" "Well, and how is your land doing?" asked Levin.

"Oh, still just the same, always at a loss," the landowner answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of serenity and conviction that so it must be.

" And how do you come to be in our province?" he asked.

" Come to take part in our _coup d'etat?_" he said, confidently pronouncing the French words with a bad accent.

" All Russia's here--gentlemen of the bedchamber, and everything short of the ministry.