Page 616 - the-brothers-karamazov

Mitya was seriously persuaded that, being on the eve of his
departure for the next world, old Kuzma must sincerely re-
pent of his past relations with Grushenka, and that she had
no more devoted friend and protector in the world than
this, now harmless, old man.
After his conversation with Alyosha, at the cross-roads,
he hardly slept all night, and at ten o’clock next morning,
he was at the house of Samsonov and telling the servant to
announce him. It was a very large and gloomy old house of
two stories, with a lodge and outhouses. In the lower story
lived Samsonov’s two married sons with their families, his
old sister, and his unmarried daughter. In the lodge lived
two of his clerks, one of whom also had a large family. Both
the lodge and the lower story were overcrowded, but the old
man kept the upper floor to himself, and would not even let
the daughter live there with him, though she waited upon
him, and in spite of her asthma was obliged at certain fixed
hours, and at any time he might call her, to run upstairs to
him from below.
This upper floor contained a number of large rooms kept
purely for show, furnished in the old-fashioned merchant
style, with long monotonous rows of clumsy mahogany
chairs along the walls, with glass chandeliers under shades,
and gloomy mirrors on the walls. All these rooms were en-
tirely empty and unused, for the old man kept to one room,
a small, remote bedroom, where he was waited upon by an
old servant with a kerchief on her head, and by a lad, who
used to sit on the locker in the passage. Owing to his swol-
len legs, the old man could hardly walk at all, and was only

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