IX + 

Pólozof was anxious to arrange for the sale of the stearine factory of which he was part owner and had been the manager. After more than half a year of energetic effort, he found a purchaser. On the purchaser’s visiting-cards was engraved the name Charles Beaumont, not pronounced Sharl Bomon, as the ignorant might suppose, but in the true English fashion, Beemont; and it was entirely natural that it was pronounced so, for the purchaser was the agent of the London house of Hodgson, Lotter and Company, for the purchase of tallow and stearine. The factory could not exist under the wretched financial and administrative conduct of its shareholders; but in the hands of a solid firm it would be sure to bring great profits. After spending on it five or six hundred thousand rubles, the firm could count on having one hundred thousand rubles of profits. The agent was a conscientious man; he looked over the factory with great care, and examined the books in detail before he advised the firm to buy the property. Then followed negotiations with the stockholders in regard to the selling of the factory. They were excessively long and according to the nature of Russian business transactions; even the patient Greeks who spent ten years in the siege of Troy would have found them tedious. And Pólozof all this time was with the agent, according to the old custom of being hospitable to people who are of use, and he invited him to dinner every day. The agent tried to get out of his way, and persistently refused to stay to dinner. But one day, after he had been having an unusually long session with the directors of the company and was tired and hungry, he consented to go to dinner with Pólozof, who lived in a flat in the factory. + 