Novels, Tales, Journeys

“Ah, my dear Tatyana Afanasyevna,” said Kirila Petrovich T., former governor-general of Ryazan, where he had acquired three thousand serfs and a young wife for himself, both not without some shadiness. “I say a wife can dress as she pleases, like a scarecrow, or like a Chinese mandarin, so long as she doesn’t order new dresses every month and throw out the old ones unworn. It used to be that a granddaughter got her grandmother’s sarafan as a dowry, but these robes rondes nowadays—just look—today it’s on the lady, tomorrow on a serf girl. What can you do? The ruin of the Russian gentry! A disaster, that’s what!” With those words he sighed and looked at his Marya Ilyinichna, who, it seemed, was not at all pleased either with his praise of the old days, or with his censure of the new customs. The other beauties shared her displeasure but said nothing, because modesty was then considered a necessary quality in a young woman.

“And who is to blame?” said Gavrila Afanasyevich, filling his mug with foaming mead. “Isn’t it we ourselves? Young wenches play the fool, and we indulge them.”

“But what can we do, if it’s not up to us?” Kirila Petrovich objected. “A man would be glad to lock his wife away in a tower, but she’s called to the assembly with a beating of drums; the husband goes for his whip, the wife for her finery. Ah, these assemblies! The Lord’s punishing us for our sins.”

Marya Ilyinichna was on pins and needles; her tongue was itching; finally, unable to help herself, she turned to her husband and with a sour little smile asked him what he found so bad about the assemblies.

“What’s bad about them,” her husband replied heatedly, “is that ever since they were instituted, husbands have been unable to manage their wives. Wives have forgotten the words of the apostle: ‘A wife should reverence her husband.’23 They busy themselves, not with housekeeping, but with new clothes; they don’t think of how to please their husbands, but of how to catch the eye of some whippersnapper of an officer. And is it proper, madam, for a Russian gentlewoman or young lady to be with tobacco-smoking Germans and the girls who work for them? Who has ever heard of dancing and talking with young men until late at night—with relatives it would be another thing, but this is with foreigners, with strangers.”

“I’d say a bit more, but the wolf’s at the door,” Gavrila Afanasyevich said, frowning. “I must confess—assemblies are not to my liking either: you have to watch out lest you run into a drunk man, or they make you drunk just for the fun of it. And also watch out lest some scapegrace get up to mischief with your daughter. Young men these days are so spoiled, it’s beyond anything. The son of the late Evgraf Sergeevich Korsakov, for instance, caused such an uproar with Natasha at the last assembly that I turned red all over. The next day I look, he comes rolling right into our courtyard. Who in God’s name is it, I thought, Prince Alexander Danilovich? Not on your life: it was Ivan Evgrafovich! The man couldn’t stop at the gate and take the trouble of walking up to the porch—oh, no! He came flying in! Bowed and scraped! Chattered his head off!…The fool Ekimovna imitates him killingly. Come, fool, do the foreign monkey for us.”

The fool Ekimovna snatched the lid from a dish, took it under her arm like a hat, and started grimacing, bowing, and scraping in all directions, mumbling “moosieu…mamzelle…assemblée…pardone.” General and prolonged laughter again expressed the guests’ pleasure.

“That’s Korsakov to a T,” said old Prince Lykov, wiping tears of laughter, when calm was gradually restored. “Why not admit it? He’s neither the first nor the last to come back to Holy Russia from foreign parts as a buffoon. What do our children learn there? To bow and scrape, to babble in God knows what tongues, to show no respect for their elders, and to dangle after other men’s wives. Of all young men educated abroad (God forgive me), the tsar’s Moor most resembles a human being.”

“Of course,” observed Gavrila Afanasyevich, “he’s a sober and decent man, not like that featherbrain…Who’s that driving into the yard? Not the foreign monkey again? What are you gawking at, you brutes?” he went on, addressing his servants. “Run and tell him we’re not receiving, and that in future—”

“Are you raving, old graybeard?” the fool Ekimovna interrupted. “Or are you blind? That’s the sovereign’s sledge; the tsar has come.”