People say of Aksinya that she has become a person of power; and it is true that when she drives in the morning to her brickyard, handsome and happy, with the naive smile on her face, and afterwards when she is giving orders there, one is aware of great power in her.  Everyone is afraid of her in the house and in the village and in the brickyard.  When she goes to the post the head of the postal department jumps up and says to her: 

“I humbly beg you to be seated, Aksinya Abramovna!”

A certain landowner, middle-aged but foppish, in a tunic of fine cloth and patent leather high boots, sold her a horse, and was so carried away by talking to her that he knocked down the price to meet her wishes.  He held her hand a long time and, looking into her merry, sly, naive eyes, said: 

“For a woman like you, Aksinya Abramovna, I should be ready to do anything you please.  Only say when we can meet where no one will interfere with us?”

“Why, when you please.”

And since then the elderly fop drives up to the shop almost every day to drink beer.  And the beer is horrid, bitter as wormwood.  The landowner shakes his head, but he drinks it.

Old Tsybukin does not have anything to do with the business now at all.  He does not keep any money because he cannot distinguish between the good and the false, but he is silent, he says nothing of this weakness.  He has become forgetful, and if they don’t give him food he does not ask for it.  They have grown used to having dinner without him, and Varvara often says: 

“He went to bed again yesterday without any supper.”

And she says it unconcernedly because she is used to it.  For some reason, summer and winter alike, he wears a fur coat, and only in very hot weather he does not go out but sits at home.  As a rule putting on his fur coat, wrapping it round him and turning up his collar, he walks about the village, along the road to the station, or sits from morning till night on the seat near the church gates.  He sits there without stirring.  Passers-by bow to him, but he does not respond, for as of old he dislikes the peasants.  If he is asked a question he answers quite rationally and politely, but briefly.

There is a rumour going about in the village that his daughter-in-law turns him out of the house and gives him nothing to eat, and that he is fed by charity; some are glad, others are sorry for him.

Varvara has grown even fatter and whiter, and as before she is active in good works, and Aksinya does not interfere with her.

There is so much jam now that they have not time to eat it before the fresh fruit comes in; it goes sugary, and Varvara almost sheds tears, not knowing what to do with it.

They have begun to forget about Anisim.  A letter has come from him written in verse on a big sheet of paper as though it were a petition, all in the same splendid handwriting.  Evidently his friend Samorodov was sharing his punishment.  Under the verses in an ugly, scarcely legible handwriting there was a single line:  “I am ill here all the time; I am wretched, for Christ’s sake help me!”