'Night-violet,' was the answer.
'The man is cheating you. Violet is a delicate scent, but this stuff is strong and unpleasant, the sort of thing embalmers use for dead bodies. In the weak condition of my nerves, it makes me feel ill. Please tell them to bring me some eau-de-cologne.'
Sonnenberg made off himself to fetch the bottle.
'Oh, no ! you'd better call someone. If you come nearer me
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yourself, I shall faint.' Sonnenberg, who counted o n his hair-oil to captivate the maids, was deeply injured.
When he had sprinkled the room with eau-de-cologne, my father set about inventing errands : there was French snuff and English magnesia to be ordered, and a carriage advertised for sale to be looked at - not that my father ever bought anything. Then Sonnenberg bowed and disappeared till dinner-time, heartily glad to get away.
10
The next to appear on the scene was the cook. Whatever he had bought or put on the slate, my father always objected to the price.
'Dear, dear ! how high prices are ! Is nothing coming in from the country ? '
'No, indeed, Sir,' answered the cook; 'the roads are very bad just now.'
'Well, you and I must buy less, until they're mended.'
Next he sat down at his writing table, where he wrote orders for his bailiff or examined his accounts, and scolded me in the intervals of business. He consulted his doctor also ; but his chief occupation was to quarrel with his valet, Nikita. Nikita was a perfect martyr. He was a short, red-faced man with a hot temper, and might have been created on purpose to annoy my father and draw down reproofs upon himself. The scenes that took place between the two every day might have furnished material for a comedy, but it was all serious to them. Knowing that the man was indispensable to him, my father often put up with his rudeness ; yet, in spite of thirty years of complete failure, he still persisted in lecturing him for his faults. The valet would have found the life unendurable, if he had not possessed one means of relief : he was generally tipsy by dinner-time. My father, though this did not escape him, did not go beyond indirect allusions to the subject : for instance, he would say that a piece of brown bread and salt prevented a man from smelling of spirits. When Nikita had taken too much, he shuffled his feet in a peculiar way while handing the dishes ; and my father, on noticing this, used to invent a message for him at once; for instance, he would send him to the barber's to ask if he had changed his address. Then he would say to me in French : 'I know he won't go ; but he's not
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sober ; he might drop a soup plate and stain the cloth and give me a start. Let him take a tum ; the fresh air will do him good.'
On these occasions, the valet generally made some reply, or, if not, muttered to himself as he left the room. Then the master called him back with unruffled composure, and asked him, 'What did you say to me ? '
' I said nothing at all t o you.'
'Then who are you talking to ? Except you and me, there is nobody in this room or the next.'
'I was talking to myself.'
'A very dangerous thing : madness often begins in that way.'
The valet went off in a fury to his room, which was next to his master's bedroom. There he read the Moscow Gazette and made wigs for sale. Probably to relieve his feelings, he took snuff furiously, and the snuff was so strong or the membrane of his nose so weak, that he always sneezed six or seven times after a pinch.
The master's bell rang and the valet threw down the hair in his hands and answered the bell.
'Is that you sneezing ?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'Then, bless you I ' - and a motion of the hand dismissed the valet.
1 1
On the eve of each Ash Wednesday all the servants came, according to the old custom, to ask pardon of their master for offences ; and on these solemn occasions my father came into the drawing-room accompanied by his valet. He always pretended he could not recognise some of the people.
'Who is that decent old man, standing in that comer ? ' he would ask the valet.
'Danilo, the coachman,' was the impatient answer ; for Nikita knew all this was play-acting.
'Dear, dear I how changed he is ! I really believe it is drinking too much that ages them so fast. What does he do now ?'
'He drives fire-wood.'
My father made a face as if he were suffering severe pain.
'Drives wood ? What do you mean ? Wood is not driven, it is conveyed in a cart. Thirty years might have taught you to speak better • . • Well, Danilo, God in His mercy has permitted me to
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meet you yet another year. I pardon you all your offences throughout the year, your waste of my oats and your neglect of my horses ; and you must pardon me. Go on with your work while strength lasts ; and now that Lent is beginning, I advise you to take rather less spirits : at our years it is bad for the health, and the Church forbids it.' This was the kind of way in which he spoke to them all on this occasion.
12
We dined at four : the dinner lasted a long time and was very tiresome. Spiridon was an excellent cook; but his parsimony as well as my father's made the meal rather unsatisfying, though there were a number of courses. My father used to put bits for the dogs in a red j ar that stood beside his place ; he also fed them off his fork, a proceeding which was deeply resented by the servants and therefore by myself also ; but I do not know why.
Visitors, rare in general, were especially rare at dinner. I only remember one, whose appearance at the table had power at times to smooth the frown from my father's face, General Nikolay Bakhmetev. He had given up active service long ago ; but he and my father had been gay young subalterns together in the Guards, in the time of Catherine; and, while her son was on the throne, both had been court-martialled, Bakhmetev for fighting a duel, and my father for acting as a second. Later, the one had gone off to foreign parts as a tourist, the other to Ufa as Governor. Bakhmetev was a big man, healthy and handsome even in old age ; he enjoyed his dinner and his glass of wine, he enjoyed cheerful conversation, and other things as well. He boasted that in his day he had eaten a hundred meat patties at a sitting ; and, at sixty, he could eat a dozen buckwheat cakes swimming in a pool of butter, with no fear of consequences. I witnessed his feats of this kind more than once.
He had some faint influence over my father and could control him to some extent. When he saw that his friend was in too bad a temper, he would put on his hat and march away. 'I'm off for the present,' he would say ; 'you're not well, and dull tonight. I meant to dine with you but I can't stand sour faces at my dinner. Gehorsamer Diener ! ' Then my father would say to me, by way of explanation : 'What life there is in that old man yet I He may thank God for his good health ; he can't feel for poor
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sufferers like me ; in this awful frost he rushes about in his sledge and thinks nothing of it, at this season ; but I thank my Creator every morning for waking up with the breath still in my body.