and every one--especially against women--he was railing from morning to
night, sometimes very aptly, sometimes rather stupidly, but always with
gusto. His ill-humour almost approached puerility; his laugh, the sound
of his voice, his whole being seemed steeped in venom. Darya Mihailovna
gave Pigasov a cordial reception; he amused her with his sallies. They
were certainly absurd enough. He took delight in perpetual exaggeration.
For example, if he were told of any disaster, that a village had been
struck by lightning, or that a mill had been carried away by floods, or
that a peasant had cut his hand with an axe, he invariably asked with
concentrated bitterness, ‘And what’s her name?’ meaning, what is the
name of the woman responsible for this calamity, for according to his
convictions, a woman was the cause of every misfortune, if you only
looked deep enough into the matter. He once threw himself on his knees
before a lady he hardly knew at all, who had been effusive in her
hospitality to him and began tearfully, but with wrath written on his
face, to entreat her to have compassion on him, saying that he had done
her no harm and never would come to see her for the future. Once a horse
had bolted with one of Darya Mihailovna’s maids, thrown her into a ditch
and almost killed her. From that time Pigasov never spoke of that horse
except as the ‘good, good horse,’ and he even came to regard the hill
and the ditch as specially picturesque spots. Pigasov had failed in
life and had adopted this whimsical craze. He came of poor parents.
His father had filled various petty posts, and could scarcely read and
write, and did not trouble himself about his son’s education; he fed
and clothed him and nothing more. His mother spoiled him, but she died
early. Pigasov educated himself, sent himself to the district school and
then to the gymnasium, taught himself French, German, and even Latin,
and, leaving the gymnasiums with an excellent certificate, went to
Dorpat, where he maintained a perpetual struggle with poverty, but
succeeded in completing his three years’ course. Pigasov’s abilities did
not rise above the level of mediocrity; patience and perseverance were
his strong points, but the most powerful sentiment in him was ambition,
the desire to get into good society, not to be inferior to others in
spite of fortune. He had studied diligently and gone to the Dorpat
University from ambition. Poverty exasperated him, and made him watchful
and cunning. He expressed himself with originality; from his youth he
had adopted a special kind of stinging and exasperated eloquence. His
ideas did not rise above the common level; but his way of speaking made
him seem not only a clever, but even a very clever, man. Having taken
his degree as candidate, Pigasov decided to devote himself to the
scholastic profession; he understood that in any other career he could
not possibly be the equal of his associates. He tried to select them
from a higher rank and knew how to gain their good graces; even by
flattery, though he was always abusing them. But to do this he had not,
to speak plainly, enough raw material. Having educated himself through
no love for study, Pigasov knew very little thoroughly. He broke down
miserably in the public disputation, while another student who had
shared the same room with him, and who was constantly the subject of his
ridicule, a man of very limited ability who had received a careful and
solid education, gained a complete triumph. Pigasov was infuriated by
this failure, he threw all his books and manuscripts into the fire and
went into a government office. At first he did not get on badly, he made
a fair official, not very active, extremely self-confident and bold,
however; but he wanted to make his way more quickly, he made a false
step, got into trouble, and was obliged to retire from the service. He
spent three years on the property he had bought himself and suddenly
married a wealthy half-educated woman who was captivated by his
unceremonious and sarcastic manners. But Pigasov’s character had become
so soured and irritable that family life was unendurable to him. After
living with him a few years, his wife went off secretly to Moscow and
sold her estate to an enterprising speculator; Pigasov had only just
finished building a house on it. Utterly crushed by this last blow,
Pigasov began a lawsuit with his wife, but gained nothing by it. After
this he lived in solitude, and went to see his neighbours, whom he
abused behind their backs and even to their faces, and who welcomed him
with a kind of constrained half-laugh, though he did not inspire them
with any serious dread. He never took a book in his hand. He had about a
hundred serfs; his peasants were not badly off.
‘Ah! _Constantin_,’ said Darya Mihailovna, when Pandalevsky came into
the drawing-room, ‘is _Alexandrine_ coming?’
‘Alexandra Pavlovna asked me to thank you, and they will be extremely
delighted,’ replied Konstantin Diomiditch, bowing affably in all
directions, and running his plump white hand with its triangular cut
nails through his faultlessly arranged hair.
‘And is Volintsev coming too?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, according to you, African Semenitch,’ continued Darya Mihailovna,
turning to Pigasov, ‘all young ladies are affected?’
Pigasov’s mouth twitched, and he plucked nervously at his elbow.
