The next day my friend arrived.... I mentioned the brigadier, and my
visits to him....
‘Oh yes! of course! I know his story,’ answered my friend; ‘I know
Madame Lomov very well, the privy councillor’s widow, by whose favour he
obtained a home here. Oh, wait a minute; I believe there must be
preserved here his letter to the privy councillor’s widow; it was on the
strength of that letter that she assigned him his little cot.’ My friend
rummaged among his papers and actually found the brigadier’s letter.
Here it is word for word, with the omission of the mistakes in spelling.
The brigadier, like every one of his epoch, was a little hazy in that
respect. But to preserve these errors seemed unnecessary; his letter
bears the stamp of his age without them.
‘HONOURED MADAM, RAÏSSA PAVLOVNA!--On the decease of my friend, and your
aunt, I had the happiness of addressing to you two letters, the first on
the first of June, the second on the sixth of July of the year 1815,
while she expired on the sixth of May in that year; in them I discovered
to you the feelings of my soul and of my heart, which were crushed under
deadly wrongs, and they reflected in full my bitter despair, in truth
deserving of commiseration; both letters were despatched by the imperial
mail registered, and hence I cannot conceive that they have not been
perused by your eye. By the genuine candour of my letters, I had counted
upon winning your benevolent attention; but the compassionate feelings
of your heart were far removed from me in my woe! Left on the loss of my
one only friend, Agrippina Ivanovna, in the most distressed and
poverty-stricken circumstances, I rested, by her instructions, all my
hopes on your bounty; she, aware of her end approaching, said to me in
these words, as it were from the grave, and never can I forget them: “My
friend, I have been your serpent, and am guilty of all your unhappiness.
I feel how much you have sacrificed for me, and in return I leave you in
a disastrous and truly destitute situation; on my death have recourse to
Raïssa Pavlovna”--that is, to you--“and implore her aid, invite her
succour! She has a feeling heart, and I have confidence in her, that she
will not leave you forlorn.” Honoured madam, let me call to witness the
all-high Creator of the world that those were her words, and I am
speaking with her tongue; and, therefore, trusting firmly in your
goodness, to you first of all I addressed myself with my open-hearted
and candid letters; but after protracted expectation, receiving no reply
to them, I could not conceive otherwise than that your benevolent heart
had left me without attention! Such your unfavourable disposition
towards me, reduced me to the depths of despair--whither, and to whom,
was I to turn in my misfortune I knew not; my soul was troubled, my
intellect went astray; at last, for the completion of my ruin, it
pleased Providence to chastise me in a still more cruel manner, and to
turn my thoughts to your deceased aunt, Fedulia Ivanovna, sister of
Agrippina Ivanovna, one in blood, but not one in heart! Having present
to myself, before my mind’s eye, that I had been for twenty years
devoted to the whole family of your kindred, the Lomovs, especially to
Fedulia Ivanovna, who never called Agrippina Ivanovna otherwise than “my
heart’s precious treasure,” and me “the most honoured and zealous friend
of our family”; picturing all the above, among abundant tears and sighs
in the stillness of sorrowful night watches, I thought: “Come,
brigadier! so, it seems, it is to be!” and, addressing myself by letter
to the said Fedulia Ivanovna, I received a positive assurance that she
would share her last crumb with me! The presents sent on by me, more
than five hundred roubles’ worth in value, were accepted with supreme
satisfaction; and afterwards the money too which I brought with me for
my maintenance, Fedulia Ivanovna was pleased, on the pretext of guarding
it, to take into her care, to the which, to gratify her, I offered no
opposition.
If you ask me whence, and on what ground I conceived such confidence--to
the above, madam, there is but one reply: she was sister of Agrippina
Ivanovna, and a member of the Lomov family! But alas and alas! all the
money aforesaid I was very soon deprived of, and the hopes which I had
rested on Fedulia Ivanovna--that she would share her last crumb with
me--turned out to be empty and vain; on the contrary, the said Fedulia
Ivanovna enriched herself with my property. To wit, on her saint’s day,
the fifth of February, I brought her fifty roubles’ worth of green
French material, at five roubles the yard; I myself received of all that
was promised five roubles’ worth of white piqué for a waistcoat and a
muslin handkerchief for my neck, which gifts were purchased in my
presence, as I was aware, with my own money--and that was all that I
profited by Fedulia Ivanovna’s bounty! So much for the last crumb! And I
could further, in all sincerity, disclose the malignant doings of
Fedulia Ivanovna to me; and also my expenses, exceeding all reason, as,
among the rest, for sweetmeats and fruits, of which Fedulia Ivanovna was
exceedingly fond;--but upon all this I am silent, that you may not take
such disclosures against the dead in bad part; and also, seeing that God
has called her before His judgment seat--and all that I suffered at her
hands is blotted out from my heart--and I, as a Christian, forgave her
long ago, and pray to God to forgive her!
‘But, honoured madam, Raïssa Pavlovna! Surely you will not blame me for
that I was a true and loyal friend of your family, and that I loved
Agrippina Ivanovna with a love so great and so insurmountable that I
sacrificed to her my life, my honour, and all my fortune! that I was
utterly in her hands, and hence could not dispose of myself nor of my
property, and she disposed at her will of me and also of my estate! It
is known to you also that, owing to her action with her servant, I
suffer, though innocent, a deadly wrong--this affair I brought after her
death before the senate, before the sixth department--it is still
unsettled now--in consequence of which I was made accomplice with her,
my estate put under guardianship, and I am still lying under a criminal
charge! In my position, at my age, such disgrace is intolerable to me;
and it is only left me to console my heart with the mournful reflection
that thus, even after Agrippina Ivanovna’s death, I suffer for her sake,
and so prove my immutable love and loyal gratitude to her!
‘In my letters, above mentioned, to you, I gave you an account with
every detail of Agrippina Ivanovna’s funeral, and what masses were read
for her--my affection and love for her spared no outlay! For all the
aforesaid, and for the forty days’ requiems, and the reading of the
psalter six weeks after for her (in addition to above, fifty roubles
of mine were lost, which were given as security for payment for
the stone, of which I sent you a description)--on all the aforesaid
was spent of my money seven hundred and fifty roubles, in which is
included, by way of donation to the church, a hundred and fifty roubles.
‘In the goodness of your heart, hear the cry of a desperate man, crushed
beneath a load of the crudest calamities! Only your commiseration and
humanity can restore the life of a ruined man! Though living--in the
suffering of my heart and soul I am as one dead; dead when I think what
I was, and what I am; I was a soldier, and served my country in all
fidelity and uprightness, as is the bounden duty of a loyal Russian and
faithful subject, and was rewarded with the highest honours, and had a
fortune befitting my birth and station; and now I must cringe and beg
for a morsel of dry bread; dead above all I am when I think what a
friend I have lost ... and what is life to me after that? But there is
no hastening one’s end, and the earth will not open, but rather seems
turned to stone! And so I call upon you, in the benevolence of your
heart, hush the talk of the people, do not expose yourself to universal
censure, that for all my unbounded devotion I have not where to lay my
head; confound them by your bounty to me, turn the tongues of the evil
speakers and slanderers to glorifying your good works--and I make bold
in all humility to add, comfort in the grave your most precious aunt,
Agrippina Ivanovna, who can never be forgotten, and who for your speedy
succour, in answer to my sinful prayers, will spread her protecting
wings about your head, and comfort in his declining days a lonely old
man, who had every reason to expect a different fate! ... And, with the
most profound respect, I have the honour to be, dear madam, your most
devoted servant,