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Prince.
    “Kniaz,” said Fanny Ivanovna, “is also one of those who live on Nikolai Vasilievich. He always comes here. Never misses a day. Sits, reads, eats, and then goes. And all without uttering a word. When he borrows money from Nikolai Vasilievichhe naturally opens his mouth, and then shuts it until the next occasion.”
    The old Prince was one of those quiet nonentities who enter unasked and leave unhindered almost any Russian home; and no one is likely to object to their coming because no one is likely to notice them. They have a face, a name, a manner so ordinary that you cannot remember them, ever. They are so colourless, so blank that they seem scarcely to exist at all. I think Goncharov speaks of them somewhere, but I would not be sure of it. “Kniaz” was like that. His name was some very ordinary name, and it even seemed odd that he should not have a more exclusive name for his title. But no one cared. No one, to be sure, knew what his name was. His
imya otchestvo
was Pàvel Pàvlovich, like the Baron’s, and so he was called by all but Fanny Ivanovna, who called him “Kniaz,” sarcastically—a Prince without a copeck to his title! I only remember that he was always very neatly dressed, shaved regularly and wore a very stiff and sharp collar which seemed to torture his dry and skinny neck.
    “Kniaz has some shares,” she explained, “in a limited company, but they are worthless—always have been—and never paid any dividends. Never so long as anybody can remember.”
    “Has he always lived on you, then?”
    “He lived on his brother when he was alive. He had great expectations from his brother. But his brother died and left him more shares, quite a number of shares, in the same limited company. Whom the brother lived on when he was alive, Lord only knows!”
    “Did they get their shares from their father?”
    “Their uncle.”
    “Did
he
get any dividends?”
    “Nikolai says no. But he seems to have put all his money into them.”
    “And now I suppose you invite Kniaz to come and live with you?” I asked.
    “He comes of his own accord.”
    “You don’t object to his coming?”
    “No one would tell him even if they did. It’s not a Russian habit to object to any one who comes to your house. It isn’t much good objecting either. They’ll come anyhow. But never mind.”
    “Extraordinary man,” said I. “What does he propose to do? Has he any plan?”
    “He believes in the shares.”
    “Have you ever tried to disillusion him?”
    “I wouldn’t be so heartless,” said Fanny Ivanovna.
    “And the girls?”
    “For them money does not exist. They are sublimely indifferent to it.”
    “And Nikolai Vasilievich?”
    “Nikolai Vasilievich believes in the mines. Kniaz helps him to sustain that belief in return for Nikolai’s faith in the shares. The money Kniaz borrows from Nikolai Vasilievich he regards merely as an advance on his future dividends.”
    “And does Nikolai Vasilievich regard it in that light?” I asked.
    “He pretends he does. But he always says: ‘Never mind, if only the mines begin to pay all will be well, Pàvel Pvlovich.’ ”
    “And the ‘family,’ Fanny Ivanovna,” I cried, “I mean his wife and her family, his fiancée and her family, you and your family, his sisters and cousins, Kniaz and the others and their families—do
they
believe in the mines?”
    “More firmly than Nikolai. If, in fact, one fine day Nikolaiturned a sceptic in matters mining, they would, I am sure, suspect him of shamming poverty to prevent them from getting their legitimate share.”
    “Fanny Ivanovna,” I sighed, “good night.”
    “I know it is amusing,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t real life, our life, my life. Then I would find it a trifle more amusing.”
    I hailed a driver who slumbered in his sleigh on the corner of the Mohovaya and the Pantilemenskaya. As I drove home across the frozen river, on which the moon spread its yellow light, I thought of the