then suddenly took fright and scuttled off too. The agent’s cottage stood apart from the rest in the middle of a thick green patch of hemp. We stopped at the gates. Mr. Pyenotchkin got up, flung off his cloak with a picturesque motion, and got out of the carriage, looking affably about him. The agent’s wife met us with low curtseys, and came up to kiss the master’s hand. Arkady Pavlitch let her kiss it to her heart’s content, and mounted the steps. In the outer room, in a dark corner, stood the bailiff’s wife, and she too curtsied, but did not venture to approach his hand. In the cold hut, as it is called—to the right of the outer room—two other women were still busily at work; they were carrying out all the rubbish, empty tubs, sheepskins stiff as boards, greasy pots, a cradle with a heap of dish-clouts and a baby covered with spots, and sweeping out the dirt with bathbrooms. Arkady Pavlitch sent them away, and installed himself on a bench under the holy pictures. The coachmen began bringing in the trunks, bags, and other conveniences, trying each time to subdue the noise of their heavy boots.

Meantime Arkady Pavlitch began questioning the bailiff about the crops, the sowing, and other agricultural subjects. The bailiff gave satisfactory answers, but spoke with a sort of heavy awkwardness, as though he were buttoning up his coat with benumbed fingers. He stood at the door and kept looking round on the watch to make way for the nimble footman. Behind his powerful shoulders I managed to get a glimpse of the agent’s wife in the outer room surreptitiously belabouring some other peasant woman. Suddenly a cart rumbled up and stopped at the steps; the agent came in.

This man, as Arkady Pavlitch said, of real administrative power, was short, broad-shouldered, grey, and thick-set, with a red nose, little blue eyes, and a beard of the shape of a fan. We may observe, by the way, that ever since Russia has existed, there has never yet been an instance of a man who has grown rich and prosperous without a big, bushy beard; sometimes a man may have had a thin, wedge-shape beard all his life; but then he begins to get one all at once, it is all round his face like a halo—one wonders where the hair has come from! The agent must have been making merry at Perov: his face was unmistakably flushed, and there was a smell of spirits about him.

‘Ah, our father, our gracious benefactor!’ he began in a sing-song voice, and with a face of such deep feeling that it seemed every minute as if he would burst into tears; ‘at last you have graciously deigned to come to us … your hand, your honour’s hand,’ he added, his lips protruded in anticipation. Arkady Pavlitch gratified his desire. ‘Well, brother Sofron, how are things going with you?’ he asked in a friendly voice.

‘Ah, you, our father!’ cried Sofron; ‘how should they go ill? how should things go ill, now that you, our father, our benefactor, graciously deign to lighten our poor village with your presence, to make us happy till the day of our death? Thank the Lord for thee, Arkady Pavlitch! thank the Lord for thee! All is right by your gracious favour.’

At this point Sofron paused, gazed upon his master, and, as though carried away by a rush of feeling (tipsiness had its share in it too), begged once more for his hand, and whined more than before.

‘Ah, you, our father, benefactor … and … There, God bless me! I’m a regular fool with delight…. God bless me! I look and can’t believe my eyes! Ah, our father!’

Arkady Pavlitch glanced at me, smiled, and asked: ‘N’est-ce pas que c’est touchant?’

‘But, Arkady Pavlitch, your honour,’ resumed the indefatigable agent; ‘what are you going to do? You’ll break my heart, your honour; your honour didn’t graciously let me know of your visit. Where are you to put up for the night? You see here it’s dirty, nasty.’

‘Nonsense, Sofron, nonsense!’ Arkady Pavlitch responded, with a smile; ‘it’s all right here.’

‘But, our father, all right—for whom? For peasants like us it’s all right; but for you … oh, our father, our gracious protector! oh, you … our father!… Pardon an old fool like me; I’m off my head, bless me! I’m gone clean crazy.’

Meanwhile supper was served; Arkady Pavlitch began to eat. The old man packed his son off, saying he smelt too strong.

‘Well, settled the division of land, old chap, hey?’ enquired Mr. Pyenotchkin, obviously trying to imitate the peasant speech, with a wink to me.

