“Now, here you are defending it? Why do you defend it? I see you are just the same, just as unrea-sonable as ever.”
Piotr Ivanovitch held his peace, but smiled faintly, showing that, he was not convinced, but that he did not wish to quarrel with Marya Ivanovna.
“You smile. We know what that means. You don’t want to discuss with me, with an old woman,” said she, gayly and soothingly, and looking at her brother more keenly, more cleverly, than one would have expected from an old woman with such strong features. “Yes, you ‘d better not discuss, little friend. You see, I have lived seventy years. And I have not lived to be a fool, either; but I have seen some things and learned some things; I have not read your books, and I don’t intend to read them, either. What rubbish there is in books.”
“Now tell me how my children please you,” said Piotr Ivanovitch, with the same smile.
“Well, well, now,” said his sister, threatening him, “don’t get on to the subject of your children yet; we will talk about that by and by. But here is something I want to tell you. You are such an unpractical man. I can see it by your eyes you are just what you always have been. And now they will make much of you. That is the fashion now; you are all in the style. Yes, yes, I see it in your eyes that you are just the same impracticable fellow that you always were,” she added, replying to his smile. “You had better keep in the background. I pray to Christ our God to keep you from all these modern liberals. God knows what they are up to. This thing is sure; it will end badly. Our government is keeping quiet now, but by and by it will show its claws; mark my word, I am afraid you will get entangled again. Give it up, it ‘s all folly; you have children.”
“You see you don’t know me now, Marya Ivanovna,” said her brother.
“Very good, but we shall see. Either I don’t know you, or you don’t know yourself. I have only said what was in my mind, and if you heed me, well and good. But now let us talk about Serozha. What do you think about him? “She was going to say, “He does not please me very much; “but she said “He resembles his mother; they are as alike as two drops of water. Now there is your Sonya. She pleases me very much; there is something very sweet and frank about her. Very pretty. Where is she, where is Sonyushka? Yes, I had forgotten about her.”
“What can I say? Sonya will make a good wife and a good mother, but Serozha is clever, very clever, no one can deny that. He is an excellent scholar, though he is rather lazy. He has a great aptitude for the natural sciences. We were very fortunate; we had a splendid, splendid tutor for him. He wants to enter the university; to have lectures on the natural sciences, chemistry ….”
“If you only knew, Petrusha, how I pity them,” said she, in a tone of genuine, softened, and even submissive melancholy. “So sorry, so sorry! Their whole life before them. What won’t they have to endure!”
“Well, we must hope that they will be more fortunate than we were.”
“God grant it, God grant it! Oh, life is hard, Petrusha! Now listen to me in one thing. Don’t go into subtleties, my dear. What a fool you are, Petrusha, oh, what a fool’! However, I made some arrangements. I have invited some people, and what shall I give them to eat?”
She gave a little sob, turned round, and rang the bell.
“Call Taras.”
“Is the old man still with you? “asked her brother.
“Yes, he is still here. But you ‘11 see he is only a boy in comparison with me.”
Taras was surly and blunt, but he undertook to do everything.
Shortly after, elated with the cold and their joy, came in Natalya Nikolayevna and Sonya, their gowns rus-tling. Serozha had remained to make some more pur-chases.
“Let me look at her.”
Marya Ivanovna clasped her face between her two hands.
Natalya Nikolayevna told what she had been doing.
SECOND FRAGMENT
(VARIANT OF THE First Chapter)
lawsuit brought by the proprietor, Ivan Apuikh-tin, retired lieutenant of the guard, for the possession of four thousand desyatins of land occupied by his neigh-bors, the crown-peasants of the village of Izlegoshchi, in the district of Krasnoslobodsky, government of Penza, had been decided at the first trial, by the District Court, in favor of the peasants, through the clever pleading of Ivan Mironof their advocate, and an enormous datcha, or parcel, of land, part forest, and part cultivated, cleared by Apuikhtin’s serfs, fell into the hands of the peasants in 1815; and in 1816 the peasants sowed this land and harvested the crops. The profit of this irregular action of the peasants surprised all the neighborhood and the peasants themselves.
This success of the peasants was explained solely by the fact that Ivan Petrovitch Apuikhtin, a man of very sweet and peaceable nature, and no lover of lawsuits, though he was convinced of his rights in the matter, had taken no measures against the peasants. Ivan Mironof, however, a peasant who had studied law, a dry, hawk-nosed, educated muzhik, who had been golova, or head man, and had been about as collector of taxes, made an assessment of fifty kopeks apiece from each of the men, and spent this money to the best advantage in bribes, and cleverly conducted the whole affair to a successful issue.
But shortly after the decision of the District Court, Apuikhtin, seeing his danger, gave a power of attorney to a skilful lawyer, Ilya Mitrofanof, who appealed the case to the higher court against the decision of the Dis-trict Court. Ilya Mitrofanof conducted the affair so cleverly that, in spite of the efforts of Ivan Mironof, the peasants’ advocate, notwithstanding all the considerable gifts of money presented by him to the members of the tribunal, the decision of the District was reversed in favor of the proprietor, and the land once more had to to be given up by the peasants, and their advocate had to make the announcement to them.
Their advocate, Ivan Mironof, explained to the assembled peasants, that the gentlemen of the government had “lengthened the proprietor’s arm and spoiled the affair entirely,” so they were going to take away the land from them again; but that the proprietor’s business would fall through because his petition had already been written to the senate, and there was a man there who had faithfully promised to do the right thing in the senate, and that then the land would be forever granted to the peasants : all that was wanted was a fresh assessment of a ruble apiece from every soul among them. The peasants voted to collect the money, and once more they intrusted the whole affair to Ivan Mironof. Having got the money, Mironof went to Petersburg.
When the season for plowing opened in Holy Week, 1817 it came late that year the peasants of Izlegoshchi met in an assembly and began to discuss whether they should cultivate the disputed land that year; and notwithstanding the fact that Apuikhtin’s manager had come during Lent with an order to them not to plow his land, and to render account of the rye that they had harvested the year before, nevertheless the peasants, for the very reason that they had already sowed their winter crop on the disputed land, and because Apuikhtin, not wishing to be too hard on them, was trying to give them a fair chance, decided to cultivate the disputed land, and to take hold of it before they did anything else. On the very day the peasants went to plow the Berestof datcha, on Maundy Thursday, Ivan Petrovitch Apuikhtin, who had been fasting during Holy Week, partook of the com-munion and went early in the morning to the church in the village of Izlegoshchi, of which he was a parishioner, and there, being unwitting of the peasants’ action, at-tended mass amiably with the church elder.
Ivan Petrovitch made confession in the afternoon and had the vespers performed at his house; in the morning he himself read the precepts, and at eight o’clock he left his house. They were expecting him at mass. As he stood at the altar where he usually stood, Ivan Petro-vitch reasoned rather than prayed; and so he was dis-satisfied with himself. He, like many men of his time, indeed of all times, felt that his attitude toward the faith was not clear.
He was now fifty years old, he had never neglected the Church ritual, he went to church regularly and fasted once a year; in talking with his only daughter he had tried to ground her in the fundamentals of the true faith : but if any one had asked him exactly what he himself believed, he would have found it hard to decide what answer to give. Es-pecially on this particular day he felt his heart melt within him, and, as he stood by the altar, instead of say-ing the prayers, he kept thinking how strangely every-thing was arranged in this world : here he was, almost an old man, who had fasted perhaps forty times in his life, and he knew that all his domestics and all in the church regarded him as a model, took him as an example, and he felt himself bound to set this example in relation to religion; but here
