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That morning was a very full one for Alexey Alexandrovitch. The

evening before, Countess Lidia Ivanovna had sent him a pamphlet

by a celebrated traveler in China, who was staying in Petersburg,

and with it she enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler

himself, as he was an extremely interesting person from various

points of view, and likely to be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch

had not had time to read the pamphlet through in the evening, and

finished it in the morning. Then people began arriving with

petitions, and there came the reports, interviews, appointments,

dismissals, apportionment of rewards, pensions, grants, notes,

the workaday round, as Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that

always took up so much time. Then there was private business of

his own, a visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his

property. The steward did not take up much time.