Immediately after the decision handed down by the County Court, Apýkhtin, seeing the danger, gave a power of attorney to the shrewd manumitted serf, Ilyá Mitrofánov, who appealed to the higher court against the decision of the County Court. Ilyá Mitrofánov managed the affair so shrewdly that, in spite of all the cunning of the peasants' representative, Iván Mirónov, in spite of the considerable presents distributed by him to the members of the higher court, the case was retried in the Government Court in favour of the proprietor, and the land was to go back to him from the peasants, of which fact their representative was duly informed.

The representative, Iván Mirónov, told the peasants at the meeting of the Commune that the gentleman in the Government capital had pulled the proprietor's leg and had "mixed up" the whole business, so that they wanted to take the land back again, but that the proprietor would not be successful, because he had a petition all written up to be sent to the Senate, and that then the land would be for ever confirmed to the peasants; all they had to do was to collect a rouble from each soul. The peasants decided to collect the money and again to entrust the whole matter to Iván Mirónov. When Mirónov had all the money in his hands, he went to St. Petersburg.

When, in the year 1817, during Passion-week, – it fell late that year, – the time came to plough the ground, the Izlegóshcha peasants began to discuss at a meeting whether they ought to plough the land under litigation during that year, or not; and, although Apýkhtin's clerk had come to see them during Lent with the order that they should not plough the land and should come to some agreement with him in regard to the rye already planted in what had been the doubtful, and now was Apýkhtin's land, the peasants, for the very reason that the winter crop had been sowed on the debatable land, and because Apýkhtin, in his desire to avoid being unfair to them, wished to arbitrate the matter with them, decided to plough the land under litigation and to take possession of it before touching any other fields.

On the very day when the peasants went out to plough, which was Maundy Thursday, Iván Petróvich Apýkhtin, who had been preparing himself for communion during the Passion-week, went to communion, and early in the morning drove to the church in the village of Izlegóshcha, of which he was a parishioner, and there he, without knowing anything about the matter, amicably chatted with the church elder. Iván Petróvich had been to confession the night before, and had attended vigils at home; in the morning he had himself read the Rules, and at eight o'clock had left the house. They waited for him with the mass. As he stood at the altar, where he usually stood, Iván Petróvich rather reflected than prayed, which made him dissatisfied with himself.

Like many people of that time, and, so far as that goes, of all times, he was not quite clear in matters of religion. He was past fifty years of age; he never omitted carrying out any rite, attended church, and went to communion once a year; in talking to his only daughter, he instructed her in the articles of faith; but, if he had been asked whether he really believed, he would not have known what to reply.

On that day more than on any other, he felt meek of spirit, and, standing at the altar, he, instead of praying, thought of how strangely everything was constructed in the world: there he was, almost an old man, taking the communion for perhaps the fortieth time in his life, and he knew that everybody, all his home folk and all the people in the church, looked at him as a model and took him for an example, and he felt himself obliged to act as an example in matters of religion, whereas he himself did not know anything, and soon, very soon, he would die, and even if he were killed he could not tell whether that in which he was showing an example to others was true. And it also seemed strange to him how every one considered – that he saw – old people to be firm and to know what was necessary and what not (thus he always thought about old men), and there he was old and positively failed to know, and was just as frivolous as he had been twenty years before; the only difference was that formerly he did not conceal it, while now he did. Just as in his childhood it had occurred to him during the service that he might crow like a cock, even so now all kinds of foolish things passed through his mind, and he, the old man, reverentially bent his head, touching the flagstones of the church with the old knuckles of his hands, and Father Vasíli was evidently timid in celebrating mass in his presence, and incited to zeal by his zeal.

"If they only knew what foolish things are running through my head! But that is a sin, a sin; I must pray," he said to himself, when the service commenced; and, trying to catch the meaning of the responses, he began to pray. Indeed, he soon transferred himself in feeling to the prayer and thought of his sins and of everything which he regretted.

