that's why I have come...

I am a relation.

I shall not disturb him, my friend...

I only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying here, is he not?
Please announce me." The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and turned away.
"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat, who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.
The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.
"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a touch, "you promised me!" The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.
They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.
Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall, were about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as they entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasili came out--wearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast, as was his custom when at home--taking leave of a good-looking, dark-haired man.

This was the celebrated Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.
"Then it is certain ?" said the prince.
"Prince, humanum est errare, * but..." replied the doctor, swallowing his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.
* To err is human.
"Very well, very well..." Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of inquiry.