It was a holiday. Gavrila Afanasyevich was expecting several relations and friends. A long table was being laid in the old-fashioned dining room. The guests were arriving with their wives and daughters, freed at last from their domestic reclusion by the ukases of the sovereign and his own example. Natalya Gavrilovna held out to each guest a silver tray covered with little gold goblets, and each one drank his, regretting that the kiss, which in former times accompanied such occasions, was no longer customary. They went to the table. In the first place, next to the host, sat his father-in-law, Prince Boris Alexeevich Lykov, a seventy-year-old boyar; the other guests, according to the seniority of their families and thus commemorating the happy days of the order of precedence,21 took their seats—the men on one side, the women on the other; at the foot of the table, in their customary places, sat the housekeeper in her old-fashioned coat and headdress; a dwarf, a tiny thirty-year-old woman, prim and wrinkled; and the captive Swede in a worn blue uniform. The table, set with a multitude of dishes, was surrounded by bustling and numerous servants, among whom the butler was distinguished by his stern gaze, fat belly, and majestic immobility. The first minutes of the dinner were given over entirely to the products of our time-honored cuisine; only the clank of plates and busy spoons broke the general silence. Finally, the host, seeing it was time to entertain his guests with pleasant conversation, looked about and asked: “And where is Ekimovna? Call her here.” Several servants rushed in different directions, but just then an old woman, made up with white greasepaint and rouge, adorned with flowers and baubles, in a damask robe ronde, her neck and shoulders bared, came dancing in humming a tune. Her appearance caused general delight.
“Greetings, Ekimovna,” said Prince Lykov. “How are you?”
“Healthy and wealthy, uncle; singing and dancing, and a bit of romancing.”
“Where have you been, fool?” asked the host.
“Dressing myself up, uncle, for the dear guests, for the holiday star, by command of the tsar, by the rules of boyars, to make all the world laugh, save the Germany half.”
At these words there was a loud burst of laughter, and the fool went to take her place behind the host’s chair.
“The fool lies away and, forsooth, she lies her way to the truth,” said Tatyana Afanasyevna, the host’s older sister, whom he sincerely respected. “Today’s fashions really do make all the world laugh. Since even you, my dear sirs, have shaved your beards and put on scanty kaftans, then for women’s rags, of course, there’s nothing to talk about: but it truly is a pity about the sarafan, young girls’ ribbons, and the povoinik.22 Just look at today’s beauties—you’ll laugh and weep: hair sticking up like matted felt, greased, sprinkled with French flour, the waist drawn in so tight it might just snap, the petticoats stretched on hoops: they have to get into a carriage sideways, and bend over going through a door. They can neither stand, nor sit, nor take a breath. Real martyrs, my little doves.”
“Ah, my dear Tatyana Afanasyevna,” said Kirila Petrovich T., former governor-general of Ryazan, where he had acquired three thousand serfs and a young wife for himself, both not without some shadiness. “I say a wife can dress as she pleases, like a scarecrow, or like a Chinese mandarin, so long as she doesn’t order new dresses every month and throw out the old ones unworn. It used to be that a granddaughter got her grandmother’s sarafan as a dowry, but these robes rondes nowadays—just look—today it’s on the lady, tomorrow on a serf girl. What can you do? The ruin of the Russian gentry! A disaster, that’s what!” With those words he sighed and looked at his Marya Ilyinichna, who, it seemed, was not at all pleased either with his praise of the old days, or with his censure of the new customs. The other beauties shared her displeasure but said nothing, because modesty was then considered a necessary quality in a young woman.
“And who is to blame?” said Gavrila Afanasyevich, filling his mug with foaming mead. “Isn’t it we ourselves? Young wenches play the fool, and we indulge them.”
“But what can we do, if it’s not up to us?” Kirila Petrovich objected. “A man would be glad to lock his wife away in a tower, but she’s called to the assembly with a beating of drums; the husband goes for his whip, the wife for her finery. Ah, these assemblies! The Lord’s punishing us for our sins.”
Marya Ilyinichna was on pins and needles; her tongue was itching; finally, unable to help herself, she turned to her husband and with a sour little smile asked him what he found so bad about the assemblies.
“What’s bad about them,” her husband replied heatedly, “is that ever since they were instituted, husbands have been unable to manage their wives. Wives have forgotten the words of the apostle: ‘A wife should reverence her husband.’23 They busy themselves, not with housekeeping, but with new clothes; they don’t think of how to please their husbands, but of how to catch the eye of some whippersnapper of an officer. And is it proper, madam, for a Russian gentlewoman or young lady to be with tobacco-smoking Germans and the girls who work for them? Who has ever heard of dancing and talking with young men until late at night—with relatives it would be another thing, but this is with foreigners, with strangers.”
“I’d say a bit more, but the wolf’s at the door,” Gavrila Afanasyevich said, frowning. “I must confess—assemblies are not to my liking either: you have to watch out lest you run into a drunk man, or they make you drunk just for the fun of it. And also watch out lest some scapegrace get up to mischief with your daughter. Young men these days are so spoiled, it’s beyond anything. The son of the late Evgraf Sergeevich Korsakov, for instance, caused such an uproar with Natasha at the last assembly that I turned red all over. The next day I look, he comes rolling right into our courtyard. Who in God’s name is it, I thought, Prince Alexander Danilovich? Not on your life: it was Ivan Evgrafovich! The man couldn’t stop at the gate and take the trouble of walking up to the porch—oh, no! He came flying in! Bowed and scraped! Chattered his head off!…The fool Ekimovna imitates him killingly. Come, fool, do the foreign monkey for us.”
The fool Ekimovna snatched the lid from a dish, took it under her arm like a hat, and started grimacing, bowing, and scraping in all directions, mumbling “moosieu…mamzelle…assemblée…pardone.” General and prolonged laughter again expressed the guests’ pleasure.
“That’s Korsakov to a T,” said old Prince Lykov, wiping tears of laughter, when calm was gradually restored. “Why not admit it? He’s neither the first nor the last to come back to Holy Russia from foreign parts as a buffoon. What do our children learn there? To bow and scrape, to babble in God knows what tongues, to show no respect for their elders, and to dangle after other men’s wives. Of all young men educated abroad (God forgive me), the tsar’s Moor most resembles a human being.”
“Of course,” observed Gavrila Afanasyevich, “he’s a sober and decent man, not like that featherbrain…Who’s that driving into the yard? Not the foreign monkey again? What are you gawking at, you brutes?” he went on, addressing his servants. “Run and tell him we’re not receiving, and that in future—”
“Are you raving, old graybeard?” the fool Ekimovna interrupted. “Or are you blind? That’s the sovereign’s sledge; the tsar has come.”
Gavrila Afanasyevich hastily got up from the table; everybody rushed to the windows and indeed saw the sovereign, who was going up the front steps leaning on his orderly’s shoulder. A commotion ensued. The host rushed to meet Peter; the servants scattered in all directions like lunatics; the guests were frightened, some even thought of heading for home as quickly as possible. Suddenly Peter’s booming voice was heard in the front hall, everything fell silent, and the tsar entered accompanied by the host, dumbstruck with joy.