A respectable-looking old man, bald-headed, with thick gray hair, dressed in a fur coat with a new white patch on one-half of his back, stepping evenly with his out-toeing bast shoes, went up to the altar, bowed low to him, tossed his hair, and went beyond the altar to place some tapers. This was the church elder, Iván Fedótov, one of the best peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha. Iván Petróvich knew him. The sight of this stern, firm face led Iván Petróvich to a new train of thoughts. He was one of those peasants who wanted to take the land away from him, and one of the best and richest married farmers, who needed the land, who could manage it, and had the means to work it. His stern aspect, ceremonious bow, and measured gait, and the exactness of his wearing-apparel, – the leg-rags fitted his legs like stockings and the laces crossed each other symmetrically on either leg, – all his appearance seemed to express rebuke and enmity on account of the land.

"I have asked forgiveness of my wife, of Mánya" (his daughter), "of the nurse, of my valet, Volódya, but it is his forgiveness that I ought to ask for, and I ought to forgive him," thought Iván Petróvich, and he decided that after matins he would ask Iván Fedótov to forgive him.

And so he did.

There were but few people in church. The country people were in the habit of going to communion in the first and in the fourth week. Now there were only forty men and women present, who had not had time to go to communion before, a few old peasant women, the church servants, and the manorial people of the Apýkhtins and his rich neighbours, the Chernýshevs. There was also there an old woman, a relative of the Chernýshevs, who was living with them, and a deacon's widow, whose son the Chernýshevs, in the goodness of their hearts, had educated and made a man of, and who now was serving as an official in the Senate. Between the matins and the mass there were even fewer people left in the church. There were left two beggar women, who were sitting in the corner and conversing with each other and looking at Iván Petróvich with the evident desire to congratulate him and talk with him, and two lackeys, – one his own, in livery, and the other, Chernýshev's, who had come with the old woman. These two were also whispering in an animated manner to each other, just as Iván Petróvich came out from the altar-place; when they saw him, they grew silent. There was also a woman in a tall head-gear with a pearl face-ornament and in a white fur coat, with which she covered up a sick child, who was crying, and whom she was attempting to quiet; and another, a stooping old woman, also in a head-gear, but with a woollen face-ornament and a white kerchief, which was tied in the fashion of old women, and in a gray gathered coat with an iris-design on the back, who, kneeling in the middle of the church, and turning to an old image between two latticed windows, over which hung a new scarf with red edges, was praying so fervently, solemnly, and impassionately that one could not fail directing one's attention to her.

Before reaching the elder, who, standing at the little safe, was kneading over the remnants of some tapers into one piece of wax, Iván Petróvich stopped to take a look at the praying woman. The old woman was praying well. She knelt as straight as it was possible to kneel in front of the image; all the members of her body were mathematically symmetrical; her feet behind her pressed with the tips of her bast shoes at the same angle against the stone floor; her body was bent back, to the extent to which her stooping shoulders permitted her to do so; her hands were quite regularly placed below her abdomen; her head was thrown back, and her face, with an expression of bashful commiseration, wrinkled, and with a dim glance, was turned straight toward the image with the scarf. Having remained in an immobile position for a minute or less, – evidently a definite space of time, – she heaved a deep sigh and, taking her right hand away, swung it above her head-gear, touched the crown of her head with folded fingers, and made ample crosses by carrying her hand down again to her abdomen and to her shoulders; then she swayed back and dropped her head on her hands, which were placed evenly on the floor, and again raised herself, and repeated the same.

"Now she is praying," Iván Petróvich thought, as he looked at her. "She does it differently from us sinners: this is faith, though I know that she is praying to her own image, or to her scarf, or to her adornment on the image, just like the rest of them. All right. What of it?" he said to himself, "every person has his own faith: she prays to her image, and I consider it necessary to beg the peasant's forgiveness."

And he walked over to the elder, instinctively scrutinizing the church in order to see who was going to see his deed, which both pleased and shamed him. It was disagreeable to him, because the old beggar women would see it, and more disagreeable still, because Míshka, his lackey, would see it. In the presence of Míshka, – he knew how wide-awake and shrewd he was, – he felt that he should not have the strength to walk up to Iván Fedótov. He beckoned to Míshka to come up to him.

"What is it you wish?"

"Go, my dear, and bring me the rug from the carriage, for it is too damp here for my feet."

"Yes, sir."