‘I say,’ he began in a measured voice--in his most violent moods of
exasperation he always spoke slowly and precisely. ‘I say that young
ladies, in general--of present company, of course, I say nothing.’
‘But that does not prevent your thinking of them,’ put in Darya
Mihailovna.
‘I say nothing of them,’ repeated Pigasov. ‘All young ladies, in
general, are affected to the most extreme point--affected in the
expression of their feelings. If a young lady is frightened, for
instance, or pleased with anything, or distressed, she is certain first
to throw her person into some such elegant attitude (and Pigasov threw
his figure into an unbecoming pose and spread out his hands) and then
she shrieks--ah! or she laughs or cries. I did once though (and here
Pigasov smiled complacently) succeed in eliciting a genuine, unaffected
expression of emotion from a remarkably affected young lady!’
‘How did you do that?’
Pigasov’s eyes sparkled.
‘I poked her in the side with an aspen stake, from behind. She did
shriek, and I said to her, “Bravo, bravo! that’s the voice of nature,
that was a genuine shriek! Always do like that for the future!”’
Every one in the room laughed.
‘What nonsense you talk, African Semenitch,’ cried Darya Mihailovna. ‘Am
I to believe that you would poke a girl in the side with a stake!’
‘Yes, indeed, with a stake, a very big stake, like those that are used
in the defence of a fort.’
‘_Mais c’est un horreur ce que vous dites là, Monsieur_,’ cried Mlle.
Boncourt, looking angrily at the boys, who were in fits of laughter.
‘Oh, you mustn’t believe him,’ said Darya Mihailovna. ‘Don’t you know
him?’
But the offended French lady could not be pacified for a long while, and
kept muttering something to herself.
‘You need not believe me,’ continued Pigasov coolly, ‘but I assure you I
told the simple truth. Who should know if not I? After that perhaps you
won’t believe that our neighbour, Madame Tchepuz, Elena Antonovna, told
me herself, mind _herself_, that she had murdered her nephew?’
‘What an invention!’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute! Listen and judge for yourselves. Mind,
I don’t want to slander her, I even like her as far as one can like a
woman. She hasn’t a single book in her house except a calendar, and she
can’t read except aloud, and that exercise throws her into a violent
perspiration, and she complains then that her eyes feel bursting out of
her head.... In short, she’s a capital woman, and her servant girls grow
fat. Why should I slander her?’
‘You see,’ observed Darya Mihailovna, ‘African Semenitch has got on his
hobbyhorse, now he will not be off it to-night.’
‘My hobby! But women have three at least, which they are never off,
except, perhaps, when they’re asleep.’
‘What three hobbies are those?’
‘Reproof, reproach, recrimination.’
‘Do you know, African Semenitch,’ began Darya Mihailovna, ‘you cannot be
so bitter against women for nothing. Some woman or other must have----’
‘Done me an injury, you mean?’ Pigasov interrupted.
Darya Mihailovna was rather embarrassed; she remembered Pigasov’s
unlucky marriage, and only nodded.
‘One woman certainly did me an injury,’ said Pigasov, ‘though she was a
good, very good one.’
‘Who was that?’
‘My mother,’ said Pigasov, dropping his voice.
‘Your mother? What injury could she have done you?’
‘She brought me into the world.’
Darya Mihailovna frowned.
‘Our conversation,’ she said, ‘seems to have taken a gloomy turn.
_Constantin_, play us Thalberg’s new _etude_. I daresay the music will
soothe African Semenitch. Orpheus soothed savage beasts.’
Konstantin Diomiditch took his seat at the piano, and played the étude
very fairly well. Natalya Alexyevna at first listened attentively, then
she bent over her work again.
‘_Merci, c’est charmant_,’ observed Darya Mihailovna, ‘I love Thalberg.
_Il est si distingué_. What are you thinking of, African Semenitch?’
‘I thought,’ began African Semenitch slowly, ‘that there are three kinds
of egoists; the egoists who live themselves and let others live; the
egoists who live themselves and don’t let others live; and the egoists
who don’t live themselves and don’t let others live. Women, for the most
part, belong to the third class.’
‘That’s polite! I am very much astonished at one thing, African
Semenitch; your confidence in your convictions; of course you can never
be mistaken.’
‘Who says so? I make mistakes; a man, too, may be mistaken. But do you
know the difference between a man’s mistakes and a woman’s? Don’t you
know? Well, here it is; a man may say, for example, that twice two makes
not four, but five, or three and a half; but a woman will say that twice
two makes a wax candle.’
‘I fancy I’ve heard you say that before. But allow me to ask what
connection had your idea of the three kinds of egoists with the music
you have just been hearing?’
