Yesterday a natural thought was always in Pólozof’s mind, “I am older than you, and more experienced. Yes, there is no one in the world smarter than I am; and as for you, milk-sucker and bubby, so much the less reason have I to listen to you, since I, with my own reason, have made four millions” (although in reality they were only two, and not four). “You try to make two millions, and then talk.” But now he thought, “What a bear he is! how he routed me! He knows how to break one in.” And the more he spoke with Kirsánof, the more lively arose before him, in addition to the quality of “bear,” another picture—an old and forgotten recollection of his life as a hussar: his riding-master,107 Zakhártchenko, was sitting on his horse, “Gromoboï” (at that time Zhukóvsky’s108 ballads were fashionable among young ladies, and therefore to a certain extent among young cavaliers, both in the army and civil life), and “Gromoboï” was prancing under Zakhártchenko, only “Gromoboï’s” lips were covered with blood. Pólozof was somewhat horrified, as he heard Kirsánof’s answer to his first question.
“Would you really have given her a fatal dose?”
“Certainly I should,” replied Kirsánof, with absolute sangfroid.
“What a murderer! He talks like a cook about a dead chicken! And you would have courage for it?”
“Of course I should. What a clout I should be if I hadn’t!”
“You are a terrible man!” said Pólozof again.
“It shows that you have never seen any terrible men,” said Kirsánof, with an indulgent smile, thinking to himself, “I should like to show you Rakhmétof.”
“But how did you manage all those doctors?”
“As though it were hard to manage such men!” said Kirsánof, with a slight grimace.
Pólozof recollected Zakhártchenko, who said to the second-captain, Volutnof: “Did you bring me this lop-eared beast for me to ride on, your eminence? I am ashamed to mount him.”
After settling all of Pólozof’s endlessly repeated questions, Kirsánof began to suggest to him how he should comport himself.
“Remember that a person is able to reason only when he is entirely undisturbed; that he is not excited only when he is not stirred up; that he does not value his fancies except when they are taken from him, when he is allowed to find out for himself whether they are good or not. If Sólovtsof is as bad as you describe him—and I fully believe it—your daughter will see it herself. But only if you don’t interfere; if you don’t excite the thought in her mind that you are in any way intriguing against him, that you are trying to block them. One word on your part, one hostile word, will injure the case for two weeks; a few words may ruin it forever. You must keep yourself entirely apart.”
This course of conduct was inculcated with words like these: “It isn’t easy to compel you to do what you don’t like, is it? and yet I have brought you to it. This shows that I understand how to take charge of a case. Then believe that whatever I say must be done. Whatever I say; you only take it secondhand.”
With such people as Pólozof it was impossible at that time, otherwise than by force, and by stepping on his throat. Pólozof became more amenable to reason, and he promised to comport himself as he was told. But even after he became convinced that Kirsánof was saying the right thing, and that it was necessary to listen to him, Pólozof could not yet comprehend what kind of a man he was. He at one and the same time took both his side and his daughter’s. He compels him to yield to his daughter, and he wants his daughter to change; how to reconcile this?
“Very simply. I want you not to hinder her return to reason, and that is all.”
Pólozof wrote Sólovtsof a note, in which he asked him to come to see him about a very important matter. That same evening Sólovtsof came; he made the old man a gentle explanation, full of self-respect; he was acknowledged as “bridegroom,” on condition that the wedding should be in three months.
VII
Kirsánof could not give up the case; it was necessary to help Katerina Vasílyevna emerge from her blindness, and it was still more necessary to manage her father, to keep him up to his promise of not interfering. But he made it inconvenient to call upon the Pólozofs, during the first few days after the crisis. Katerina Vasílyevna was still feeling exalted; if he saw, as was to be infallibly expected, that the “bridegroom” was a scoundrel, then, even his silent dissatisfaction with the “bridegroom,” and not alone his upright and downright opinion, would be prejudicial; would still further kindle her excitement. Kirsánof called there one morning, after a week and a half, so as not directly to seek a meeting with the “bridegroom,” but to secure Katerina Vasílyevna’s permission. Katerina Vasílyevna was already beginning to look better; she was as yet very thin and pale, but was entirely well, though the former famous practitioner still prescribed for her; for, when Kirsánof again put her in his hands, he said, “Ask his advice; now none of his medicines will do you any harm, even if you should take them.”
Katerina Vasílyevna met Kirsánof enthusiastically, and looked at him with wondering eyes, when he told her what he had come for.
“You saved my life, and yet you want to ask my permission to call on us!”
“But my calling upon you, without your consent, while he is here, might seem to you as an attempt, on my part, to interfere in your relations, if I came. You know my rule: not to do anything against the will of a person for whose benefit I would like to work.”
Kirsánof came on the second or third evening, and found the “bridegroom” to be exactly what Pólozof described him, and Pólozof himself, in a
