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And Other Stories
Translated from the Russian by
ISABEL F. HAPGOOD
(1881)
There were eight of us in the room, and we were discussing contemporarymatters and persons,
"I do not understand these gentlemen!" remarked A.—"They are fellows ofa reckless sort…. Really, desperate…. There has never been anythingof the kind before."
"Yes, there has," put in P., a grey-haired old man, who had been bornabout the twenties of the present century;—"there were reckless men indays gone by also. Some one said of the poet Yázykoff, that he hadenthusiasm which was not directed to anything, an objectless enthusiasm;and it was much the same with those people—their recklessness waswithout an object. But see here, if you will permit me, I will narrateto you the story of my grandnephew, Mísha Pólteff. It may serve as asample of the recklessness of those days."
He made his appearance in God's daylight in the year 1828, I remember,on his father's ancestral estate, in one of the most remote nooks of aremote government of the steppes. I still preserve a distinctrecollection of Mísha's father, Andréi Nikoláevitch Pólteff. He was agenuine, old-fashioned landed proprietor, a pious inhabitant of thesteppes, sufficiently well educated,—according to the standards of thatepoch,—rather crack-brained, if the truth must be told, and subject, inaddition, to epileptic fits…. That also is an old-fashioned malady….However, Andréi Nikoláevitch's attacks were quiet, and they generallyterminated in a sleep and in a fit of melancholy.—He was kind of heart,courteous in manner, not devoid of some pomposity: I have alwayspictured to myself the Tzar Mikhaíl Feódorovitch as just that sort of aman.
Andréi Nikoláevitch's whole life flowed past in the punctual dischargeof all the rites established since time immemorial, in strict conformitywith all the customs of ancient-orthodox, Holy-Russian life. He rose andwent to bed, he ate and went to the bath, he waxed merry or wrathful (hedid both the one and the other rarely, it is true), he even smoked hispipe, he even played cards (two great innovations!), not as suited hisfancy, not after his own fashion, but in accordance with the rule andtradition handed down from his ancestors, in proper and dignified style.He himself was tall of stature, of noble mien and brawny; he had aquiet and rather hoarse voice, as is frequently the case with virtuousRussians; he was neat about his linen and his clothing, wore whiteneckerchiefs and long-skirted coats of snuff-brown hue, but his nobleblood made itself manifest notwithstanding; no one would have taken himfor a priest's son or a merchant! Andréi Nikoláevitch always knew, inall possible circumstances and encounters, precisely how he ought to actand exactly what expressions he must employ; he knew when he ought totake medicine, and what medicine to take, which symptoms he should heedand which might be disregarded … in a word, he knew everything that itwas proper to do…. It was as though he said: "Every