“Now for the last call — the visit to Nikitskaia Street,” I said to Kuzma, and we started for Prince Ivan Ivanovitch’s mansion¹.

Towards the end, a round of calls usually brings one a certain amount of self-assurance: consequently I was approaching the Prince’s abode² in quite a tranquil³ frame of mind, when suddenly I remembered the Princess Kornakoff’s words that I was his heir, and at the same moment caught sight of two carriages waiting at the portico⁴. Instantly, my former nervousness returned.

Both the old major-domo who opened the door to me, and the footman who took my coat, and the two male and three female visitors whom I found in the drawing-room, and, most of all, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch himself (whom I found clad in a “company” frockcoat and seated on a sofa) seemed to look at me as at an HEIR, and so to eye me with ill-will. Yet the Prince was very gracious and, after kissing me (that is to say, after pressing his cold, dry, flabby lips to my cheek for a second), asked me about my plans and pursuits, jested with me, inquired whether I still wrote verses of the kind which I used to indite⁵ in honour of my grandmother’s birthdays, and invited me to dine with him that day. Nevertheless, in proportion as he grew the kinder, the more did I feel persuaded that his civility was only intended to conceal⁶ from me the fact that he disliked the idea of my being his heir. He had a custom (due to his false teeth, of which his mouth possessed⁷ a complete set) of raising his upper lip a little as he spoke⁸, and producing a slight whistling sound from it; and whenever, on the present occasion, he did so it seemed to me that he was saying to himself: “A boy, a boy — I know it! And my heir, too — my heir!”

When we were children, we had been used to calling the Prince “dear Uncle;” but now, in my capacity of heir, I could not bring my tongue to the phrase, while to say “Your Highness,” as did one of the other visitors, seemed derogatory to my self-esteem. Consequently, never once during that visit did I call him anything at all. The personage, however, who most disturbed me was the old Princess who shared with me the position of

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