A House of Gentlefolk

but hard work and obscurity before him⁠—this was at the very beginning of the reign of the Emperor Alexander. He was obliged reluctantly to return to the country to his father. How squalid, poor, and wretched his parents’ home seemed to him! The stagnation and sordidness of life in the country offended him at every step. He was consumed with ennui. Moreover, everyone in the house, except his mother, looked at him with unfriendly eyes. His father did not like his town manners, his swallowtail coats, his frilled shirtfronts, his books, his flute, his fastidious ways, in which he detected⁠—not incorrectly⁠—a disgust for his surroundings; he was forever complaining and grumbling at his son. “Nothing here,” he used to say, “is to his taste; at table he is all in a fret, and doesn’t eat; he can’t bear the heat and close smell of the room; the sight of folks drunk upsets him, one daren’t beat anyone before him; he doesn’t want to go into the government service; he’s weakly, as you see, in health; fie upon him, the milksop! And all this because he’s got his head full of Voltaire.” The old man had a special dislike to Voltaire, and the “fanatic” Diderot, though he had not read a word of their words; reading was not in his line. Piotr Andreitch was not mistaken; his son’s head for that matter was indeed full of both Diderot and Voltaire, and not only of them alone, of Rousseau too, and Helvetius, and many other writers of the same kind⁠—but they were in his head only. The retired abbé and encyclopedist who had been Ivan Petrovitch’s tutor had taken pleasure in pouring all the wisdom of the eighteenth century into his pupil, and he was simply brimming over with it; it was there in him, but without mixing in his blood, nor penetrating to his soul, nor shaping itself in any firm convictions.⁠ ⁠… But, indeed, could one expect convictions from a young man of fifty years ago, when even at the present day we have not succeeded in attaining them? The guests, too, who frequented his father’s house, were oppressed by Ivan Petrovitch’s presence; he regarded them with loathing, they were afraid of him; and with his sister Glafira, who was twelve years older than he, he could not get on at all. This Glafira was a strange creature; she was ugly, crooked, and spare, with severe, wide-open eyes, and thin compressed lips. In her face, her voice, and her quick angular movements, she took after her grandmother, the gipsy, Andrei’s wife. Obstinate and fond of power, she would not even hear of marriage. The return of Ivan Petrovitch did not fit in with her plans; while the Princess Kubensky kept him with her, she had hoped to receive at least half of her father’s estate; in her avarice, too, she was like her grandmother. Besides, Glafira envied her brother, he was so well educated, spoke such good French with a Parisian accent, while she was scarcely able to pronounce “bon jour” or “comment vous portez-vous.” To be sure, her parents did not know any French, but that was no comfort to her. Ivan Petrovitch did not know what to do with himself for wretchedness and ennui; he had spent hardly a year in the country, but that year seemed to him as long as ten. The only consolation he could find was in talking to his mother, and he would sit for whole hours in her low-pitched rooms, listening to the good woman’s simple-hearted prattle, and eating preserves. It so happened that among Anna Pavlovna’s maids there was one very pretty girl with clear soft eyes and refined features, Malanya by name, a modest intelligent creature. She took his fancy at first sight, and he fell in love with her: he fell in love with her timid movements, her bashful answers, her gentle voice and gentle smile; every day she seemed sweeter to him. And she became devoted to Ivan Petrovitch with all the strength of her soul, as none but Russian girls can be devoted⁠—and she gave herself to him. In the large household of a country squire nothing can long be kept a secret; soon everyone knew of the love between the young master and Malanya; the gossip even reached the ears of Piotr Andreitch himself. Under other circumstances, he would probably have paid no attention to a matter of so little importance, but he had long had a grudge against his son, and was delighted at an opportunity of humiliating the town-bred wit and dandy. A storm of fuss and clamour was raised; Malanya was locked up in the pantry, Ivan Petrovitch was summoned into his father’s presence. Anna Pavlovna too ran up at the hubbub. She began trying to pacify her husband, but Piotr Andreitch would hear nothing. He pounced down like a hawk on his son, reproached him with immorality, with godlessness, with hypocrisy; he took the opportunity to vent on him all the wrath against the Princess Kubensky that had been simmering within him, and lavished abusive epithets upon him. At first Ivan Petrovitch was silent and held himself in, but when his father thought to fit to threaten him with a shameful punishment he could endure it no longer. “Ah,” he thought, “the fanatic Diderot is brought out again, then I will take the bull by the horns, I will astonish you all.” And thereupon with a calm and even voice, though quaking inwardly in every limb, Ivan Petrovitch declared to his father, that there was no need to reproach him with immorality; that though he did not intend to justify his fault he was ready to make amends for it, the more willingly as he felt himself to be superior to every kind of prejudice⁠—and in fact⁠—was ready to marry Malanya. In uttering these words Ivan Petrovitch did undoubtedly attain his object; he so astonished Piotr Andreitch that the