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I did not ride in a straight line as I had to make a circuit along the road that skirted the circular lake. It was only possible to go in a straight line by boat, while those who went by the road had to make a large detour, the distance being almost eight versts farther. All the way, looking across the lake, I could see beyond it the muddy banks opposite, on which the bright strip of a blossoming cherry orchard gleamed white, while farther still I could see the roofs of the Count’s barns dotted all over with many coloured pigeons, and rising still higher the small white belfry of the Count’s chapel. At the foot of the muddy banks was the bathing cabin with sailcloth nailed on the sides and sheets hanging to dry on its railings. I saw all this, and it appeared to me as if only a verst separated me from my friend the Count, yet in order to reach his estate I had to ride about sixteen versts.

On the way, I thought of my strange relationship with the Count. I was interested in examining and trying to define it, but the task proved beyond me. However much I thought, I could come to no satisfactory decision, and at last I arrived at the conclusion that I was a bad judge of myself and of men in general. The people who knew both the Count and me had an explanation for our mutual connection. The narrower-minded, who see nothing beyond the tip of their nose, were fond of asserting that the illustrious Count found in the ‘poor and undistinguished’ magistrate a congenial hanger-on and boon companion. In their view I, the writer of these lines, fawned and cringed before the Count for the sake of the crumbs and scraps that fell from his table. In their opinion the illustrious millionaire, who was both the bugbear and the envy of the whole of the S — district, was very clever and liberal; otherwise his gracious condescension that went as far as friendship for an indigent magistrate and the genuine liberalism that made the Count tolerate my familiarity in addressing him as ‘thou’, would be quite incomprehensible. Cleverer people ex-

plained our intimacy by our common ‘spiritual interests’. The Count and I were of the same age. We had finished our law studies in the same university, and we both knew very little: I still had a smattering of legal lore, but the Count had forgotten and drowned in alcohol the little he had ever known. We were both proud, and by virtue of some reason which was only known to ourselves, we shunned the world like misanthropes. We were both indifferent to the opinion of the world - that is of the S — district - we were both immoral, and would certainly both end badly. These were the ‘spiritual interests’ that united us. This was all that the people who knew us could say about our relations.

They would, of course, have spoken differently had they known how weak, soft and yielding was the nature of my friend, the Count, and how strong and hard was mine. They would have had much to say had they known how fond this infirm man was of me, and how I disliked him! He was the first to offer his friendship and I was the first to say ‘thou’ to him, but with what a difference in the tone! In a fit of kindly feeling he embraced me, and asked me timidly to be his friend. I, on the other hand, once seized by a feeling of a contempt and aversion, said to him:

‘Canst thou not cease jabbering nonsense?’

And he accepted this ‘thou’ as an expression of friendship and submitted to it from that time, repaying me with an honest, brotherly ‘thou’.

Yes, it would have been better and more honest had I turned my Zorka’s head homewards and ridden back to Polycarp and my Ivan Dem’yanych.

Afterwards I often thought: ‘How much misfortune I would have avoided bearing on my shoulders, how much good I would have brought to my neighbours, if on that night I had had the resolution to turn back, if only my Zorka had gone mad and carried me far away from the immensities of the lake! What numbers of tormenting recollections which now cause my hand to quit the pen and seize my head would not have pressed so heavily on my mind!’ But I must not anticipate, all the more as farther on I shall often have to dwell on misfortunes. Now for gaiety…

My Zorka bore me into the gates of the Count’s yard. At the very gates she stumbled, and I, losing the stirrup, almost fell to the ground.

‘An ill omen, sir!’ a muzhik, who was standing at one of the doors of the Count’s long line of stables, called to me.

