“It’s tricky, Your Excellency; the sale was probably done in accordance with the law.”
“Think, brother, put your mind to it.”
“If, for instance, Your Excellency could in some way or other obtain from your neighbor the record or deed of purchase authorizing his ownership of the estate, then of course…”
“I understand, but the trouble is—all his papers got burned up in a fire.”
“What, Your Excellency, his papers got burned up?! Could anything be better? In that case you can proceed according to the law, and you will undoubtedly obtain full satisfaction.”
“You think so? Well, look sharp, then. I rely on your diligence, and you can be sure of my gratitude.”
Shabashkin bowed almost to the ground, left, started busying himself that same day with the projected case, and, thanks to his adroitness, exactly two weeks later Dubrovsky received an invitation from town to provide immediately a proper explanation regarding his ownership of the village of Kistenevka.
Andrei Gavrilovich, astonished by the unexpected request, wrote in reply that same day a rather rude declaration, in which he stated that the village of Kistenevka had become his at the death of his late parent, that he owned it by right of inheritance, that Troekurov had nothing to do with the matter, and that any outside claim to his property was calumny and fraud.
This letter made a rather pleasant impression on the soul of the assessor Shabashkin. He saw, first, that Dubrovsky knew little about legal affairs, and, second, that it would be easy to put such a hot-tempered and imprudent man in a most disadvantageous position.
Andrei Gavrilovich, having considered the assessor’s inquiries cool-headedly, saw the necessity of responding in more detail. He wrote a rather sensible paper, but subsequently it turned out to be insufficient.
The case dragged on. Convinced that he was in the right, Andrei Gavrilovich worried little about it, had neither the wish nor the means to throw money around, and though he used to be the first to mock the bought conscience of the ink-slinging tribe, the thought of falling victim to calumny never entered his head. For his part, Troekurov cared just as little about the success of the case he had undertaken. Shabashkin bustled about for him, acted in his name, threatened and bribed judges, and interpreted various decrees either straightly or crookedly.
Be that as it may, in the year 18––, on the 9th day of February, Dubrovsky received, through the town police, a summons to appear before the * * * district judge for the hearing of his decision in the affair of the estate contested between him, Lieutenant Dubrovsky, and General-en-chef Troekurov and the signing of his accord or disaccord. That same day Dubrovsky set out for town; on the way Troekurov overtook him. They looked at each other proudly, and Dubrovsky noticed a malicious smile on his adversary’s face.
CHAPTER TWO
Having arrived in town, Andrei Gavrilovich stopped with a merchant acquaintance, spent the night there, and the next morning appeared in the office of the district court. No one paid any attention to him. After him came Kirila Petrovich. The clerks rose and put their pens behind their ears. The members of the court received him with expressions of profound obsequiousness, moved a chair for him in a show of respect for his rank, years, and portliness; he sat down by the open door. Andrei Gavrilovich stood leaning against the wall. A profound silence ensued, and the secretary in a ringing voice began to read the decision of the court. We insert it here in full,2 supposing that everyone will be pleased to see one of the means by which we in Russia can be deprived of an estate, to the ownership of which we have an indisputable right.
