Turandina
I
PETER ANTÒNOVITCH BULANIN was spending the summer in the country with the family of his cousin, a teacher of philology. Bulanin himself was a young advocate of thirty years of age, having finished his course at the University only two years before.
The past year had been a comparatively fortunate one. He had successfully defended two criminal cases on the nomination of the Court, as well as a civil case undertaken at the instigation of his own heart. All three cases had been won by his brilliant pleading. The jury had acquitted the young man who had killed his father out of pity because the old man fasted too assiduously and suffered in consequence; they had acquitted the poor seamstress who had thrown vitriol at the girl her lover wished to marry; and in the civil court the judge had awarded the plaintiff a hundred and fifty roubles, saying
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