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For all that, Malania Pavlovna was a very kind-hearted woman; she was easily pleased. ‘She’s not one to snarl, nor to sneer,’ the maids used to say of her. Malania Pavlovna was passionately fond of sweet things–and a special old woman who looked after nothing but the jam, and so was called the jam-maid, would bring her, ten times a day, a china dish with rose-leaves crystallised in sugar, or barberries in honey, or sherbet of bananas. Malania Pavlovna was afraid of solitude– dreadful thoughts are apt to come over one, she would say–and was almost always surrounded by companions, whom she would urgently implore: ‘Talk, talk! why do you sit like that, simply keeping your seats warm!’ and they would begin twittering like canaries. She was no less devout than Alexey Sergeitch, and was very fond of praying; but as, in her own words, she had never learned to repeat prayers well, she kept for the purpose a poor deacon’s widow who prayed with such relish! Never stumbled over a word in her life! And this deacon’s widow certainly could utter the words of prayer in a sort of unbroken flow, not interrupting the stream to breathe out or draw breath in, while Malania Pavlovna listened and was much moved. She had another widow in attendance on her–it was her duty to tell her stories in the night. ‘But only the old ones,’ Malania Pavlovna would beg–‘those I know already; the new ones are all so far-fetched.’ Malania Pavlovna was flighty in the extreme, and at times she was fanciful too; some ridiculous notion would suddenly come into her head. She did not like the dwarf, Janus, for instance; she was always fancying he would suddenly get up and shout, ‘Don’t you know who I am? The prince of the Buriats. Mind, you are to obey me!’ Or else that he would set fire to the house in a fit of spleen. Malania Pavlovna was as liberal as Alexey Sergeitch; but she never gave money–she did not like to soil her hands–but kerchiefs, bracelets, dresses, ribbons; or she would send pies from the table, or a piece of roast meat, or a bottle of wine. She liked feasting the peasant-women, too, on holidays; they would dance, and she would tap with her heels and throw herself into attitudes.

Alexey Sergeitch was well aware that his wife was a fool; but almost from the first year of his marriage he had schooled himself to keep up the fiction that she was very witty and fond of saying cutting things. Sometimes when her chatter began to get beyond all bounds, he would threaten her with his finger, and say as he did so: ‘Ah, the tongue, the tongue! what it will have to answer for in the other world! It will be pierced with a redhot pin!’

Malania Pavlovna was not offended, however, at this; on the contrary, she seemed to feel flattered at hearing a reproof of that sort, as though she would say, ‘Well! is it my fault if I’m naturally witty?’

Malania Pavlovna adored her husband, and had been all her life an exemplarily faithful wife; but there had been a romance even in her life–a young cousin, an hussar, killed, as she supposed, in a duel on her account; but, according to more trustworthy reports, killed by a blow on the head from a billiard-cue in a tavern brawl. A water-colour portrait of this object of her affections was kept by her in a secret drawer. Malania Pavlovna always blushed up to her ears when she mentioned Kapiton–such was the name of the young hero–and Alexey Sergeitch would designedly scowl, shake his finger at his wife again, and say: ‘No trusting a horse in the field nor a woman in the house. Don’t talk to me of Kapiton, he’s Cupidon!’ Then Malania Pavlovna would be all of a flutter and say: ‘Alexis, Alexis, it’s too bad of you! In your young days you flirted, I’ve no doubt, with all sorts of misses and madams–and so now you imagine….’ ‘Come, that’s enough, that’s enough, my dear Malania,’ Alexey Sergeitch interrupted with a smile. ‘Your gown is white–but whiter still your soul!’ ‘Yes, Alexis, it is whiter!’ ‘Ah, what a tongue, what a tongue!’ Alexis would repeat, patting her hand.