Two landowners - Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev - read an e-book online for free or download this literary work for free. Two landowners - Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev - read a free e-book online or download this literature for free

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

TWO LANDMANS

I have already had the honor of introducing to you, sympathetic readers, some of my neighbors; allow me now, by the way (everything is in order for our brother the writer), to introduce you to two more landowners with whom I often hunted, people who are very respectable, well-meaning and universally respected in several districts.

First, I will describe to you the retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Imagine a tall and once slender man, now somewhat flabby, but not at all decrepit, not even outdated, a man in adulthood , in the very, as they say, time. True, the once correct and now still pleasant features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have sagged, frequent wrinkles are radiantly located near the eyes, there are no other teeth, as Saadi said, according to Pushkin; blond hair, at least all that remained intact, turned into purple thanks to the composition bought at the Romen horse fair from a Jew who pretended to be an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Illarionovich acts briskly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs, twists his mustache, and finally calls himself an old cavalryman, while it is known that real old men never call themselves old men. He usually wears a frock coat, buttoned up to the top, a high necktie with starched collars, and gray trousers with a sparkle, military cut; He wears his hat directly on his forehead, leaving the entire back of his head out. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits. For example: he cannot treat nobles who are not wealthy or not official in any way, as with people equal to themselves. When talking to them, he usually looks at them from the side, leaning his cheek strongly on a hard and white collar, or suddenly he will take it and illuminate them with a clear and motionless look, keep silent and move all the skin under the hair on his head; he even pronounces words differently and does not say, for example: “Thank you, Pavel Vasilyich”, or: “Come here, Mikhailo Ivanovich”, but: “Bolldaryu, Pall Asilich”, or: “Pa-azhalte here, Michal Vanych”. With people on the lower levels of society, he treats them even more strangely: he does not look at them at all and, before he explains his desire to them or gives them an order, he repeats several times in a row, with an anxious and dreamy look: “What is your name? .. what is your name?” He was a troublemaker and lived a terrible life, but the owner was a bad one: he took a retired sergeant major, a Little Russian, an unusually stupid person, as his steward. However, in the matter of management, no one among us has yet outdone one important Petersburg official who, having seen from the reports of his clerk that his barns and his estate are often subject to fires, which is why a lot of bread is wasted, gave the strictest order: do not plant sheaves in a barn until the fire is completely extinguished. The same dignitary took it into his head to sow all his fields with poppies, as a result of, apparently, a very simple calculation: poppy, they say, is more expensive than rye, therefore, it is more profitable to sow poppies. He also ordered his serf women to wear kokoshniks according to the pattern sent from St. Petersburg; and indeed, women on his estates still wear kokoshniki… only on top of kichek… But let us return to Vyacheslav Illarionovich. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is a terrible hunter of the fair sex, and as soon as he sees a pretty person in his county town on the boulevard, he immediately sets off after her, but immediately limps - that's what a wonderful circumstance. He likes to play cards, but only with people of lower rank; they are something to him: “Your Excellency,” and he pushes them and scolds them as much as his heart desires. When he happens to play with the governor or with some official, an amazing change takes place in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - he smells like honey from him ... He even loses and does not complain. Vyacheslav Illarionich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows, first his mustache, then his eyebrows, as if sending a wave from bottom to top over his face. Especially remarkable is this undulating movement on Vyacheslav Illarionich's face when he happens (in front of guests, of course) to run through the columns of the Journal des Debats. In the elections, he plays a rather significant role, but he refuses the honorary title of leader out of avarice. “Gentlemen,” he usually says to the nobles approaching him, and speaks in a voice full of patronage and independence, “I am very grateful for the honor; but I decided to devote my leisure to solitude. And, having said these words, he will move his head several times to the right and to the left, and then with dignity he will put his chin and cheeks on the tie. In his younger years he was an adjutant to some significant person, whom he does not call otherwise than by name and patronymic; they say that he took on more than just adjutant duties, as if, for example, dressed in full dress uniform and even fastening the hooks, he soared his boss in the bathhouse - but not every rumor can be trusted. However, General Khvalynsky himself does not like to talk about his service career, which is generally quite strange: it seems that he also did not go to war. General Khvalynsky lives in a small house, alone; he did not experience marital happiness in his life, and therefore is still considered a groom, and even an advantageous groom. But he has a housekeeper, a woman of about thirty-five, black-eyed, black-browed, plump, fresh and with a mustache, on weekdays she walks in starched dresses, and on Sundays she puts on muslin sleeves. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is good at big dinner parties given by landlords in honor of governors and other authorities: here he, one might say, is completely at ease. He usually sits in such cases, if not at the right hand of the governor, then not far from him; at the beginning of dinner, he more adheres to his own dignity and, throwing himself back, but without turning his head, looks down from the side at the round backs of the heads and standing collars of the guests; but by the end of the table he cheers up, begins to smile in all directions (in the direction of the governor he smiled from the beginning of dinner), and sometimes even offers a toast in honor of the fair sex, the decoration of our planet, according to him. Also, General Khvalynsky is not bad at all solemn and public acts, exams, meetings and exhibitions; the master also comes under the blessing. At sidings, crossings, and other similar places, Vyacheslav Illarionich's people do not make noise or shout; on the contrary, pushing the people apart or calling the carriage, they say in a pleasant throaty baritone: “Let me, let me, let General Khvalynsky pass,” or: “General Khvalynsky’s crew ...” The crew, however, Khvalynsky’s uniform is rather old; on the lackeys the livery is rather shabby (it seems hardly necessary to mention that it is gray with red piping); the horses, too, have lived quite well and have served their time, but Vyacheslav Illarionich has no pretensions to panache and does not even consider it proper for his rank to splurge. Khvalynsky does not have a special gift for words, or, perhaps, does not have the opportunity to show his eloquence, because he does not tolerate not only disputes, but generally objections, and he carefully avoids all long conversations, especially with young people. It is indeed truer; otherwise the trouble is with the current people: it will just come out of obedience and lose respect. Before the highest persons Khvalynsky for the most part he is silent, but to lower persons, whom he apparently despises, but with whom he only knows, he keeps his speech abrupt and sharp, incessantly using expressions like the following: “This, however, you are talking nonsense”; or: “I finally find myself compelled, my dear friend, to show you”; or: “Finally, you must, however, know with whom you are dealing,” etc. His postmasters, indispensable assessors and stationmasters. At home, he does not receive anyone and lives, as you hear, a miser. With all that, he is a fine landowner. “An old campaigner, a disinterested man, with rules, vieux grognard,” the neighbors say about him. One provincial prosecutor allows himself to smile when they mention in his presence the excellent and solid qualities of General Khvalynsky - but what envy does not do! ..

