pillars have fallen and evil deeds end badly sooner
or later. There is not much to say about Lizaveta
Prohorovna. She is still living and, as is often
the case with people of her sort, is not much changed,
she has not even grown much older—she only
seems to have dried up a little; on the other hand,
her stinginess has greatly increased though it is
difficult to say for whose benefit she is saving as
she has no children and no attachments. In conversation
she often speaks of Akim and declares that since she
has understood his good qualities she has begun to
feel great respect for the Russian peasant. Kirillovna
bought her freedom for a considerable sum and married
for love a fair-haired young waiter who leads her a
dreadful life; Avdotya lives as before among the maids
in Lizaveta Prohorovna’s house, but has sunk
to a rather lower position; she is very poorly, almost
dirtily dressed, and there is no trace left in her
of the townbred airs and graces of a fashionable maid
or of the habits of a prosperous innkeeper’s
wife.... No one takes any notice of her and she
herself is glad to be unnoticed; old Petrovitch is
dead and Akim is still wandering, a pilgrim, and God
only knows how much longer his pilgrimage will last!
1852.
* * * *
*
That evening Kuzma Vassilyevitch Yergunov told us
his story again. He used to repeat it punctually
once a month and we heard it every time with fresh
satisfaction though we knew it almost by heart, in
all its details. Those details overgrew, if one
may so express it, the original trunk of the story
itself as fungi grow over the stump of a tree.
Knowing only too well the character of our companion,
we did not trouble to fill in his gaps and incomplete
statements. But now Kuzma Vassilyevitch is dead
and there will be no one to tell his story and so
we venture to bring it before the notice of the public.
It happened forty years ago when Kuzma Vassilyevitch
was young. He said of himself that he was at
that time a handsome fellow and a dandy with a complexion
of milk and roses, red lips, curly hair, and eyes
like a falcon’s. We took his word for it,
though we saw nothing of that sort in him; in our
eyes Kuzma Vassilyevitch was a man of very ordinary
exterior, with a simple and sleepy-looking face and
a heavy, clumsy figure. But what of that?
There is no beauty the years will not mar! The
traces of dandyism were more clearly preserved in Kuzma
Vassilyevitch. He still in his old age wore narrow
trousers with straps, laced in his corpulent figure,
cropped the back of his head, curled his hair over
his forehead and dyed his moustache with Persian dye,
which had, however, a tint rather of purple, and even
of green, than of black. With all that Kuzma
Vassilyevitch was a very worthy gentleman, though
at preference he did like to “steal a peep,”
that is, look over his neighbour’s cards; but
this he did not so much from greed as carefulness,
for he did not like wasting his money. Enough
of these parentheses, however; let us come to the
story itself.
