t know any of the real ones.  They are all some kind of Germans—­Gay, Fay, Day—­tout l’alphabet, or else all sorts of Ivanoffs, Simenoffs, Nikitines, or else Ivanenkos, Simonenkos, Nikitenkos, pour varier.  Des gens de l’autre monde.  Well, it is all the same.  I’ll tell my husband, he knows them.  He knows all sorts of people.  I’ll tell him, but you will have to explain, he never understands me.  Whatever I may say, he always maintains he does not understand it.  C’est un parti pris, every one understands but only not he.”

At this moment a footman with stockinged legs came in with a note on a silver platter.

“There now, from Aline herself.  You’ll have a chance of hearing Kiesewetter.”

“Who is Kiesewetter?”

“Kiesewetter?  Come this evening, and you will find out who he is.  He speaks in such a way that the most hardened criminals sink on their knees and weep and repent.”

The Countess Katerina Ivanovna, however strange it may seem, and however little it seemed in keeping with the rest of her character, was a staunch adherent to that teaching which holds that the essence of Christianity lies in the belief in redemption.  She went to meetings where this teaching, then in fashion, was being preached, and assembled the “faithful” in her own house.  Though this teaching repudiated all ceremonies, icons, and sacraments, Katerina Ivanovna had icons in every room, and one on the wall above her bed, and she kept all that the Church prescribed without noticing any contradiction in that.