He divided the nobles in general into three categories:  the judicious, “of whom there are not many”; the profligate, “of whom there is a goodly number”; and the licentious, “of whom there are enough to dam a pond.”  And if any one of them was harsh and oppressive to his subjects, that man was guilty in the sight of God, and culpable in the sight of men!—­Yes; the house-serfs led an easy life in the old man’s house; the “subjects behind his back” were less well off, as a matter of course, despite the cane wherewith he threatened Micromegas.—­And how many there were of them—­of those house-serfs—­in his manor!  And for the most part they were old, sinewy, hairy, grumbling, stoop-shouldered, clad in long-skirted nankeen kaftans, and imbued with a strong acrid odour!  And in the women’s department nothing was to be heard but the trampling of bare feet, and the rustling of petticoats.—­The head valet was named Irinarkh, and Alexyei Sergyeitch always summoned him with a long-drawn-out call:  “I-ri-na-a-arkh!”—­He called the others:  “Young fellow!  Boy!  What subject is there?!”—­He could not endure bells.  “God have mercy, this is no tavern!” And what amazed me was, that no matter at what time Alexyei Sergyeitch called his valet, the man instantly presented himself, just as though he had sprung out of the earth, and placing his heels together, and putting his hands behind his back, stood before his master a grim and, as it were, an irate but zealous servant!

Alexyei Sergyeitch was lavish beyond his means; but he did not like to be called “benefactor.”—­“What sort of a benefactor am I to you, sir?...  I’m doing myself a favour, not you, my good sir!” (When he was angry or indignant he always called people “you.")—­“To a beggar give once, give twice, give thrice,” he was wont to say....  “Well, and if he returns for the fourth time—­give to him yet again, only add therewith:  ’My good man, thou shouldst work with something else besides thy mouth all the time.’”

“Uncle,” I used to ask him, “what if the beggar should return for the fifth time after that?”

“Why, then, do thou give to him for the fifth time.”

The sick people who appealed to him for aid he had cured at his own expense, although he himself did not believe in doctors, and never sent for them.—­“My deceased mother,” he asserted, “used to heal all maladies with olive-oil and salt; she both administered it internally and rubbed it on externally, and everything passed off splendidly.  And who was my mother?  She had her birth under Peter the First—­only think of that!”

Alexyei Sergyeitch was a Russian man in every respect; he loved Russian viands, he loved Russian songs, but the accordion, “a factory invention,” he detested; he loved to watch the maidens in their choral songs, the women in their dances.  In his youth, it was said, he had sung rollickingly and danced with agility.  He loved to steam himself in the bath,—­and steamed himself so energetically