In the year 18––, the 27th day of October, the district court examined the case of the wrongful possession by Lieutenant of the Guards Dubrovsky, Andrei Gavrilovich, of an estate belonging to General-en-chef Troekurov, Kirila Petrovich, situated in * * * province in the village of Kistenevka, consisting of * * * male souls and of * * * acres of land with meadows and appurtenances. The case presents the following: on the 9th day of June past, in the year of 18––, the aforesaid General-en-chef Troekurov submitted to this court a petition to the effect that his late father, the collegiate assessor and chevalier Troekurov, Pyotr Efimovich, in the year 17––, on the 14th day of August, while serving as provincial secretary in a local office, did purchase from the gentleman and chancery clerk Spitsyn, Fadei Egorovich, an estate lying in the * * * township, in the aforementioned village of Kistenevka (which village, according to the * * * census, was then called the Kistenevka settlements), consisting, according to the 4th census, of * * * souls of the male sex with all their peasant chattels, the farmstead, with arable and non-arable land, woods, hayfields, fishing in the river, called the Kistenevka, and with all the appurtenances belonging to the estate and the wooden manor house, and, in short, everything without exception that his father, the village constable Spitsyn, Egor Terentyevich, gentleman, had left him as inheritance and that had been in his possession, not excluding a single soul, nor a single square foot of land, for the price of 2,500 roubles, the deed for which was signed on the same day in the * * * court of justice, and on the 26th day of that same August at the district court his father entered into possession and the seizin for it was recorded.—And finally, in the year 17––, the 6th day of September, by the will of God his father died, and meanwhile he, the petitioner, General-en-chef Troekurov, had been in the military service since the year 17––, almost from infancy, and for the most part had been on campaigns abroad, for which reason he could not have information of his father’s death, nor likewise of the property left to him. Now, having gone into full retirement from the service and returned to his father’s estates, located in * * * and * * * provinces, * * * and * * * districts, in various villages, comprising 3,000 souls in all, he discovers that, of the number of these above-listed estates mentioned in the * * * census, the souls (some * * * souls in that village at the present date * * *), with land and with all appurtenances, is without any title in the possession of the aforementioned Lieutenant of the Guards Andrei Dubrovsky, for which reason, presenting along with his petition the original deed of purchase which his father received from the seller Spitsyn, Troekurov requests that the said estate, removed from the wrongful possession of Dubrovsky, be placed at the full disposal of its rightful owner, Troekurov. And for the unlawful appropriation of it, with the profits he gained from its use, after making a proper inquiry into them, a penalty in accordance with the law be imposed on him, Dubrovsky, to his, Troekurov’s, satisfaction.
The investigation of this petition by the * * * district court has discovered: that the said present owner of the disputed estate, Lieutenant of the Guards Dubrovsky, gave the local assessor of the nobility the explanation that the estate now in his possession, the said village of Kistenevka, * * * souls with land and appurtenances, came to him as an inheritance after the death of his father, Sub-lieutenant of Artillery Dubrovsky, Gavrila Evgrafovich, who obtained it through purchase from the petitioner’s father, former provincial secretary, later collegiate assessor Troekurov, through the power of attorney granted by him in the year 17––, on the 30th day of August, notarized in the * * * district court, to the titular councilor Sobolev, Grigory Vassilyevich, who was to provide him, Dubrovsky’s father, with the deed, in which it would be stated that the entire estate, * * * souls with the land, obtained by him, Troekurov, through purchase from the clerk Spitsyn, had been sold to his, Dubrovsky’s, father, and the agreed sum, 3,200 roubles, had been received from the father in full and without return, and it was requested that the attorney Sobolev provide his father with the official deed. And meanwhile his father, by the same power of attorney, having paid the full sum, was to take over this estate purchased by him and manage it as its lawful owner until the deed was executed, and neither he, the seller Troekurov, nor anyone else was to intervene henceforth in this estate. But precisely when and in what office the deed was executed and given by Sobolev to his father, he, Andrei Dubrovsky, does not know, for he was in his earliest infancy at the time, and after his father’s death he was unable to find the said deed, and supposes that it may have been burned up, along with other papers and property, during the fire in their house that took place in the year of 17––, as is also known to the inhabitants of the village. And that the estate, since the purchase from Troekurov or the receipt of the power of attorney by Sobolev, that is, since the year 17––, and from the death of his father until the present day, has been in their, the Dubrovskys’, undisputed possession, this has been testified to by the local inhabitants, 52 persons in all, who, being questioned under oath, bore witness that indeed, as far as they could remember, the said disputed estate had been in the possession of the aforesaid Messrs Dubrovsky for some 70 years now with no dispute from anyone, but by precisely what act or deed they do not know. Whether the previous purchaser of the estate mentioned in this case, the former provincial secretary Pyotr Troekurov, had owned the said estate, they do not recall. The house of Messrs Dubrovsky burned down in a fire that occurred in the village during the nighttime some 30 years ago, while disinterested persons suppose that the average income of the aforementioned disputed estate, counting from that time on, could be no less than 2,000 roubles annually.