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I recognised him instantly: it was the very artisan Vassily, who had once shown me my dead tutor!

His features were little changed; only their expression had become still more unusual, still more terrible…. The lower part of his swollen face was overgrown with unkempt beard. Tattered, filthy, wild-looking, he inspired in me more repugnance than horror. He left off crossing himself, but still his eyes wandered senselessly about the corners of the room, about the floor, as though he were waiting for something….

‘Vassily Nikititch, please come,’ said the woman in the jacket with a bow. He suddenly threw up his head and turned round, but stumbled and tottered…. His companion flew to him at once, and supported him under the arm. Judging by her voice and figure, she seemed still young; her face it was almost impossible to see.

‘Akulinushka, friend!’ the vagrant repeated once more in a shaking voice, and opening his mouth wide, and smiting himself on the breast with his fist, he uttered a deep groan, that seemed to come from the bottom of his heart. Both followed the landlady out of the room.

I lay down on my hard sofa and mused a long while on what I had seen. My mesmeriser had become a regular religious maniac. This was what he had been brought to by the power which one could not but recognise in him!

* * * * *

The next morning I was preparing to go on my way. The rain was falling as fast as the day before, but I could not delay any longer. My servant, as he gave me water to wash, wore a special smile on his face, a smile of restrained irony. I knew that smile well; it indicated that my servant had heard something discreditable or even shocking about gentlefolks. He was obviously burning with impatience to communicate it to me.

‘Well, what is it?’ I asked at last.

‘Did your honour see the crazy pilgrim yesterday?’ my man began at once.

‘Yes; what then?’

‘And did you see his companion too?’

‘Yes, I saw her.’

‘She’s a young lady, of noble family.’

‘What?’

‘It’s the truth I’m telling you; some merchants arrived here this morning from T—-; they recognised her. They did tell me her name, but I’ve forgotten it.’

It was like a flash of enlightenment. ‘Is the pilgrim still here?’ I asked.

‘I fancy he’s not gone yet. He’s been ever so long at the gate, and making such a wonderful wise to-do, that there’s no getting by. He’s amusing himself with this tomfoolery; he finds it pay, no doubt.’

My man belonged to the same class of educated servants as Ardalion.

‘And is the lady with him?’

‘Yes. She’s in attendance on him.’

* * * * *

I went out on to the steps, and got a view of the crazy pilgrim. He was sitting on a bench at the gate, and, bent down with both his open hands pressed on it, he was shaking his drooping head from right to left, for all the world like a wild beast in a cage. The thick mane of curly hair covered his eyes, and shook from side to side, and so did his pendulous lips…. A strange, almost unhuman muttering came from them. His companion had only just finished washing from a pitcher that was hanging on a pole, and without having yet replaced her kerchief on her head, was making her way back to the gate along a narrow plank laid across the dark puddles of the filthy yard. I glanced at her head, which was now entirely uncovered, and positively threw up my hands with astonishment: before me stood Sophie B.!