The prince took a cab and went to Peski.
On one of the Rozhdestvensky streets he soon located a rather small wooden house.
To his surprise, this house turned out to be attractive, clean, very well kept, with a front garden in which flowers were growing.
The windows facing the street were open and from them came the sound of shrill, ceaseless talking, almost shouting, as if someone was reading aloud or even delivering a speech; the voice was interrupted now and then by the laughter of several resounding voices.
The prince entered the yard, went up the front steps, and asked for Mr. Lebedev.
"Mister's in there," the cook replied, opening the door, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, jabbing her finger towards the "drawing room." In this drawing room, the walls of which were covered with blue wallpaper, and which was decorated neatly and with some pretense—that is, with a round table and a sofa, a bronze clock under a glass bell, a narrow mirror between the two windows, and a very old crystal chandelier, not big, suspended from the ceiling on a bronze chain—in the middle of the room stood Mr. Lebedev himself, his back turned to the entering prince, in a waistcoat but with nothing over it, summer-fashion, beating himself on the breast and delivering a bitter harangue on some subject.
The listeners were: a boy of about fifteen with a rather merry and far from stupid face and with a book in his hand, a young girl of about twenty dressed in mourning and with a nursing baby in her arms, a thirteen-year-old girl, also in mourning, who was laughing loudly and opening her mouth terribly widely as she did so, and, finally, an extremely strange listener, a fellow of about twenty, lying on the sofa, rather handsome, dark, with long, thick hair, big, dark eyes, and a small pretense to side-whiskers and a little beard.
This listener, it seemed, often interrupted and argued with the haranguing Lebedev; that was probably what made the rest of the audience laugh.
"Lukyan Timofeich, hey, Lukyan Timofeich!
No, really!
Look here! . . .
Well, drat you all!"
And the cook left, waving her arms and getting so angry that she even became all red.
Lebedev turned around and, seeing the prince, stood for a time as if thunderstruck, then rushed to him with an obsequious smile, but froze again on the way, nevertheless having uttered:
"Il-il-illustrious Prince!"
But suddenly, as if still unable to recover his countenance, he turned around and, for no reason at all, first fell upon the girl in mourning with the baby in her arms, so that she even recoiled a little from the unexpectedness of it, then immediately abandoned her and fell upon the thirteen-year-old girl, who hovered in the doorway to the other room and went on smiling with the remnants of her recent laughter.
She could not bear his shouting and immediately darted off to the kitchen; Lebedev even stamped his feet behind her, for greater intimidation, but, meeting the prince's eyes, staring in bewilderment, said by way of explanation:
"For . . . respectfulness, heh, heh, heh!"
"There's no need for all this . . ." the prince tried to begin.
"At once, at once, at once . . . like lightning!"
And Lebedev quickly vanished from the room.
The prince looked in surprise at the young girl, at the boy, at the one lying on the sofa; they were all laughing.
The prince laughed, too.
"He went to put on his tailcoat," said the boy.
"This is all so vexing," the prince began, "and I'd have thought . . . tell me, is he . . ."
"Drunk, you think?" cried the voice from the sofa. "Stone sober!
Maybe three or four glasses, well, or make it five, but that's just for discipline."
The prince was about to address the voice from the sofa, but the young girl began to speak and, with a most candid look on her pretty face, said:
"He never drinks much in the mornings; if you've come on business, talk to him now.
It's the right time.
When he comes home in the evening, he's drunk; and now he mostly weeps at night and reads aloud to us from the Holy Scriptures, because our mother died five weeks ago."
"He ran away because he probably had a hard time answering you," the young man laughed from the sofa.
"I'll bet he's about to dupe you and is thinking it over right now."
"Just five weeks!
Just five weeks!" Lebedev picked up, coming back in wearing his tailcoat, blinking his eyes and pulling a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his tears. "Orphans!"
"Why have you come out all in holes?" said the young girl. "You've got a brand-new frock coat lying there behind the door, didn't you see it?"
"Quiet, you fidget!" Lebedev shouted at her.
"Ah, you!" he began to stamp his feet at her.
But this time she only laughed.
"Don't try to frighten me, I'm not Tanya, I won't run away.
But you may wake up Lyubochka, and she'll get into a fit . . . what's all this shouting!"
"No, no, no!
Bite your tongue . . ." Lebedev suddenly became terribly frightened and, rushing to the baby asleep in his daughter's arms, with a frightened look made a cross over it several times.
"Lord save us, Lord protect us!
This is my own nursing baby, my daughter Lyubov," he turned to the prince, "born in the most lawful wedlock of the newly departed Elena, my wife, who died in childbed.
And this wee thing is my daughter Vera, in mourning . . . And this, this, oh, this . . ."
"Why do you stop short?" cried the young man. "Go on, don't be embarrassed."
"Your Highness!" Lebedev suddenly exclaimed in a sort of transport, "have you been following the murder of the Zhemarin family7 in the newspapers?"
"I have," the prince said in some surprise.
"Well, this is the true murderer of the Zhemarin family, the man himself!"