‘None at all, but I did not listen to the music.’
‘Well, “incurable I see you are, and that is all about it,”’ answered
Darya Mihailovna, slightly altering Griboyedov’s line. ‘What do you
like, since you don’t care for music? Literature?’
‘I like literature, only not our contemporary literature.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll tell you why. I crossed the Oka lately in a ferry boat with a
gentleman. The ferry got fixed in a narrow place; they had to drag the
carriages ashore by hand. This gentleman had a very heavy coach. While
the ferrymen were straining themselves to drag the coach on to the bank,
the gentleman groaned so, standing in the ferry, that one felt quite
sorry for him.... Well, I thought, here’s a fresh illustration of the
system of division of labour! That’s just like our modern literature;
other people do the work, and it does the groaning.’
Darya Mihailovna smiled.
‘And that is called expressing contemporary life,’ continued Pigasov
indefatigably, ‘profound sympathy with the social question and so on.
... Oh, how I hate those grand words!’
‘Well, the women you attack so--they at least don’t use grand words.’
Pigasov shrugged his shoulders.
‘They don’t use them because they don’t understand them.’
Darya Mihailovna flushed slightly.
‘You are beginning to be impertinent, African Semenitch!’ she remarked
with a forced smile.
There was complete stillness in the room.
‘Where is Zolotonosha?’ asked one of the boys suddenly of Bassistoff.
‘In the province of Poltava, my dear boy,’ replied Pigasov, ‘in the
centre of Little Russia.’ (He was glad of an opportunity of changing the
conversation.) ‘We were talking of literature,’ he continued, ‘if I had
money to spare, I would at once become a Little Russian poet.’
‘What next? a fine poet you would make!’ retorted Darya Mihailovna. ‘Do
you know Little Russian?’
‘Not a bit; but it isn’t necessary.’
‘Not necessary?’
‘Oh no, it’s not necessary. You need only take a sheet of paper and
write at the top “A Ballad,” then begin like this, “Heigho, alack, my
destiny!” or “the Cossack Nalivaiko was sitting on a hill and then on
the mountain, under the green tree the birds are singing, grae, voropae,
gop, gop!” or something of that kind. And the thing’s done. Print it
and publish it. The Little Russian will read it, drop his head into his
hands and infallibly burst into tears--he is such a sensitive soul!’
‘Good heavens!’ cried Bassistoff. ‘What are you saying? It’s too absurd
for anything. I have lived in Little Russia, I love it and know the
language... “grae, grae, voropae” is absolute nonsense.’
‘It may be, but the Little Russian will weep all the same. You speak
of the “language.”... But is there a Little Russian language? Is it a
language, in your opinion? an independent language? I would pound my
best friend in a mortar before I’d agree to that.’
Bassistoff was about to retort.
‘Leave him alone!’ said Darya Mihailovna, ‘you know that you will hear
nothing but paradoxes from him.’
Pigasov smiled ironically. A footman came in and announced the arrival
of Alexandra Pavlovna and her brother.
Darya Mihailovna rose to meet her guests.
‘How do you do, Alexandrine?’ she began, going up to her, ‘how good of
you to come!... How are you, Sergei Pavlitch?’
Volintsev shook hands with Darya Mihailovna and went up to Natalya
Alexyevna.
‘But how about that baron, your new acquaintance, is he coming to-day?’
asked Pigasov.
‘Yes, he is coming.’
‘He is a great philosopher, they say; he is just brimming over with
Hegel, I suppose?’
Darya Mihailovna made no reply, and making Alexandra Pavlovna sit down
on the sofa, established herself near her.
‘Philosophies,’ continued Pigasov, ‘are elevated points of view! That’s
another abomination of mine; these elevated points of view. And what can
one see from above? Upon my soul, if you want to buy a horse, you don’t
look at it from a steeple!’
‘This baron was going to bring you an essay?’ said Alexandra Pavlovna.
‘Yes, an essay,’ replied Darya Mihailovna, with exaggerated
carelessness, ‘on the relation of commerce to manufactures in Russia.
... But don’t be afraid; we will not read it here.... I did not invite
you for that. _Le baron est aussi aimable que savant_. And he speaks
Russian beautifully! _C’est un vrai torrent... il vous entraîne_.
‘He speaks Russian so beautifully,’ grumbled Pigasov, ‘that he deserves
a eulogy in French.’
‘You may grumble as you please, African Semenitch.... It’s in keeping
with your ruffled locks.... I wonder, though, why he does not come. Do
you know what, _messieurs et mesdames_’ added Darya Mihailovna, looking
round, ‘we will go into the garden. There is still nearly an hour to
dinner-time and the weather is glorious.’
