A family of noblemen

by Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov

Porfiry Vladimirych had always had a strong leaning toward the petty annoyance of people and litigation, but because of his lack of practicality he had derived no direct profit from it. Sometimes he was even the first to suffer. This proclivity of his was now transferred to a world of abstractions and phantoms, where there was no scope for resistance on the part of the oppressed and no need for self-justification. The dividing line between the weak and the powerful vanished. In that world there were no police or justices of the peace, or rather, there were, but they existed solely for the purpose of protecting his own interests. On this fantastic plane he could freely enmesh the whole universe in his net of intriguing, cavilling, and petty oppression.

He loved to torment people, ruin them, make them unhappy, suck their blood—at least, in his imagination. He would look over the various branches of his establishment and on each build up a fantastic structure of all manner of oppression and plunder—a veritable paradise, but the foulest ever conceived by a landed proprietor. And everything depended here on overpayments and underpayments assumed arbitrarily, each overpaid or underpaid kopek served as a pretext for remodelling the entire edifice, which thus passed through endless changes.

When his tired thoughts were no longer capable of following out all the details of the intricate computations on which his imaginary operations were based, he applied his imagination to a more plastic material. He recalled every conflict and altercation he had had not only in recent times, but far back in his youth, and he so manipulated his reminiscences as always to come out the victor. He took revenge on those of his former colleagues who had gone over his head in service and had so deeply wounded his self-love that he renounced his official career. He revenged himself on his schoolmates who had taken advantage of their physical strength to tease or persecute him; on the neighbors that had opposed his claims and stood up for their rights; on the servants who had offended him or simply had not treated him with sufficient respect; on "dearest mamma" Arina Petrovna for having wasted too much of the money that "by law" belonged to him on the repairs of Pogorelka; on his brother Simple Simon for having nicknamed him Yudushka; on aunt Varvara Mikhailovna for having unexpectedly given birth to children, with the result that the property of Gavryushkino was forever lost to the family. He revenged himself on the living and he revenged himself on the dead.

Gradually he worked himself into a state of actual intoxication. The ground vanished from under his feet, wings grew on his shoulders, his eyes shone, his lips trembled and foamed, his face grew ghastly pale, and took on a threatening air. The atmosphere around him swarmed with ghosts, and he fought them in imaginary battles.

His existence became so ample and independent that there was nothing left for him to desire. The whole universe was at his feet, that is, the universe of which his wretched mind could conceive. It was something in the nature of ecstatic clairvoyance, not unlike the phenomena that take place at the seances of mediums. His untrammeled imagination created an illusory reality, rendered concrete and almost tangible by his constant mental frenzy. It was not faith or conviction, but unrestrained mental debauchery, a sort of trance in which his tongue involuntarily uttered words and his body made automatic gestures.

Porfiry Vladimirych was happy. He locked up the windows and doors that he might not hear, he drew down the curtains that he might not see. He went through the customary functions and duties which had no connection with the world of his imagination, in haste, almost with disgust. When the ever-drunken Prokhor rapped at his door and announced that dinner was served, he ran into the dining-room impatiently, hurriedly swallowed his three courses and disappeared again into his study. Something new showed in his manners—a mixture of timidity and derision, as if he both feared and defied the few people whom he met. He rose very early and immediately set to work. He cut down the time devoted to worship, said his prayers indifferently, without thinking of their meaning, crossed himself and went through the other gestures of worship mechanically and carelessly. Apparently even the notion of a hell with its complicated system of punishments was no longer present in his mind.

Meanwhile Yevpraksia reveled in the satisfaction of carnal desires. Dancing between the clerk Ignat and the coachman Arkhip, and also casting glances at the red-faced carpenter Ilyusha, who was mending the cellars at the head of a gang of workmen, she did not notice what was going on in the manor-house. She thought the master was playing "a new comedy," and many a light remark about the master was passed in the jolly gatherings of the servants. But one day she happened to enter the dining-room when Yudushka was hurriedly despatching the remnants of roast goose, and suddenly a kind of dread fell upon her.

Porfiry Vladimirych wore a greasy dressing-gown, through the holes of which the cotton interlining peeped out. He was pale, unkempt, and his face bristled with a many days' growth.

"Dear master, what is it? What is the matter?" she turned to him in fright.

Porfiry Vladimirych only smiled half sheepishly, half derisively, and the meaning of his smile was: "I'd like to see how you could get at me now."