‘We’ve settled the land shares, your honour; all by your gracious favour. Day before yesterday the list was made out. The Hlinovsky folks made themselves disagreeable about it at first … they were disagreeable about it, certainly. They wanted this … and they wanted that … and God knows what they didn’t want! but they’re a set of fools, your honour!—an ignorant lot. But we, your honour, graciously please you, gave an earnest of our gratitude, and satisfied Nikolai Nikolaitch, the mediator; we acted in everything according to your orders, your honour; as you graciously ordered, so we did, and nothing did we do unbeknown to Yegor Dmitritch.’

‘Yegor reported to me,’ Arkady Pavlitch remarked with dignity.

‘To be sure, your honour, Yegor Dmitritch, to be sure.’

‘Well, then, now I suppose you ‘re satisfied.’

Sofron had only been waiting for this.

‘Ah, you are our father, our benefactor!’ he began, in the same sing- song as before. ‘Indeed, now, your honour … why, for you, our father, we pray day and night to God Almighty…. There’s too little land, of course….’

Pyenotchkin cut him short.

‘There, that’ll do, that’ll do, Sofron; I know you’re eager in my service…. Well, and how goes the threshing?’

Sofron sighed.

‘Well, our father, the threshing’s none too good. But there, your honour, Arkady Pavlitch, let me tell you about a little matter that came to pass.’ (Here he came closer to Mr. Pyenotchkin, with his arms apart, bent down, and screwed up one eye.) ‘There was a dead body found on our land.’

‘How was that?’

‘I can’t think myself, your honour; it seems like the doing of the evil one. But, luckily, it was found near the boundary; on our side of it, to tell the truth. I ordered them to drag it on to the neighbour’s strip of land at once, while it was still possible, and set a watch there, and sent word round to our folks. «Mum’s the word,» says I. But I explained how it was to the police officer in case of the worst. «You see how it was,» says I; and of course I had to treat him and slip some notes into his hand…. Well, what do you say, your honour? We shifted the burden on to other shoulders; you see a dead body’s a matter of two hundred roubles, as sure as ninepence.’

Mr. Pyenotchkin laughed heartily at his agent’s cunning, and said several times to me, indicating him with a nod, ‘Quel gaillard, eh!’

Meantime it was quite dark out of doors; Arkady Pavlitch ordered the table to be cleared, and hay to be brought in. The valet spread out sheets for us, and arranged pillows; we lay down. Sofron retired after receiving his instructions for the next day. Arkady Pavlitch, before falling asleep, talked a little more about the first-rate qualities of the Russian peasant, and at that point made the observation that since Sofron had had the management of the place, the Shipilovka peasants had never been one farthing in arrears…. The watchman struck his board; a baby, who apparently had not yet had time to be imbued with a sentiment of dutiful self-abnegation, began crying somewhere in the cottage … we fell asleep.

The next morning we got up rather early; I was getting ready to start for Ryabovo, but Arkady Pavlitch was anxious to show me his estate, and begged me to remain. I was not averse myself to seeing more of the first-rate qualities of that man of administrative power—Sofron—in their practical working. The agent made his appearance. He wore a blue loose coat, tied round the waist with a red handkerchief. He talked much less than on the previous evening, kept an alert, intent eye on his master’s face, and gave connected and sensible answers. We set off with him to the threshing-floor. Sofron’s son, the seven-foot bailiff, by every external sign a very slow-witted fellow, walked after us also, and we were joined farther on by the village constable, Fedosyitch, a retired soldier, with immense moustaches, and an extraordinary expression of face; he looked as though he had had some startling shock of astonishment a very long while ago, and had never quite got over it. We took a look at the threshing-floor, the barn, the corn-stacks, the outhouses, the windmill, the cattle-shed, the vegetables, and the hempfields; everything was, as a fact, in excellent order; only the dejected faces of the peasants rather puzzled me. Sofron had had an eye to the ornamental as well as the useful; he had planted all the ditches with willows, between the stacks he had made little paths to the threshing-floor and strewn them with fine sand; on the windmill he had constructed a weathercock of the shape of a bear with his jaws open and a red tongue sticking out; he had attached to the brick cattle-shed something of the nature of a Greek facade, and on it inscribed in white letters: ‘Construt in the