LITMIR.BIZ

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ought to be kept on bread and water and shut up in a dark room … you’re a murderess!” Miss Perepelitsyn, shaking with spite, hissed at Sashenka.

      “I will be kept on bread and water, I am not afraid of anything!” cried Sashenka, moved to frenzy in her turn. “I will defend papa because he can’t defend himself. Who is he, who is your Foma Fomitch compared with papa? He eats papa’s bread and insults papa, the ungrateful creature. I would tear him to pieces, your Foma Fomitch! I’d challenge him to a duel and shoot him on the spot with two pistols! …”

      “Sasha, Sasha,” cried my uncle in despair. “Another word and I am ruined, hopelessly ruined.”

      “Papa,” cried Sashenka, flinging herself headlong at her father, dissolving into tears and hugging him in her arms, “papa, how can you ruin yourself like this, you so kind, and good, and merry and clever? How can you give in to that horrid ungrateful man, be his plaything and let him turn you into ridicule? Papa, my precious papa! …”

      She burst into sobs, covered her face with her hands and ran out of the room.

      A fearful hubbub followed. Madame la Générale lay in a swoon. My uncle was kneeling beside her kissing her hands. Miss Perepelitsyn was wriggling about them and casting spiteful but triumphant glances at us. Anfisa Petrovna was moistening the old lady’s temples and applying her smelling-salts. Praskovya Ilyinitchna was shedding tears and trembling, Yezhevikin was looking for a corner to seek refuge in, while the governess stood pale and completely overwhelmed with terror. Mizintchikov was the only one who remained unchanged. He got up, went to the window and began looking out of it, resolutely declining to pay attention to the scene around him.

      All at once Madame la Générale sat up, drew herself up and scanned me with a menacing eye.

      “Go away!” she shouted, stamping her foot at me.

      I must confess that this I had not in the least expected.

      “Go away! Go out of the house! What has he come for? Don’t let me see a trace of him!”

      “Mamma, mamma, what do you mean? Why, this is Seryozha,” my uncle muttered, shaking all over with terror. “Why, he has come to pay us a visit, mamma.”

      “What Seryozha? Nonsense. I won’t hear a word. Go away! It’s Korovkin. I am convinced it is Korovkin. My presentiments never deceive me. He has come to turn Foma Fomitch out; he has been sent for with that very object. I have a presentiment in my heart. … Go away, you scoundrel!”

      “Uncle, if this is how it is,” I said, spluttering with honest indignation, “then excuse me, I’ll …” And I reached after my hat.

      “Sergey, Sergey, what are you about? … Well, this really is… . Mamma, this is Seryozha! … Sergey, upon my word!” he cried, racing after me and trying to take away my hat. “You are my visitor; you’ll stay, I wish it! She doesn’t mean it,” he went on in a whisper; “she only goes on like this when she is angry… . You only keep out of her sight just at first … keep out of the way and it will all pass over. She will forgive you, I assure you! She is goodnatured, only she works herself up. You hear she takes you for Korovkin, but afterwards she will forgive you, I assure you… . What do you want?” he cried to Gavrila, who came into the room trembling with fear.

      Gavrila came in not alone; with him was a very pretty peasant boy of sixteen who had been taken as a house serf on account of his good looks, as I heard afterwards. His name was Falaley. He was wearing a peculiar costume, a red silk shirt with embroidery at the neck and a belt of gold braid, full black velveteen breeches, and goatskin boots turned over with red. This costume was designed by Madame la Générale herself. The boy was sobbing bitterly, and tears rolled one after another from his big blue eyes.

      “What’s this now?” cried my uncle. “What has happened? Speak, you ruffian!”

      “Foma Fomitch told us to come here; he is coming after us himself,” answered the despondent Gavrila. “Me for an examination, while he …”

      “He?”

      “He has been dancing, sir,” answered Gavrila in a tearful voice.

      “Dancing!” cried my uncle in horror.

      “Dancing,” blubbered Falaley with a sob.

      “The Komarinsky!”

      “Yes, the Kom-a-rin-sky.”

      “And Foma Fomitch found him?”

      “Ye-es, he found me.”

      “You’ll be the death of me!” cried my uncle. “I am done for!” And he clutched his head in both hands.

      “Foma Fomitch!” Vidoplyasov announced, entering the room.

      The door opened, and Foma Fomitch in his own person stood facing the perplexed company.

      CHAPTER VI

      OF THE WHITE BULL AND THE KOMARINSKY PEASANT

       Table of Contents

       BEFORE I have the honour of presenting the reader with Foma Fomitch in person, I think it is absolutely essential to say a few words about Falaley and to explain what there was terrible in the fact of his dancing the Komarinsky and Foma Fomitch’s finding him engaged in that lighthearted diversion. Falaley was a house serf boy, an orphan from the cradle, and a godson of my uncle’s late wife. My uncle was very fond of him. That fact alone was quite sufficient to make Foma Fomitch, after he had settled at Stepantchikovo and gained complete domination over my uncle, take a dislike to the latter’s favourite, Falaley. But Madame la Générale took a particular fancy to the boy, who, in spite of Foma Fomitch’s wrath, remained upstairs in attendance on the family. Madame la Générale herself insisted upon it, and Foma gave way, storing up the injury — he looked on everything as an injury — in his heart and revenging it on every favourable occasion on my uncle, who was in no way responsible. Falaley was wonderfully good-looking. He had a girlish face, the face of a beautiful peasant girl. Madame la Generale petted and spoiled him, prized him as though he were a rare and pretty toy, and there was no saying which she loved best, her little curly black dog Ami or Falaley. We have already referred to his costume, which was her idea. The young ladies gave him pomatum, and it was the duty of the barber Kuzma to curl his hair on holidays. This boy was a strange creature. He could not be called a perfect idiot or imbecile, but he was so naive, so truthful and simplehearted, that he might sometimes be certainly taken for a fool. If he had a dream, he would go at once to tell it to his master or mistress. He joined in the conversation of the gentlefolk without caring whether he was interrupting them. He would tell them things quite impossible to tell gentlefolks. He would dissolve into the most genuine tears when his mistress fell into a swoon or when his master was too severely scolded. He sympathised with every sort of distress. He would sometimes go up to Madame la Generale, kiss her hands, and beg her not to be cross — and the old lady would magnanimously forgive him these audacities. He was sensitive in the extreme, kindhearted, as free from malice as a lamb and as gay as a happy child. They gave him dainties from the dinner-table.

      He always stood behind Madame la Generale’s chair and was awfully fond of sugar. When he was given a lump of sugar he would nibble at it with his strong milk-white teeth, and a gleam of indescribable pleasure shone in his merry blue eyes and all over his pretty little face.

      For a long time Foma Fomitch raged; but reflecting at last that he would get nothing by anger, he suddenly made up his mind to be Falaley’s benefactor. After first pitching into my uncle for doing nothing for the education of the house serfs, he determined at once to set about training the poor boy in morals, good manners and French.

      “What I” he would say in defence of his absurd idea (an idea not confined to Foma Fomitch, as the writer of these lines can testify), “what! he is always upstairs waiting on his mistress; one day, forgetting that he does not know French, she will say to him,

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