All the company rose and went into the garden.
Darya Mihailovna’s garden stretched right down to the river. There were
many alleys of old lime-trees in it, full of sunlight and shade and
fragrance and glimpses of emerald green at the ends of the walks, and
many arbours of acacias and lilacs.
Volintsev turned into the thickest part of the garden with Natalya and
Mlle. Boncourt. He walked beside Natalya in silence. Mlle. Boncourt
followed a little behind.
‘What have you been doing to-day?’ asked Volintsev at last, pulling the
ends of his handsome dark brown moustache.
In features he resembled his sister strikingly; but there was less
movement and life in his expression, and his soft beautiful eyes had a
melancholy look.
‘Oh! nothing,’ answered Natalya, ‘I have been listening to Pigasov’s
sarcasms, I have done some embroidery on canvas, and I’ve been reading.’
‘And what have you been reading?’
‘Oh! I read--a history of the Crusades,’ said Natalya, with some
hesitation.
Volintsev looked at her.
‘Ah!’ he ejaculated at last, ‘that must be interesting.’
He picked a twig and began to twirl it in the air. They walked another
twenty paces.
‘What is this baron whom your mother has made acquaintance with?’ began
Volintsev again.
‘A Gentleman of the Bedchamber, a new arrival; _maman_ speaks very
highly of him.’
‘Your mother is quick to take fancies to people.’
‘That shows that her heart is still young,’ observed Natalya.
‘Yes. I shall soon bring you your mare. She is almost quite broken in
now. I want to teach her to gallop, and I shall manage it soon.’
‘_Merci_!... But I’m quite ashamed. You are breaking her in yourself ...
and they say it’s so hard!’
‘To give you the least pleasure, you know, Natalya Alexyevna, I am
ready... I... not in such trifles----’
Volintsev grew confused.
Natalya looked at him with friendly encouragement, and again said
‘_merci_!’
‘You know,’ continued Sergei Pavlitch after a long pause, ‘that not such
things.... But why am I saying this? you know everything, of course.’
At that instant a bell rang in the house.
‘Ah! _la cloche du diner_!’ cried Mlle. Boncourt, ‘_rentrons_.’
‘_Quel dommage_,’ thought the old French lady to herself as she mounted
the balcony steps behind Volintsev and Natalya, ‘_quel dommage que ce
charmant garçon ait si peu de ressources dans la conversation_,’ which
may be translated, ‘you are a good fellow, my dear boy, but rather a
fool.’
The baron did not arrive to dinner. They waited half-an-hour for him.
Conversation flagged at the table. Sergei Pavlitch did nothing but gaze
at Natalya, near whom he was sitting, and zealously filled up her
glass with water. Pandalevsky tried in vain to entertain his neighbour,
Alexandra Pavlovna; he was bubbling over with sweetness, but she hardly
refrained from yawning.
Bassistoff was rolling up pellets of bread and thinking of nothing at
all; even Pigasov was silent, and when Darya Mihailovna remarked to him
that he had not been very polite to-day, he replied crossly, ‘When am
I polite? that’s not in my line;’ and smiling grimly he added, ‘have a
little patience; I am only kvas, you know, _du simple_ Russian kvas; but
your Gentleman of the Bedchamber----’
‘Bravo!’ cried Darya Mihailovna, ‘Pigasov is jealous, he is jealous
already!’
But Pigasov made her no rejoinder, and only gave her a rather cross
look.
Seven o’clock struck, and they were all assembled again in the
drawing-room.
‘He is not coming, clearly,’ said Darya Mihailovna.
But, behold, the rumble of a carriage was heard: a small tarantass
drove into the court, and a few instants later a footman entered the
drawing-room and gave Darya Mihailovna a note on a silver salver. She
glanced through it, and turning to the footman asked:
‘But where is the gentleman who brought this letter?’
‘He is sitting in the carriage. Shall I ask him to come up?’
‘Ask him to do so.’
The man went out.
‘Fancy, how vexatious!’ continued Darya Mihailovna, ‘the baron has
received a summons to return at once to Petersburg. He has sent me
his essay by a certain Mr. Rudin, a friend of his. The baron wanted to
introduce him to me--he speaks very highly of him. But how vexatious it
is! I had hoped the baron would stay here for some time.’
‘Dmitri Nikolaitch Rudin,’ announced the servant
III
A man of about thirty-five entered, of a tall, somewhat stooping
figure, with crisp curly hair and swarthy complexion, an irregular but
expressive and intelligent face, a liquid brilliance in his quick, dark
blue eyes, a straight, broad nose, and well-curved lips. His clothes
were not new, and were somewhat small, as though he had outgrown them.
