His brother happened about the same time to be made an officer in the Guards. He took him to Petersburg directly he was eighteen, and placed him in the university. His father gave him up as a bad job, and let him go into the civil service. Nikolai Petrovitch, as a general's son-though so far from being distinguished by courage that he even deserved to be called 'a funk'-was intended, like his brother Pavel, to enter the army but he broke his leg on the very day when the news of his commission came, and, after being two months in bed, retained a slight limp to the end of his days. She wore gorgeous caps and rustling silk dresses in church she was the first to advance to the cross she talked a great deal in a loud voice, let her children kiss her hand in the morning, and gave them her blessing at night-in fact, she got everything out of life she could. His mother, one of the Kolyazin family, as a girl called Agathe, but as a general's wife Agathokleya Kuzminishna Kirsanov, was one of those military ladies who take their full share of the duties and dignities of office. He was educated at home till he was fourteen, surrounded by cheap tutors, free-and-easy but toadying adjutants, and all the usual regimental and staff set. Nikolai Petrovitch was born in the south of Russia like his elder brother, Pavel, of whom more hereafter. His father, a general in the army, who served in 1812, a coarse, half-educated, but not ill-natured man, a typical Russian, had been in harness all his life, first in command of a brigade, and then of a division, and lived constantly in the provinces, where, by virtue of his rank, he played a fairly important part. He had, twelve miles from the posting station, a fine property of two hundred souls, or, as he expressed it-since he had arranged the division of his land with the peasants, and started 'a farm'-of nearly five thousand acres. His name was Nikolai Petrovitch Kirsanov. We will introduce him to the reader while he sits, his feet tucked under him, gazing thoughtfully round. His master sighed, and sat down on a little bench. 'No, sir,' responded the man a second time. The servant, in whom everything-the turquoise ring in his ear, the streaky hair plastered with grease, and the civility of his movements-indicated a man of the new, improved generation, glanced with an air of indulgence along the road, and made answer: He was addressing his servant, a chubby young fellow, with whitish down on his chin, and little, lack-lustre eyes. 'Well, Piotr, not in sight yet?' was the question asked on May the 20th, 1859, by a gentleman of a little over forty, in a dusty coat and checked trousers, who came out without his hat on to the low steps of the posting station at S.
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