On one of my excursions I received an invitation to dine at the house of
a rich landowner and sportsman, Alexandr Mihalitch G----. His property
was four miles from the small village where I was staying at the time. I
put on a frock-coat, an article without which I advise no one to travel,
even on a hunting expedition, and betook myself to Alexandr Mihalitch's.
The dinner was fixed for six o'clock; I arrived at five, and found
already a great number of gentlemen in uniforms, in civilian dress, and
other nondescript garments. My host met me cordially, but soon hurried
away to the butler's pantry. He was expecting a great dignitary, and was
in a state of agitation not quite in keeping with his independent
position in society and his wealth. Alexandr Mihalitch had never
married, and did not care for women; his house was the centre of a
bachelor society. He lived in grand style; he had enlarged and
sumptuously redecorated his ancestral mansion, spent fifteen thousand
roubles on wine from Moscow every year, and enjoyed the highest public
consideration. Alexandr Mihalitch had retired from the service ages ago,
and had no ambition to gain official honours of any kind. What could
have induced him to go out of his way to procure a guest of high
official position, and to be in a state of excitement from early morning
on the day of the grand dinner? That remains buried in the obscurity of
the unknown, as a friend of mine, an attorney, is in the habit of saying
when he is asked whether he takes bribes when kindly-disposed persons
offer them.
On parting from my host, I began walking through the rooms. Almost all
the guests were utterly unknown to me: about twenty persons were already
seated at the card-tables. Among these devotees of preference were two
warriors, with aristocratic but rather battered countenances, a few
civilian officials, with tight high cravats and drooping dyed
moustaches, such as are only to be found in persons of resolute
character and strict conservative opinions: these conservative persons
picked up their cards with dignity, and, without turning their heads,
glared sideways at everyone who approached; and five or six local petty
officials, with fair round bellies, fat, moist little hands, and staid,
immovable little legs. These worthies spoke in a subdued voice, smiled
benignly in all directions, held their cards close up to their very
shirt-fronts, and when they trumped did not flap their cards on the
table, but, on the contrary, shed them with an undulatory motion on the
green cloth, and packed their tricks together with a slight, unassuming,
and decorous swish. The rest of the company were sitting on sofas, or
hanging in groups about the doors or at the windows; one gentleman, no
longer young, though of feminine appearance, stood in a corner,
fidgeting, blushing, and twisting the seal of his watch over his stomach
in his embarrassment, though no one was paying any attention to him;
some others in swallow-tail coats and checked trousers, the handiwork of
the tailor and Perpetual Master of the Tailors Corporation, Firs
Klyuhin, were talking together with extraordinary ease and liveliness,
turning their bald, greasy heads from side to side unconstrainedly as
they talked; a young man of twenty, short-sighted and fair-haired,
dressed from head to foot in black, obviously shy, smiled
sarcastically....
I was beginning, however, to feel bored, when suddenly I was joined by a
young man, one Voinitsin by name, a student without a degree, who
resided in the house of Alexandr Mihalitch in the capacity of...it
would be hard to say precisely, of what. He was a first-rate shot, and
could train dogs. I had known him before in Moscow. He was one of those
young men who at every examination 'played at dumb-show,' that is to
say, did not answer a single word to the professor's questions. Such
persons were also designated 'the bearded students.' (You will gather
that this was in long past days.) This was how it used to be: they would
call Voinitsin, for example. Voinitsin, who had sat upright and
motionless in his place, bathed in a hot perspiration from head to foot,
slowly and aimlessly looked about him, got up, hurriedly buttoned up his
undergraduate's uniform, and edged up to the examiner's table. 'Take a
paper, please,' the professor would say to him pleasantly. Voinitsin
would stretch out his hand, and with trembling fingers fumble at the
pile of papers. 'No selecting, if you please,' observed, in a jarring
voice, an assistant-examiner, an irritable old gentleman, a professor in
some other faculty, conceiving a sudden hatred for the unlucky bearded
one. Voinitsin resigned himself to his fate, took a paper, showed the
number on it, and went and sat down by the window, while his predecessor
was answering his question. At the window Voinitsin never took his eyes
off his paper, except that at times he looked slowly round as before,
though he did not move a muscle. But his predecessor would finish at
last, and would be dismissed with, 'Good! you can go,' or even 'Good
indeed, very good!' according to his abilities. Then they call
Voinitsin: Voinitsin gets up, and with resolute step approaches the
table. 'Read your question,' they tell him. Voinitsin raises the paper
in both hands up to his very nose, slowly reads it, and slowly drops his
hands. 'Well, now, your answer, please,' the same professor remarks
languidly, throwing himself backwards, and crossing his arms over his
breast.