I believe that a man falling from a horse may break his neck, but I do not believe in prognostications. Having given the bridle to the muzhik, I beat the dust off my top-boots with my riding-whip and ran into the house. Nobody met me. All the doors and windows of the rooms were wide open, nevertheless within the house the air was heavy, and had a strange smell. It was a mixture of the odour of ancient, deserted apartments with the tart narcotic scent of hothouse plants that have but recently been brought from the conservatories into the rooms… In the drawing-room, two tumbled cushions were lying on one of the sofas that was covered with a light blue silk material, and on a round table before the sofa I saw a glass containing a few drops of a liquid that exhaled an odour of strong Riga balsam. All this denoted that the house was inhabited, but I did not meet a living soul in any of the eleven rooms that I traversed. The same desertion that was round the lake reigned in the house…

A glass door led into the garden from the so-called ‘mosaic’ drawing-room. I opened it noisily and went down the marble stairs into the garden. I had gone only a few steps along the avenue when I met Nastasia, an old woman of ninety, who had formerly been the Count’s nurse. This little wrinkled old creature, forgotten by death, had a bald head and piercing eyes. When you looked at her face you involuntarily remembered the nickname ‘Scops-Owl’ that had been given her in the village… When she saw me she trembled and almost dropped a glass of milk she was carrying in both hands.

‘How do you do, Scops?’ I said to her.

She gave me a sidelong glance and silently went on her way… I seized her by the shoulder.

‘Don’t be afraid, fool… Where’s the Count?’

The old woman pointed to her ear.

‘Are you deaf? How long have you been deaf?’

Despite her great age, the old woman heard and saw very well, but she found it useful to pretend otherwise. I shook my finger at her and let her go.

Having gone on a few steps farther, I heard voices, and soon after saw people. At the spot where the avenue widened out and formed an open space surrounded by iron benches and shaded by tall white acacias, stood a table on which a samovar shone brightly. People were seated at the table, talking. I went quietly across the grass towards the gathering and, hiding behind a lilac bush, began to peer about for the Count.

My friend, Count Karnéev, was seated at the table on a cane-bottomed folding chair, drinking tea. He was dressed in the same many-coloured dressing-gown in which I had seen him two years before, and he wore a straw hat. His face had a troubled, concentrated expression, and it was very wrinkled, so that a man not acquainted with him might have imagined he was troubled at that moment by some serious thought or anxiety… The Count had not changed at all in appearance during the two years since last we met. He had the same small thin body, as frail and wizened as the body of a corncrake. He had the same narrow, consumptive shoulders, surmounted by a small redhaired head. His small nose was as red as formerly, and his cheeks were flabby and hanging like rags, as they had been two years before. On his face there was nothing of boldness, strength or manliness… All was weak, apathetic and languid. The only imposing thing about him was his long, drooping moustache. Somebody had told my friend that a long moustache was very becoming to him. He believed it, and every morning since then he had measured how much longer the growth on his pale lips had become. With this moustache he reminded you of a moustached but very young and puny kitten.

Sitting next to the Count at the table was a stout man with a large closely-cropped head and very dark eyebrows, who was unknown to me. His face was fat and shone like a ripe melon. His moustache was longer than the Count’s, his forehead was low, his lips were compressed, and his eyes gazed lazily into the sky… The features of his face were bloated, but nevertheless they were as hard as dried-up skin. He did not look like a Russian… The stout man was without his coat or waistcoat, and on his shirt there were dark spots caused by perspiration. He was not drinking tea but Seltzer water.

At a respectful distance from the table a short, thick-set man with a stout red neck and protruding ears was standing. This man was Urbenin, the Count’s bailiff. In honour of the Count’s arrival he was dressed in a new black suit and was now suffering torments. The perspiration was pouring in streams from his red, sunburnt face. Next to the bailiff stood the muzhik, who had come to me with the letter. It was only here I noticed that this muzhik had only one eye. Standing at attention, not allowing himself the slightest movement, he was like a statue, and waited to be questioned.

‘Kuz’ma, you deserve to be thrashed black and blue with your own whip,’ the bailiff said to him in his reproachful soft bass voice, pausing between each word, is it possible to execute the master’s orders in such a careless way. You ought to have requested him to come here at once and to have found out when he could be expected.’

‘Yes, yes, yes…’ the Count exclaimed nervously. ‘You ought to have found out everything! He said: “I’ll come!” But that’s not enough! I want him at once! Pos-i-tively at once! You asked him to come, but he did not understand!’

