Monsieur Gauché

A rival horticulturist named as the target of Yegor Semyonych Pesotsky's polemical journal articles; Yegor Semyonych dismisses Gauché's professional success as "manufactured by the ignorant and the dilettante," and has Kovrin read Gauché's own article first so that his rebuttal will make sense. Gauché never appears in the story except as this offstage professional antagonist quoted and attacked secondhand.