THE KOURÁSOFFS.
I.
My acquaintance with the brothers Kourásoff commenced as far back as when I was sub-professor at the Polytechnic Institute in St. Petersburg and Loris, the elder, was in the Guards, while Vladimir, the younger, was still at the School of Gunnery. These two brothers were commonly mistaken for twins, although Loris was no less than four years older than Vladimir; but, though Nature had made them outwardly alike, she had not failed to mark an extraordinary difference in their characters. Fortune, too, having endowed them equally in the first instance, had unequivocally declared one to be her favored child.
Vladimir Kourásoff was by turns morose and flippant. He had managed to encumber himself with debts even sooner than young Russian nobles usually do, and was, moreover, suspected of inclining to revolutionary principles. The Government took good care to be informed of everything Vladimir Kourásoff said and did.
Loris, on the contrary, enjoyed a high degree of imperial favor. He had been sent, at his own request, to take command in one of the disturbed districts near the Turkestan frontier—a position which he filled to the satisfaction of the Government and of the local authorities too, a thing difficult to do. About this time he invented a new fuse, which was approved by the Ministry of War, and for which he declined to accept any compensation, which induced the emperor to decorate him. He belonged to the true party of order and progress, which seeks to improve the Russ as he is without vainly attempting to turn him into a German or a Frenchman. His estates near Wilna were said to prove by their flourishing condition that emancipation could be turned to the mutual benefit of proprietor and serf. Of his private character my great affection for him makes me speak with diffidence. I can only say that he had a multitude of friends who shared my opinion of him. His talents and accomplishments were adorned with a singular modesty, which, if it did not disarm jealousy, at least silenced it.
The Russ is essentially democratic; therefore it is not remarkable that Count Loris Kourásoff, one of the darlings of St. Petersburg society, should have for his friend a sub-professor who lived in modest lodgings in an unfashionable quarter beyond the Izaak bridge. Once a year we usually took a journey together; and one summer he accompanied me to Germany on a mission of a sentimental nature, which, if not settled to my satisfaction, was at least settled, and I set myself to forgetting Maria von Spreckeldsen as quickly as I could. This proved to be easier than I had imagined; and, though I wept tears of rage, and Maria tears of disappointment, when her father refused to let us marry on my salary as sub-professor, the anguish of both subsided by degrees, leaving only a feeling of placid regret. Maria, who could not talk philosophy so well as I, acted it much better, and in less than a year married Herr Sachs, one of the richest brewers in Bavaria; and when I last saw her I thought I would not exchange the image which dwelt in my heart of my adored Maria in her youthful slenderness for the excellent but stout Madame Sachs, while I am sure she would not have given her brewer for all the professors in Russia and Germany together. But we still correspond (with the full approbation of Herr Sachs), and in our letters call each other Gottlieb and Maria. O youth! O folly! O Maria!
Count Loris frequently complained that my affair with Maria had destroyed his fondest illusions, and that my inconstancy, as he was pleased to call my devotion to my ideal Maria, had made him a skeptic in love. He seemed to take a cruel pleasure in listening to my most harrowing reminiscences, and when we dined together always toasted Maria with a variety of unfeeling remarks.
I had never visited the Wilna estates of Count Kourásoff, but in the summer of 18—, being engaged in making studies of Russian village life, I presented myself at Ivánofka. Count Loris was at home when I arrived, and was overjoyed to see me. The house was very much like French chateaux of the best class, and maintained in a state of order and repair not always found in Russia. Everything showed a generous but wise expenditure. The village gave evidences of thrift and industry. The communal land, as well as that belonging to Count Kourásoff, was under an excellent system of husbandry. Instead of the complicated agricultural machinery for which the Russian proprietors have a mania, while their plows are made after the model of those used in the time of Iwan the Terrible, I found at Ivánofka that they had judiciously improved on their common tools and implements. The barley was of a superior order, and the cattle were fat and well-shaped. All the credit for this state of things was awarded to Count Kourásoff. It was he who had given Iwan Tiska a horse when his own died of lockjaw; it was he who had paid Mother Karlitch for her flax when it was all burned up; it was he who had given them seed in the year of the bad harvest. In short, the inhabitants of Ivánofka regarded Count Kourásoff as the general benefactor of the human race.
The only dissatisfied man in the village appeared to be the parish priest. The contempt in which the "White" or married clergy are generally held is well known, and in this instance the dislike of the parishioners was warmly reciprocated; but, in spite of the head-shakings and evident disgust of my village friends, I had formed a sort of intimacy with the old fellow, and sometimes amused myself by listening to his hearty denunciations of the souls committed to his charge. Once he said, shrugging his shoulders: "Count Loris is a man of sense, but he treats them like rational human beings, when, to show you how little they deserve it, about once a year the howling sickness breaks out among them. It begins with some woman whose husband has given her an extra beating—not a blow too much, I dare say" (the priest was accused of using this method of persuasion on his own wife occasionally)—"and in two days the whole village is howling."
"Well," I asked, "what happens then?"