VIII

Feodor Ivanovitch Lavretzky (we must ask the reader's permission to

break the thread of our narrative for a time) was descended from an

ancient family of the nobility. The ancestral founder of the Lavretzkys

had come out of Prussia during the princely reign of Vasily the Blind,

and had been granted two hundred quarters[1] of land, on Byezhetsk

Heights. Many of his descendants were members of various branches of the

public service, and sat under princes and distinguished personages in

distant governorships, but not one of them ever rose above the rank of

table-decker at the Court of the Tzars, or acquired any considerable

fortune. The most opulent and noteworthy of all the Lavretzkys had been

Feodor Ivanitch's great-grandfather, Andrei, a harsh, insolent,

clever, and crafty man. Down to the day of which we are speaking, the

fame of his arbitrary violence, of his fiendish disposition, his mad

lavishness, and unquenchable thirst had not died out. He had been very

stout and lofty of stature, swarthy of visage, and beardless; he lisped,

and appeared to be sleepy; but the more softly he spoke, the more did

every one around him tremble. He obtained for himself a wife to match.

Goggle-eyed, with hawk-like nose, with a round, sallow face, a gipsy by

birth, quick-tempered and revengeful, she was not a whit behind her

husband, who almost starved her to death, and whom she did not survive,

although she was eternally snarling at him.

Andrei's son, Piotr, Feodor's grandfather, did not resemble his

father: he was a simple squire of the steppes, decidedly hare-brained, a

swashbuckler and dawdler, rough but not malicious, hospitable, and fond

of dogs. He was more than thirty years old when he inherited from his

father two thousand souls in capital order; but he speedily dispersed

them, sold a part of his estate, and spoiled his house-servants. Petty

little people, acquaintances and non-acquaintances, crawled from all

sides, like black-beetles, to his spacious, warm, and slovenly mansion;

all these ate whatever came to hand, but ate their fill, drank themselves

drunk, and carried off what they could, lauding and magnifying the

amiable host; and the host, when he was not in a good humour, also

magnified his guests--as drones and blackguards--but he was bored without

them. Piotr Andreitch's wife was a meek person: he took her from a

neighbouring family, at his father's choice and command; her name was

Anna Pavlovna. She never interfered with anything, received visitors

cordially, and was fond of going out herself, although powdering her

hair, according to her own words, was death to her. They put a felt hood

on your head, she was wont to narrate in her old age, combed your hair

all up on top, smeared it with tallow, sprinkled on flour, stuck in iron

pins,--and you could not wash yourself afterward; but to go visiting

without powder was impossible--people would take offence;--torture!--She

was fond of driving after trotters, was ready to play cards from morning

until night, and always covered up with her hand the few farthings of

winnings set down to her when her husband approached the card-table; but

she gave her dowry and all her money to him, and required no accounting

for its use. She bore him two children: a son, Ivan, Feodor's father,

and a daughter, Glafira.

Ivan was not brought up at home, but at the house of a wealthy old aunt,

Princess Kubenskoy; she had designated him as her heir (had it not been

for that, his father would not have let him go); she dressed him like a

doll, hired every sort of teacher for him, provided him with a governor,

a Frenchman, a former abbe, a disciple of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a

certain M. Courtin de Vaucelles, an adroit and subtle intriguer,--the

most _fine fleur_ of the emigration, as she expressed it,--and ended by

marrying this "fine-fleur" when she was almost seventy years of age; she

transferred to his name her entire fortune, and soon afterward, rouged,

scented with amber, _a la Richelieu_, surrounded by small negroes,

slender-legged dogs, and screeching parrots, she died on a crooked little

couch of the time of Louis XV, with an enamelled snuff-box, the work of

Petitot, in her hands,--and died, deserted by her husband: the sneaking

M. Courtin had preferred to retire to Paris with her money.

Ivan was only in his twentieth year when this blow (we are speaking of

the Princess's marriage, not of her death) descended upon him; he did not

wish to remain in his aunt's house, where from a wealthy heir he had

suddenly been converted into a parasite; in Petersburg, the society in

which he had been reared, was closed to him; to service, beginning with

the lowest ranks, difficult and dark, he felt repugnance (all this took

place at the very beginning of the reign of the Emperor Alexander). He

was compelled, perforce, to return to the country, to his father. Dirty,

poor, tattered did his native nest appear to him: the dulness and soot of

existence on the steppes offended him at every step; he was tormented

with boredom; on the other hand, every one in the house, with the

exception of his mother, looked upon him with unfriendly eyes. His father

did not like his habits of the capital; his dress-suits, frilled shirts,

books, his flute, his cleanliness, in which, not without reason, they

scented his fastidiousness; he was constantly complaining and grumbling

at his son.--"Nothing here suits him," he was wont to say: "at table he

is dainty, he does not eat, he cannot endure the odour of the servants,

the stifling atmosphere; the sight of drunken men disturbs him, and you

mustn't dare to fight in his presence, either; he will not enter

government service: he's frail in health, forsooth; phew, what an

effeminate creature! And all because Voltaire sticks in his head!"

