having kept the inn successfully for about fifteen years, sold it
advantageously to another townsman. He would never have parted from
the inn if it had not been for the following, apparently
insignificant, circumstance: for two mornings in succession his dog,
sitting before the windows, had kept up a prolonged and doleful howl.
He went out into the road the second time, looked attentively at the
howling dog, shook his head, went up to town and the same day agreed
on the price with a man who had been for a long time anxious to
purchase it. A week later he had moved to a distance--out of the
province; the new owner settled in and that very evening the inn was
burnt to ashes; not a single outbuilding was left and Naum's successor
was left a beggar. The reader can easily imagine the rumours that this
fire gave rise to in the neighbourhood.... Evidently he carried his
'luck' away with him, everyone repeated. Of Naum it is said that he
has gone into the corn trade and has made a great fortune. But will it
last long? Stronger pillars have fallen and evil deeds end badly
sooner or later. There is not much to say about Lizaveta Prohorovna.
She is still living and, as is often the case with people of her sort,
is not much changed, she has not even grown much older--she only seems
to have dried up a little; on the other hand, her stinginess has
greatly increased though it is difficult to say for whose benefit she
is saving as she has no children and no attachments. In conversation
she often speaks of Akim and declares that since she has understood
his good qualities she has begun to feel great respect for the Russian
peasant. Kirillovna bought her freedom for a considerable sum and
married for love a fair-haired young waiter who leads her a dreadful
life; Avdotya lives as before among the maids in Lizaveta Prohorovna's
house, but has sunk to a rather lower position; she is very poorly,
almost dirtily dressed, and there is no trace left in her of the
townbred airs and graces of a fashionable maid or of the habits of a
prosperous innkeeper's wife.... No one takes any notice of her and she
herself is glad to be unnoticed; old Petrovitch is dead and Akim is
still wandering, a pilgrim, and God only knows how much longer his
pilgrimage will last!
1852.
LIEUTENANT YERGUNOV'S STORY
I
That evening Kuzma Vassilyevitch Yergunov told us his story again. He
used to repeat it punctually once a month and we heard it every time
with fresh satisfaction though we knew it almost by heart, in all its
details. Those details overgrew, if one may so express it, the
original trunk of the story itself as fungi grow over the stump of a
tree. Knowing only too well the character of our companion, we did not
trouble to fill in his gaps and incomplete statements. But now Kuzma
Vassilyevitch is dead and there will be no one to tell his story and
so we venture to bring it before the notice of the public.
II
It happened forty years ago when Kuzma Vassilyevitch was young. He
said of himself that he was at that time a handsome fellow and a dandy
with a complexion of milk and roses, red lips, curly hair, and eyes
like a falcon's. We took his word for it, though we saw nothing of
that sort in him; in our eyes Kuzma Vassilyevitch was a man of very
