"
I had to apologize for not recognizing him at first in that costume and
in that new garb. He arose, came to me, and with his moist hand
irresolutely and weakly seized my hand, and sat down by me. Instead of
looking at me, though he apparently seemed so glad to see me, he gazed
with an expression of unfriendly bravado at the officers.
Either because I recognized in him a man whom I had met a few years
before in a dresscoat in a parlor, or because he was suddenly raised in
his own opinion by the fact of being recognized,--at all events it
seemed to me that his face and even his motions completely changed: they
now expressed lively intelligence, a childish self-satisfaction in the
consciousness of such intelligence, and a certain contemptuous
indifference; so that I confess, notwithstanding the pitiable position
in which he found himself, my old acquaintance did not so much excite
sympathy in me as it did a sort of unfavorable sentiment.
I now vividly remembered our first meeting. In 1848, while I was staying
at Moscow, I frequently went to the house of Ivashin, who from childhood
had been an old friend of mine. His wife was an agreeable hostess, a
charming woman, as everybody said; but she never pleased me.
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