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But at this point, if I can trust my memory, I began weeping bitterly, and could not get to sleep all night. Next day at two o'clock I set off to the Zlotnitskys'. The father was not at home, and his wife was not sitting in her usual place; after the pancake festival of the preceding day, she had a headache, and had gone to lie down in her bedroom.
The family of the Zlotnitskys was one of the first whose acquaintance I made on coming to Petersburg from Moscow. It consisted of a father and mother, two daughters, and a son.
The unlooked-for discovery I had made astonished me the more as Asanov was not often at the Zlotnitskys' house, much less so than I, and had shown no marked preference for Sonitchka. He was a handsome, dark fellow, with expressive but rather heavy features, with brilliant, prominent eyes, with a large white forehead, and full red lips under fine moustaches.
After a few days, during which I noticed that Pasinkov was in very low spirits, I made up my mind at last to go to the Zlotnitskys'. What I felt, as I stepped into their drawing-room, it would be difficult to convey in words; I remember that I could hardly distinguish the persons in the room, and my voice failed me.
In Petersburg he lived as in a wilderness, not thinking of the future, and knowing scarcely any one. I took him to the Zlotnitskys'. He used to go and see them rather often. Not being self-conscious, he was not shy, but in their house, as everywhere, he said very little; they liked him, however.
On my arrival in Petersburg, I had thought it my duty to call on the Zlotnitskys. They were relations of my mother's. I managed with difficulty to sit out an hour with them, and it was a long while before I went there again. But by degrees I took to going oftener and oftener. I was drawn there by Sophia, whom I had not cared for at first, and with whom I finally fell in love.
We were joined on these occasions by two plump, short young ladies, sisters, and distant relations of the Zlotnitskys, terribly given to giggling, and a few lads from the military school, very good-natured, quiet fellows. Pasinkov always used to sit beside Tatiana Vassilievna, and with her, judge what was to be done to the one who had to pay a forfeit.
'You have been at Asanov's? 'Yes. 'Well, and he? made a great to-do, I suppose? I articulated with an effort. 'No, I can't say that. I expected more ... He ... he's not such a vulgar fellow as I thought. 'Well, and have you seen any one else besides? I asked, after a brief pause. 'I've been at the Zlotnitskys'.
In the Zlotnitskys' house there reigned a perpetual stillness; it was only broken by the piercing screams of Popka, but visitors soon got used to these, and were conscious again of the burden and oppression of the eternal stillness. Visitors, however, seldom looked in upon the Zlotnitskys; their house was a dull one.
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