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Updated: June 22, 2025
Fyodor rummaged Akim's pockets and felt him all over while the old man stood motionless, with his head drooping on his breast as though he were dead. "Here's a knife," said Fyodor, taking an old kitchen knife out of the front of Akim's coat. "Aha, my fine gentleman, so that's what you were after," cried Naum.
It was not that his conscience was troubling him no! he had with amazing coolness been present all day at the packing and moving of all Akim's possessions and had more than once addressed Avdotya, who was so downcast that she did not even reproach him ... his conscience was at rest but he was disturbed by various conjectures and calculations.
One autumn evening a merchant in the drapery line put up at Akim's inn. He was journeying by various cross-country roads from Moscow to Harkov with two loaded tilt carts; he was one of those travelling traders whose arrival is sometimes awaited with such impatience by country gentlemen and still more by their wives and daughters.
It is hard to say how it could have happened so quickly, especially as she had hitherto been irreproachable in her behaviour in spite of many opportunities and temptations to deceive her husband. However that may have been, Naum began to be frequently seen in Akim's yard.
The portrait was recognisable though the artist had painted her excessively stout and rosy and had made her eyes not grey but black and even slightly squinting.... Akim's was a complete failure, the portrait had come out dark a la Rembrandt so that sometimes a visitor would go up to it, look at it and merely give an inarticulate murmur.
Akim's susceptibility was extreme, his heart could never resist a woman's glance: he melted before it like the first snow of autumn in the sun ... and dearly he had to pay for his excessive sensibility. Besides, he was then in his forty-sixth year and at that time of life every passion grows perceptibly calmer and cooler and the time for marrying was past.
"Certainly," said Naum, and he got up and followed Kirillovna into the drawing-room. The door closed behind them.... When the door opened again and Naum walked out backwards, bowing, the matter was settled: Akim's inn belonged to him. He had bought it for 2800 paper roubles.
Avdotya certainly did not appreciate Akim's eloquence and often in the evenings when he indulged in conversation with travellers or fell to telling stories she stealthily yawned or went out of the room. Akim looked at the closed door. "Once you begin talking," he repeated in an undertone.... "The fact is, I have not talked enough to you. And who is it?
Akim's love for her and confidence in her only increased as he grew older; her girl friends, who had been married not to peasants, were suffering cruel hardships, either from poverty or from having fallen into bad hands.... Akim went on getting richer and richer. Everything succeeded with him he was always lucky; only one thing was a grief: God had not given him children.
Even Akim's appearance disposed people in his favour: he was tall, rather thin, but graceful even at his advanced years; he had a long face, with fine-looking regular features, a high and open brow, a straight and delicate nose and a small mouth.
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