Notwithstanding all this, Malanya Pavlovna was a very kind woman; she was easy to please.—­“She doesn’t nag you, and she doesn’t sneer at you,” the maids said of her.—­Malanya Pavlovna was passionately fond of all sweets, and a special old woman, who occupied herself with nothing but the preserves, and therefore was called the preserve-woman, brought to her, half a score of times in a day, a Chinese plate now with candied rose-leaves, again with barberries in honey, or orange sherbet.  Malanya Pavlovna feared solitude—­dreadful thoughts come then—­and was almost constantly surrounded by female hangers-on whom she urgently entreated:  “Talk, talk!  Why do you sit there and do nothing but warm your seats?”—­and they began to twitter like canary-birds.  Being no less devout than Alexyei Sergyeitch, she was very fond of praying; but as, according to her own words, she had not learned to recite prayers well, she kept for that purpose the widow of a deacon, who prayed so tastily!  She would never stumble to all eternity!  And, in fact, that deacon’s widow understood how to utter prayerful words in an irrepressible sort of way, without a break even when she inhaled or exhaled her breath—­and Malanya Pavlovna listened and melted with emotion.  She had another widow also attached to her service; the latter’s duty consisted in telling her stories at night,—­“but only old ones,” entreated Malanya Pavlovna, “those I already know; all the new ones are spurious.”

Malanya Pavlovna was very frivolous and sometimes suspicious.  All of a sudden she would take some idea into her head.  She did not like the dwarf Janus, for example; it always seemed to her as though he would suddenly start in and begin to shriek:  “But do you know who I am?  A Buryat Prince!  So, then, submit!”—­And if she did not, he would set fire to the house out of melancholy.  Malanya Pavlovna was as lavish as Alexyei Sergyeitch; but she never gave money—­she did not wish to soil her pretty little hands—­but kerchiefs, ear-rings, gowns, ribbons, or she would send a patty from the table, or a bit of the roast, or if not that, a glass of wine.  She was also fond of regaling the peasant-women on holidays.  They would begin to dance, and she would click her heels and strike an attitude.

Alexyei Sergyeitch was very well aware that his wife was stupid; but he had trained himself, almost from the first year of his married life, to pretend that she was very keen of tongue and fond of saying stinging things.  As soon as she got to chattering he would immediately shake his little finger at her and say:  “Okh, what a naughty little tongue!  What a naughty little tongue!  Won’t it catch it in the next world!  It will be pierced with red-hot needles!”—­But Malanya Pavlovna did not take offence at this; on the contrary, she seemed to feel flattered at hearing such remarks—­as much as to say:  “Well, I can’t help it!  It isn’t my fault that I was born witty!”