Liza; Or, "A Nest of Nobles"

by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

[Footnote C: Inspector of rural police.]

[Footnote D: Prikashchiki and Burmistrui: two classes of overseers, the former dealing with economical matters only, the latter having to do with the administrative department also.]

The change which had taken place in Ivan Petrovich, produced a strong impression on the mind of his son. He had already entered on his nineteenth year; and he had begun to think for himself, and to shake off the weight of the hand which had been pressing him down. Even before this he had remarked how different were his father's deeds from his words; the wide and liberal theories he professed from the hard and narrow despotism he practiced; but he had not expected so abrupt a transformation. In his old age the egotist revealed himself in his full nature. The young Lavretsky was just getting ready to go to Moscow, with a view to preparing himself for the university, when a new and unexpected misfortune fell on the head of Ivan Petrovich. In the course of a single day the old man became blind, hopelessly blind.

Distrusting the skill of Russian medical men, he did all he could to get permission to travel abroad. It was refused. Then, taking his son with him, he wandered about Russia for three whole years, trying one doctor after another, incessantly journeying from place to place, and, by his impatient fretfulness, driving his doctors, his son, and his servants to the verge of despair. Utterly used up[A], he returned to Lavriki a weeping and capricious infant. Days of bitterness ensued, in which all suffered at his hands. He was quiet only while he was feeding. Never had he eaten so much, nor so greedily. At all other moments he allowed neither himself nor any one else to be at peace. He prayed, grumbled at fate, found fault with himself, with his system, with politics, with all which he used to boast of, with all that he had ever set up as a model for his son. He would declare that he believed in nothing, and then he would betake himself again to prayer; he could not bear a single moment of solitude, and he compelled his servants constantly to sit near his bed day and night, and to entertain him with stories, which he was in the habit of interrupting by exclamations of, "You're all telling lies!" or, "What utter nonsense!"

[Footnote A: Literally, "a regular rag.">[

Glafira Petrovna had the largest share in all the trouble he gave. He was absolutely unable to do without her; and until the very end she fulfilled all the invalid's caprices, though sometimes she was unable to reply immediately to what he said, for fear the tone of her voice should betray the anger which was almost choking her. So he creaked on for two years more, and at length one day in the beginning of the month of May, he died. He had been carried out to the balcony, and planed there in the sun. "Glasha! Glashka! broth, broth, you old idi—," lisped his stammering tongue; and then, without completing the last word, it became silent forever. Glafira, who had just snatched the cup of broth from the hands of the major-domo, stopped short, looked her brother in the face, very slowly crossed herself, and went silently away. And his son, who happened also to be on the spot, did not say a word either, but bent over the railing of the balcony, and gazed for a long time into the garden, all green and fragrant, all sparkling in the golden sunlight of spring. He was twenty-three years old; how sadly, how swiftly had those years passed by unmarked! Life opened out before him now.

XII.

After his father's burial, having confided to the never-changing Glafira Petrovna the administration of his household, and the supervision of his agents, the young Lavretsky set out for Moscow, whither a vague but powerful longing attracted him. He knew in what his education had been defective, and he was determined to supply its deficiencies as far as possible. In the course of the last five years he had read much, and he had see a good deal with his own eyes. Many ideas had passed through his mind, many a professor might have envied him some of his knowledge; yet, at the same time, he was entirely ignorant of much that had long been familiar to every school-boy. Lavretsky felt that he was not at his ease among his fellow-men; he had a secret inkling that he was an exceptional character. The Anglomaniac had played his son a cruel trick; his capricious education had borne its fruit. For many years he had implicitly obeyed his father; and when at last he had learned to value him aright, the effects of his father's teaching were already produced. Certain habits had become rooted in him. He did not know how to comport himself towards his fellow-men; at the age of twenty-three, with an eager longing after love in his bashful heart, he had not yet dared to look a woman in the face. With his clear and logical, but rather sluggish intellect, with his stubbornness, and his tendency towards inactivity and contemplation, he ought to have been flung at an early age into the whirl of life, instead of which he had been deliberately kept in seclusion. And now the magic circle was broken, but he remained standing on the same spot, cramped in mind and self-absorbed.

At his age it seemed a little ridiculous to put on the uniform of a student[A], but he did not fear ridicule. His Spartan education had at all events been so far useful, inasmuch as it had developed in him a contempt for the world's gossiping. So he donned a student's uniform without being disconcerted, enrolling himself in the faculty of physical and mathematical science. His robust figure, his ruddy face, his sprouting beard, his taciturn manner, produced a singular impression on his comrades. They never suspected that under the rough exterior of this man, who attended the lectures so regularly, driving up in a capacious rustic sledge, drawn by a couple of horses, something almost childlike was concealed. They thought him an eccentric sort of pedant, and they made no advances towards him, being able to do very well without him. And he, for his part, avoided them. During the first two years he passed at the university, he became intimate with no one except the student from whom she took lessons in Latin. This student, whose name was Mikhalevich, an enthusiast, and somewhat of a poet, grew warmly attached to Lavretsky, and quite accidentally became the cause of a serious change in his fortunes.

[Footnote A: The students at the Russian universities used to wear a uniform, but they no longer do so.]