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 CHAPTER V

reception-room of the celebrated Petersburg lawyer was full of people when Alekseï Aleksandrovitch entered it. Three ladies, one old, another young, and a merchant's wife; three men, a German banker with a ring on his hand, a merchant with a beard, and a sullen-looking official in undress-uniform with a decoration around his neck, had apparently been waiting a long time.

Two clerks were writing with scratching pens. Their writing utensils—and Alekseï Aleksandrovitch was a connoisseur of such things—were of unusual excellence. Alekseï could not fail to take note of that fact. One of the clerks turned his head, with an air of annoyance, toward the newcomer, and, without rising, asked him, with half-closed eyes:—

"What do you want?"

"I have business with the lawyer."

"He is busy," replied the clerk severely, pointing with his pen toward those who were already waiting; and he went back to his writing.

"Will he not find a moment to receive me?" asked Alekseï Aleksandrovitch.

"He is not at liberty a single moment; he is always busy: have the goodness to wait."

"Be so good as to give him my card," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, with dignity, seeing that it was impossible to preserve his incognito.

The secretary took his card, and, evidently not approving of it, left the room.

Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, on principle, approved of public courts, but he did not fully sympathize with certain details of its application in Russia, because of his acquaintance with its working in the best official relations, and he criticized them as far as he could criticize anything that received the sanction of the supreme power. His whole life was spent in administrative activity, and consequently when he did not sympathize