Of his wife there is scarcely anything to be said.

Her name was Kalliopa Karlovna.

There was always a tear in her left eye, on the strength of which Kalliopa Karlovna (she was, one must add, of German extraction) considered herself a woman of great sensibility.

She was always in a state of nervous agitation, seemed as though she were ill-nourished, and wore a tight velvet dress, a cap, and tarnished hollow bracelets.

The only daughter of Pavel Petrovitch and Kalliopa Karlovna, Varvara Pavlovna, was only just seventeen when she left the boarding-school, in which she had been reckoned, if not the prettiest, at least the cleverest pupil and the best musician, and where she had taken a decoration.