He rushed to the library and saw that it was true. Only the empty covers of the books remained. The surprise was so great that it threw him into a perspiration, and he began to appeal to his ancestors, saying sorrowfully:
"And who taught you to write history in such a one-sided manner? Look what you have done. Alas! what kind of history is it? To the devil with it!" But the peasants kept repeating the same thing:
"You have proved it all to us very clearly," they said. "Get away as quickly as you can, or else we shall drive you away."
Egorka had gone completely over to the peasants. When he met the nobleman he turned up his nose and laughed sneeringly:
"O you Liberal! Habeas corpus!"
Things went from bad to worse. The peasants sang songs and were in such high spirits that they carried off to their homes a stack of the nobleman's hay.
Suddenly the nobleman remembered that he had another card to play. In the entresol sat his great-grandmother, awaiting an inevitable death. She was so old that she had forgotten all human words; she could only remember one thing:
"Don't give ..."
Since the year 1861[2] she had not been able to say anything else.
He hastened to her, his feelings greatly agitated. He fell at her feet affectionately and appealed to her: