"Everything is according to your grace," Antíp would reply merrily.
"Grace is all right, only just look out for thyself, Micromegas! Don't dare to touch my peasants, my subjects behind my back! They will make complaint … my cane is not far off, seest thou?"
"I always keep your little cane well in mind, dear little father Alexyéi
Sergyéitch," replied Antíp-Micromegas, stroking his beard.
"That's right, keep it in mind!" and master and bailiff laughed in each other's faces.
With his house-serfs, with his serfs in general, with his "subjects" (Alexyéi Sergyéitch loved that word), he dealt gently.—"Because, judge for thyself, little nephew, if thou hast nothing of thine own save the cross on thy neck,[39] and that a brass one, don't hanker after other folks' things…. What sense is there in that?" There is no denying the fact that no one even thought of the so-called problem of the serfs at that epoch; and it could not disturb Alexyéi Sergyéitch. He very calmly ruled his "subjects"; but he condemned bad landed proprietors and called them the enemies of their class.
He divided the nobles in general into three categories: the judicious, "of whom there are not many"; the profligate, "of whom there is a goodly number"; and the licentious, "of whom there are enough to dam a pond." And if any one of them was harsh and oppressive to his subjects, that man was guilty in the sight of God, and culpable in the sight of men!—Yes; the house-serfs led an easy life in the old man's house; the "subjects behind his back" were less well off, as a matter of course, despite the cane wherewith he threatened Micromegas.—And how many there were of them—of those house-serfs—in his manor! And for the most part they were old, sinewy, hairy, grumbling, stoop-shouldered, clad in long-skirted nankeen kaftans, and imbued with a strong acrid odour! And in the women's department nothing was to be heard but the trampling of bare feet, and the rustling of petticoats.—The head valet was named Irinárkh, and Alexyéi Sergyéitch always summoned him with a long-drawn-out call: "I-ri-na-a-árkh!"—He called the others: "Young fellow! Boy! What subject is there?!"—He could not endure bells. "God have mercy, this is no tavern!" And what amazed me was, that no matter at what time Alexyéi Sergyéitch called his valet, the man instantly presented himself, just as though he had sprung out of the earth, and placing his heels together, and putting his hands behind his back, stood before his master a grim and, as it were, an irate but zealous servant!
Alexyéi Sergyéitch was lavish beyond his means; but he did not like to be called "benefactor."—"What sort of a benefactor am I to you, sir?… I'm doing myself a favour, not you, my good sir!" (When he was angry or indignant he always called people "you.")—"To a beggar give once, give twice, give thrice," he was wont to say…. "Well, and if he returns for the fourth time—give to him yet again, only add therewith: 'My good man, thou shouldst work with something else besides thy mouth all the time.'"
"Uncle," I used to ask him, "what if the beggar should return for the fifth time after that?"
"Why, then, do thou give to him for the fifth time."
The sick people who appealed to him for aid he had cured at his own expense, although he himself did not believe in doctors, and never sent for them.—"My deceased mother," he asserted, "used to heal all maladies with olive-oil and salt; she both administered it internally and rubbed it on externally, and everything passed off splendidly. And who was my mother? She had her birth under Peter the First—only think of that!"