§10
The next to appear on the scene was the cook. Whatever he had bought or put on the slate, my father always objected to the price.
“Dear, dear! how high prices are! Is nothing coming in from the country?”
“No, indeed, Sir,” answered the cook; “the roads are very bad just now.”
“Well, you and I must buy less, until they’re mended.”
Next he sat down at his writing table, where he wrote orders for his bailiff or examined his accounts, and scolded me in the intervals of business. He consulted his doctor also; but his chief occupation was to quarrel with his valet, Nikíta. Nikíta was a perfect martyr. He was a short, red-faced man with a hot temper, and might have been created on purpose to annoy my father and draw down reproofs upon himself. The scenes that took place between the two every day might have furnished material for a comedy, but it was all serious to them. Knowing that the man was indispensable to him, my father often put up with his rudeness; yet, in spite of thirty years of complete failure, he still persisted in lecturing him for his faults. The valet would have found the life unendurable, if he had not possessed one means of relief: he was generally tipsy by dinner-time. My father, though this did not escape him, did not go beyond indirect allusions to the subject: for instance, he would say that a piece of brown bread and salt prevented a man from smelling of spirits. When Nikita had taken too much, he shuffled his feet in a peculiar way while handing the dishes; and my father, on noticing this, used to invent a message for him at once; for instance, he would send him to the barber’s to ask if he had changed his address. Then he would say to me in French: “I know he won’t go; but he’s not sober; he might drop a soup plate and stain the cloth and give me a start. Let him take a turn; the fresh air will do him good.”
On these occasions, the valet generally made some reply, or, if not, muttered to himself as he left the room. Then the master called him back with unruffled composure, and asked him, “What did you say to me?”
“I said nothing at all to you.”
“Then who are you talking to? Except you and me, there is nobody in this room or the next.”
“I was talking to myself.”