§7
His successor, Kornilov, soon made his appearance. He was a very different sort of person—a man of about fifty, tall and stout, rather flabby in appearance, but with an agreeable smile and gentlemanly manners. He formed all his sentences with strict grammatical accuracy and used a great number of words; in fact, he spoke with a clearness which was capable, by its copiousness, of obscuring the simplest topic. He had been at school with Púshkin and had served in the Guards; he bought all the new French books, liked to talk on serious topics, and gave me a copy of Tocqueville’s[[112]] Democracy in America the day after he arrived at Vyatka.
[112]. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French statesman and publicist (1805-1859).
It was a startling change. The same rooms, the same furniture, but, instead of the Tatar tax-collector with the face of an Esquimo and the habits of a Siberian, a theorist with a tincture of pedantry but a gentleman none the less. Our new Governor had intelligence, but his intellect seemed to give light only and no warmth, like a bright day in winter which ripens no fruit though it is pleasant enough. He was a terrible formalist too, though not of the red-tape variety; it is not easy to describe the type, but it was just as tiresome as all varieties of formalism are.
As the new Governor had a real wife, the official residence lost its ultra-bachelor characteristics; it became monogamous. As a consequence of this, the members of the Council became quite domestic characters: these bald old gentlemen, instead of boasting over their conquests, now spoke with tender affection of their lawful wives, although these ladies were past their prime and either angular and bony, or so fat that it was impossible for a surgeon to draw blood from them.