There reigns the silence of the tomb. 'Why are you silent?' Voinitsin is
mute. The assistant-examiner begins to be restive. 'Well, say
something!' Voinitsin is as still as if he were dead. All his companions
gaze inquisitively at the back of his thick, close-cropped, motionless
head. The assistant-examiner's eyes are almost starting out of his head;
he positively hates Voinitsin. 'Well, this is strange, really,' observes
the other examiner. 'Why do you stand as if you were dumb? Come, don't
you know it? if so, say so.' 'Let me take another question,' the
luckless youth articulates thickly. The professors look at one another.'
Well, take one,' the head-examiner answers, with a wave of the hand.
Voinitsin again takes a paper, again goes to the window, again returns
to the table, and again is silent as the grave. The assistant-examiner
is capable of devouring him alive. At last they send him away and mark
him a nought. You would think, 'Now, at least, he will go.' Not a bit of
it! He goes back to his place, sits just as immovably to the end of the
examination, and, as he goes out, exclaims: 'I've been on the rack! what
ill-luck!' and the whole of that day he wanders about Moscow, clutching
every now and then at his head, and bitterly cursing his luckless fate.
He never, of course, touched a book, and the next day the same story was
repeated.
So this was the Voinitsin who joined me. We talked about Moscow, about
sport.
'Would you like me,' he whispered to me suddenly, 'to introduce you to
the first wit of these parts?'
'If you will be so kind.'
Voinitsin led me up to a little man, with a high tuft of hair on his
forehead and moustaches, in a cinnamon-coloured frock-coat and striped
cravat. His yellow, mobile features were certainly full of cleverness
and sarcasm. His lips were perpetually curved in a flitting ironical
smile; little black eyes, screwed up with an impudent expression, looked
out from under uneven lashes. Beside him stood a country gentleman,
broad, soft, and sweet--a veritable sugar-and-honey mixture--with one
eye. He laughed in anticipation at the witticisms of the little man, and
seemed positively melting with delight. Voinitsin presented me to the
wit, whose name was Piotr Petrovitch Lupihin. We were introduced and
exchanged the preliminary civilities.
'Allow me to present to you my best friend,' said Lupihin suddenly in a
strident voice, seizing the sugary gentleman by the arm.
'Come, don't resist, Kirila Selifanitch,' he added; 'we're not going to
bite you. I commend him to you,' he went on, while the embarrassed
Kirila Selifanitch bowed with about as much grace as if he were
undergoing a surgical operation; 'he's a most superior gentleman. He
enjoyed excellent health up to the age of fifty, then suddenly conceived
the idea of doctoring his eyes, in consequence of which he has lost one.
Since then he doctors his peasants with similar success.... They, to be
sure, repay with similar devotion...'
'What a fellow it is!' muttered Kirila Selifanitch. And he laughed.
'Speak out, my friend; eh, speak out!' Lupihin rejoined. 'Why, they may
elect you a judge; I shouldn't wonder, and they will, too, you see.
Well, to be sure, the secretaries will do the thinking for you, we may
assume; but you know you'll have to be able to speak, anyhow, even if
only to express the ideas of others. Suppose the governor comes and
asks, "Why is it the judge stammers?" And they'd say, let's assume,
"It's a paralytic stroke." "Then bleed him," he'd say. And it would be
highly indecorous, in your position, you'll admit.'
The sugary gentleman was positively rolling with mirth.
