Alexyéi Sergyéitch assumed a pompous mien. "Potyómkin, Grigóry Alexándritch, was a statesman, a theologian, a nursling of Katherine's, her offspring, one must say…. But enough of that, my little sir!"
Alexyéi Sergyéitch was a very devout man and went to church regularly, although it was beyond his strength. There was no superstition perceptible in him; he ridiculed signs, the evil eye, and other "twaddle," yet he did not like it when a hare ran across his path, and it was not quite agreeable for him to meet a priest.[34] He was very respectful to ecclesiastical persons, nevertheless, and asked their blessing, and even kissed their hand every time, but he talked with them reluctantly.—"They emit a very strong odour," he explained; "but I, sinful man that I am, have grown effeminate beyond measure;—their hair is so long[35] and oily, and they comb it out in all directions, thinking thereby to show me respect, and they clear their throats loudly in the middle of conversation, either out of timidity or because they wish to please me in that way also. Well, but they remind me of my hour of death. But be that as it may, I want to live a while longer. Only, little sir, don't repeat these remarks of mine; respect the ecclesiastical profession—only fools do not respect it; and I am to blame for talking nonsense in my old age."
Alexyéi Sergyéitch had received a scanty education,[36] like all nobles of that epoch; but he had completed it, to a certain degree, by reading. He read only Russian books of the end of the last century; he considered the newer writers unleavened and weak in style. During his reading he placed beside him, on a round, one-legged little table, a silver jug filled with a special effervescent kvas flavoured with mint, whose pleasant odour disseminated itself through all the rooms. He placed large, round spectacles on the tip of his nose; but in his later years he did not so much read as stare thoughtfully over the rims of the spectacles, elevating his brows, mowing with his lips and sighing. Once I caught him weeping, with a book on his knees, which greatly surprised me, I admit.
He recalled the following wretched doggerel:
O all-conquering race of man!
Rest is unknown to thee!
Thou findest it only
When thou swallowest the dust of the grave….
Bitter, bitter is this rest!
Sleep, ye dead…. But weep, ye living!
These verses were composed by a certain Górmitch-Gormítzky, a roving poetaster, whom Alexyéi Sergyéitch had harboured in his house because he seemed to him a delicate and even subtle man; he wore shoes with knots of ribbon, pronounced his o's broadly, and, raising his eyes to heaven, he sighed frequently. In addition to all these merits, Górmitch-Gormítzky spoke French passably well, for he had been educated in a Jesuit college, while Alexyéi Sergyéitch only "understood" it. But having once drunk himself dead-drunk in a dram-shop, this same subtle Gormítzky displayed outrageous violence. He thrashed "to flinders" Alexyéi Sergyéitch's valet, the cook, two laundresses who happened along, and even an independent carpenter, and smashed several panes in the windows, yelling lustily the while: "Here now, I'll just show these Russian sluggards, these unlicked katzápy!"[37]—And what strength that puny little man displayed! Eight men could hardly control him! For this turbulence Alexyéi Sergyéitch gave orders that the rhymster should be flung out of the house, after he had preliminarily been rolled in the snow (it happened in the winter), to sober him.
"Yes," Alexyéi Sergyéitch was wont to say, "my day is over; the horse is worn out. I used to keep poets at my expense, and I used to buy pictures and books from the Jews—and my geese were quite as good as those of Mukhán, and I had genuine slate-coloured tumbler-pigeons…. I was an amateur of all sorts of things! Except that I never was a dog-fancier, because of the drunkenness and the clownishness! I was mettlesome, untamable! God forbid that a Telyégin should be anything but first-class in everything! And I had a splendid horse-breeding establishment…. And those horses came … whence, thinkest thou, my little sir?—From those very renowned studs of the Tzar Iván Alexyéitch, the brother of Peter the Great…. I'm telling you the truth! All stallions, dark brown in colour, with manes to their knees, tails to their hoofs…. Lions! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! But what's the use of regretting it? Every man has his limit fixed for him.—You cannot fly higher than heaven, nor live in the water, nor escape from the earth…. Let us live on a while longer, at any rate!"
And again the old man smiled and took a pinch of his Spanish tobacco.
His peasants loved him. Their master was kind, according to them, and not a heart-breaker.—Only, they also repeated that he was a worn-out steed. Formerly Alexyéi Sergyéitch had gone into everything himself: he had ridden out into the fields, and to the flour-mill, and to the oil-mill and the storehouses, and looked in to the peasants' cottages; every one was familiar with his racing-drozhky,[38] upholstered in crimson plush and drawn by a well-grown horse with a broad blaze extending clear across its forehead, named "Lantern"—from that same famous breeding establishment. Alexyéi Sergyéitch drove him himself with the ends of the reins wound round his fists. But when his seventieth birthday came the old man gave up everything, and entrusted the management of his estate to the peasant bailiff Antíp, of whom he secretly stood in awe and called Micromegas (memories of Voltaire!), or simply "robber."
"Well, robber, hast thou gathered a big lot of stolen goods?" he would say, looking the robber straight in the eye.