Fedor Ivanitch Lavretsky—­we must ask the reader’s permission to break off the thread of our story for a time—­came of an old noble family.  The founder of the house of Lavretskky came over from Prussia in the reign of Vassili the Blind, and received a grant of two hundred chetverts of land in Byezhetsk.  Many of his descendants filled various offices, and served under princes and persons of eminence in outlying districts, but not one of them rose above the rank of an inspector of the Imperial table nor acquired any considerable fortune.  The richest and most distinguished of all the Lavretskys was Fedor Ivanitch’s great-grandfather, Andrei, a man cruel and daring, cunning and able.  Even to this day stories still linger of his tyranny, his savage temper, his reckless munificence, and his insatiable avarice.  He was very stout and tall, swarthy of countenance and beardless, he spoke in a thick voice and seemed half asleep; but the more quietly he spoke the more those about him trembled.  He had managed to get a wife who was a fit match for him.  She was a gipsy by birth, goggle-eyed and hook-nosed, with a round yellow face.  She was irascible and vindictive, and never gave way in anything to her husband, who almost killed her, and whose death she did not survive, though she had been for ever quarrelling with him.  The son of Andrei, Piotr, Fedor’s grandfather, did not take after his father; he was a typical landowner of the steppes, rather a simpleton, loud-voiced, but slow to move, coarse but not ill-natured, hospitable and very fond of coursing with dogs.  He was over thirty when he inherited from his father a property of two thousand serfs in capital condition; but he had soon dissipated it, and had partly mortgaged his estate, and demoralised his servants.  All sorts of people of low position, known and unknown, came crawling like cockroaches from all parts into his spacious, warm, ill-kept halls.  All this mass of people ate what they could get, but always had their fill, drank till they were drunk, and carried off what they could, praising and blessing their genial host; and their host too when he was out humour blessed his guests—­for a pack of sponging toadies, but he was bored when he was without them.  Piotr Andreitch’s wife was a meek-spirited creature; he had taken her from a neighbouring family by his father’s choice and command; her name was Anna Pavlovna.  She never interfered in anything, welcomed guests cordially, and readily paid visits herself, though being powdered, she used to declare, would be the death of her.  “They put,” she used to say in her old age, “a fox’s brush on your head, comb all the hair up over it, smear it with grease, and dust it over with flour, and stick it up with iron pins,—­there’s no washing it off afterwards; but to pay visits without powder was quite impossible—­people would be offended.  Ah, it was a torture!”