As for his face, it was of the warm, ardent tint of a piatok [23].

Persons of this kind--persons to whose designing nature has devoted not much thought, and in the fashioning of whose frames she has used no instruments so delicate as a file or a gimlet and so forth--are not uncommon.

Such persons she merely roughhews.

One cut with a hatchet, and there results a nose; another such cut with a hatchet, and there materialises a pair of lips; two thrusts with a drill, and there issues a pair of eyes.

Lastly, scorning to plane down the roughness, she sends out that person into the world, saying: "There is another live creature." Sobakevitch was just such a ragged, curiously put together figure--though the above model would seem to have been followed more in his upper portion than in his lower.