I have seen few palacPs more pleasant to look at than Vasilevskoye. For anyonp who knows Kuntsevo and Yusupov's Arkhangelskoye, or Lopu khin's estate facing the Savva monastery, i t i s enough to say that Vasilevskoy!' lies on a continuation of the same hank of tlw Moskva, twPnty miles from the monastery. On the sloping side of the river lie th!' village, the church, and the old manor house. On tlw other side there is a hill and a small vil lage, and th!'re my fathPr had built a new house. The view
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from i t embraced the country within a radius of ten miles; far and wide rolled seas of quivering corn ; homesteads and villages with white churches could be seen here and there; forests of various hues made a semi-circular setting, and the Moskva like a pale blue ribbon ran through it all. Early in the morning I opened the window in my"room upstairs and looked and listened and breathed.
And yet I regretted the old stone house, perhaps because it was in it that I first made acquaintance with the country; I so loved the long, shady avenue leading up to it and the garden that had run wild; the house was falling into ruins and a slender, graceful birch tree was growing out of a crack in the wall of the vestibule. On the left an avenue of willows ran along the riverside, beyond it there were reeds and the white sand down to the river; on that sand and among those reeds I used at eleven and twelve years old to play for a whole morning. A bent old man, the gardener, used nearly always to be sitting before the house; he used to triple-distil peppermint liquor, cook berries, and secretly regale me with all sorts of vegetables. There \Vere great numbers of crows in the garden: the tops of the trees were covered with their nests, and they used to circle round them, cawir..g; sometimes, especially towards the evening, they used to take wing, hundreds at a time, racing after one another with a great clamour; sometimes one \Vould fly hurriedly from tree to tree and then all would be still. . . . And towards night an owl would wail somewhere in the distance like a child, or go off into a peal of laughter . . . . I was afraid of these wild wailing sounds and yet I went to listen to them.
Every year, or, at least, every other year, we used to go to Vasilevskoye. As I went away I used to measure my height on the wall by the balcony, and I went at once on arriving to find how much I had grown. But in the country I could measure not only my physical grmvth: these periodical returns to the same objects showed me plainly the difference in my inner development. Other books \vere brought, other objects interested me. In 1 823 I was still quite a child; I had children's books with me, and even those I did not read, but was much more interested in a hare and a squirrel which lived in the loft near my room.
One of my principal enjoyments consisted in my father's permission to fire a small cannon every evening, an operation which of course entertained all the servants, and grey-haired old men of fifty were as much diverted as I was. In 1 827 I brought with me Plutarch and �chiller; tarly in the morning I used to go out into
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the forest, as far as I could into the thickest part of it and, imagining that I was in the Bohemian forests,22 read aloud to myself. Nevertheless, I was greatly interested also in a dam which I was making in a small stream with the help of a serfboy, and would run a dozen times a day to look at it and repair it. In 1 829 and 1830 I was writing a philosophical article on Schiller's Wallenstein, and of my old toys none but the cannon retained its charm.
Besides firing the cannon there was, however, another enjoyment for which I retained an unalterable passion-watching the evenings in the country; now as then such evenings are for me still times of devoutness, peace, and poetry. One of the last serenely bright moments in my life reminds me also of those village evenings. The sun was sinking majestically, brilliantly, into an ocean of fire, was dissolving into it . . . . All at once the rich purple was follO\wd by deep blue dusk, and everything was covered \Vith a smoky mist: in Italy the darkness falls quickly.
\Ve mount�d our mules ; on the way from Frascati to Rome \'l'e had to ride through a little village ; here and there lights were already twinkling; everything was still, the hoofs of the mules rang on the stone, a fresh and rather damp wind was blowing from the Apennines. As \W came out of the village, there was a little Madonna standing in a niche with a lamp burning before her; some peasant girls as they came from work with white kerchiefs on their heads sank on their knees and chanted a prayer; they were joined by some needy pifferari who were passing by. I was deeply affected, deeply touched. \Ve looked at each other . . . and rode on at a slow pace to the inn where a carriage was waiting for us. As we drove homewards I talked of the evenings at Vasilevskoye. But what was there to tell?
In silence stood the garden trees,
Among the hills the village lay,
And thither at the fall of night
The lingering cattle u·end their way.
N. P. 0GARh·. Humorous Verse
The shepherd c-racks his long whip and plays on his birchhark pipe ; there is the lowing and bleating and stamping of the herds rPturning on'r the bridge, the dog with a bark chases a str<)ying sheep while she runs with a sort of woodPn gallop; and then the songs of the peasant girls, on their way home from the 22 The scene of Schiller's Die Rauber. (/l.S.)
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fields, come closer and closer; but the path turns off t o the right and the sounds recede again. From the houses children, little girls, run out at the creaking gates to meet their cows and sheep; work is over. The children are playing in the street and on the river-bank, their voices ring out with shrill clarity over the river in the evening glow ; the scorched smell of barns mingles with the air, the dew begins little by little to spread like smoke over the fields, the wind moves over the forest with a sound as though the leaves were boiling, the summer lightning, quivering, lights up the landscape with a dying, tremulous azure, and Vera Artamonovna, grumbling rather than cross, says, coming upon me under a lime tree:
'How is it there's no finding you anywhere? And tea has been served long ago and everyone is at table. Here I have been looking and looking for you until my legs are tired. I can't go running about at my age; and why are you lying on the damp grass like that? . . . you'll have a cold to-morrow, I'll be bound.'
'Oh, that'll do, that'll do,' I say to the old woman with a laugh; 'I shan't have a cold and I don't want any tea, but you steal me the best of the cream from the very top.'