But let us now pass on to another landowner.

Mardariy Apollonitch Stegunov in no way resembled Khvalynsky; he hardly served anywhere and was never considered handsome. Mardarius Apollonich is a short, plump, bald old man with a double chin, soft hands and a decent paunch. He is a big hospitable and joker; lives, as they say, for his own pleasure; winter and summer goes in a striped dressing gown on wadding. In one thing he only agreed with General Khvalynsky: he is also a bachelor. He has five hundred souls. Mardary Apollonitch takes care of his estate rather superficially; In order to keep up with the times, I bought a threshing machine from Butenop in Moscow ten years ago, locked it in a shed, and calmed down. Is it possible that on a good summer day they are ordered to lay down a racing droshky and go to the field to look for bread and pick cornflowers. Mardariy Apollonitch lives in a completely old way. And his house is of an old construction: in the hall, as it should, it smells of kvass, tallow candles and leather; immediately to the right is a sideboard with pipes and washbasins; in the dining-room there are family portraits, flies, a large pot of erani, and sour fortepianos; in the living room there are three sofas, three tables, two mirrors and a hoarse clock, with blackened enamel and carved bronze hands; in the office there is a table with papers, bluish-colored screens with pasted pictures cut out from various works of the past century, cupboards with stinking books, spiders and black dust, a plump armchair, an Italian window and a tightly boarded door to the garden ... In a word, everything is as usual. There are many people at Mardary Apollonitch's, and they are all dressed in the old fashion: in long blue caftans with high collars, pantaloons of dull color, and short yellowish waistcoats. They say to the guests: "father." His housekeeping is managed by a steward made of peasants, with a full beard; home - an old woman, tied with a brown scarf, wrinkled and stingy. In the stable of Mardarius Apollonich there are thirty different-sized horses; he leaves in a home-made carriage of one and a half hundred pounds. He receives guests very cordially and treats them to glory, that is: thanks to the stupefying properties of Russian cuisine, he deprives them until the very evening of any opportunity to do anything other than preference. He himself never does anything, and even the Dream Interpretation stopped reading. But we still have quite a few such landowners in Rus'; one may ask: why on earth did I start talking about him and why?.. But instead of answering, allow me to tell you one of my visits to Mardarius Apollonitch.