'You see he laughs,' Lupihin pursued with a malignant glance at Kirila
Selifanitch's heaving stomach. 'And why shouldn't he laugh?' he added,
turning to me: 'he has enough to eat, good health, and no children; his
peasants aren't mortgaged--to be sure, he doctors them--and his wife is
cracked.' (Kirila Selifanitch turned a little away as though he were not
listening, but he still continued to chuckle.) 'I laugh too, while my
wife has eloped with a land-surveyor.' (He grinned.) 'Didn't you know
that? What! Why, one fine day she ran away with him and left me a
letter.
"Dear Piotr Petrovitch," she said, "forgive me: carried away by passion,
I am leaving with the friend of my heart."... And the land-surveyor only
took her fancy through not cutting his nails and wearing tight trousers.
You're surprised at that? "Why, this," she said, "is a man with no
dissimulation about him."... But mercy on us! Rustic fellows like us
speak the truth too plainly. But let us move away a bit.... It's not for
us to stand beside a future judge.'...
He took me by the arm, and we moved away to a window.
'I've the reputation of a wit here,' he said to me, in the course of
conversation. 'You need not believe that. I'm simply an embittered man,
and I do my railing aloud: that's how it is I'm so free and easy in my
speech. And why should I mince matters, if you come to that; I don't
care a straw for anyone's opinion, and I've nothing to gain; I'm
spiteful--what of that? A spiteful man, at least, needs no wit. And,
however enlightening it may be, you won't believe it.... I say, now, I
say, look at our host! There! what is he running to and fro like that
for? Upon my word, he keeps looking at his watch, smiling, perspiring,
putting on a solemn face, keeping us all starving for our dinner! Such a
prodigy! a real court grandee! Look, look, he's running again--bounding,
positively, look!'
And Lupihin laughed shrilly.
'The only pity is, there are no ladies,' he resumed with a deep sigh;
'it's a bachelor party, else that's when your humble servant gets on.
Look, look,' he cried suddenly: 'Prince Kozelsky's come--that tall man
there, with a beard, in yellow gloves. You can see at once he's been
abroad... and he always arrives as late. He's as heavy, I tell you, by
himself, as a pair of merchant's horses, and you should see how
condescendingly he talks with your humble servant, how graciously he
deigns to smile at the civilities of our starving mothers and
daughters!... And he sometimes sets up for a wit, but he is only here
for a little time; and oh, his witticisms! It's for all the world like
hacking at a ship's cable with a blunt knife. He can't bear me.... I'm
going to bow to him.'
And Lupihin ran off to meet the prince.
'And here comes my special enemy,' he observed, turning all at once to
me. 'Do you see that fat man with the brown face and the bristles on his
head, over there, that's got his cap clutched in his hand, and is
creeping along by the wall and glaring in all directions like a wolf? I
sold him for 400 roubles a horse worth 1000, and that stupid animal has
a perfect right now to despise me; though all the while he is so
destitute of all faculty of imagination, especially in the morning
before his tea, or after dinner, that if you say "Good morning!" to him,
he'll answer, "Is it?" 'And here comes the general,' pursued Lupihin,
'the civilian general, a retired, destitute general. He has a daughter
of beetroot-sugar, and a manufactory with scrofula.... Beg pardon, I've
got it wrong... but there, you understand. Ah! and the architect's
turned up here! A German, and wears moustaches, and does not understand
his business--a natural phenomenon!... though what need for him to
understand his business so long as he takes bribes and sticks in pillars
everywhere to suit the tastes of our pillars of society!'
Lupihin chuckled again.... But suddenly a wave of excitement passed over
the whole house. The grandee had arrived. The host positively rushed
into the hall. After him ran a few devoted members of the household and
eager guests.... The noisy talk was transformed into a subdued pleasant
chat, like the buzzing of bees in spring within their hives. Only the
turbulent wasp, Lupihin, and the splendid drone, Kozelsky, did not
subdue their voices.... And behold, at last, the queen!--the great
dignitary entered. Hearts bounded to meet him, sitting bodies rose; even
the gentleman who had bought a horse from Lupihin poked his chin into
his chest. The great personage kept up his dignity in an inimitable
manner; throwing his head back, as though he were bowing, he uttered a
few words of approbation, of which each was prefaced by the syllable
_er_, drawled through his nose; with a sort of devouring indignation
he looked at Prince Kozelsky's democratic beard, and gave the destitute
general with the factory and the daughter the forefinger of his right
hand. After a few minutes, in the course of which the dignitary had had
time to observe twice that he was very glad he was not late for dinner,
the whole company trooped into the dining-room, the swells first.
