Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales

by graf Leo Tolstoy

THIRD FRAGMENT

(Variant of the First Chapter)

On the 2d of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Directing Senate handed down a decision in the debatable land case between the economic peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha and Chernýshev, which was in favour of the peasants and against Chernýshev. This decision was an unexpected and important calamitous event for Chernýshev. The case had lasted five years. It had been begun by the attorney of the rich village of Izlegóshcha with its three thousand inhabitants, and was won by the peasants in the County Court; but when, with the advice of lawyer Ilyá Mitrofánov, a manorial servant bought of Prince Saltykóv, Prince Chernýshev carried the case to the Government, he won it and besides, the Izlegóshcha peasants were punished by having six of them, who had insulted the surveyor, put in jail.

After that, Prince Chernýshev, with his good-natured and merry carelessness, entirely acquiesced, the more so since he knew full well that he had not "appropriated" any land of the peasants, as was said in the petition of the peasants. If the land was "appropriated," his father had done it, and since then more than forty years had passed. He knew that the peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha were getting along well without that land, had no need of it, and lived on terms of friendship with him, and was unable to understand why they had become so infuriated against him. He knew that he never offended and never wished to offend any one, that he lived in peace with everybody, and that he never wished to do otherwise, and so could not believe that any one should think of offending him. He hated litigations, and so did not defend his case in the Senate, in spite of the advice and earnest solicitations of his lawyer, Ilyá Mitrofánov; by allowing the time for the appeal to lapse, he lost the case in the Senate, and lost it in such a way that he was confronted with complete ruin. By the decree of the Senate he not only was to be deprived of five thousand desyatínas of land, but also, for the illegal tenure of that land, was to be mulcted to the amount of 107,000 roubles in favour of the peasants.

Prince Chernýshev had eight thousand souls, but all the estates were mortgaged and he had large debts, so that this decree of the Senate ruined him with his whole large family. He had a son and five daughters. He thought of his case when it was too late to attend to it in the Senate. According to Ilyá Mitrofánov's words there was but one salvation, and that was, to petition the sovereign and to transfer the case to the Imperial Council. To obtain this it was necessary in person to approach one of the ministers or a member of the Council, or, better still, the emperor himself. Taking all that into consideration, Prince Grigóri Ivánovich in the fall of the year 1817 with his whole family left his beloved estate of Studénets, where he had lived so long without leaving it, and went to Moscow. He started for Moscow, and not for St. Petersburg, because in the fall of that year the emperor with his whole court, with all the highest dignitaries, and with part of the Guards, in which the son of Grigóri Ivánovich was serving, was to arrive in Moscow to lay the corner-stone of the Church of the Saviour in commemoration of the liberation of Russia from the French invasion.

In August, immediately after receiving the terrible news of the decree of the Senate, Prince Grigóri Ivánovich got ready to go to Moscow. At first the majordomo was sent away to fix the prince's own house on the Arbát; then was sent out a caravan with furniture, servants, horses, carriages, and provisions. In September the prince with his whole family travelled in seven carriages, drawn by his own horses, and, after arriving in Moscow, settled in his house. Relatives, friends, visitors from the province and from St. Petersburg began to assemble in Moscow in the month of September. The Moscow life, with its entertainments, the arrival of his son, the débuts of his daughters, and the success of his eldest daughter, Aleksándra, the only blonde among all the brunettes of the Chernýshevs, so much occupied and diverted the prince's attention that, in spite of the fact that here in Moscow he was spending everything which would be left to him after paying all he owed, he forgot his affair and was annoyed and tired whenever Ilyá Mitrofánov talked of it, and undertook nothing for the success of his case.

Iván Mirónovich Baúshkin, the chief attorney of the peasants, who had conducted the case against the prince with so much zeal in the Senate, who knew all the approaches to the secretaries and departmental chiefs, and who had so skilfully distributed the ten thousand roubles, collected from the peasants, in the shape of presents, now himself brought his activity to an end and returned to the village, where, with the money collected for him as a reward and with what was left of the presents, he bought himself a grove from a neighbouring proprietor and built there a hut and an office. The case was finished in the court of the highest instance, and everything would now proceed of its own accord.

The only ones of those concerned in the case who could not forget it were the six peasants who were passing their seventh month in jail, and their families that were left without their heads. But nothing could be done in the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslobódsk, and their families tried to get along as well as they could. Nobody could be invoked in the case. Iván Mirónovich himself said that he could not take it up, because it was not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case. The peasants were in prison, and nobody paid any attention to them; but one family, that of Mikhaíl Gerásimovich, particularly his wife Tíkhonovna, could not get used to the idea that the precious old man, Gerásimovich, was sitting in prison with a shaven head. Tíkhonovna could not rest quiet. She begged Mirónovich to take the case, but he declined it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to God for the old man. She had made a vow the year before that she would go on a pilgrimage to a saint, and had delayed it for another year only because she had had no time and did not wish to leave the house to the young daughters-in-law. Now that the misfortune had happened and Gerásimovich was put into jail, she recalled her vow; she turned her back on her house and, together with the deacon's wife of the same village, got ready to go on the pilgrimage.

First they went to the county seat to see her old man in the prison and to take him some shirts; from there they went through the capital of the Government to Moscow. On her way Tíkhonovna told the deacon's wife of her sorrow, and the latter advised her to petition the emperor who, it was said, was to be in Pénza, telling her of various cases of pardon granted by him.

When the pilgrims arrived in Pénza, they heard that there was there, not the emperor, but his brother Grand Duke Nikoláy Pávlovich. When he came out of the cathedral, Tíkhonovna pushed herself forward, dropped down on her knees, and began to beg for her husband. The grand duke was surprised, the governor was angry, and the old woman was taken to the lockup. The next day she was let out and she proceeded to Tróitsa. In Tróitsa she went to communion and confessed to Father Paísi. At the confession she told him of her sorrow, and repented having petitioned the brother of the Tsar. Father Paísi told her that there was no sin in that and that there was no sin in petitioning the Tsar even in a just case, and dismissed her. In Khótkov she called on the blessed abbess, and she ordered her to petition the Tsar himself.