One of these visitors was an exceedingly comic figure, a short, bald old man, who always wore a short, tight tail-coat, and a waistcoat which ended where a modern waistcoat begins. His name was Dmitri Pimyónov, and he always looked twenty years out of date, reminding you of 1810 in 1830, and of 1820 in 1840. He was interested in literature, but his natural capacity was small, and he had been brought up on the sentimental phrases of Karamzín, or Marmontel and Marivaux. Dmítriev was his master in poetry; and he had been tempted to make some experiments of his own on that slippery track which is trod by Russian authors—his first publication was a translation of La Rochefoucauld’s Pensées, and his second a treatise on Female Beauty and Charm. But his chief distinction was, not that he had once published books which nobody ever read, but that, if he once began to laugh, he could not stop, but went on till he crowed convulsively like a child with whooping-cough. He was aware of this, and therefore took his precautions when he felt it coming on: he pulled out his handkerchief, looked at his watch, buttoned up his coat, and covered his face with both hands; then, when the paroxysm was imminent, he got up, turned his face to the wall, and stood in that position suffering torments, for half an hour or longer; at last, red in the face and worn out by his exertions, he sat down again and mopped his bald head; and for a long time an occasional sob heaved his body.
He was a kindly man, but awkward and poor and a man of letters. Consequently my father attached no importance to him and considered him as “below the salt” in all respects; but he was well aware of this tendency to convulsive laughter, and used to make his guest laugh to such an extent that other people could not help laughing too in an uncomfortable fashion. Then the author of all this merriment, with a slight smile on his own lips, used to look at us as a man looks at puppies when they are rioting.
My father sometimes played dreadful tricks on this unlucky admirer of Female Beauty and Charm.
A Colonel of Engineers was announced by the servant one day. “Bring him in,” said my father, and then he turned to Pimyónov and said, “Please be careful before him: he is unfortunate enough to have a very peculiar stammer”—here he gave a very successful imitation of the Colonel—“I know you are easily amused, but please restrain yourself.”
That was quite enough: before the officer had spoken three words, Pimyónov pulled out his handkerchief, made an umbrella out of his hand, and finally sprang to his feet.
The officer looked on in surprise, while my father said to me with perfect composure: “What can be the matter with our friend? He is suffering from spasms of some kind: order a glass of cold water for him at once, and bring eau-de-cologne.”
But in these cases Pimyónov clutched his hat and vanished. Home he went, shouting with laughter for a mile or so, stopping at the crossings, and leaning against the lamp-posts.
For several years he dined at our house every second Sunday, with few exceptions; and my father was equally vexed, whether he came or failed to come. He was not kind to Pimyónov, but the worthy man took the long walk, in spite of that, until he died. There was nothing laughable about his death: he was a solitary old bachelor, and, when his long illness was nearing the end, he looked on while his housekeeper robbed him of the very sheets upon his bed and then left him without attendance.
§14
But the real martyrs of our dinner-table were certain old and feeble ladies, who held a humble and uncertain position in the household of Princess Khovanski, my father’s sister. For the sake of change, or to get information about our domestic affairs—whether the heads of the family had quarrelled, whether the cook had beaten his wife and been detected by his master, whether a maid had slipped from the path of virtue—these old people sometimes came on a saint’s day to spend the day. I ought to mention that these old widows had known my father forty or fifty years earlier in the house of the Princess Meshcherski, where they were brought up for charity. During this interval between their precarious youth and unsettled old age, they had quarrelled for twenty years with husbands, tried to keep them sober, nursed them when paralysed, and buried them. One had fought the battle of life in Bessarabia with a husband on half-pay and a swarm of children; another, together with her husband, had been a defendant for years in the criminal courts; and all these experiences had left on them the traces of life in provincial towns—a dread of those who have power in this world, a spirit of humility and also of blind fanaticism.