§8
In 1840 my father bought the house next to ours, a larger and better house, with a garden, which had belonged to Countess Rostopchín, wife of the famous governor of Moscow. We moved into it. Then he bought a third house, for no reason except that it was adjacent. Two of these houses stood empty; they were never let because tenants would give trouble and might cause fires—both houses were insured, by the way—and they were never repaired, so that both were in a fair way to fall down. Sonnenberg was permitted to lodge in one of these houses, but on conditions: (1) he must never open the yard-gates after 10 p.m. (as the gates were never shut, this was an easy condition); (2) he was to provide fire-wood at his own expense (he did in fact buy it of our coachman); and (3) he was to serve my father as a kind of private secretary, coming in the morning to ask for orders, dining with us, and returning in the evening, when there was no company, to entertain his employer with conversation and the news.
The duties of his place may seem simple enough; but my father contrived to make it so bitter that even Sonnenberg could not stand it continuously, though he was familiar with all the privations that can befall a man with no money and no sense, with a feeble body, a pock-marked face, and German nationality. Every two years or so, the secretary declared that his patience was at an end. He packed up his traps, got together by purchase or barter some odds and ends of disputable value and doubtful quality, and started off for the Caucasus. Misfortune dogged him relentlessly. Either his horse—he drove his own horse as far as Tiflis and Redut-Kale—came down with him in dangerous places inhabited by Don Cossacks; or half his wares were stolen; or his two-wheeled cart broke down and his French scent-bottles wasted their sweetness on the broken wheel at the foot of Mount Elbruz; he was always losing something, and when he had nothing else to lose, he lost his passport. Nearly a year would pass, and then Sonnenberg, older, more unkempt, and poorer than before, with fewer teeth and less hair than ever, would turn up humbly at our house, with a stock of Persian powder against fleas and bugs, faded silk for dressing-gowns, and rusty Circassian daggers; and down he settled once more in the empty house, to buy his own fire-wood and run errands by way of rent.