Kukushkin

A short, unpleasant-looking actual state councillor in Orlov's Thursday circle, a petty careerist who flatters everyone he considers powerful, including the servants of powerful men. He jokes about "stealing" Zinaida Fyodorovna from Orlov and begins paying her solicitous visits once Orlov starts staying away; the narrator, suspecting his motives, publicly strikes him with a packet of papers in the street. Two years later Orlov reports that Kukushkin has been telling people the narrator once tried to kill him.