I have already had the honor of introducing to you, sympathetic readers, some of my neighbors; allow me now, by the way (everything is in order for our brother the writer), to introduce you to two more landowners, with whom I often hunted, people who are very respectable, well-intentioned and enjoying the universal respect of several counties. First, I will describe to you the retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Imagine a tall and once slender man, now somewhat flabby, but not at all decrepit, not even obsolete, a man in adulthood, in the very, as they say, time. True, the once correct and now still pleasant features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have sagged, frequent wrinkles are radiantly located near the eyes, there are no other teeth, as Saadi said, according to Pushkin; blond hair, at least all that remained intact, turned into purple thanks to the composition bought at the Romen horse fair from a Jew who pretended to be an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Illarionovich speaks briskly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs, twists his mustache, and finally calls himself an old cavalryman, while it is known that real old people never call themselves old people. He usually wears a frock coat, buttoned up to the top, a high necktie with starched collars, and gray trousers with a sparkle, military cut; He wears his hat directly on his forehead, leaving the entire back of his head out. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits. For example: he cannot treat nobles who are not wealthy or not official in any way, as with people equal to themselves. When talking to them, he usually looks at them from the side, leaning his cheek strongly on a hard and white collar, or suddenly he will take it and illuminate them with a clear and motionless look, keep silent and move all the skin under the hair on his head; he even pronounces words differently and does not say, for example: “Thank you, Pavel Vasilyich”, or: “Come here, Mikhailo Ivanovich”, but: “Bolldaryu, Pall Asilich”, or: “Pa-azhalte here, Michal Vanych”. With people on the lower levels of society, he treats them even more strangely: he does not look at them at all and, before he explains his desire to them or gives them an order, he repeats several times in a row, with an anxious and dreamy look: “What is your name? .. what is your name?” He was a troublemaker and lived a terrible life, but the owner was a bad one: he took a retired sergeant major, a Little Russian, an unusually stupid person, as his steward. However, in the matter of management, no one among us has yet outdone one important Petersburg official who, having seen from the reports of his clerk that his barns are often subject to fires on his name day, which is why a lot of bread is wasted, gave the strictest order: do not plant sheaves in the barn until the fire is completely extinguished. The same dignitary took it into his head to sow all his fields with poppies, as a result of, apparently, a very simple calculation: poppy, they say, is more expensive than rye, therefore it is more profitable to sow poppies. He also ordered his serf women to wear kokoshniks according to the pattern sent from St. Petersburg; and indeed, women still wear kokoshniki on his estates...only on top of kichek... But let us return to Vyacheslav Illarionovich. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is a terrible hunter of the fair sex, and as soon as he sees a pretty person in his county town on the boulevard, he immediately sets off after her, but immediately limps - that's what a wonderful circumstance. He likes to play cards, but only with people of lower rank; they are something to him: “Your Excellency,” and he pushes them and scolds them as much as his heart desires. When he happens to play with the governor or with some official, an amazing change takes place in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - he smells like honey from him ... He even loses and does not complain. Vyacheslav Illarionich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows, first his mustache, then his eyebrows, as if sending a wave from bottom to top over his face. Especially remarkable is this undulating movement on Vyacheslav Illarionich's face when he happens (in front of guests, of course) to run through the columns of the Journal des Débats. In the elections, he plays a rather significant role, but he refuses the honorary title of leader out of avarice. “Gentlemen,” he usually says to the nobles approaching him, and speaks in a voice full of patronage and independence, “I am very grateful for the honor; but I decided to devote my leisure to solitude. And, having said these words, he will move his head several times to the right and to the left, and then with dignity he will put his chin and cheeks on the tie. In his younger years he was an adjutant to some significant person, whom he does not call otherwise than by name and patronymic; they say that he took on more than just adjutant duties, as if, for example, dressed in full dress uniform and even fastening the hooks, he soared his boss in the bath - but not every rumor can be trusted. However, General Khvalynsky himself does not like to talk about his service career, which is generally quite strange; He didn't seem to have been in the war either. General Khvalynsky lives in a small house, alone; he did not experience marital happiness in his life, and therefore is still considered a groom, and even an advantageous groom. But he has a housekeeper, a woman of about thirty-five, black-eyed, black-browed, plump, fresh and with a mustache, on weekdays she walks in starched dresses, and on Sundays she puts on muslin sleeves. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is good at big dinner parties given by landlords in honor of governors and other authorities: here he, one might say, is completely at ease. He usually sits in such cases, if not at the right hand of the governor, then not far from him; at the beginning of dinner, he more adheres to self-esteem and, throwing himself back, but without turning his head, looks down from the side at the round backs of the heads and standing peaks of the guests; but by the end of the table he cheers up, begins to smile in all directions (in the direction of the governor he smiled from the beginning of dinner), and sometimes even offers a toast in honor of the fair sex, the decoration of our planet, according to him. Also, General Khvalynsky is not bad at all solemn and public acts, exams, meetings and exhibitions; the master also comes under the blessing. At sidings, crossings, and other similar places, Vyacheslav Illarionich's people do not make noise or shout; on the contrary, pushing the people apart or calling for a carriage, they say in a pleasant throaty baritone: “Let me, let me, let General Khvalynsky pass,” or: “General Khvalynsky’s crew ...” The crew, however, Khvalynsky’s uniform is rather old; on the lackeys the livery is rather shabby (it seems hardly necessary to mention that it is gray with red piping); the horses, too, have lived quite well and have served their time, but Vyacheslav Illarionich has no pretensions to panache and does not even consider it proper for his rank to splurge. Khvalynsky does not have a special gift for words, or, perhaps, does not have the opportunity to show his eloquence, because he does not tolerate not only disputes, but generally objections, and he carefully avoids all long conversations, especially with young people. It is indeed truer; otherwise the trouble is with the current people: it will just come out of obedience and lose respect. In front of higher persons, Khvalynsky is mostly silent, and towards lower persons, whom, apparently, he despises, but with whom he only knows, he makes abrupt and sharp speeches, incessantly using expressions like the following: “This, however, you are talking nonsense”; or: “I finally find myself compelled, my dear friend, to show you”; or: “Finally, you must, however, know with whom you are dealing,” etc. Postmasters, indispensable assessors and stationmasters are especially afraid of him. At home, he does not receive anyone and lives, as you hear, a miser. With all that, he is a fine landowner. “An old campaigner, a disinterested man with rules, vieux grognard,” the neighbors say about him. One provincial prosecutor allows himself to smile when the excellent and solid qualities of General Khvalynsky are mentioned in his presence—but what does envy do!... But let us now pass on to another landowner. Mardariy Apollonitch Stegunov in no way resembled Khvalynsky; he hardly served anywhere and was never considered handsome. Mardarius Apollonich is a short, plump, bald old man with a double chin, soft hands and a decent paunch. He is a big hospitable and joker; lives, as they say, for his own pleasure; winter and summer goes in a striped dressing gown on wadding. In one thing he only agreed with General Khvalynsky: he is also a bachelor. He has five hundred souls. Mardary Apollonitch takes care of his estate rather superficially; In order to keep up with the times, I bought a threshing machine from Butenop in Moscow ten years ago, locked it in a barn, and calmed down. Is it on a good summer day that he orders to lay down a racing droshky and go to the field to look for bread and pick cornflowers. Mardariy Apollonitch lives in a completely old way. And his house is of an old construction: in the hall, as it should, it smells of kvass, tallow candles and leather; immediately to the right is a sideboard with pipes and washbasins; in the dining-room there are family portraits, flies, a large pot of erani, and sour fortepianos; in the living room there are three sofas, three tables, two mirrors and a hoarse clock, with blackened enamel and carved bronze hands; in the study there is a table with papers, bluish-colored screens pasted with pictures cut out from various works of the past century, cupboards with stinking books, spiders and black dust, a plump armchair, an Italian window and a tightly boarded door to the garden ... In a word, everything is as usual. There are many people at Mardary Apollonitch's, and they are all dressed in the old fashion: in long blue caftans with high collars, pantaloons of dull color, and short yellowish waistcoats. They say to the guests: "father." His housekeeping is managed by a steward made of peasants, with a full beard; home - an old woman, tied with a brown scarf, wrinkled and stingy. In the stable of Mardarius Apollonich there are thirty different-sized horses; he leaves in a home-made carriage of one and a half hundred pounds. He receives guests very cordially and treats them to glory, that is: thanks to the stupefying properties of Russian cuisine, he deprives them until the very evening of any opportunity to do anything other than preference. He himself never does anything, and even the Dream Interpretation stopped reading. But we still have quite a few such landowners in Rus'; one may ask: why on earth did I start talking about him and why?.. But instead of answering, allow me to tell you one of my visits to Mardarius Apollonitch. I came to him in the summer, at seven o'clock in the evening. Vigil had just departed from him, and the priest, a young man, apparently very timid and recently out of the seminary, was sitting in the living room near the door, on the very edge of his chair. Mardary Apollonitch, as usual, received me extremely affectionately: he genuinely rejoiced at each guest, and he was generally a kind person. The priest stood up and took up his hat. "Wait, wait, father," Mardary Apollonitch spoke, without letting go of my hand, "don't go away... I ordered you to bring vodka." "I don't drink, sir," the priest muttered in confusion, and blushed to his ears. - What nonsense! How not to drink in your rank! answered Mardary Apollonitch. - Bear! Yushka! vodka father! Yushka, a tall and thin old man of about eighty, came in with a glass of vodka on a dark painted tray spotted with flesh-colored spots. The priest began to refuse. “Drink, father, don’t break, it’s not good,” the landowner remarked reproachfully. The poor young man obeyed. - Well, now, father, you can go. The priest began to bow. "Well, all right, all right, go on... A fine man," continued Mardary Apollonitch, looking after him, "I am very pleased with him; one is still young. He holds all his sermons, but he does not drink wine. But how are you, my father?.. What are you, how are you? Let's go to the balcony - you see, what a glorious evening. We went out to the balcony, sat down and started talking. Mardaria Apollonitch looked down and suddenly became terribly agitated. - Whose chickens are these? whose chickens are these? he shouted, “whose chickens are they walking in the garden? Yushka! Yushka! Go and find out now whose chickens are walking in the garden? Whose chickens are they? How many times have I forbidden, how many times have I spoken! Yushka ran. - What a riot! - repeated Mardary Apollonitch, - this is horror! The unfortunate chickens, as I now remember, two speckled and one white with a crest, calmly continued to walk under the apple trees, occasionally expressing their feelings with prolonged grunting, when suddenly Yushka, without a hat, with a stick in his hand, and three other adult courtyards, all together rushed at them. The fun has gone. The hens screamed, flapped their wings, jumped, clucked deafeningly; courtyard people ran, stumbled, fell; the gentleman from the balcony shouted like a frenzy: “Catch, catch! catch, catch! Catch, catch, catch! .. Whose chickens are these, whose chickens are they? Finally, one yard man managed to catch a crested hen, pressing it to the ground with his chest, and at the same time, a girl of about eleven years old, all disheveled and with a twig in her hand, jumped over the fence of the garden, from the street. — Ah, those are the chickens! exclaimed the landowner triumphantly. - Yermila-coachman chickens! Look, he sent his Natalka to drive them away ... I suppose he didn’t send Parasha, ”the landowner added in an undertone and grinned significantly. - Hey Yushka! throw the chickens: catch Natalka for me. But before the out of breath Yushka could run to the frightened girl, out of nowhere the housekeeper grabbed her hand and slapped the poor thing on the back several times... "Here's a tack, here's a tack," picked up the landowner, "those, those, those!" Those, those, those!.. And take away the chickens, Avdotya,” he added in a loud voice and turned to me with a bright face: “What, father, was the persecution, eh? Even sweat, look. And Mardary Apollonitch burst out laughing. We stayed on the balcony. The evening was really unusually good. We were served tea. "Tell me," I began, "Mardariy Apollonitch, have your yards been evicted, over there, on the road, beyond the ravine?"- My ... what? "How are you, Mardary Apollonitch?" After all, it is wrong. The huts allotted to the peasants are nasty, cramped; you won't see trees around; there is not even a planter; there is only one well, and even that one is no good. Couldn't you have found another place?.. And, they say, you even took away the old hemp-growers from them? - And what will you do with the disengagement? answered Mardary Apollonitch. - I have this demarcation here where it sits. (He pointed to the back of his head.) And I do not foresee any benefit from this delimitation. And that I took hemp plants from them and planters, or something, I didn’t dig up from them there - I myself know about this, father. I'm a simple man - I do it the old way. In my opinion: if a master is a master, and if a peasant is a peasant ... That's what. Of course, there was nothing to answer such a clear and convincing argument. “And besides,” he continued, “they are bad, disgraced peasants. Especially there are two families; even the deceased father, God grant him the kingdom of heaven, did not complain about them, did not complain painfully. And I, I will tell you, have such a sign: if the father is a thief, then the son is a thief; as you wish... Oh, blood, blood is a great thing! I, to confess to you frankly, from those two families, and without a queue, gave in to the soldiers and stuffed them like that - in some places; Yes, they are not translated, what will you do? Fruitful, damned. Meanwhile, the air was completely still. Only occasionally did the wind come in streams and, dying for the last time near the house, brought to our ears the sound of measured and frequent blows that were heard in the direction of the stables. Mardary Apollonitch had just brought a poured saucer to his lips and was already expanding his nostrils, without which, as you know, not a single native Russian draws tea into himself, but he stopped, listened, nodded his head, took a sip and, putting the saucer on the table, said with a kindest smile and as if involuntarily echoing the blows: “Chyuki-chuki-chuk! Chucky-chook! Chucky-chook!" - What is it? I asked in amazement. - And there, on my orders, the rascal is punished ... Would you like to know Vasya the barman?- Which Vasya? - Yes, that's what he served us at dinner the other day. He also walks with such big sideburns. The most fierce indignation could not resist the clear and meek gaze of Mardarius Apollonitch. What are you, young man, what are you? he said, shaking his head. - What am I, a villain, or something, that you are staring at me like that? Love and punish: you yourself know. A quarter of an hour later I said goodbye to Mardarius Apollonitch. Passing through the village, I saw the barman Vasya. He walked down the street and ate nuts. I told the driver to stop the horses and called him. “What, brother, were you punished today?” I asked him. — How do you know? Vasya answered. “Your master told me.- The barin himself? Why did he order you to be punished? - And rightly so, father, rightly so. We do not punish for trifles; we don’t have such an institution - no, no. Our master is not like that; we have a master ... you will not find such a gentleman in the whole province. — Went! I said to the coachman. “Here it is, old Rus'!” I thought on my way back.

This page of the site contains free book Two landowners the author whose name is Turgenev Ivan Sergeevich. On the website, you can either download the book Two Landlords for free in RTF, TXT, FB2 and EPUB formats, or read online e-book Turgenev Ivan Sergeevich - Two landowners, and without registration and without SMS.

The size of the archive with the book Two Landowners is 24.28 KB

Hunter's Notes -

Zmiy
“I.S. Turgenev. "Notes of a hunter"": Narodnaya asveta; Minsk; 1977
annotation
“Rarely have two difficult-to-combine elements united to such an extent, in such complete balance: sympathy for humanity and artistic feeling,” F.I. Tyutchev. The cycle of essays "Notes of a Hunter" basically took shape over five years (1847-1852), but Turgenev continued to work on the book. Turgenev added three more to twenty-two early essays in the early 1870s. About two dozen stories remained in the sketches, plans and testimonies of contemporaries.
Naturalistic descriptions of the life of pre-reform Russia in the "Notes of a Hunter" develop into reflections on the mysteries of the Russian soul. The peasant world grows into myth and opens up into nature, which turns out to be a necessary backdrop for almost every story. Poetry and prose, light and shadows are intertwined here in unique, bizarre images.
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
TWO LANDMANS
I have already had the honor of introducing to you, sympathetic readers, some of my neighbors; allow me now, by the way (everything is in order for our brother the writer), to introduce you to two more landowners with whom I often hunted, people who are very respectable, well-meaning and universally respected in several districts.
First, I will describe to you the retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Imagine a tall and once slender man, now somewhat flabby, but not at all decrepit, not even obsolete, a man in adulthood, in the very, as they say, time. True, the once correct and now still pleasant features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have sagged, frequent wrinkles are radiating around his eyes, there are no other teeth, as Saadi said, according to Pushkin; blond hair, at least all that remained intact, turned into purple thanks to the composition bought at the Romen horse fair from a Jew who pretended to be an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Illarionovich acts briskly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs, twists his mustache, and finally calls himself an old cavalryman, while it is known that real old people never call themselves old people. He usually wears a frock coat, buttoned up to the top, a high necktie with starched collars, and gray trousers with a sparkle, military cut; He wears his hat directly on his forehead, leaving the entire back of his head out. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits. For example: he cannot treat nobles who are not wealthy or not official in any way, as with people equal to themselves. When talking to them, he usually looks at them from the side, leaning his cheek strongly on a hard and white collar, or suddenly he will take it and illuminate them with a clear and motionless look, keep silent and move all the skin under the hair on his head; he even pronounces words differently and does not say, for example: “Thank you, Pavel Vasilyich”, or: “Come here, Mikhailo Ivanovich”, but: “Bolldaryu, Pall Asilich”, or: “Pa-azhalte here, Michal Vanych”. With people on the lower levels of society, he treats them even more strangely: he does not look at them at all and, before he explains his desire to them or gives them an order, he repeats several times in a row, with an anxious and dreamy look: “What is your name? .. what is your name?” He was a troublemaker and lived a terrible life, but the owner was a bad one: he took a retired sergeant major, a Little Russian, an unusually stupid person, as his steward. However, in the matter of management, no one among us has yet outdone one important Petersburg official who, having seen from the reports of his clerk that his barns and his estate are often subject to fires, which is why a lot of bread is wasted, gave the strictest order: do not plant sheaves in a barn until the fire is completely extinguished. The same dignitary took it into his head to sow all his fields with poppies, as a result of, apparently, a very simple calculation: poppy, they say, is more expensive than rye, therefore, it is more profitable to sow poppies. He also ordered his serf women to wear kokoshniks according to the pattern sent from St. Petersburg; and indeed, women on his estates still wear kokoshniki… only on top of kichek… But let us return to Vyacheslav Illarionovich. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is a terrible hunter of the fair sex, and as soon as he sees a pretty person in his county town on the boulevard, he immediately sets off after her, but immediately limps - that's what a wonderful circumstance. He likes to play cards, but only with people of lower rank; they are something to him: “Your Excellency,” and he pushes them and scolds them as much as his heart desires. When he happens to play with the governor or with some official, an amazing change takes place in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - he smells like honey from him ... He even loses and does not complain. Vyacheslav Illarionich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows, first his mustache, then his eyebrows, as if sending a wave from bottom to top over his face. Especially remarkable is this undulating movement on Vyacheslav Illarionich's face when he happens (in front of guests, of course) to run through the columns of the Journal des Debats. In the elections, he plays a rather significant role, but he refuses the honorary title of leader out of avarice. “Gentlemen,” he usually says to the nobles approaching him, and speaks in a voice full of patronage and independence, “I am very grateful for the honor; but I decided to devote my leisure to solitude. And, having said these words, he will move his head several times to the right and to the left, and then with dignity he will put his chin and cheeks on the tie. In his younger years he was an adjutant to some significant person, whom he does not call otherwise than by name and patronymic; they say that he took on more than just adjutant duties, as if, for example, dressed in full dress uniform and even fastening the hooks, he soared his boss in the bathhouse - but not every rumor can be trusted. However, General Khvalynsky himself does not like to talk about his service career, which is generally quite strange: it seems that he also did not go to war. General Khvalynsky lives in a small house, alone; he did not experience marital happiness in his life, and therefore is still considered a groom, and even an advantageous groom. But he has a housekeeper, a woman of about thirty-five, black-eyed, black-browed, plump, fresh and with a mustache, on weekdays she walks in starched dresses, and on Sundays she puts on muslin sleeves. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is good at big dinner parties given by landlords in honor of governors and other authorities: here he, one might say, is completely at ease. He usually sits in such cases, if not at the right hand of the governor, then not far from him; at the beginning of dinner, he more adheres to his own dignity and, throwing himself back, but without turning his head, looks down from the side at the round backs of the heads and standing collars of the guests; but by the end of the table he cheers up, begins to smile in all directions (in the direction of the governor he smiled from the beginning of dinner), and sometimes even offers a toast in honor of the fair sex, the decoration of our planet, according to him. Also, General Khvalynsky is not bad at all solemn and public acts, exams, meetings and exhibitions; the master also comes under the blessing. At sidings, crossings, and other similar places, Vyacheslav Illarionich's people do not make noise or shout; on the contrary, pushing the people apart or calling the carriage, they say in a pleasant throaty baritone: “Let me, let me, let General Khvalynsky pass,” or: “General Khvalynsky’s crew ...” The crew, however, Khvalynsky’s uniform is rather old; on the lackeys the livery is rather shabby (it seems hardly necessary to mention that it is gray with red piping); the horses, too, have lived quite well and have served their time, but Vyacheslav Illarionich has no pretensions to panache and does not even consider it proper for his rank to splurge. Khvalynsky does not have a special gift for words, or, perhaps, does not have the opportunity to show his eloquence, because he does not tolerate not only disputes, but generally objections, and he carefully avoids all long conversations, especially with young people. It is indeed truer; otherwise the trouble is with the current people: it will just come out of obedience and lose respect. Khvalynsky is silent for the most part in front of superior people, and towards inferior people, whom he apparently despises, but with whom he only knows, he makes abrupt and harsh speeches, incessantly using expressions such as the following: “This, however, you are talking nonsense”; or: “I finally find myself compelled, my dear friend, to show you”; or: “Finally, you must, however, know with whom you are dealing,” etc. Postmasters, indispensable assessors and stationmasters are especially afraid of him. At home, he does not receive anyone and lives, as you hear, a miser. With all that, he is a fine landowner. “An old campaigner, a disinterested man, with rules, vieux grognard,” the neighbors say about him. One provincial prosecutor allows himself to smile when they mention in his presence the excellent and solid qualities of General Khvalynsky - but what envy does not do! ..
But let us now pass on to another landowner.
Mardariy Apollonitch Stegunov in no way resembled Khvalynsky; he hardly served anywhere and was never considered handsome. Mardarius Apollonich is a short, plump, bald old man with a double chin, soft hands and a decent paunch. He is a big hospitable and joker; lives, as they say, for his own pleasure; winter and summer goes in a striped dressing gown on wadding. In one thing he only agreed with General Khvalynsky: he is also a bachelor. He has five hundred souls. Mardary Apollonitch takes care of his estate rather superficially; In order to keep up with the times, I bought a threshing machine from Butenop in Moscow ten years ago, locked it in a shed, and calmed down. Is it possible that on a good summer day they are ordered to lay down a racing droshky and go to the field to look for bread and pick cornflowers. Mardariy Apollonitch lives in a completely old way. And his house is of an old construction: in the hall, as it should, it smells of kvass, tallow candles and leather; immediately to the right is a sideboard with pipes and washbasins; in the dining-room there are family portraits, flies, a large pot of erani, and sour fortepianos; in the living room there are three sofas, three tables, two mirrors and a hoarse clock, with blackened enamel and carved bronze hands; in the office there is a table with papers, bluish-colored screens with pasted pictures cut out from various works of the past century, cupboards with stinking books, spiders and black dust, a plump armchair, an Italian window and a tightly boarded door to the garden ... In a word, everything is as usual. There are many people at Mardary Apollonitch's, and they are all dressed in the old fashion: in long blue caftans with high collars, pantaloons of dull color, and short yellowish waistcoats. They say to the guests: "father." His housekeeping is managed by a steward made of peasants, with a full beard; home - an old woman, tied with a brown scarf, wrinkled and stingy. In the stable of Mardarius Apollonich there are thirty different-sized horses; he leaves in a home-made carriage of one and a half hundred pounds. He receives guests very cordially and treats them to glory, that is: thanks to the stupefying properties of Russian cuisine, he deprives them until the very evening of any opportunity to do anything other than preference. He himself never does anything, and even the Dream Interpretation stopped reading. But we still have quite a few such landowners in Rus'; one may ask: why on earth did I start talking about him and why?.. But instead of answering, allow me to tell you one of my visits to Mardarius Apollonitch.
I came to him in the summer, at seven o'clock in the evening. Vigil had just departed from him, and the priest, a young man, apparently very timid and recently out of the seminary, was sitting in the living room near the door, on the very edge of his chair. Mardary Apollonitch, as usual, received me extremely affectionately: he genuinely rejoiced at each guest, and he was generally a kind person. The priest stood up and took up his hat.
“Wait, wait, father,” said Mardary Apollonitch, without letting go of my hand, “don’t go away… I ordered you to bring vodka.”
"I don't drink, sir," the priest muttered in confusion, and blushed to the ears.
- What nonsense! How not to drink in your rank! answered Mardary Apollonitch. - Bear! Yushka! vodka father!
Yushka, a tall and thin old man of about eighty, came in with a glass of vodka on a dark painted tray spotted with flesh-colored spots.
The priest began to refuse.
“Drink, father, don’t break, it’s not good,” the landowner remarked reproachfully.
The poor young man obeyed.
- Well, now, father, you can go.
The priest began to bow.
“Well, all right, all right, go on… A fine man,” continued Mardary Apollonitch, looking after him, “I am very pleased with him; one is still young. He holds all his sermons, but he does not drink wine. But how are you, my father?.. What are you, how are you? Let's go to the balcony - you see, what a glorious evening.
We went out to the balcony, sat down and started talking. Mardarius Apollonitch looked down and suddenly became terribly agitated.
- Whose chickens are these? whose chickens are these? he shouted. - Whose chickens are walking in the garden? .. Yushka! Yushka! Go and find out now whose chickens are walking in the garden? Whose chickens are they? How many times have I forbidden, how many times have I spoken!
Yushka ran.
- What a riot! - repeated Mardary Apollonitch, - this is horror!
The unfortunate chickens, as I now remember, two speckled and one white with a crest, calmly continued to walk under the apple trees, occasionally expressing their feelings with a prolonged grunt, when suddenly Yushka, without a hat, with a stick in his hand, and three other adult courtyards, all together rushed at them in unison. The fun has gone. The hens screamed, flapped their wings, jumped, clucked deafeningly; courtyard people ran, stumbled, fell; the gentleman from the balcony shouted like a frenzy: “Catch, catch! catch, catch! Catch, catch, catch! .. Whose chickens are these, whose chickens are they? Finally, one yard man managed to catch a crested hen, pressing it to the ground with his chest, and at the same time, a girl of about eleven years old, all disheveled and with a twig in her hand, jumped over the fence of the garden, from the street.
- Ah, that's whose chickens! exclaimed the landowner triumphantly. - Ermila-coachman chickens! There he sent his Natalka to drive them away ... I suppose he didn’t send Parasha, ”the landowner added in an undertone and grinned significantly. - Hey Yushka! throw the chickens: catch Natalka for me.
But before the out of breath Yushka could run to the frightened girl - out of nowhere the housekeeper grabbed her hand and slapped the poor thing on the back several times ...
“That’s it, here’s the tech,” picked up the landowner, “those, those, those!” Those, those, those!.. And take away the chickens, Avdotya,” he added in a loud voice and turned to me with a bright face: “What, father, was the persecution, eh? Even sweat, look.
And Mardary Apollonitch burst out laughing.
We stayed on the balcony. The evening was really unusually good.
We were served tea.
“Tell me,” I began, “Mardariy Apollonitch, have your yards been evicted, over there, on the road, beyond the ravine?”
- My ... and what?
- How are you, Mardarius Apollonitch? After all, it is wrong. The huts allotted to the peasants are nasty, cramped; you won’t see trees all around: there’s not even a planter; there is only one well, and even that is no good. Couldn't you have found another place?.. And, they say, you even took away the old hemp-growers from them?
- And what will you do with the disengagement? Mardary Apollonitch answered me. - I have this demarcation here where it sits. (He pointed to the back of his head.) And I do not foresee any benefit from this delimitation. And that I took hemp plants from them and planters, or something, I didn’t dig up from them there, - I myself know about this, father. I'm a simple man - I do it the old way. In my opinion: if a master is a master, and if a peasant is a peasant ... That's what.
Of course, there was nothing to answer such a clear and convincing argument.
“Besides,” he continued, “they are bad, disgraced men. Especially there are two families; even the deceased father, God grant him the kingdom of heaven, did not complain about them, did not complain painfully.

We hope the book Two landowners author Turgenev Ivan Sergeevich You'll like it!
If so, can you recommend a book? Two landowners to your friends by putting a link to the page with the work Turgenev Ivan Sergeevich - Two landowners.
Keywords of the page: Two landowners; Turgenev Ivan Sergeevich, download, read, book and free of charge

I have already had the honor of introducing to you, sympathetic readers, some of my neighbors; allow me now, by the way (everything is in order for our brother the writer), to introduce you to two more landowners with whom I often hunted, people who are very respectable, well-meaning and universally respected in several districts.

First, I will describe to you the retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Imagine a tall and once slender man, now somewhat flabby, but not at all decrepit, not even obsolete, a man in adulthood, in the very, as they say, time. True, the once correct and now still pleasant features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have sagged, frequent wrinkles are radiating around his eyes, there are no other teeth, as Saadi said, according to Pushkin; blond hair, at least all that remained intact, turned into purple thanks to the composition bought at the Romen horse fair from a Jew who pretended to be an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Illarionovich acts briskly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs, twists his mustache, and finally calls himself an old cavalryman, while it is known that real old people never call themselves old people. He usually wears a frock coat, buttoned up to the top, a high necktie with starched collars, and gray trousers with a sparkle, military cut; He wears his hat directly on his forehead, leaving the entire back of his head out. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits. For example: he cannot treat nobles who are not wealthy or not official in any way, as with people equal to themselves. When talking to them, he usually looks at them from the side, leaning his cheek strongly on a hard and white collar, or suddenly he will take it and illuminate them with a clear and motionless look, keep silent and move all the skin under the hair on his head; he even pronounces words differently and does not say, for example: “Thank you, Pavel Vasilyich”, or: “Come here, Mikhailo Ivanovich”, but: “Bolldaryu, Pall Asilich”, or: “Pa-azhalte here, Michal Vanych”. With people on the lower levels of society, he treats them even more strangely: he does not look at them at all and, before he explains his desire to them or gives them an order, he repeats several times in a row, with an anxious and dreamy look: “What is your name? .. what is your name?” He was a troublemaker and lived a terrible life, but the owner was a bad one: he took a retired sergeant major, a Little Russian, an unusually stupid person, as his steward. However, in the matter of management, no one among us has yet outdone one important Petersburg official who, having seen from the reports of his clerk that his barns and his estate are often subject to fires, which is why a lot of bread is wasted, gave the strictest order: do not plant sheaves in a barn until the fire is completely extinguished. The same dignitary took it into his head to sow all his fields with poppies, as a result of, apparently, a very simple calculation: poppy, they say, is more expensive than rye, therefore, it is more profitable to sow poppies. He also ordered his serf women to wear kokoshniks according to the pattern sent from St. Petersburg; and indeed, women on his estates still wear kokoshniki… only on top of kichek… But let us return to Vyacheslav Illarionovich. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is a terrible hunter of the fair sex, and as soon as he sees a pretty person in his county town on the boulevard, he immediately sets off after her, but immediately limps - that's what a wonderful circumstance. He likes to play cards, but only with people of lower rank; they are something to him: “Your Excellency,” and he pushes them and scolds them as much as his heart desires. When he happens to play with the governor or with some official, an amazing change takes place in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - he smells like honey from him ... He even loses and does not complain. Vyacheslav Illarionich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows, first his mustache, then his eyebrows, as if sending a wave from bottom to top over his face. Especially remarkable is this undulating movement on Vyacheslav Illarionich's face when he happens (in front of guests, of course) to run through the columns of the Journal des Debats. In the elections, he plays a rather significant role, but he refuses the honorary title of leader out of avarice. “Gentlemen,” he usually says to the nobles approaching him, and speaks in a voice full of patronage and independence, “I am very grateful for the honor; but I decided to devote my leisure to solitude. And, having said these words, he will move his head several times to the right and to the left, and then with dignity he will put his chin and cheeks on the tie. In his younger years he was an adjutant to some significant person, whom he does not call otherwise than by name and patronymic; they say that he took on more than just adjutant duties, as if, for example, dressed in full dress uniform and even fastening the hooks, he soared his boss in the bathhouse - but not every rumor can be trusted. However, General Khvalynsky himself does not like to talk about his service career, which is generally quite strange: it seems that he also did not go to war. General Khvalynsky lives in a small house, alone; he did not experience marital happiness in his life, and therefore is still considered a groom, and even an advantageous groom. But he has a housekeeper, a woman of about thirty-five, black-eyed, black-browed, plump, fresh and with a mustache, on weekdays she walks in starched dresses, and on Sundays she puts on muslin sleeves. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is good at big dinner parties given by landlords in honor of governors and other authorities: here he, one might say, is completely at ease. He usually sits in such cases, if not at the right hand of the governor, then not far from him; at the beginning of dinner, he more adheres to his own dignity and, throwing himself back, but without turning his head, looks down from the side at the round backs of the heads and standing collars of the guests; but by the end of the table he cheers up, begins to smile in all directions (in the direction of the governor he smiled from the beginning of dinner), and sometimes even offers a toast in honor of the fair sex, the decoration of our planet, according to him. Also, General Khvalynsky is not bad at all solemn and public acts, exams, meetings and exhibitions; the master also comes under the blessing. At sidings, crossings, and other similar places, Vyacheslav Illarionich's people do not make noise or shout; on the contrary, pushing the people apart or calling the carriage, they say in a pleasant throaty baritone: “Let me, let me, let General Khvalynsky pass,” or: “General Khvalynsky’s crew ...” The crew, however, Khvalynsky’s uniform is rather old; on the lackeys the livery is rather shabby (it seems hardly necessary to mention that it is gray with red piping); the horses, too, have lived quite well and have served their time, but Vyacheslav Illarionich has no pretensions to panache and does not even consider it proper for his rank to splurge. Khvalynsky does not have a special gift for words, or, perhaps, does not have the opportunity to show his eloquence, because he does not tolerate not only disputes, but generally objections, and he carefully avoids all long conversations, especially with young people. It is indeed truer; otherwise the trouble is with the current people: it will just come out of obedience and lose respect. Khvalynsky is silent for the most part in front of superior people, and towards inferior people, whom he apparently despises, but with whom he only knows, he makes abrupt and harsh speeches, incessantly using expressions such as the following: “This, however, you are talking nonsense”; or: “I finally find myself compelled, my dear friend, to show you”; or: “Finally, you must, however, know with whom you are dealing,” etc. Postmasters, indispensable assessors and stationmasters are especially afraid of him. At home, he does not receive anyone and lives, as you hear, a miser. With all that, he is a fine landowner. “An old campaigner, a disinterested man, with rules, vieux grognard,” the neighbors say about him. One provincial prosecutor allows himself to smile when they mention in his presence the excellent and solid qualities of General Khvalynsky - but what envy does not do! ..

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

TWO LANDMANS

I have already had the honor of introducing to you, sympathetic readers, some of my neighbors; allow me now, by the way (everything is in order for our brother the writer), to introduce you to two more landowners with whom I often hunted, people who are very respectable, well-meaning and universally respected in several districts.