The old man cherished a particular dislike for Voltaire, and for the

"fanatic" Diderot, although he had never read a single line of their

writings: reading was not in his line. Piotr Andreitch was not mistaken:

Diderot and Voltaire really were sticking in his son's head, and not they

only,--but Rousseau and Raynal and Helvetius, and many other writers of

the same sort, were sticking in his head,--but only in his head. Ivan

Petrovitch's former tutor, the retired abbe and encyclopedist, had

contented himself with pouring the whole philosophy of the XVIII century

into his pupil in a mass, and the latter went about brimful of it; it

gained lodgment within him, without mingling with his blood, without

penetrating into his soul, without making itself felt as a firm

conviction.... And could convictions be demanded of a young fellow of

fifty years ago, when we have not even yet grown up to them? He also

embarrassed the visitors to his father's house: he loathed them, and they

feared him; and with his sister, Glafira, who was twelve years older than

he, he did not get on at all.

This Glafira was a strange being; homely, hunchbacked, gaunt, with

stern, staring eyes and thin, tightly compressed lips; in face, voice,

and quick, angular movements, she recalled her grandmother, the gipsy,

the wife of Andrei. Persistent, fond of power, she would not even hear

of marriage. The return of Ivan Petrovitch did not please her; so long

as the Princess Kubenskoy had kept him with her, she had cherished the

hope of receiving at least half of the parental estate: she resembled her

grandmother in her avarice. Moreover, Glafira was envious of her

brother: he was so cultivated, he spoke French so well, with a Parisian

accent, while she was scarcely able to say: "_bon jour_," and "_comment

vous portez vous_?" To tell the truth, her parents did not understand any

French at all,--but that did not render it any the more pleasant for her.

Ivan Petrovitch did not know what to do with himself for tedium and

melancholy; he spent nearly a year in the country, and it seemed to him

like ten years.--Only with his mother did he relieve his heart, and he

was wont to sit, by the hour, in her low-ceiled rooms, listening to the

simple prattle of the good woman, and gorging himself with preserves. It

so happened, that among Anna Pavlovna's maids there was one very pretty

girl, with clear, gentle eyes and delicate features, named Malanya, both

clever and modest. She pleased Ivan Petrovitch at first sight, and he

fell in love with her: he fell in love with her timid walk, her shy

answers, her soft voice, her gentle smile; with every passing day she

seemed to him more charming. And she became attached to Ivan Petrovitch

with her whole soul, as only Russian girls can become attached--and gave

herself to him.

In the country manor-house of a landed proprietor, no secret can be kept

long: every one soon knew of the bond between the young master and

Malanya; the tidings of this connection at last reached Piotr

Andreitch himself. At any other time, he would, in all probability, have

paid no heed to such an insignificant matter; but he had long been in a

rage with his son, and rejoiced at the opportunity to put to shame the

Petersburg philosopher and dandy. Tumult, shrieks, and uproar arose:

Malanya was locked up in the lumber-room; Ivan Petrovitch was summoned

to his parent. Anna Pavlovna also hastened up at the outcry. She made an

effort to pacify her husband, but Piotr Andreitch no longer listened to

anything. Like a vulture he pounced upon his son, upbraided him with

immorality, with impiety, with hypocrisy; incidentally, he vented on him

all his accumulated wrath against the Princess Kubenskoy, and

overwhelmed him with insulting epithets. At first, Ivan Petrovitch held

his peace, and stood firm, but when his father took it into his head to

threaten him with a disgraceful chastisement, he lost patience. "The

fanatic Diderot has come on the stage again," he thought,--"so just wait,

I'll put him in action; I'll astonish you all."

Thereupon, in a quiet voice, although trembling in every limb, Ivan

Petrovitch announced to his father, that there was no necessity for

upbraiding him with immorality, that, although he did not intend to

justify his fault, yet he was ready to rectify it, and that the more

willingly because he felt himself superior to all prejudices--in short,

he was ready to marry Malanya. By uttering these words, Ivan

Petrovitch did, undoubtedly, attain his object: he astounded Piotr

Andreitch to such a degree, that the latter stared with all his eyes,

and was rendered dumb for a moment; but he immediately recovered himself,

and just as he was, clad in a short coat lined with squirrel-skin, and

with slippers on his bare feet, he flung himself with clenched fists upon

Ivan Petrovitch, who that day, as though expressly, had his hair

dressed _a la Titus_, and had donned a new blue English dress-coat,

boots with tassels, and dandified chamois trousers, skin-tight. Anna

Pavlovna shrieked at the top of her voice, and covered her face with her

hands, but her son ran through the whole house, sprang out into the yard,

rushed into the vegetable garden, across the garden, flew out upon the

highway, and kept running, without looking behind him, until, at last, he

ceased to hear behind him the heavy tramp of his father's footsteps, and

his violent, broken shouts.... "Stop, rascal!" he roared,--"stop! I'll

curse thee!"

