The name of the young man whom we have just introduced to the reader was Vladimir Nikolaitch Panshin.

He served in Petersburg on special commissions in the department of internal affairs.

He had come to the town of O---- to carry out some temporary government commissions, and was in attendance on the Governor-General Zonnenberg, to whom he happened to be distantly related.

Panshin's father, a retired cavalry officer and a notorious gambler, was a man with insinuating eyes, a battered countenance, and a nervous twitch about the mouth.

He spent his whole life hanging about the aristocratic world; frequented the English clubs of both capitals, and had the reputation of a smart, not very trustworthy, but jolly good-natured fellow.