we told him we would wait for him near the church.  We walked, talked, laughed over our purchases, while a man who was known in the district by a very strange nickname, “Forty Martyrs,” followed us all the while in silence with a mysterious air like a detective.  This Forty Martyrs was no other than Gavril Syeverov, or more simply Gavryushka, who had been for a short time in my service as a footman and had been dismissed by me for drunkenness.  He had been in Dmitri Petrovitch’s service, too, and by him had been dismissed for the same vice.  He was an inveterate drunkard, and indeed his whole life was as drunk and disorderly as himself.  His father had been a priest and his mother of noble rank, so by birth he belonged to the privileged class; but however carefully I scrutinized his exhausted, respectful, and always perspiring face, his red beard now turning grey, his pitifully torn reefer jacket and his red shirt, I could not discover in him the faintest trace of anything we associate with privilege.  He spoke of himself as a man of education, and used to say that he had been in a clerical school, but had not finished his studies there, as he had been expelled for smoking; then he had sung in the bishop’s choir and lived for two years in a monastery, from which he was also expelled, but this time not for smoking but for “his weakness.”  He had walked all over two provinces, had presented petitions to the Consistory, and to various government offices, and had been four times on his trial.  At last, being stranded in our district, he had served as a footman, as a forester, as a kennelman, as a sexton, had married a cook who was a widow and rather a loose character, and had so hopelessly sunk into a menial position, and had grown so used to filth and dirt, that he even spoke of his privileged origin with a certain scepticism, as of some myth.  At the time I am describing, he was hanging about without a job, calling himself a carrier and a huntsman, and his wife had disappeared and made no sign.

From the tavern we went to the church and sat in the porch, waiting for the coachman.  Forty Martyrs stood a little way off and put his hand before his mouth in order to cough in it respectfully if need be.  By now it was dark; there was a strong smell of evening dampness, and the moon was on the point of rising.  There were only two clouds in the clear starry sky exactly over our heads:  one big one and one smaller; alone in the sky they were racing after one another like mother and child, in the direction where the sunset was glowing.

“What a glorious day!” said Dmitri Petrovitch.

“In the extreme . . .”  Forty Martyrs assented, and he coughed respectfully into his hand.  “How was it, Dmitri Petrovitch, you thought to visit these parts?” he asked in an ingratiating voice, evidently anxious to get up a conversation.

Dmitri Petrovitch made no answer.  Forty Martyrs heaved a deep sigh and said softly, not looking at us: