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My grandmother nodded her head up and down….

‘Madam,’ a hoarse almost stifled voice was heard suddenly. I looked round. Baburin’s face was red … dark red; under his overhanging brows could be seen little sharp points of light…. There was no doubt about it; it was he, it was Baburin, who had uttered the word ‘Madam.’

My grandmother too looked round, and turned her eyeglass from Yermil to Baburin.

‘Who is that … speaking?’ she articulated slowly … through her nose. Baburin moved slightly forward.

‘Madam,’ he began, ‘it is I…. I venture … I imagine … I make bold to submit to your honour that you are making a mistake in acting as … as you are pleased to act at this moment.’

‘That is?’ my grandmother said, in the same voice, not removing her eyeglass.

‘I take the liberty …’ Baburin went on distinctly, uttering every word though with obvious effort–‘I am referring to the case of this lad who is being sent away to a settlement … for no fault of his. Such arrangements, I venture to submit, lead to dissatisfaction, and to other–which God forbid!–consequences, and are nothing else than a transgression of the powers allowed to seignorial proprietors.’

‘And where have you studied, pray?’ my grandmother asked after a short silence, and she dropped her eyeglass.

Baburin was disconcerted. ‘What are you pleased to wish?’ he muttered.

‘I ask you: where have you studied? You use such learned words.’

‘I … my education …’ Baburin was beginning.

My grandmother shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. ‘It seems,’ she interrupted, ‘that my arrangements are not to your liking. That is of absolutely no consequence to me–among my subjects I am sovereign, and answerable to no one for them, only I am not accustomed to having people criticising me in my presence, and meddling in what is not their business. I have no need of learned philanthropists of nondescript position; I want servants to do my will without question. So I always lived till you came, and so I shall live after you’ve gone. You do not suit me; you are discharged. Nikolai Antonov,’ my grandmother turned to the steward, ‘pay this man off; and let him be gone before dinner-time to-day! D’you hear? Don’t put me into a passion. And the other too … the fool that lives with him–to be sent off too. What’s Yermilka waiting for?’ she added, looking out of window, ‘I have seen him. What more does he want?’ My grandmother shook her handkerchief in the direction of the window, as though to drive away an importunate fly. Then she sat down in a low chair, and turning towards us, gave the order grimly: ‘Everybody present to leave the room!’

We all withdrew–all, except the day page, to whom my grandmother’s words did not apply, because he was nobody.

My grandmother’s decree was carried out to the letter. Before dinner, both Baburin and my friend Punin were driving away from the place. I will not undertake to describe my grief, my genuine, truly childish despair. It was so strong that it stifled even the feeling of awe-stricken admiration inspired by the bold action of the republican Baburin. After the conversation with my grandmother, he went at once to his room and began packing up. He did not vouchsafe me one word, one look, though I was the whole time hanging about him, or rather, in reality, about Punin. The latter was utterly distraught, and he too said nothing; but he was continually glancing at me, and tears stood in his eyes … always the same tears; they neither fell nor dried up. He did not venture to criticise his ‘benefactor’–Paramon Semyonitch could not make a mistake,–but great was his distress and dejection. Punin and I made an effort to read something out of the Rossiad for the last time; we even locked ourselves up in the lumber-room–it was useless to dream of going into the garden–but at the very first line we both broke down, and I fairly bellowed like a calf, in spite of my twelve years, and my claims to be grown-up.