youthful, almost childish appearance, on account of which you could not help excusing his expression of self-sufficiency, though it modified the impression of his high-mightiness caused by his intellectual face and especially his smile.  It is said that he had great success that winter with the high-born ladies of Moscow.  As I saw him at his sister’s I could only infer how far this was true by the feeling of pleasure and contentment constantly excited in me by his youthful appearance and by his sometimes indiscreet anecdotes.  He and I met half a dozen times, and talked a good deal; or, rather, he talked a good deal, and I listened.  He spoke for the most part in French, always with a good accent, very fluently and ornately; and he had the skill of drawing others gently and politely into the conversation.  As a general thing, he behaved toward all, and toward me, in a somewhat supercilious manner, and I felt that he was perfectly right in this way of treating people.  I always feel that way in regard to men who are firmly convinced that they ought to treat me superciliously, and who are comparative strangers to me.

Now, as he sat with me, and gave me his hand, I keenly recalled in him that same old haughtiness of expression; and it seemed to me that he did not properly appreciate his position of official inferiority, as, in the presence of the officers, he asked me what I had been doing in all that time, and how I happened to be there.  In spite of the fact that I invariably made my replies in Russian, he kept putting his questions in French, expressing himself as before in remarkably correct language.  About himself he said fluently that after his unhappy, wretched story (what the story was, I did not know, and he had not yet told me), he had been three months under arrest, and then had been sent to the Caucasus to the N. regiment, and now had been serving three years as a soldier in that regiment.

“You would not believe,” said he to me in French, “how much I have to suffer in these regiments from the society of the officers.  Still it is a pleasure to me, that I used to know the adjutant of whom we were just speaking:  he is a good man—­it’s a fact,” he remarked condescendingly.  “I live with him, and that’s something of a relief for me.  Yes, my dear, the days fly by, but they aren’t all alike,” [Footnote:  Oui, mon cher, Les JOURS Se SUIVENT, mais ne Se RESSEMBLENT pas:  in French in the original.] he added; and suddenly hesitated, reddened, and stood up, as he caught sight of the adjutant himself coming toward us.

“It is such a pleasure to meet such a man as you,” said Guskof to me in a whisper as he turned from me.  “I should like very, very much, to have a long talk with you.”

I said that I should be very happy to talk with him, but in reality I confess that Guskof excited in me a sort of dull pity that was not akin to sympathy.