There is no need to describe to the reader how they put the great man in
the most important place, between the civilian general and the marshal
of the province, a man of an independent and dignified expression of
face, in perfect keeping with his starched shirt-front, his expanse of
waistcoat, and his round snuff-box full of French snuff; how our host
bustled about, and ran up and down, fussing and pressing the guests to
eat, smiling at the great man's back in passing, and hurriedly snatching
a plate of soup or a bit of bread in a corner like a schoolboy; how the
butler brought in a fish more than a yard long, with a nosegay in its
mouth; how the surly-looking foot-men in livery sullenly plied every
gentleman, now with Malaga, now dry Madeira; and how almost all the
gentlemen, particularly the more elderly ones, drank off glass after
glass with an air of reluctantly resigning themselves to a sense of
duty; and finally, how they began popping champagne bottles and
proposing toasts: all that is probably only too well known to the
reader. But what struck me as especially noteworthy was the anecdote
told us by the great man himself amid a general delighted silence.
Someone--I fancy it was the destitute general, a man familiar with
modern literature--referred to the influence of women in general, and
especially on young men. 'Yes, yes,' chimed in the great man, 'that's
true; but young men ought to be kept in strict subjection, or else, very
likely, they'll go out of their senses over every petticoat.' (A smile
of child-like delight flitted over the faces of all the guests; positive
gratitude could be seen in one gentleman's eyes.) 'For young men are
idiots.' (The great man, I suppose for the sake of greater
impressiveness, sometimes changed the accepted accentuation of words.)
'My son, Ivan, for instance,' he went on; 'the fool's only just
twenty--and all at once he comes to me and says: "Let me be married,
father." I told him he was a fool; told him he must go into the service
first.... Well, there was despair--tears... but with me... no
nonsense.' (The words 'no nonsense' the great man seemed to enunciate
more with his stomach than his lips; he paused and glanced majestically
at his neighbour, the general, while he raised his eyebrows higher than
any one could have expected. The civilian general nodded agreeably a
little on one side, and with extraordinary rapidity winked with the eye
turned to the great man.) 'And what do you think?' the great man began
again: 'now he writes to me himself, and thanks me for looking after him
when he was a fool.... So that's the way to act.' All the guests, of
course, were in complete agreement with the speaker, and seemed quite
cheered up by the pleasure and instruction they derived from him....
After dinner, the whole party rose and moved into the drawing-room with
a great deal of noise--decorous, however; and, as it were, licensed for
the occasion.... They sat down to cards.
I got through the evening somehow, and charging my coachman to have my
carriage ready at five o'clock next morning, I went to my room. But I
was destined, in the course of that same day, to make the acquaintance
of a remarkable man.
In consequence of the great number of guests staying in the house, no
one had a bedroom to himself. In the small, greenish, damp room to which
I was conducted by Alexandr Mihalitch's butler, there was already
another guest, quite undressed. On seeing me, he quickly ducked under
the bed-clothes, covered himself up to the nose, turned a little on the
soft feather-bed, and lay quiet, keeping a sharp look-out from under the
round frill of his cotton night-cap. I went up to the other bed (there
were only two in the room), undressed, and lay down in the damp sheets.
My neighbour turned over in bed.... I wished him good-night.
Half-an-hour went by. In spite of all my efforts, I could not get to
sleep: aimless and vague thoughts kept persistently and monotonously
dragging one after another on an endless chain, like the buckets of a
hydraulic machine.
'You're not asleep, I fancy?' observed my neighbour.
'No, as you see,' I answered. 'And you're not sleepy either, are you?'
'I'm never sleepy.'
'How's that?'
'Oh! I go to sleep--I don't know what for. I lie in bed, and lie in bed,
and so get to sleep.'
'Why do you go to bed before you feel sleepy?'
'Why, what would you have me do?'