When Míshka went away, Iván Petróvich at once went up to Iván Fedótov. Iván Fedótov was disconcerted, like a guilty person, at the approach of the gentleman. Timidity and hasty motions formed a queer contradiction to his austere face and curly steel-gray hair and beard.

"Do you wish a dime taper?" he said, raising the desk, and now and then casting his large, beautiful eyes upon the master.

"No, I do not want a taper, Iván. I ask you to forgive me for Christ's sake, if I have in any way offended you. Forgive me, for Christ's sake," Iván Petróvich repeated, with a low bow.

Iván Fedótov completely lost his composure and began to move restlessly, but when he comprehended it all, he smiled a gentle smile:

"God forgives," he said. "It seems to me, I have received no offence from you. God will forgive you, – I have not been offended by you," he hastened to repeat.

"Still – "

"God will forgive you, Iván Petróvich. So you want two dime tapers?"

"Yes, two."

"He is an angel, truly, an angel. He begs even a base peasant to forgive him. O Lord, true angels," muttered the deacon's widow, in an old black capote and black kerchief. "Truly, we ought to understand that."

"Ah, Paramónovna!" Iván Petróvich turned to her. "Are you getting ready for communion, too? You, too, must forgive me, for Christ's sake."

"God will forgive you, sir, angel, merciful benefactor! Let me kiss your hand!"

"That will do, that will do, you know I do not like that," said Iván Petróvich, smiling, and going away from the altar.

The mass, as always, did not take long to celebrate in the parish of Izlegóshcha, the more so since there were few communicants. Just as, after the Lord's Prayer, the regal doors were closed, Iván Petróvich looked through the north door, to call Míshka to take off his fur coat. When the priest saw that motion, he angrily beckoned to the deacon, and the deacon almost ran out to call in the lackey. Iván Petróvich was in a pretty good humour, but this subserviency and expression of respect from the priest who was celebrating mass again soured him entirely; his thin, bent, shaven lips were bent still more and his kindly eyes were lighted up by sarcasm.

"He acts as though I were his general," he thought, and immediately he thought of the words of the German tutor, whom he had once taken to the altar to attend a Russian divine service, and who had made him laugh and had angered his wife, when he said, "Der Pop war ganz böse, dass ich ihm Alles nachgesehen hatte." He also recalled the answer of the young Turk that there was no God, because he had eaten up the last piece of him. "And here I am going to communion," he thought, and, frowning, he made a low obeisance.

He took off his bear-fur coat, and in his blue dress coat with bright buttons and in his tall white neckerchief and waistcoat, and tightly fitting trousers, and heelless, sharp-toed boots, went with his soft, modest, and light gait to make his obeisances to the large images. Here he again met that same obsequiousness from the other communicants, who gave up their places to him.

"They act as though they said, 'Après vous, s'il en reste,'" he thought, awkwardly making side obeisances; this awkwardness was due to the fact that he was trying to find that mean in which there would be neither disrespect, nor hypocrisy. Finally the doors were opened. He said the prayer after the priest, repeating the words, "As a robber;" his neckerchief was covered with the chalice cloth, and he received his communion and the lukewarm water in the ancient dipper, having put new silver twenty-kopek pieces on ancient plates; after hearing the last prayers, he kissed the cross and, putting on his fur coat left the church, receiving congratulations and experiencing the pleasant sensation of having everything over. As he left the church, he again fell in with Iván Fedótov.

"Thank you, thank you!" he replied to his congratulations. "Well, are you going to plough soon?"

"The boys have gone out, the boys have," replied Iván Fedótov, more timidly even than before. He supposed that Iván Petróvich knew whither the Izlegóshcha peasants had gone out to plough. "It is damp, though. Damp it is. It is early yet, early it is."

Iván Petróvich went up to his parents' monument, bowed to it, and went back to be helped into his six-in-hand with an outrider.

"Well, thank God," he said to himself, swaying on the soft, round springs and looking at the vernal sky with the scattering clouds, at the bared earth and the white spots of unmelted snow, and at the tightly braided tail of a side horse, and inhaling the fresh spring air, which was particularly pleasant after the air in the church.

