The Unknown Man ("Stepan" / Vladimir Ivanych)

The story's first-person narrator, an educated former revolutionary and retired naval lieutenant already in the early stages of consumption, who takes a footman's place in Georgy Orlov's household under the name "Stepan" in order to spy on Orlov's statesman father. A chance encounter with the old man leaves him unable to summon his former political hatred, and he abandons his mission; he instead becomes entangled with, and eventually the protector and lover of, Orlov's abandoned mistress Zinaida Fyodorovna, revealing his real identity to her (giving the name "Vladimir Ivanych") the night Orlov's desertion comes to light. He nurses her in Venice, cares for her through her pregnancy and death in Nice, and in the story's final movement, now dying himself, raises her daughter Sonya and returns to confront Orlov about the child's future. The story's title withholds his real name to the end, in keeping with his own political anonymity.