Piotr Vassilyevitch Kolitchev? Lavretsky found also some old calendars
and dream-books, and the mysterious work of Ambodik; many were the
memories stirred by the well-known; but long-forgotten Symbols and
Emblems. In Glafira Petrovna’s little dressing-table, Lavretsky found a
small packet, tied up with black ribbon, sealed with black sealing wax,
and thrust away in the very farthest corner of the drawer. In the parcel
there lay face to face a portrait, in pastel, of his father in his
youth, with effeminate curls straying over his brow, with almond-shaped
languid eyes and parted lips, and a portrait, almost effaced, of a pale
woman in a white dress with a white rose in her hand--his mother. Of
herself, Glafira Petrovna had never allowed a portrait to be taken. “I,
myself, little father, Fedor Ivanitch,” Anton used to tell Lavretsky,
“though I did not then live in the master’s house, still I can remember
your great-grandfather, Andrey Afanasyevitch, seeing that I had come
to my eighteenth year when he died. Once I met him in the garden and my
knees were knocking with fright indeed; however, he did nothing, only
asked me my name, and sent me to his room for his pocket-handkerchief.
He was a gentleman--how shall I tell you--he didn’t look on any one as
better than himself. For your great-grandfather had, I do assure you, a
magic amulet; a monk from Mount Athos made him a present of this amulet.
And he told him, this monk did, “It’s for your kindness, Boyar, I give
you this; wear it, and you need not fear judgment.” Well, but there,
little father, we know what those times were like; what the master
fancied doing, that he did. Sometimes, if even some gentleman saw fit to
cross him in anything, he would just stare at him and say, “You swim
in shallow water;” that was his favourite saying. And he lived, your
great-grandfather of blessed memory, in a small log-house; and what
goods he left behind him, what silver, and stores of all kinds! All
the storehouses were full and overflowing. He was a manager. That very
decanter, that you were pleased to admire, was his; he used to drink
brandy out of it. But there was your grandfather, Piotr Andreitch, built
himself a palace of stone, but he never grew rich; everything with him
went badly, and he lived worse than his father by far, and he got no
pleasure from it for himself, but spent all his money, and now there is
nothing to remember him by--not a silver spoon has come down from him,
and we have Glafira Petrovna’s management to thank for all that is
saved.
“But is it true,” Lavretsky interrupted him, “they called her the old
witch?”
“What sort of people called her so, I should like to know!” replied
Anton with an air of displeasure.
“And little father,” the old man one day found courage to ask, “what
about our mistress, where is she pleased to fix her residence?”
“I am separated from my wife,” Lavretsky answered with an effort,
“please do not ask questions about her.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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