"Thank God that I have been through the communion, and thank God that I now may take a pinch of snuff." And he took out his snuff-box and for a long time held the pinch between his fingers, smiling and, without letting the pinch out of the hand, raising his cap in response to the low bows of the people on the way, especially of the women, who were washing the tables and chairs in front of their houses, just as the carriage at a fast trot of the large horses of the six-in-hand plashed and clattered through the mud of the street of the village of Izlegóshcha.

Iván Petróvich held the pinch of snuff, anticipating the pleasure of snuffing, not only down the whole village, but even until they got out of a bad place at the foot of a hill, toward which the coachman descended not without anxiety: he held up the reins, seated himself more firmly, and shouted to the outrider to go over the ice. When they went around the bridge, over the bed of the river, and scrambled out of the breaking ice and mud, Iván Petróvich, looking at two plovers that rose from the hollow, took the snuff and, feeling chilly, put on his glove, wrapped himself in his fur coat, plunged his chin into the high neckerchief, and said to himself, almost aloud, "Glorious!" which he was in the habit of saying secretly to himself whenever he felt well.

In the night snow had fallen, and when Iván Petróvich had driven to church the snow had not yet disappeared, but was soft; now, though there was no sun, it was all melted from the moisture, and on the highway, on which he had to travel for three versts before turning into Chirakóvo, the snow was white only in last year's grass, which grew in parallel lines along the ruts; but on the black road the horses splashed through the viscous mud. The good, well-fed, large horses of his own stud had no difficulty in pulling the carriage, and it just rolled over the grass, where it left black marks, and over the mud, without being at all detained. Iván Petróvich was having pleasant reveries; he was thinking of his home, his wife, and his daughter.

"Mánya will meet me at the porch, and with delight. She will see such holiness in me! She is a strange, sweet girl, but she takes everything too much to heart. The rôle of importance and of knowing everything that is going on in this world, which I must play before her, is getting to be too serious and ridiculous. If she knew that I am afraid of her!" he thought. "Well, Káto," (his wife) "will no doubt be in good humour to-day, she will purposely be in good humour, and we shall have a fine day. It will not be as it was last week on account of the Próshkin women. What a remarkable creature! How afraid of her I am! What is to be done? She does not like it herself." And he recalled a famous anecdote about a calf. A proprietor, having quarrelled with his wife, was sitting at a window, when he saw a frisky calf: "I should like to get you married!" he said. And Iván Petróvich smiled again, according to his custom solving every difficulty and every perplexity by a joke, which generally was directed against himself.

At the third verst, near a chapel, the outrider bore to the left, into a cross-road, and the coachman shouted to him for having turned in so abruptly that the centre horses were struck by the shaft; and the carriage almost glided all the way down-hill. Before reaching the house, the outrider looked back at the coachman and pointed to something; the coachman looked back at the lackey, and indicated something to him. And all of them looked in the same direction.

"What are you looking at?" asked Iván Petróvich.

"Geese," said Míshka.

"Where?"

Though he strained his vision, he could not see them.

"There they are. There is the forest, and there is the cloud, so be pleased to look between the two."

Iván Petróvich could not see anything.

"It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to Annunciation."

"That's so."

"Well, go on!"

Near a puddle, Míshka jumped down from the footboard and tested the road, again climbed up, and the carriage safely drove on the pond dam in the garden, ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the laundry, from which water was falling, and nimbly rolled up and stopped at the porch. The Chernýshev calash had just left the yard. From the house at once ran the servants: gloomy old Danílych with the side whiskers, Nikoláy, Míshka's brother, and the boy Pavlúshka; and after them came a girl with large black eyes and red arms, which were bared above the elbow, and with just such a bared neck.

"Márya Ivánovna, Márya Ivánovna! Where are you going? Your mother will be worried. You will have time," was heard the voice of fat Katerína behind her.

But the girl paid no attention to her; just as her father had expected her to do, she took hold of his arm and looked at him with a strange glance.

"Well, papa, have you been to communion?" she asked, as though in dread.

"Yes. You look as though you were afraid that I am such a sinner that I could not receive the communion."

The girl was apparently offended by her father's jest at such a solemn moment. She heaved a sigh and, following him, held his hand, which she kissed.

"Who is here?"

