the stairs for his carriage, he jostled against a friend of his, an aide-de-camp of the Tsar, Prince G.
'I was looking at you from my box', the prince said to him, grinning over his perfumed moustaches. 'Do you know whom you were talking to?'
'No, do you?'
'The lad's no fool, eh?'
'Far from it; who is he?'
Then the prince bent over to his ear and whispered in French, 'My brother─yes; he's my brother, a natural son of my father's . . . his name's Nezhdanov. I will tell you about it some day. . . . My father hadn't expected him; that's why he called him Nezhdanov that is, unexpected. However, he provided for him. . . il lui a fait un sort. . .. We let him have an allowance. He's a fellow with brains . . . he's had, thanks to my father again, a good education. But he's gone utterly crazy, a sort of republican. . . . We don't receive him. . . Il est impossible! But good-bye, they're calling my carriage!' The prince departed, and the next day Sipyagin read in the paper the advertisement Nezhdanov had inserted, and he went to see him. . .
'My surname's Sipyagin,' he told Nezhdanov,
31