First, I will describe to you the retired Major General Vyacheslav Illarionovich Khvalynsky. Imagine a tall and once slender man, now somewhat flabby, but not at all decrepit, not even obsolete, a man in adulthood, in the very, as they say, time. True, the once correct and now still pleasant features of his face have changed a little, his cheeks have sagged, frequent wrinkles are radiating around his eyes, there are no other teeth, as Saadi said, according to Pushkin; blond hair, at least all that remained intact, turned into purple thanks to the composition bought at the Romen horse fair from a Jew who pretended to be an Armenian; but Vyacheslav Illarionovich acts briskly, laughs loudly, tinkles his spurs, twists his mustache, and finally calls himself an old cavalryman, while it is known that real old people never call themselves old people. He usually wears a frock coat, buttoned up to the top, a high necktie with starched collars, and gray trousers with a sparkle, military cut; He wears his hat directly on his forehead, leaving the entire back of his head out. He is a very kind person, but with rather strange concepts and habits. For example: he cannot treat nobles who are not wealthy or not official in any way, as with people equal to themselves. When talking to them, he usually looks at them from the side, leaning his cheek strongly on a hard and white collar, or suddenly he will take it and illuminate them with a clear and motionless look, keep silent and move all the skin under the hair on his head; he even pronounces words differently and does not say, for example: “Thank you, Pavel Vasilyich”, or: “Come here, Mikhailo Ivanovich”, but: “Bolldaryu, Pall Asilich”, or: “Pa-azhalte here, Michal Vanych”. With people on the lower levels of society, he treats them even more strangely: he does not look at them at all and, before he explains his desire to them or gives them an order, he repeats several times in a row, with an anxious and dreamy look: “What is your name? .. what is your name?” He was a troublemaker and lived a terrible life, but the owner was a bad one: he took a retired sergeant major, a Little Russian, an unusually stupid person, as his steward. However, in the matter of management, no one among us has yet outdone one important Petersburg official who, having seen from the reports of his clerk that his barns and his estate are often subject to fires, which is why a lot of bread is wasted, gave the strictest order: do not plant sheaves in a barn until the fire is completely extinguished. The same dignitary took it into his head to sow all his fields with poppies, as a result of, apparently, a very simple calculation: poppy, they say, is more expensive than rye, therefore, it is more profitable to sow poppies. He also ordered his serf women to wear kokoshniks according to the pattern sent from St. Petersburg; and indeed, women on his estates still wear kokoshniki… only on top of kichek… But let us return to Vyacheslav Illarionovich. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is a terrible hunter of the fair sex, and as soon as he sees a pretty person in his county town on the boulevard, he immediately sets off after her, but immediately limps - that's what a wonderful circumstance. He likes to play cards, but only with people of lower rank; they are something to him: “Your Excellency,” and he pushes them and scolds them as much as his heart desires. When he happens to play with the governor or with some official, an amazing change takes place in him: he smiles, and nods his head, and looks into their eyes - he smells like honey from him ... He even loses and does not complain. Vyacheslav Illarionich reads little, while reading he constantly moves his mustache and eyebrows, first his mustache, then his eyebrows, as if sending a wave from bottom to top over his face. Especially remarkable is this undulating movement on Vyacheslav Illarionich's face when he happens (in front of guests, of course) to run through the columns of the Journal des Debats. In the elections, he plays a rather significant role, but he refuses the honorary title of leader out of avarice. “Gentlemen,” he usually says to the nobles approaching him, and speaks in a voice full of patronage and independence, “I am very grateful for the honor; but I decided to devote my leisure to solitude. And, having said these words, he will move his head several times to the right and to the left, and then with dignity he will put his chin and cheeks on the tie. In his younger years he was an adjutant to some significant person, whom he does not call otherwise than by name and patronymic; they say that he took on more than just adjutant duties, as if, for example, dressed in full dress uniform and even fastening the hooks, he soared his boss in the bathhouse - but not every rumor can be trusted. However, General Khvalynsky himself does not like to talk about his service career, which is generally quite strange: it seems that he also did not go to war. General Khvalynsky lives in a small house, alone; he did not experience marital happiness in his life, and therefore is still considered a groom, and even an advantageous groom. But he has a housekeeper, a woman of about thirty-five, black-eyed, black-browed, plump, fresh and with a mustache, on weekdays she walks in starched dresses, and on Sundays she puts on muslin sleeves. Vyacheslav Illarionovich is good at big dinner parties given by landlords in honor of governors and other authorities: here he, one might say, is completely at ease. He usually sits in such cases, if not at the right hand of the governor, then not far from him; at the beginning of dinner, he more adheres to his own dignity and, throwing himself back, but without turning his head, looks down from the side at the round backs of the heads and standing collars of the guests; but by the end of the table he cheers up, begins to smile in all directions (in the direction of the governor he smiled from the beginning of dinner), and sometimes even offers a toast in honor of the fair sex, the decoration of our planet, according to him. Also, General Khvalynsky is not bad at all solemn and public acts, exams, meetings and exhibitions; the master also comes under the blessing. At sidings, crossings, and other similar places, Vyacheslav Illarionich's people do not make noise or shout; on the contrary, pushing the people apart or calling the carriage, they say in a pleasant throaty baritone: “Let me, let me, let General Khvalynsky pass,” or: “General Khvalynsky’s crew ...” The crew, however, Khvalynsky’s uniform is rather old; on the lackeys the livery is rather shabby (it seems hardly necessary to mention that it is gray with red piping); the horses, too, have lived quite well and have served their time, but Vyacheslav Illarionich has no pretensions to panache and does not even consider it proper for his rank to splurge. Khvalynsky does not have a special gift for words, or, perhaps, does not have the opportunity to show his eloquence, because he does not tolerate not only disputes, but generally objections, and he carefully avoids all long conversations, especially with young people. It is indeed truer; otherwise the trouble is with the current people: it will just come out of obedience and lose respect. Khvalynsky is silent for the most part in front of superior people, and towards inferior people, whom he apparently despises, but with whom he only knows, he makes abrupt and harsh speeches, incessantly using expressions such as the following: “This, however, you are talking nonsense”; or: “I finally find myself compelled, my dear friend, to show you”; or: “Finally, you must, however, know with whom you are dealing,” etc. Postmasters, indispensable assessors and stationmasters are especially afraid of him. At home, he does not receive anyone and lives, as you hear, a miser. With all that, he is a fine landowner. “An old campaigner, a disinterested man, with rules, vieux grognard,” the neighbors say about him. One provincial prosecutor allows himself to smile when they mention in his presence the excellent and solid qualities of General Khvalynsky - but what envy does not do! ..