But Slepushkin would turn up again a week later and ask for a loan of 1 ,500 roubles. He got it and again paid his debt on the nail ; and my father considered him a pattern of honesty. A week later, Slepushkin would borrow a still larger sum. Thus in the course of a year he secured 5,000 roubles in ready money to use in his business ; and for this he paid, by way of interest, a couple of currant-loaves, a few pounds of figs and walnuts, and perhaps a hundred oranges and Crimean apples.
6
I shall end this subject by relating how my father lost nearly a thousand acres of valuable timber on one of the estates which had come to him from his brother, the Senator.
In the forties Count Orlov, wishing to buy land for his sons,
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offered a price for this estate, which was in the Government of Tver. The parties came to terms, and it seemed that the transaction was complete. But when the Count went to examine his purchase, he wrote to my father that the forest marked upon the plan of the estate had simply disappeared.
'There I' said my father, 'Orlov is a clever man of course ; he was involved in the conspiracy too.2 He has written a book on finance ; but when it comes to business, he is clearly no good.
Necker 3 over again ! I shall send a friend of iny own to look at the place, not a conspirator but an honest man who understands business.'
But alas ! the honest man came back and reported that the forest had disappeared ; all that remained was a fringe of trees, which made it impossible to detect the truth from the high-road or from the manor-house. After the division between the brothers, my uncle had paid five visits to the place, but had seen nothing I 7
That our way of life may be thoroughly understood, I shall describe a whole day from the beginning. They were all alike, and this very monotony was the most killing part of it all. Our life went on like an English clock with the regulator put back - with a slow and steady movement and a loud tick for each second.
At ten in the morning, the valet who sat in the room next the bedroom, informed Vera Artamonovna, formerly my nurse, that the master was getting up ; and she went off to prepare coffee, which my father drank alone in his study. The house now assumed a different aspect : the servants began to clean the rooms or at least to make a pretence of doing something. The servants'
hall, empty till then, began to fill up ; and even Macbeth, the big Newfoundland dog, sat down before the stove and stared unwinkingly at the fire.
Over his coffee my father read the Moscow Gazette and the Journal de St Petersbourg. It may be worth mentioning that the newspapers were wanned to save his hands from contact with the damp sheets, and that he read the political news in the French z. See p. 147.
3· facques Necker (1732.-1804), Minister of Finance under Louis XVI ; the husband of Gibbon's first love, and the father of Mme de Stael.
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version, finding i t clearer than the Russian. For some time h e took in the Hamburg Gazette, but could not pardon the Germans for using German print; he often pointed out to me the difference between French and German type, and said that the curly tails of the Gothic letters tried his eyes. Then he ordered the Journal de Francfort for a time, but finally contented himself with the native product.
When he had read the newspaper, he noticed for the first time the presence of Sonnenberg in the room. When Nick reached the age of fifteen, Sonnenberg professed to start a shop ; but having nothing to sell and no customers, he gave it up, when he had spent such savings as he had in this useful form of commerce ; yet he still called himself 'a commercial agent'. He was then much over forty, and at that pleasant age he lived like the fowls of the air or a boy of fourteen ; he never knew today where he would sleep or, how he would secure a dinner tomorrow. He enjoyed my father's favour to a certain extent : what that amounted to, we shall see presently.
8
In 1 840 my father bought the house next to ours, a larger and better house, with a garden, which had belonged to Countess Rostopchin, wife of the famous governor of Moscow. We moved into it. Then he bought a third house, for no reason except that it was adjacent. Two of these houses stood empty ; they were never let because tenants would give trouble and might cause fires - both houses were insured, by the way - and they were never repaired, so that both were in a fair way to fall down.
Sonnenberg was permitted to lodge in one of these houses, but on conditions : (1) he must never open the yard-gates after 10
p.m. (as the gates were never shut, this was an easy condition) ; (2) he was to provide firewood at his own expense (he did in fact buy it of our coachman) ; and (3) he was to serve my father as a kind of private secretary, corning in the morning to ask for orders, dining with us, and returning in the evening, when there was no company, to entertain his employer with conversation and the news.
The duties of his place may seem simple enough ; but my father contrived to make it so bitter that even Sonnenberg could not stand it continuously, though he was familiar with all the
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privitations that can befall a man with no money and no sense, with a feeble body, a pock-marked face, and German nationality.
Every two years or so, the secretary declared that his patience was at an end. He packed up his traps, got together by purchase or barter some odds and ends of disputable value and doubtful quality, and started off for the Caucasus. Misfortune dogged him relentlessly. Either his horse - he drove his own horse as far as Tiflis and Redut-Kale - came down with him in dangerous places inhabited by Don Cossacks ; or half his wares were stolen ; or his two-wheeled cart broke down and his French scent-bottles wasted their sweetness on the broken wheel at the foot of Mount Elbrus ; he was always losing something, and when he had nothing else to lose, he lost his passport. Nearly a year would pass, and then Sonnenberg, older, more unkempt, and poorer than before, with fewer teeth and less hair than ever, would tum up humbly at our house, with a stock of Persian powder against fleas and bugs, faded silk for dressing-gowns, and rusty Circassian daggers ; and down he settled once more in the empty house, to buy his own firewood and run errands by way of rent.
9
As soon as he noticed Sonnenberg, my father began a little campaign at once. He acknowledged by a bow enquiries as to his health ; then he thought a little, and asked (this just as an example of his methods), 'Where do you buy your hair-oil ? '
I should say that Sonnenberg, though the plainest of men, thought himself a regular Don Juan : he was careful about his clothes and wore a curling wig of a golden-yellow colour.
'I buy it of Bouis, on the Kuznetsky Bridge,' he answered abruptly, rather nettled ; and then he placed one foot on the other, like a man prepared to defend himself.
'What do you call that scent ? '