At eleven o’clock the next day, which was Sunday, he was driving with his wife along Pyatnitsky Street in a light, one-horse carriage.  He was afraid of his father’s doing something outrageous, and was already ill at ease.  After two nights in her husband’s house Yulia Sergeyevna considered her marriage a mistake and a calamity, and if she had had to live with her husband in any other town but Moscow, it seemed to her that she could not have endured the horror of it.  Moscow entertained her—­she was delighted with the streets, the churches; and if it had been possible to drive about Moscow in those splendid sledges with expensive horses, to drive the whole day from morning till night, and with the swift motion to feel the cold autumn air blowing upon her, she would perhaps not have felt herself so unhappy.

Near a white, lately stuccoed two-storey house the coachman pulled up his horse, and began to turn to the right.  They were expected, and near the gate stood two policemen and the porter in a new full-skirted coat, high boots, and goloshes.  The whole space, from the middle of the street to the gates and all over the yard from the porch, was strewn with fresh sand.  The porter took off his hat, the policemen saluted.  Near the entrance Fyodor met them with a very serious face.

“Very glad to make your acquaintance, little sister,” he said, kissing Yulia’s hand.  “You’re very welcome.”

He led her upstairs on his arm, and then along a corridor through a crowd of men and women.  The anteroom was crowded too, and smelt of incense.

“I will introduce you to our father directly,” whispered Fyodor in the midst of a solemn, deathly silence.  “A venerable old man, pater-familias.”

In the big drawing-room, by a table prepared for service, Fyodor Stepanovitch stood, evidently waiting for them, and with him the priest in a calotte, and a deacon.  The old man shook hands with Yulia without saying a word.  Every one was silent.  Yulia was overcome with confusion.

The priest and the deacon began putting on their vestments.  A censer was brought in, giving off sparks and fumes of incense and charcoal.  The candles were lighted.  The clerks walked into the drawing-room on tiptoe and stood in two rows along the wall.  There was perfect stillness, no one even coughed.

“The blessing of God,” began the deacon.  The service was read with great solemnity; nothing was left out and two canticles were sung —­to sweetest Jesus and the most Holy Mother of God.  The singers sang very slowly, holding up the music before them.  Laptev noticed how confused his wife was.  While they were singing the canticles, and the singers in different keys brought out “Lord have mercy on us,” he kept expecting in nervous suspense that the old man would make some remark such as, “You don’t know how to cross yourself,” and he felt vexed.  Why this crowd, and why this ceremony with priests and choristers?  It was too bourgeois.  But when she, like the old man, put her head under the gospel and afterwards several times dropped upon her knees, he realised that she liked it all, and was reassured.