person
Kazimir Khaptsinsky
Khaptsinsky
also: Казимир Хапцинский, the steward
The Polish steward managing Count Boyadlovsky's estate in the count's absence; he receives the snowbound colonel, drinks and plays cards with him, and lodges him for the night in the count's empty manor house. His wife turns out to be the mysterious woman of the colonel's Christmas Eve story, in the tale's second and final twist.
Reading notes
- It Was She! §37 It wasn't my wife at all, but the steward's wife
The colonel's second and final twist: having killed the mood with the anticlimax of his own wife, he simply reverses himself and claims the woman was Khaptsinsky's wife instead -- an adulterous, scandalous version that instantly revives the young ladies' interest, exposing that the 'truth' of his story was negotiable from the start and existed only to serve his audience's appetite.