Dead Souls

One circumstance, however, nearly roused Tentetnikov and nearly caused a turnabout in his character. Something resembling love occurred, but here, too, the matter somehow came to nothing. In the neighborhood, six miles from his estate, lived a general, who, as we have already seen, spoke not altogether favorably of Tentetnikov. The general lived like a general, was hospitable, liked his neighbors to come and pay their respects; he himself, naturally, paid no visits, spoke hoarsely, read books, and had a daughter, a strange, incomparable being, who could be regarded more as some fantastic vision than as a woman. It happens that a man sometimes sees such a thing in a dream, and afterwards he dwells on this dream all his life, reality is lost to him forever, and he is decidedly good for nothing anymore. Her name was Ulinka. Her upbringing had been somehow strange. She was brought up by an English governess who did not know a word of Russian. She had lost her mother while still a child. The father had no time. Anyway, loving his daughter to distraction, he would only have spoiled her. It is extraordinarily difficult to paint her portrait. This was something as alive as life itself. She was lovelier than any beauty; better than intelligent; trimmer and more ethereal than a classical woman. It was simply impossible to tell what country had set its stamp on her, because it was difficult to find such a profile and facial form anywhere, except perhaps on antique cameos. As a child brought up in freedom, everything in her was willful. Had anyone seen the sudden wrath all at once gather wrinkles on her beautiful brow, as she ardently disputed with her father, he would have thought she was a most capricious being. Yet she was wrathful only when she heard of some injustice or cruel act done to anyone. But how this wrath would suddenly vanish, if she saw misfortune overtake the one against whom she was wrathful, how she would suddenly throw him her purse, without reflecting on whether it was smart or stupid, or tear up her own dress for bandages if he were wounded! There was something impetuous in her. When she spoke, everything in her seemed to rush after her thought: the expression of her face, the expression of her speech, the movements of her hands, the very folds of her dress seemed to rush in the same direction, and it seemed as if she herself were about to fly off after her own words. Nothing in her was hidden. She would not have been afraid of displaying her thoughts before anyone, and no power could have forced her to be silent if she wished to speak. Her charming, peculiar gait, which belonged to her alone, was so dauntlessly free that everything inadvertently gave way to her. In her presence a bad man became somehow embarrassed and speechless, and a good one, even of the shyest sort, could get to talking with her as never with anyone in his life before, and—strange illusion!— from the first moments of the conversation it would seem to him that he had known her sometime and somewhere, that it had been in the days of some immemorial infancy, in his own home, on a gay evening, with joyful games amid a crowd of children, and after that for a long time he would remain somehow bored with sensible adulthood.

Andrei Ivanovich Tentetnikov could by no means have said how it happened that from the very first day he felt as if he had known her forever. An inexplicable new feeling entered his soul. His dull life became momentarily radiant. The dressing gown was abandoned for a while. He did not linger so long in bed, Mikhailo did not stand for so long holding the washbasin. The windows got opened in the rooms, and the owner of the picturesque estate would spend a long time strolling along the shady, winding paths of his garden, standing for hours before the enchanting views in the distance.