Ivan Petrovitch hid himself in the house of a neighbouring peasant

proprietor, while Piotr Andreitch returned home utterly exhausted and

perspiring, and announcing almost before he had recovered his breath,

that he would deprive his son of his blessing and his heritage, ordered

all his idiotic books to be burned, and the maid Malanya to be sent

forthwith to a distant village. Kind people turned up, who sought out

Ivan Petrovitch and informed him of all. Mortified, enraged, he vowed

that he would take revenge on his father; and that very night, lying in

wait for the peasant cart in which Malanya was being carried off, he

rescued her by force, galloped off with her to the nearest town, and

married her. He was supplied with money by a neighbour, an eternally

intoxicated and extremely good-natured retired naval officer, a

passionate lover of every sort of noble adventure, as he expressed it. On

the following day, Ivan Petrovitch wrote a caustically-cold and

courteous letter to Piotr Andreitch, and betook himself to an estate

where dwelt his second cousin, Dmitry Pestoff, and his sister, Marfa

Timofeevna, already known to the reader. He told them everything,

announced that he intended to go to Petersburg to seek a place, and

requested them to give shelter to his wife, for a time at least. At the

word "wife" he fell to weeping bitterly, and, despite his city breeding

and his philosophy, he prostrated himself humbly, after the fashion of a

Russian beggar, before the feet of his relatives, and even beat his brow

against the floor. The Pestoffs, kind and compassionate people, gladly

acceded to his request; he spent three weeks with them, in secret

expectation of a reply from his father; but no reply came,--and none

could come. Piotr Andreitch, on learning of his son's marriage, had

taken to his bed, and had forbidden the name of Ivan Petrovitch to be

mentioned in his presence; but his mother, without the knowledge of her

husband, borrowed five hundred rubles from the ecclesiastical supervisor

of the diocese, and sent them to him, together with a small holy picture

for his wife;[2] she was afraid to write, but she gave orders that Ivan

Petrovitch was to be told, by the lean peasant her envoy, who managed to

walk sixty versts in the course of twenty-four hours, that he must not

grieve too much, that, God willing, everything would come right, and his

father would convert wrath into mercy; that she, also, would have

preferred a different daughter-in-law, but that, evidently, God had so

willed it, and she sent her maternal blessing to Malanya Sergyeevna.

The lean little peasant received a ruble, requested permission to see his

new mistress, to whom he was related as co-sponsor at a baptism, kissed

her hand, and hastened off homeward.

And Ivan Petrovitch set off for Petersburg with a light heart. The

unknown future awaited him; poverty, perhaps, menaced him, but he had

bidden farewell to the life in the country which he detested, and, most

important of all, he had not betrayed his teachers, he really had "put in

action" and justified in fact Rousseau, Diderot, and _la declaration des

droits de l'homme_. A sense of duty accomplished, of triumph, of pride,

filled his soul; and his separation from his wife did not greatly alarm

him; the necessity of living uninterruptedly with his wife would have

perturbed him more. That affair was ended; he must take up other affairs.

In Petersburg, contrary to his own expectation, fortune smiled on him:

Princess Kubenskoy--whom Monsieur Courtin had already succeeded in

abandoning, but who had not yet succeeded in dying,--by way, in some

measure, of repairing the injury which she had done to her nephew,

recommended him to the good graces of all her friends, and gave him five

thousand rubles,--almost her last farthing,--and a Lepikovsky watch with

his coat of arms in a garland of cupids. Three months had not elapsed,

when he had already obtained a place in the Russian mission to London,

and he went to sea on the first English ship which sailed (there was no

thought of steamers in those days). A few months later, he received a

letter from Pestoff. The kind-hearted squire congratulated Ivan

Petrovitch on the birth of a son, who had made his appearance in the

world, in the village of Pokrovskoe, on August 20, 1807, and was named

Feodor, in honour of the holy martyr, Feodor the Strategist. Owing to

her extreme weakness, Malanya Sergyeevna added only a few lines; but

those few lines astonished Ivan Petrovitch: he was not aware that

Marfa Timofeevna had taught his wife to read and write. However, Ivan

Petrovitch did not give himself up for long to the sweet agitation of

paternal emotions: he was paying court to one of the most famous Phrynes

or Laises of the period (classical appellations were still flourishing

at that epoch); the peace of Tilsit had just been concluded, and

everybody was making haste to enjoyment, everything was whirling round in

a sort of mad whirlwind. He had very little money; but he played luckily

at cards, he picked up acquaintances, he took part in all the

merrymakings,--in a word, he was dashing along under full sail.

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[1] An ancient land-measure, varying in different localities; the average

"quarter" being about thirty by forty fathoms.--Translator.

[2] That is to say, she sent her maternal blessing.--Translator.