He walked quickly up to Darya Mihailovna, and with a slight bow told her
that he had long wished to have the honour of an introduction to her,
and that his friend the baron greatly regretted that he could not take
leave of her in person.
The thin sound of Rudin’s voice seemed out of keeping with his tall
figure and broad chest.
‘Pray be seated... very delighted,’ murmured Darya Mihailovna, and,
after introducing him to the rest of the company, she asked him whether
he belonged to those parts or was a visitor.
‘My estate is in the T---- province,’ replied Rudin, holding his hat on
his knees. ‘I have not been here long. I came on business and stayed for
a while in your district town.’
‘With whom?’
‘With the doctor. He was an old chum of mine at the university.’
‘Ah! the doctor. He is highly spoken of. He is skilful in his work, they
say. But have you known the baron long?’
‘I met him last winter in Moscow, and I have just been spending about a
week with him.’
‘He is a very clever man, the baron.’
‘Yes.’
Darya Mihailovna sniffed at her little crushed-up handkerchief steeped
in _eau de cologne_.
‘Are you in the government service?’ she asked.
‘Who? I?’
‘Yes.’
‘No. I have retired.’
There followed a brief pause. The general conversation was resumed.
‘If you will allow me to be inquisitive,’ began Pigasov, turning to
Rudin, ‘do you know the contents of the essay which his excellency the
baron has sent?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘This essay deals with the relations to commerce--or no, of manufactures
to commerce in our country.... That was your expression, I think, Darya
Mihailovna?’
‘Yes, it deals with’... began Darya Mihailovna, pressing her hand to her
forehead.
‘I am, of course, a poor judge of such matters,’ continued Pigasov, ‘but
I must confess that to me even the title of the essay seems excessively
(how could I put it delicately?) excessively obscure and complicated.’
‘Why does it seem so to you?’
Pigasov smiled and looked across at Darya Mihailovna.
‘Why, is it clear to you?’ he said, turning his foxy face again towards
Rudin.
‘To me? Yes.’
‘H’m. No doubt you must know better.’
‘Does your head ache?’ Alexandra Pavlovna inquired of Darya Mihailovna.
‘No. It is only my--_c’est nerveux_.’
‘Allow me to inquire,’ Pigasov was beginning again in his nasal tones,
‘your friend, his excellency Baron Muffel--I think that’s his name?’
‘Precisely.’
‘Does his excellency Baron Muffel make a special study of political
economy, or does he only devote to that interesting subject the hours of
leisure left over from his social amusements and his official duties?’
Rudin looked steadily at Pigasov.
‘The baron is an amateur on this subject,’ he replied, growing rather
red, ‘but in his essay there is much that is interesting and just.’
‘I am not able to dispute it with you; I have not read the essay. But I
venture to ask--the work of your friend Baron Muffel is no doubt founded
more upon general propositions than upon facts?’
‘It contains both facts and propositions founded upon the facts.’
‘Yes, yes. I must tell you that, in my opinion--and I’ve a right to give
my opinion, on occasion; I spent three years at Dorpat... all these,
so-called general propositions, hypotheses, these systems--excuse me,
I am a provincial, I speak the truth bluntly--are absolutely worthless.
All that’s only theorising--only good for misleading people. Give us
facts, sir, and that’s enough!’
‘Really!’ retorted Rudin, ‘why, but ought not one to give the
significance of the facts?’
‘General propositions,’ continued Pigasov, ‘they’re my abomination,
these general propositions, theories, conclusions. All that’s based on
so-called convictions; every one is talking about his convictions, and
attaches importance to them, prides himself on them. Ah!’
And Pigasov shook his fist in the air. Pandalevsky laughed.
‘Capital!’ put in Rudin, ‘it follows that there is no such thing as
conviction according to you?’
‘No, it doesn’t exist.’
‘Is that your conviction?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you say that there are none then? Here you have one at the very
first turn.’
All in the room smiled and looked at one another.
‘One minute, one minute, but----,’ Pigasov was beginning.
But Darya Mihailovna clapped her hands crying, ‘Bravo, bravo, Pigasov’s
beaten!’ and she gently took Rudin’s hat from his hand.
‘Defer your delight a little, madam; there’s plenty of time!’ Pigasov
began with annoyance. ‘It’s not sufficient to say a witty word, with a
show of superiority; you must prove, refute. We had wandered from the
subject of our discussion.’