‘What do you want with him?’ the fat man asked the Count.

‘I want to see him!’

‘Only that? To my mind, Alexey, that magistrate would do far better if he remained at home today. I have no wish for guests.’

I opened my eyes. What was the meaning of that masterful, authoritative T?

‘But he’s not a guest!’ my friend said in an imploring tone. ‘He won’t prevent you from resting after the journey. I beg you not to stand on ceremonies with him… You’ll like him at once, my dear boy, and you’ll soon be friends with him!’

I came out of my hiding place behind the lilac bushes and went up to the tables. The Count saw and recognized me, and his face brightened with a pleased smile.

‘Here he is! Here he is!’ he exclaimed, getting red with pleasure, and he jumped up from the table. ‘How good of you to come!’

He ran towards me, seized me in his arms, embraced me and scratched my cheeks several times with his bristly moustache. These kisses were followed by lengthy shaking of my hand and long looks into my eyes.

‘You, Sergey, have not changed at all! You’re still the same! The same handsome strong fellow! Thank you for accepting my invitation and coming at once!’

When released from the Count’s embrace, I greeted the bailiff, who was an old friend of mine, and sat down at the table.

‘Oh, golubchek!’ the Count continued in an excitedly anxious tone, if you only knew how delighted I am to see your serious countenance again. You are not acquainted? Allow me to introduce you - my good friend, Kaetan Kazimirovich Pshekhotsky. And this,’ he continued, introducing me to the fat man, ‘is my good old friend, Sergey Petrovich Zinov’ev! Our magistrate.’

The stout, dark-browed man rose slightly from his seat and offered me his fat, and extremely sweaty hand.

‘Very pleased,’ he mumbled, examining me from head to foot. ‘Very glad!’

Having given vent to his feelings and become calm again, the Count filled a glass with cold, dark brown tea for me and moved a box of biscuits towards my hand.

‘Eat… When passing through Moscow I bought them at Einem’s. I’m very angry with you, Serezha, so angry that I wanted to quarrel with you! Not only have you not written me a line during the whole of the past two years, but you did not even think a single one of my letters worth answering! That’s not friendly!’

‘I don’t know how to write letters,’ I said. ‘Besides, I have no time for letter writing. Can you tell me what could I have written to you about?’

‘There must have been many things!’

‘Indeed, there was nothing. I admit of only three sorts of letters: love, congratulatory, and business letters. The first I did not write to you because you are not a woman, and I am not in love with you; the second you don’t require; and from the third category we are relieved as from our birth we have never had any business connection together.’

‘That’s perfectly true,’ the Count said, agreeing readily and quickly with everything; ‘but all the same, you might have written, if only a line… And what’s more, as Pëtr Egorych tells me, all these two years you’ve not set foot here, as though you were living a thousand versts away or disdained my property. You could have made your home here, shot over my grounds. Many things might have happened here while I was away.’

The Count spoke much and long. When once he began talking about anything, his tongue chattered on without ceasing and without end, quite regardless of the trivality or insignificance of his subject.

In the utterance of sounds he was as untiring as my Ivan Dem’yanych. I could hardly stand him for that facility. This time he was stopped by his butler, Il’ya, a tall, thin man in a well-worn, much-stained livery, who brought the Count a wineglass of vodka and half a tumbler of water on a silver tray. The Count swallowed the vodka, washed it down with some water, making a grimace with a shake of the head.

‘So it seems you have not yet stopped tippling vodka!’ I said.

‘No, Serezha, I have not.’

‘Well, you might at least drop that drunken habit of making faces and shaking your head! It’s disgusting!’

‘My dear boy, I’m going to drop everything… The doctors have forbidden me to drink. I drink now only because it’s unhealthy to drop habits all at once… It must be done gradually…

I looked at the Count’s unhealthy, worn face, at the wineglass, at the butler in yellow shoes. I looked at the dark-browed Pole, who from the very first moment for some reason had appeared to me to be a scoundrel and a blackguard. I looked at the one-eyed muzhik, who stood there at attention, and a feeling of dread and of oppression came over me… I suddenly wanted to leave this dirty atmosphere, having first opened the Count’s eyes to the unlimited antipathy I felt for him… There was a moment when I was ready to rise and depart… But I did not go away… I was prevented (I’m ashamed to confess it!) by physical laziness…

‘Give me a glass of vodka, too!’ I said to Il’ya.