"Young Chernýshev. He is in the drawing-room."

"Is mamma up? How is she?"

"Mamma feels better to-day. She is sitting down-stairs."

In the passage room Iván Petróvich was met by nurse Evprakséya, clerk Andréy Ivánovich, and a surveyor, who was living at the house, in order to lay out some land. All of them congratulated Iván Petróvich. In the drawing-room sat Luíza Kárlovna Trugóni, for ten years a friend of the house, an emigrant governess, and a young man of sixteen years, Chernýshev, with his French tutor.

THE DECEMBRISTS

THIRD FRAGMENT

(Variant of the First Chapter)

On the 2d of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Directing Senate handed down a decision in the debatable land case between the economic peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha and Chernýshev, which was in favour of the peasants and against Chernýshev. This decision was an unexpected and important calamitous event for Chernýshev. The case had lasted five years. It had been begun by the attorney of the rich village of Izlegóshcha with its three thousand inhabitants, and was won by the peasants in the County Court; but when, with the advice of lawyer Ilyá Mitrofánov, a manorial servant bought of Prince Saltykóv, Prince Chernýshev carried the case to the Government, he won it and besides, the Izlegóshcha peasants were punished by having six of them, who had insulted the surveyor, put in jail.

After that, Prince Chernýshev, with his good-natured and merry carelessness, entirely acquiesced, the more so since he knew full well that he had not "appropriated" any land of the peasants, as was said in the petition of the peasants. If the land was "appropriated," his father had done it, and since then more than forty years had passed. He knew that the peasants of the village of Izlegóshcha were getting along well without that land, had no need of it, and lived on terms of friendship with him, and was unable to understand why they had become so infuriated against him. He knew that he never offended and never wished to offend any one, that he lived in peace with everybody, and that he never wished to do otherwise, and so could not believe that any one should think of offending him. He hated litigations, and so did not defend his case in the Senate, in spite of the advice and earnest solicitations of his lawyer, Ilyá Mitrofánov; by allowing the time for the appeal to lapse, he lost the case in the Senate, and lost it in such a way that he was confronted with complete ruin. By the decree of the Senate he not only was to be deprived of five thousand desyatínas of land, but also, for the illegal tenure of that land, was to be mulcted to the amount of 107,000 roubles in favour of the peasants.

Prince Chernýshev had eight thousand souls, but all the estates were mortgaged and he had large debts, so that this decree of the Senate ruined him with his whole large family. He had a son and five daughters. He thought of his case when it was too late to attend to it in the Senate. According to Ilyá Mitrofánov's words there was but one salvation, and that was, to petition the sovereign and to transfer the case to the Imperial Council. To obtain this it was necessary in person to approach one of the ministers or a member of the Council, or, better still, the emperor himself. Taking all that into consideration, Prince Grigóri Ivánovich in the fall of the year 1817 with his whole family left his beloved estate of Studénets, where he had lived so long without leaving it, and went to Moscow. He started for Moscow, and not for St. Petersburg, because in the fall of that year the emperor with his whole court, with all the highest dignitaries, and with part of the Guards, in which the son of Grigóri Ivánovich was serving, was to arrive in Moscow to lay the corner-stone of the Church of the Saviour in commemoration of the liberation of Russia from the French invasion.

In August, immediately after receiving the terrible news of the decree of the Senate, Prince Grigóri Ivánovich got ready to go to Moscow. At first the majordomo was sent away to fix the prince's own house on the Arbát; then was sent out a caravan with furniture, servants, horses, carriages, and provisions. In September the prince with his whole family travelled in seven carriages, drawn by his own horses, and, after arriving in Moscow, settled in his house. Relatives, friends, visitors from the province and from St. Petersburg began to assemble in Moscow in the month of September. The Moscow life, with its entertainments, the arrival of his son, the débuts of his daughters, and the success of his eldest daughter, Aleksándra, the only blonde among all the brunettes of the Chernýshevs, so much occupied and diverted the prince's attention that, in spite of the fact that here in Moscow he was spending everything which would be left to him after paying all he owed, he forgot his affair and was annoyed and tired whenever Ilyá Mitrofánov talked of it, and undertook nothing for the success of his case.

