Dead Souls

So spoke his uncle, the actual state councillor. He himself had never once in his life walked any other street than the one that led to his place of service, where there were no handsome public buildings; he never noticed anyone he met, either general or prince; he had not the foggiest notion of the fancies that are the attraction of a capital for people greedy for license, and had never once in his life even been in a theater. He said all this solely in order to stir up the young man's ambition and work on his imagination. In this, however, he did not succeed: Tentetnikov stubbornly held his own. He had begun to weary of the departments and the capital. The countryside had begun to appear as a sort of haven of freedom, a nourisher of thoughts and intentions, the only path for useful activity. Some two weeks after this conversation, he was already in the vicinity of the places where his childhood had flown by. How it all started coming back to him, how his heart began to beat when he felt he was nearing his father's estate! He had already completely forgotten many places and gazed curiously, like a newcomer, at the beautiful views. When the road raced through a narrow ravine into the thick of a vast, overgrown forest, and he saw above, below, over, and under himself three-century-old oaks of enormous girth, mixed with silver firs, elms, and black poplars that overtopped the white, and when, to the question, "Whose forest?" he was told, "Tentetnikov's"; when, emerging from the forest, the road raced across meadows, past aspen groves, willows, and vines young and old, with a view of the distant mountains, and flew over bridges which in various places crossed one and the same river, leaving it now to the right, now to the left of him, and when, to the question, "Whose fields and water meadows?" he was answered, "Tentetnikov's"; when, after that, the road went uphill and over a level elevation past unharvested fields of wheat, rye, and oats on one side, and on the other past all the places he had just driven by, which all suddenly appeared in the picturesque distance, and when, gradually darkening, the road started to enter and then did enter under the shade of wide-spreading trees, scattered over a green carpet right up to the estate, and before him peasant cottages and red-roofed manor buildings began to flash; when the ardently pounding heart knew even without asking where it had come to—the constantly accumulating feelings finally burst out in almost these words: "Well, haven't I been a fool all this while? Destiny appointed me the owner of an earthly paradise, a prince, and I got myself enslaved as a scrivener in an office! After studying, being educated, enlightened, laying up quite a large store of information necessary precisely in order to direct people, to improve the whole region, to fulfill the manifold duties of a landowner as judge, manager, keeper of order, I entrusted this place to an ignorant steward! And instead of that chose what?—copying papers, which a cantonist who never went to any school can do incomparably better!" And once again Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov called himself a fool.

And meanwhile another spectacle awaited him. Having learned of the master's arrival, the population of the entire village gathered by the porch. Gay-colored kerchiefs, headbands, scarfs, homespun coats, beards of all sorts—spade, shovel, wedge-shaped, red, blond, and white as silver—covered the whole square. The muzhiks boomed out: "Our provider, we've waited so long!" The women wailed: "Gold, the heart's silver!" Those who stood further away even fought in their zeal to press forward. A wobbly crone who looked like a dried pear crept between the others' legs, accosted him, clasped her hands, and shrieked: "Our little runny-nose, what a weakling you are! the cursed Germans have starved you out!" "Away with you, granny!" the spade, shovel, and wedge-shaped beards all shouted at her. "Watch where you're shoving, you old scraggy one!" Someone tacked on a little word, at which only a Russian peasant could keep from laughing. The master could not help himself and laughed, but nevertheless he was deeply touched in his soul. "So much love! and what for?" he thought to himself. "For never having seen them, for never concerning myself with them! I give my word that henceforth I will share all your labors and concerns with you! I'll do everything to help you become what you ought to be, what the good nature that is in you meant you to be, so that your love for me will not be in vain, so that I will indeed be your provider!"