Long shadows began to be cast on the avenue and on the open space where we were sitting…

The distant croaking of frogs, the cawing of crows and the singing of orioles greeted the setting of the sun. A gay evening was just beginning…

‘Tell Urbenin to sit down,’ I whispered to the Count. ‘He’s standing before you like a boy.’

‘Oh, I never thought of that! Pëtr Egorych,’ the Count addressed his bailiff, ‘sit down, please! Why are you standing there?’

Urbenin sat down, casting a grateful glance at me. He who was always healthy and gay appeared to me now to be ill and dull. His face seemed wrinkled and sleepy, his eyes looked at us lazily and as if unwillingly.

‘Well, Pëtr Egorych, what’s new here? Any pretty girls, eh?’ Karnéev asked him. isn’t there something special… something out of the common?’

‘It’s always the same, your Excellency…’

‘Are there no new… nice little girls, Pëtr Egorych?’

The virtuous Pëtr Egorych blushed.

‘I don’t know, your Excellency… I don’t occupy myself with that’

‘There are, your Excellency,’ broke in the deep bass voice of one-eyed Kuz’ma, who had been silent all the time. ‘And quite worth notice, too.’

‘Are they pretty?’

‘There are all sorts, your Excellency, for all tastes… There are dark ones and fair ones - all sorts…’

‘O, ho! Stop a minute… I remember you now… My former Leporello, a sort of secretary… Your name’s Kuz’ma, I think?’

‘Yes, your Excellency…’

‘I remember, I remember… Well, and what have you now in view? Something new, all peasant girls?’

‘Mostly peasants, of course, but there are finer ones, too…’

‘Where have you found finer ones…’ Il’ya asked, winking at Kuz’ma.

‘At Easter the postman’s sister-in-law came to stay with him… Nastasia Ivanovna… A girl all on springs. She’s good enough to eat, but money is wanted… Cheeks like peaches, and all the rest as good… There’s something finer than that, too. It’s only waiting for you, your Excellency. Young, plump, jolly… a beauty! Such a beauty, your Excellency, as you’ve scarcely found in Petersburg…’

‘Who is it?’

‘Olenka, the forester Skvortsov’s daughter.’

Urbenin’s chair cracked under him. Supporting himself with his hands on the table, purple in the face, the bailiff rose slowly and turned towards the one-eyed Kuz’ma. The expression on his face of dullness and fatigue had given place to one of great anger.

‘Hold your tongue, serf!’ he grumbled. ‘One-eyed vermin! Say what you please, but don’t talk about respectable people!’

‘I’m not speaking of you, Pëtr Egorych,’ Kuz’ma said imperturbably.

‘I’m not talking about myself, blockhead! Besides… Forgive me, your Excellency,’ the bailiff turned to the Count, ‘forgive me for making a scene, but I would beg your Excellency to forbid your Leporello, as you were pleased to call him, to extend his zeal to persons who are worthy of all respect!’

‘I don’t understand…’ the Count lisped naively. ‘He has said nothing very offensive.’

Insulted and excited to a degree, Urbenin went away from the table and stood with his side towards us. With his arms crossed on his breast and his eyes blinking, hiding his purple face from us behind the branches of the bushes, he stood plunged in thought.

Had not this man a presentiment that in the near future his moral feelings would have to suffer offences a thousand times more bitter?

‘I don’t understand what has offended him!’ the Count whispered in my ear. ‘What a caution! There was nothing offensive in what was said.’

After two years of sober living, the glass of vodka acted on me in a slightly intoxicating manner. A feeling of lightness, of pleasure, was diffused in my brain and through my whole body. Added to this, I began to feel the coolness of evening, which little by little was supplanting the sultriness of the day. I proposed to take a stroll. The Count and his new Polish friend had their coats brought from the house, and we set off. Urbenin followed us.