“Why?” Valek repeated. “Because a count isn’t an ordinary person. A count does what he pleases and drives in a coach, and then that count had money. He would have given money to any other judge, and the judge would have let him go and condemned a poor man.”
“Yes, that’s true. I heard the count shouting in our house: ‘I can buy and sell every one of you!’”
“And what did the Judge say?”
“My father said: ‘Get out of my sight!’”
“There, now, you see! And Tiburtsi says he isn’t afraid to drive a rich man away, but when old Ivanovna came to him with her rheumatism he had a chair brought for her. He’s like that! Even Turkevich has never raised a rumpus under his windows.”
That was true; when he was on his denunciatory expeditions Turkevich always passed by our windows in silence, and sometimes even took off his cap.
All this set me thinking deeply. Valek was showing me my father in a light in which I had never before seen him, and the boy’s words touched chords of filial pride in my heart. I was pleased to hear these praises of my father coming from Tiburtsi who “knew everything,” but there still quivered in my breast, with a pang of aching love, the bitter certainty that this man never could and never would love me as Tiburtsi loved his children.
VI
AMONG THE “GREY STONES”
Several days passed. The “bad company” ceased to appear in town, and I wandered through the streets in vain, feeling sad and lonely, waiting for them to return so that I might hasten to the hill.