Iván Mirónovich Baúshkin, the chief attorney of the peasants, who had conducted the case against the prince with so much zeal in the Senate, who knew all the approaches to the secretaries and departmental chiefs, and who had so skilfully distributed the ten thousand roubles, collected from the peasants, in the shape of presents, now himself brought his activity to an end and returned to the village, where, with the money collected for him as a reward and with what was left of the presents, he bought himself a grove from a neighbouring proprietor and built there a hut and an office. The case was finished in the court of the highest instance, and everything would now proceed of its own accord.

The only ones of those concerned in the case who could not forget it were the six peasants who were passing their seventh month in jail, and their families that were left without their heads. But nothing could be done in the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslobódsk, and their families tried to get along as well as they could. Nobody could be invoked in the case. Iván Mirónovich himself said that he could not take it up, because it was not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case. The peasants were in prison, and nobody paid any attention to them; but one family, that of Mikhaíl Gerásimovich, particularly his wife Tíkhonovna, could not get used to the idea that the precious old man, Gerásimovich, was sitting in prison with a shaven head. Tíkhonovna could not rest quiet. She begged Mirónovich to take the case, but he declined it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to God for the old man. She had made a vow the year before that she would go on a pilgrimage to a saint, and had delayed it for another year only because she had had no time and did not wish to leave the house to the young daughters-in-law. Now that the misfortune had happened and Gerásimovich was put into jail, she recalled her vow; she turned her back on her house and, together with the deacon's wife of the same village, got ready to go on the pilgrimage.

First they went to the county seat to see her old man in the prison and to take him some shirts; from there they went through the capital of the Government to Moscow. On her way Tíkhonovna told the deacon's wife of her sorrow, and the latter advised her to petition the emperor who, it was said, was to be in Pénza, telling her of various cases of pardon granted by him.

When the pilgrims arrived in Pénza, they heard that there was there, not the emperor, but his brother Grand Duke Nikoláy Pávlovich. When he came out of the cathedral, Tíkhonovna pushed herself forward, dropped down on her knees, and began to beg for her husband. The grand duke was surprised, the governor was angry, and the old woman was taken to the lockup. The next day she was let out and she proceeded to Tróitsa. In Tróitsa she went to communion and confessed to Father Paísi. At the confession she told him of her sorrow, and repented having petitioned the brother of the Tsar. Father Paísi told her that there was no sin in that and that there was no sin in petitioning the Tsar even in a just case, and dismissed her. In Khótkov she called on the blessed abbess, and she ordered her to petition the Tsar himself.

On their way back, Tíkhonovna and the deacon's wife stopped in Moscow to see the saints. Here she heard that the Tsar was there, and she thought that it was evidently God's command that she should petition the Tsar. All that had to be done was to write the petition.

In Moscow the pilgrims stopped in a hostelry. They begged permission to stay there overnight; they were allowed to do so. After supper the deacon's wife lay down on the oven, and Tíkhonovna, placing her wallet under her head, lay down on a bench and fell asleep. In the morning, before daybreak, Tíkhonovna got up, woke the deacon's wife, and went out. The innkeeper spoke to her just as she walked into the yard.

"You are up early, granny," he said.

"Before we get there, it will be time for matins," Tíkhonovna replied.

"God be with you, granny!"

"Christ save you!" said Tíkhonovna, and the pilgrims went to the Kremlin.

After standing through the matins and the mass, and having kissed the relics, the old women, with difficulty making their way, arrived at the house of the Chernýshevs. The deacon's wife said that the old lady had given her an urgent invitation to stop at her house, and had ordered that all pilgrims should be received.

"There we shall find a man who will write the petition," said the deacon's wife, and the pilgrims started to blunder through the streets and ask their way. The deacon's wife had been there before, but had forgotten where it was. Two or three times they were almost crushed, and people shouted at them and scolded them. Once a policeman took the deacon's wife by the shoulder and, giving her a push, forbade her to walk through the street on which they were, and directed them through a forest of lanes. Tíkhonovna did not know that they were driven off the Vozdvízhenka for the very reason that through that street was to drive the Tsar, of whom she was thinking all the time, and to whom she intended to give the petition.