The young merchant interested in the gold mines, the son of a peasant, whose evening dress was made in London, who had diamond studs to his shirt, possessed a fine library, contributed freely to philanthropic work, and held liberal European views, seemed pleasant to Nekhlúdoff as a sample of a quite new and good type of civilised European culture, grafted on a healthy, uncultivated peasant stem.
The governor of the distant Siberian town was that same man who had been so much talked about in Petersburg at the time Nekhlúdoff was there. He was plump, with thin, curly hair, soft blue eyes, carefully-tended white hands, with rings on the fingers, a pleasant smile, and very big in the lower part of his body. The master of the house valued this governor because of all the officials he was the only one who would not be bribed. The mistress of the house, who was very fond of music and a very good pianist herself, valued him because he was a good musician and played duets with her.
Nekhlúdoff was in such good humour that even this man was not unpleasant to him, in spite of what he knew of his vices. The bright, energetic aide-de-camp, with his bluey grey chin, who was continually offering his services, pleased Nekhlúdoff by his good nature. But it was the charming young couple, the General’s daughter and her husband, who pleased Nekhlúdoff best. The daughter was a plain-looking, simple-minded young woman, wholly absorbed in her two children. Her husband, whom she had fallen in love with and married after a long struggle with her parents, was a Liberal, who had taken honours at the Moscow University, a modest and intellectual young man in Government service, who made up statistics and studied chiefly the foreign tribes, which he liked and tried to save from dying out.
All of them were not only kind and attentive to Nekhlúdoff, but evidently pleased to see him, as a new and interesting acquaintance. The General, who came in to dinner in uniform and with a white cross round his neck, greeted Nekhlúdoff as a friend, and asked the visitors to the side table to take a glass of vodka and something to whet their appetites. The General asked Nekhlúdoff what he had been doing since he left that morning, and Nekhlúdoff told him he had been to the post-office and received the news of the mitigation of that person’s sentence that he had spoken of in the morning, and again asked for a permission to visit the prison.
The General, apparently displeased that business should be mentioned at dinner, frowned and said nothing.
“Have a glass of vodka,” he said, addressing the Englishman, who had just come up to the table. The Englishman drank a glass, and said he had been to see the cathedral and the factory, but would like to visit the great transportation prison.
“Oh, that will just fit in,” said the General to Nekhlúdoff. “You will be able to go together. Give them a pass,” he added, turning to his aide-de-camp.
“When would you like to go?” Nekhlúdoff asked.
“I prefer visiting the prisons in the evening,” the Englishman answered. “All are indoors and there is no preparation; you find them all as they are.”
“Ah, he would like to see it in all its glory! Let him do so. I have written about it and no attention has been paid to it. Let him find out from foreign publications,” the General said, and went up to the dinner table, where the mistress of the house was showing the visitors their places. Nekhlúdoff sat between his hostess and the Englishman. In front of him sat the General’s daughter and the ex-director of the Government department in Petersburg. The conversation at dinner was carried on by fits and starts, now it was India that the Englishman talked about, now the Tonkin expedition that the General strongly disapproved of, now the universal bribery and corruption in Siberia. All these topics did not interest Nekhlúdoff much.
But after dinner, over their coffee, Nekhlúdoff and the Englishman began a very interesting conversation about Gladstone, and Nekhlúdoff thought he had said many clever things which were noticed by his interlocutor. And Nekhlúdoff felt it more and more pleasant to be sipping his coffee seated in an easy-chair among amiable, well-bred people. And when at the Englishman’s request the hostess went up to the piano with the ex-director of the Government department, and they began to play in well-practised style Beethoven’s fifth symphony, Nekhlúdoff fell into a mental state of perfect self-satisfaction to which he had long been a stranger, as though he had only just found out what a good fellow he was.
The grand piano was a splendid instrument, the symphony was well performed. At least, so it seemed to Nekhlúdoff, who knew and liked that symphony. Listening to the beautiful andante, he felt a tickling in his nose, he was so touched by his many virtues.
Nekhlúdoff thanked his hostess for the enjoyment that he had been deprived of for so long, and was about to say goodbye and go when the daughter of the house came up to him with a determined look and said, with a blush, “You asked about my children. Would you like to see them?”
“She thinks that everybody wants to see her children,” said her mother, smiling at her daughter’s winning tactlessness. “The Prince is not at all
