FullReads

When he had taken his seat in the carriage Baburin at last turned to me, and with a slight softening of the accustomed sternness of his face, observed: ‘It’s a lesson for you, young gentleman; remember this incident, and when you grow up, try to put an end to such acts of injustice. Your heart is good, your nature is not yet corrupted…. Mind, be careful; things can’t go on like this!’ Through my tears, which streamed copiously over my nose, my lips, and my chin, I faltered out that I would … I would remember, that I promised … I would do … I would be sure … quite sure …

But at this point, Punin, whom I had before this embraced twenty times (my cheeks were burning from the contact with his unshaven beard, and I was odoriferous of the smell that always clung to him)–at this point a sudden frenzy came over Punin. He jumped up on the seat of the cart, flung both hands up in the air, and began in a voice of thunder (where he got it from!) to declaim the well-known paraphrase of the Psalm of David by Derzhavin,–a poet for this occasion–not a courtier.

‘God the All-powerful doth arise
And judgeth in the congregation of the mighty! …
How long, how long, saith the Lord,
Will ye have mercy on the wicked?
“Ye have to keep the laws….”‘

‘Sit down!’ Baburin said to him.

Punin sat down, but continued:

‘To save the guiltless and needy,
To give shelter to the afflicted,
To defend the weak from the oppressors.’

Punin at the word ‘oppressors’ pointed to the seignorial abode, and then poked the driver in the back.

‘To deliver the poor out of bondage!
They know not! neither will they understand! …’

Nikolai Antonov running out of the seignorial abode, shouted at the top of his voice to the coachman: ‘Get away with you! owl! go along! don’t stay lingering here!’ and the cart rolled away. Only in the distance could still be heard:

‘Arise, O Lord God of righteousness! …
Come forth to judge the unjust–
And be Thou the only Ruler of the nations!’

‘What a clown!’ remarked Nikolai Antonov.

‘He didn’t get enough of the rod in his young days,’ observed the deacon, appearing on the steps. He had come to inquire what hour it would please the mistress to fix for the night service.

The same day, learning that Yermil was still in the village, and would not till early next morning be despatched to the town for the execution of certain legal formalities, which were intended to check the arbitrary proceedings of the landowners, but served only as a source of additional revenue to the functionaries in superintendence of them, I sought him out, and, for lack of money of my own, handed him a bundle, in which I had tied up two pocket-handkerchiefs, a shabby pair of slippers, a comb, an old night-gown, and a perfectly new silk cravat. Yermil, whom I had to wake up–he was lying on a heap of straw in the back yard, near the cart–Yermil took my present rather indifferently, with some hesitation in fact, did not thank me, promptly poked his head into the straw and fell asleep again. I went home somewhat disappointed. I had imagined that he would be astonished and overjoyed at my visit, would see in it a pledge of my magnanimous intentions for the future–and instead of that …

‘You may say what you like–these people have no feeling,’ was my reflection on my homeward way.

My grandmother, who had for some reason left me in peace the whole of that memorable day, looked at me suspiciously when I came after supper to say good-night to her.

‘Your eyes are red,’ she observed to me in French; ‘and there’s a smell of the peasant’s hut about you. I am not going to enter into an examination of what you’ve been feeling and doing–I should not like to be obliged to punish you–but I hope you will get over all your foolishness, and begin to conduct yourself once more in a manner befitting a well-bred boy. However, we are soon going back to Moscow, and I shall get you a tutor–as I see you need a man’s hand to manage you. You can go.’