A family of noblemen

by Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov

"The Lord is merciful. Keep up a stout heart."

"She'll eat me up alive," repeated Stepan Vladimirych, with such conviction that the innkeeper involuntarily lowered his eyes.

With these words Golovliov turned sharply along the country road, walking in a shuffle and leaning on a gnarled stick which he had cut off a tree.

Ivan Mikhailych followed him with his eyes for a while, and then ran after him.

"Listen, master," he said. "When I was cleaning your uniform a few minutes ago, I saw three rubles in your side pocket. Please don't lose them."

Stepan Vladimirych was visibly irresolute and could not make up his mind how to act in this contingency. Finally, he stretched out his hand to the peasant and said, with tears in his eyes:

"I understand—to buy tobacco for the old trooper? Thanks. But she'll eat me up alive, friend. Sure as hell."

Golovliov found the country road again and several minutes later his grey soldier's cap showed afar off, now vanishing, now appearing above the young wood. It was early in the day. The morning mist, touched into gold by the first rays of the sun, hovered above the country road. The grass glistened with the dew, and the air was redolent of fir-trees, mushrooms, and wild berries. The road meandered across a plain swarming with birds.

Stepan Vladimirych, however, noticed nothing of the beauty about him. All his frivolity had suddenly gone, and he walked as if to the Last Judgment. One thought filled his mind to the exclusion of everything else. In three or four hours he would have reached his goal. He recalled his life at Golovliovo, and he felt as if the doors of a damp cellar were opening to let him in, and no sooner would he penetrate into the gloomy interior than the doors would close behind him and everything would be over. Memories prophetic of what awaited him at Golovliovo surged in his mind. There had been uncle Mikhail Petrovich, popularly known as Mishka the Squabbler, one of the "horrid" members of the family, whom grandfather Piotr Ivanych had exiled to Golovliovo, where he had lived in the servants' quarters and eaten out of the same dish with Trezorka, the house dog. There had been Aunt Vera Mikhailovna, who had lived on the estate by her brother's favor and died of "moderate living"; for Arina Petrovna had begrudged her every mouthful at dinner and every billet of wood for the stove in her room. And a similar fate awaited him.

He foresaw an endless succession of joyless days losing themselves in a grey yawning abyss, and he involuntarily shut his eyes. Henceforth he would have to be alone with a wicked old woman, half dead in the stagnation of despotism. She would be the death of him before long, as sure as fate. Not a soul to speak to, not a place to visit. She would be everywhere, scornful, despotic, deadening. The thought of that inevitable future made his heart so heavy that he stopped under a tree in desperation, and struck his head against it several times. His entire life with all its farcical strutting, idleness, and buffoonery loomed up as if flooded with sudden light. Then he started on his way again. He felt there was nothing else left for him. The least of men can make some effort, can earn his bread. He alone was helpless. It was a new thought. He had been accustomed in thinking of his future to picture various prospects, but always prospects of wealth coupled with idleness, never prospects of work. And now the time had come when he had to pay for the wickedness and aimlessness of his existence. It was a bitter settlement, summed up in the terrible phrase: "She will be the end of me."