A Russian Proprietor, and Other StoriesTolstoy, Leo, graf
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A Russian Proprietor, and Other Stories
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Russia -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 -- Translations into English
Anna Fedorovna awoke from her slumber, and demanded, "What has happened?"
The count took his seat in his sledge, shouted to the driver, and now no
longer delaying, and thinking not of Lukhnof nor of the little widow, nor
of Stioshka, but only of what was awaiting him in Moscow, rapidly left the
city of K. behind him.
IX.
A score of years have passed. Much water has run since then, many men have
died, many children have been born, many have grown up and become old;
still more thoughts have been born and perished. Much that was beautiful
and much that was ugly in the past have disappeared; much that is beautiful
in the new has been brought forth, and still more that is incomplete and
abortive of the new has appeared in God's world.
Count Feódor Turbin was long ago killed in a duel with some foreigner whom
he struck on the street with his long whip. His son, who was as like him as
two drops of water, had already reached the age of two or three and twenty,
and was a lovely fellow, already serving in the cavalry.
Morally the young Count Turbin was entirely different from his father.
There was not a shadow of those fiery, passionate, and in truth be it said,
corrupt inclinations, peculiar to the last century.
Together with intelligence, cultivation, and inherited natural gifts, a
love for the proprieties and amenities of life, a practical view of men and
circumstances, wisdom and forethought, were his chief characteristics.
The young count made admirable progress in his profession; at twenty-three
he was already lieutenant.... When war broke out, he came to the conclusion
that it would be more for his interests to enter the regular army; and he
joined a regiment of hussars as captain of cavalry, where he soon was given
command of a battalion.
In the month of May, 1848, the S. regiment of hussars was on its way
through the government of K., and the very battalion which the young Count
Turbin commanded was obliged to be quartered for one night at Morozovka,
Anna Fedorovna's village. Anna Fedorovna was still alive, but was now so
far from being young that she no longer called herself young, which, for a
woman, means much.
She had grown very stout, and this, it is said, restores youth in a woman.
But that was not the worst of it: over her pale, stout flesh was a net-work
of coarse, flabby wrinkles. She no longer went to the city, she even found
it hard to mount into her carriage; but still she was just as good-natured
and as completely vacant-minded as ever,--the truth might safely be told,
now that it was no longer palliated by her beauty.
Under her roof lived her daughter Liza, a rustic Russian belle of
twenty-three summers, and her brother, our acquaintance the cavalryman, who
had spent all his patrimony in behalf of others, and now, in his old age,
had taken refuge with Anna Fedorovna.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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