Birdie was left sole heiress.  She very successfully turned the cozy house into money, as well as the land somewheres at the edge of the town; married, as it had been presupposed, very happily; and up to this time is convinced that her father carried on a great commercial business in the export of wheat through Odessa and Novorossiysk into Asia Minor.

On the evening of the day when Jennie’s corpse had been carried away to an anatomical theatre; at an hour when not even a chance guest appears on Yamskaya Street, all the girls, at the insistence of Emma Edwardovna, assembled in the drawing room.  Not one of them dared murmur against the fact that on this distressing day, when they had not yet recovered from the impression of Jennka’s horrible death, they would be compelled to dress up, as usual, in wildly festive finery, and to go into the brightly illuminated drawing room, in order to dance, sing, and to entice lecherous men with their denuded bodies.

And at last into the drawing room walked Emma Edwardovna herself.  She was more majestic than she had ever been—­clad in a black silk gown, from which, just like battlements, her enormous breasts jutted out, upon which descended two fat chins; in black silk mittens; with an enormous gold chain wound thrice around her neck, and terminating in a ponderous medallion hanging upon the very abdomen.

“Ladies! ...” she began impressively, “I must ...  Stand up!” she suddenly called out commandingly.  “When I speak, you must hear me out standing.”

They all exchanged glances with perplexity:  such an order was a novelty in the establishment.  However, the girls got up one after another, irresolutely, with eyes and mouths gasping.

“Sie sollen ... you must from this day show me that respect which you are bound to show to your mistress,” importantly and weightily began Emma Edwardovna.  “Beginning from to-day, the establishment in a legal manner has passed from our good and respected Anna Markovna to me, Emma Edwardovna Titzner.  I hope that we will not quarrel, and that you will behave yourselves like sensible, obedient, and well-brought-up girls.  I will be to you like in place of your own mother, but only remember, that I will not stand for laziness, or drunkenness, or notions of any sort; or any kind of disorder.  The kind Madam Shaibes, it must be said, held you in too loose reins.  O—­o, I will be far more strict.  Discipline uber alles ... before everything.  It’s a great pity, that the Russian people are lazy, dirty and stoopid, do not understand this rule; but don’t you trouble yourself, I will teach you this for your own good.  I say ‘for your own good,’ because my main thought is to kill the competition of Treppel.  I want that my client should be a man of substance, and not some charlatan and ragamuffin, some kind of student, now, or ham actor.  I want that my ladies should be the most beautiful, best brought-up, the healthiest and gayest in the whole city.  I won’t