Fifty-Two Stories

“There are many mistakes, but in fact the main one, in my opinion, was the general spirit that…that reigned in all your estates. You see, I’m not good at expressing myself. The main thing was this—a dislike, an aversion to people, which was felt in positively everything. Your whole system of life was built on this aversion. Aversion to the human voice, to faces, the backs of heads, ways of walking…in short, to everything that makes up a human being. In all the doorways and on the stairs stand well-fed, crude and lazy lackeys in livery, to keep improperly dressed people from entering the house; the chairs in the front hall have high backs, so that during balls and receptions the servants won’t soil the wallpaper with their heads; there are thick rugs in all the rooms, so that human footsteps will not be heard; whoever enters is warned to talk little and softly, and to avoid saying anything that might affect the imagination or the nerves. And in your study a visitor does not get a handshake and is not invited to sit down, just as now you did not shake my hand or invite me to sit down…”

“Very well, if you want!” said the princess, holding out her hand and smiling. “To be angry over such a trifle, really…”

“Do I seem angry?” The doctor laughed, but immediately flushed, took off his hat, and, waving it, began to speak heatedly. “Frankly speaking, I’ve been waiting a long time for a chance to tell you everything, everything…That is, I want to tell you that you look at all people Napoleonically, as cannon fodder. But Napoleon at least had an idea of some sort, while you have nothing except an aversion to people!”

“So I have an aversion to people!” the princess smiled, shrugging her shoulders in amazement. “Do I!”

“Yes, you do! You need facts? Very well! In your Mikhaltsevo three of your former cooks live by begging. They went blind in your kitchens from the heat of the stoves. On your many thousands of acres, all that there is of healthy, strong, and handsome, all of it has been taken by you and your hangers-on as servants, lackeys, coachmen. All this two-legged livestock is being bred for lackeydom; they overeat, grow crude, lose the image and likeness,² in short…Young doctors, agronomists, teachers, intelligent workers in general, my God, they’re taken from their work, from honest labor, and forced for the sake of a crust of bread to participate in all sorts of puppet comedies that are an embarrassment for any decent person! Before three years go by, a young man in your service turns into a hypocrite, a lickspittle, a squealer…Is that good? Your Polish managers, these lowdown spies, all these Kasimirs and Kaetans, prowl over your thousands of acres from morning to night and try to take three hides off one ox just to please you. Sorry, I’m not putting things very systematically, but never mind! Simple people on your estates don’t count as human beings. And those princes, counts, and bishops who visited you, you considered as décor, not as living people. But the main thing…the main thing, which outrages me most of all—you have a fortune of over a million, and you do nothing for people, nothing!”

The princess sat there astonished, frightened, offended, not knowing what to say or how to behave. No one had ever spoken to her in such a tone. The doctor’s unpleasant, angry voice, his awkward, faltering speech, produced in her ears and head a sharp, rapping noise, and after a while it seemed to her that the gesticulating doctor was hitting her on the head with his hat.

“That’s not true!” she brought out in a soft and pleading voice. “I did a lot of good for people, you know that yourself!”

“Oh, enough!” cried the doctor. “Can you still go on considering your charity work as something serious and useful, and not as a puppet comedy? It was a comedy from beginning to end, it was a performance of loving one’s neighbor, such an obvious performance that even children and stupid peasant women understood it! Take your—what was it?—hospice for homeless old women, where you made me something like the head doctor, and you yourself were an honorary trustee. Oh, Lord God, what a splendid institution! You had a house built, with parquet floors and weathervanes on the roof, then a dozen old women were found in the villages and forced to sleep under flannel blankets, on Dutch linen sheets, and eat fruit drops.”

The doctor snorted maliciously into his hat and went on quickly, stammering: