Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1868
Source: Original Text from TheAnarchistLibrary.org
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
(Variant of the First Chapter)
On the 14th of August, 1817, the sixth department of the Controlling Senate rendered a decision in the lawsuit between the “ekonom”[11] peasants of the village of Izlegoshchi and Prince Chernuishef, granting the land that was in dispute to the peasants.
This decision was unexpected and serious, and unfortunate for Chernuishef. The suit had been dragging along already for five years. Having been brought originally by the advocate of the rich and populous village of Izlegoshchi, it had been gained by the peasants in the District Court; but when Prince Chernuishef, by the advice of Ilya Mitrofanof, a solicitor, a domestic serf belonging to Prince Saltuikof, hired by him, appealed the case, he won it, and, moreover, the Izlegoshchi peasants were punished by having six of them, who had insulted the surveyor, sent to the mines.
After this, Prince Chernuishef, with a good-natured carelessness characteristic of him, was perfectly at ease, the more because he knew well that he had never “usurped” any land of the peasants, as it had been said in the peasants’ petition. If any land had ever been “usurped” it had been done by his father, but since then more than forty years had passed away. He knew that the peasants of the village of Izlegoshchi even without this land were prosperous, that they did not need it, and that they were good neighbors of his, and he could not understand why they were “mad” with him.
He knew that he had never injured any one, and that he had no wish to injure any one; he had always lived with charity to all and that was all he wanted to do, and so he did not believe that they wanted to do him any wrong: he detested litigation, and therefore he had not labored in the senate, notwithstanding the advice and admonition of his attorney, Ilya Mitrofanof. Having disregarded the term of the appeal, he lost the case in the senate, and lost it in such a manner that ruin stared him in the face. According to the decree of the senate not only were five thousand desyatins of land to be taken from him, but on account of his illegal use of the land he was obliged to pay the peasants 107,000 rubles.
Prince Chernuishef had had eight thousand serfs, but all his estates were mortgaged; he had many debts, and this decision of the senate ruined him together with all his great family. He had a son and five daughters. He woke up when it was too late to do anything in the senate. According to Ilya Mitrofanof he had one way of salvation; that was to petition the Emperor and appeal the case to the imperial council. For this it was necessary personally to address one of the ministers or one of the members of the council, or even—and this would be still better—the Emperor himself. Having decided on this plan of action, Prince Grigori Ivanovitch, in the autumn of 1817, left his beloved Studentso, where he always lived, and went with his whole family to Moscow. He went to Moscow and not to Petersburg, because during the autumn of that year the sovereign, with his court, and all his highest dignitaries, and a part of the Guard in which Grigori Ivanovitch’s son served, was to be in Moscow for the ceremony of dedicating the cathedral of the Savior in memory of the deliverance of Russia from the invasion of the French.
Even in August immediately after the receipt of the horrible news of the decision of the senate, Prince Grigori Ivanovitch found himself in Moscow. His steward had been sent on in advance to make ready his private house on the Arbata; a baggage-train was sent on with furniture, servants, horses, equipages, and provisions. In September the prince, with his whole family in seven carriages drawn by his own horses, reached Moscow, and settled down in their mansion. His relatives and friends, who had come to Moscow from the country or from Petersburg, began to gather in Moscow in September; the Moscow life with all its gayeties, the arrival of his son, the coming out of his daughters, and the success of his eldest daughter, Aleksandra, the one blond among all the dark Chernuishefs, so occupied and engrossed the prince, that notwithstanding the fact that he was spending there in Moscow all the remainder of his substance,—in case he had to pay his fine,—he kept forgetting his chief business, and was annoyed and bored when Ilya Mitrofanof mentioned it, and he kept putting off doing anything to further the success of his affairs.
Ivan Mironovitch Baushkin, the chief advocate of the muzhiks, who had carried the lawsuit through the senate with such zeal, who knew all the ways and means of dealing with the secretaries and head clerks, and who had so cleverly spent at Petersburg in the form of bribes the ten thousand rubles collected from the muzhiks, had also now put an end to his activity and had returned to the village; where, with the reward for his success and with the money not expended in bribes, he had bought a piece of woodland of a neighboring proprietor, and had established in it an office.[12] The lawsuit in the highest instance was at an end, and by good rights the affair should now take care of itself.
Of all those that had been entangled in this affair, the only ones who could not forget it were the six muzhiks, who had been for seven months in prison, and their families deprived of their head men. But there was nothing to be done about it. There they were in the Krasnoslobodsky prison, and their families were struggling to get along without them. There was no one to petition. Even Ivan Mironovitch declared that there was nothing he could do in their behalf; that this was not an affair of the “mir” or of the civil court, but a criminal case. The muzhiks were in prison and no one was working in their behalf; only the family of Mikhaïl Gerasimovitch, especially his old woman, Tikhonovna, could not acquiesce in the fact that her “golden one,” her old man, Gerasimuitch, was confined in prison with a shaven head. Tikhonovna could not remain in peace. She besought Mironuitch to work for her; Mironuitch refused. Then she resolved herself to go, and pray God to release her old man. The year before she had vowed to go on a pilgrimage to the saints, and yet for lack of leisure, and because she did not like to leave the house in the care of her sisters-in-law, who were young, she had postponed it for a year. Now that she had become poor, and Gerasimuitch was in prison, she remembered her vow. She let her household cares have the go-by, and with a deacon’s wife of her village, she started in on her pilgrimage. At first they went to the district where the old man was in prison; they carried him some shirts, and thence they went to Moscow, passing through the governmental city.
On the way Tikhonovna related the story of her misfortune, and the deacon’s wife advised her to petition the Czar, who, she had heard, was to be at Penza, telling her what were the chances of pardon. When the pilgrims reached Penza they learned that the Czar’s brother, the Grand Duke Nikolaï Pavlovitch, and not the Czar himself, had already come to Penza. Coming forth from the cathedral at Penza, Tikhonovna forced her way through the line, threw herself on her knees, and began to beg for her lord and master. The Grand Duke was amazed, the governor was angry, and the old woman was arrested. After a day’s detention she was set free, and went on to Troïtsa. At this monastery Tikhonovna prepared for the sacrament, and made confession to Father Païsi. At confession she told all her misfortune, and confessed how she had tried to offer her petition to the Czar’s brother. Father Païsi told her there was no sin in that, and that she was on the right track, and that it was no sin to petition the Czar, and then he let her go. Also at Khotkovo she stopped with “an inspired woman,”[13] and this woman advised her to present her petition to the Czar himself. Tikhonovna, on her way back with the deacon’s wife, went to Moscow to visit the saints there. There she learned that the Czar was in Moscow, and it seemed to her that God had commanded her to petition the Czar. All she had to do was to get the petition written. At Moscow the pilgrims stopped at an inn. They asked for a night’s lodgings; it was granted them. After supper the deacon’s wife lay down on the oven, but Tikhonovna lay down on a bench, placing her kotomka, or birch-bark wallet, under her head, and went to sleep. In the morning, before it was light, Tikhonovna got up, awakened the deacon’s wife, and came down into the court before the dvornik had called them.
“You are up early, baushka,”[14] said he.
“You see we are going to matins, benefactor,” replied Tikhonovna.
“God go with you, baushka. Christ save you,” said the dvornik; and the pilgrim women started for the Kreml.
After attending matins and mass, and having kissed the holy things, the two old women, with difficulty finding their way, went to the Chernuishefs’. The deacon’s wife said that the old lady Chernuishef had strongly urged her to stop there, that she always received all pilgrims.
“There we shall find a man to help with the petition,” said the deacon’s wife, and the two pilgrims went wandering along the streets, asking the way as they went. The deacon’s wife had been there once, but had forgotten where it was. Twice they were almost crushed, men shouted at them, and scolded them. Once a police officer grasped the deacon’s wife by the shoulder, and gave her a push, forbidding them to pass through the street on which they were walking, and directing them into a wilderness of lanes. Tikhonovna did not know that they were driven out of Vozdvizhenka for the very reason that the Czar himself, of whom she was all the time thinking, and to whom she was going to write and present the petition, was to ride along that very street.
The deacon’s wife, as always, walked heavily and painfully. Tikhonovna, as usual, went along with a free and easy gait, like a young woman. The pilgrims paused at the very gates. The deacon’s wife did not know the place; a new izba had been built there; it had not been there before. But when the deacon’s wife saw a well and pump at one corner of the dvor she recognized it. The dogs began to bark, and sprang toward the old women who appeared with staves.
“Don’t be afraid, they won’t hurt you,” cried the dvornik. “Back, you rascals,” said he to the dogs, waving his broom at them. “You see they are country dogs, and they hanker after country folks. Come round this way. God keeps the frost off.”
But the deacon’s wife, afraid of the dogs, pitifully mumbling, sat down on a bench at the gate, and asked the dvornik to take the dogs away. Tikhonovna, bowing low before the dvornik, and leaning on her staff, spreading wide her legs, tightly bound with leg-wrappers, halted near the other, calmly looking ahead, and waiting for the dvornik, who was coming toward them.
“Whom do you want? “ asked the dvornik.
“Don’t you know us, benefactor? Isn’t your name Yegor?” asked the deacon’s wife. “We have been on a pilgrimage, and here we have come to her excellency.”
“You are from Izlegoshchi,” said the dvornik. “Are you not the old deacon’s wife? Well, well! Come into the izba. They will receive you. No one is ever turned away. But who is this woman?”
He pointed to Tikhonovna.
“I am from Izlegoshchi. I am Gerasim’s wife; I was a Fadeyef,” said Tikhonovna. “I am from Izlegoshchi too.”
“Is that so? I have heard your man is in jail. Is that so?”
Tikhonovna made no reply. She only sighed, and with a powerful gesture shifted her wallet and her shuba on her back.
The deacon’s wife asked if the old princess was at home, and, learning that she was, asked to be taken to her. Then she asked after her son, who had been made a functionary, and through the prince’s favor was serving in Petersburg. The dvornik could not answer her question, and he took them along a planked walk, across the yard, into the common izba. The old women entered the izba, which was full of people, women and children, young and old, domestic serfs, and there they bowed low toward the images. The laundress and the old princess’s chambermaid immediately recognized the deacon’s wife and immediately engaged her in conversation; they took her wallet from her, and sat her down at a table, and offered her something to eat.
Tikhonovna, meantime, crossing herself toward the images and greeting every one, stood by the door waiting to be invited in. At the very door, by the first window, sat an old man mending boots.
“Sit down, babushka; why do you stand? Sit down here and take off your wallet,” said he.
“There is no room in there for her to sit down. Take her into the dark room,”[15] remarked some woman.
“Ah, here we have Madame de Chalmé,” said a young lackey, pointing to the cocks on the back of Tikhonovna’s zipun; “stockings and slippers too!” He pointed to her leg wrappers and bark shoes—novelties for Moscow.
“You ought to have some like them, Parasha.”
“Come, come into the izba. I will show you the way.”
And the old cobbler, thrusting in his awl, got up, but as he caught sight of a young girl he called to her and bade her lead the old woman into the kitchen.
Tikhonovna not only paid no heed to what was said around her and about her, but she did not even hear it or notice it. Ever since she had left her home she had been impressed with the sense of the necessity of laboring in God’s service, and with one other feeling which had come into her soul she knew not how—the necessity of presenting the petition. As she left the sitting-room where the people were, she went close to the deacon’s wife, and bowing low said:—
“For Christ’s sake, Matushka Paramonovna, don’t forget my business. Ask if there isn’t some man.”
“What does the old woman want?”
“She has a grievance, and the people advise her to present a petition to the Czar.”
“Go straight to the Czar and take it,” said the joker of a lackey.
“Oh, fool, what an ill-bred fool,” said the old cobbler. “I will teach you with my last, in spite of your good coat, not to make sport of old women.”
The lackey began to call names, but the old man, not heeding him, led Tikhonovna into the kitchen. Tikhonovna was glad to be sent out from the crowded sitting-room and led into the “black” izba which the coachmen frequented. In the sitting-room everything was too clean and the people were all clean, and Tikhonovna did not feel at home. But in the coachmen’s “black” izba it was like the hut of a peasant, and Tikhonovna was much more contented. The room was finished in spruce, and measured about twenty-one feet, and dark, with a great stove and with sleeping-benches and berths, and the newly laid floor was all trampled over with mud. When Tikhonovna entered the izba she found there the cook, a white, ruddy, fat peasant woman with the sleeves of her chintz dress rolled up, laboriously putting a pot into the oven with an oven-hook; then a fine-looking young coachman practicing the balalaïka, and a crooked-legged old man with a full, white, soft beard sitting on the sleeping-bench, with a skein of silk in his mouth, sewing something delicate and beautiful; a ragged, dark young man in a shirt and blue trousers, with a surly face, chewing bread, was sitting on a bench near the stove, leaning his head on both hands, supported on his knees.
The barefooted girl with shining eyes ran with her light young legs in advance of the old woman, and opened the door, which was dripping with steam, and whined with her high-pitched voice:—
“Auntie Marina, Simonuitch sends this old woman to you and tells you to give her something to eat. She is from our parts, and has been making a pilgrimage to the saints with Paramonovna. They are giving Paramonovna some tea, and Vlasyevna sends this one to you.”
The fluent little girl would have continued still longer talking glibly; the words seemed to flow from her mouth, and she evidently liked to hear her own voice. But Marina, who was sweating over the oven, not having settled to her satisfaction the pot of shchi which stuck half way in the oven, cried out angrily to her:—
“Now, that’ll do. Stop your chatter; how can we feed any more old women; we can’t even feed our own. Curse you,” she cried, to the pot which almost tipped over as it moved from its hearth on which it had stuck.
But having once got her pot settled she looked round, and seeing the pleasant-faced Tikhonovna with her wallet and in regular country attire, kissing the cross and bowing low to the corner where the images were, she instantly felt compunction for her words; and, apparently bethinking her of the labors which tormented her, and putting her hand to her breast where below the collar-bone the buttons fastened her dress, she felt to see if one was unfastened, and, putting her hand to her head, she pulled back the knot of her kerchief which covered her well-oiled hair, and thus she stood leaning on her oven-fork waiting for the greeting of the pleasant-looking old woman. Having bowed for the last time to the image, Tikhonovna turned round and bowed to the three directions.
“God be your refuge! I wish your health,”[16] said she.
“We ask your blessing, auntie,” said the tailor.
“Thank you, babushka, take off your wallet. There is a place for you,” said the cook, pointing to the bench where the ragged man sat. “Make yourself at home, if you can. How cold it is growing, isn’t it?”
The ragged fellow, scowling still more angrily, got up, moved along, and, still chewing his bread, kept his eyes fixed on the old woman. The young coachman bowed low, and, ceasing to strum his instrument, began to tune up the strings of his balalaïka, looking first at the old woman, then at the tailor, not knowing how to treat the old woman: whether with deference as it seemed to him proper, because the old woman wore the same kind of attire as his babushka and the mother of his house did—he was a postilion taken from among the muzhiks—or banteringly, as he would have liked to do, and as it seemed to him the suitable thing for him in his present position in his blue poddevka and his top boots. The tailor closed one eye and seemed to smile, pushing the skein of silk to one side of his mouth, and he also looked at her. Marina started to put in another pot, but, though she was buzy with her work, she looked at the old woman as she cleverly and deftly took off her wallet, and, endeavoring not to incommode any one, stowed it under the bench. Nastka ran to her and helped her; she took out from under the bench the boots which were in the way of the wallet.
“Uncle Pankrat,” she cried, addressing the surly man, “I have your boots here; what shall I do with them?”
“The devil take them; throw them into the oven,” said the surly man, flinging them into the farther corner.
“Come here, you wise one, Nastka,” said the tailor; “the journeyman needs some one to pacify him.”
“Christ save you, little girl. It is so comfortable,” said Tikhonovna. “Only, my dear young man, we have disturbed you,” said the old woman, addressing Pankrat.
“It is of no consequence,” said Pankrat.
Tikhonovna sat down on the bench, taking off her zipun and carefully folding it up, and then she began to take off her foot-gear. First of all, she unwound her cords, which she had smoothed with the greatest solicitude for this pilgrimage; then she unwound carefully the lamb’s-wool white leg-wrappers, and, carefully folding them, laid them on her wallet.
While she was unwinding the second leg, Marina awkwardly again caught the pot on something, and it spilled over, and she began once more to scold, grasping it with her oven-hook.
“Something has evidently burnt out the hearth. You ought to have it plastered,” said Tikhonovna.
“How can I get it plastered? The chimney is not right; you put in two loaves of bread a day, you take out some, but the others are spoiled.”
In answer to Marina’s complaints about the loaves and the burnt-out hearth, the tailor stood up in defense of the conveniences of the Chernuishevsky house, and he explained how they had come suddenly to Moscow, that the whole izba had been built in three weeks, and the oven set up; and there were at least a hundred domestics, all of whom had to be fed.
“It’s evident it is hard work. It is a great establishment,” said Tikhonovna.
“And where did God bring you from, babushka?” asked the tailor.
And immediately Tikhonovna, while still continuing to divest herself of her wraps, told whence she came and where she had been and how she was on her way home. But she said nothing about the petition. The conversation went on uninterruptedly. The tailor learned all about the old woman, and the old woman learned about the awkward and handsome Marina, how her husband was a soldier and she had been taken as a cook, that the tailor himself was making caftans for the coachmen, that the little girl who ran errands was the housekeeper’s orphan, and that the shaggy, surly Pankrat was in the employ of the overseer, Ivan Vasilyevitch.
Pankrat left the izba, stumbling at the door; the tailor told how he was such a clownish peasant, but to-day was particularly surly. That afternoon he had broken two of the overseer’s windows, and that day they were going to flog him at the stable. Ivan Vasilyevitch is coming now to attend to the flogging. The little coachman was a countryman taken to be postilion,[17] and he is growing up, and is now getting his hand in to take care of the horses, and he plays the balalaïka, but he is not very skilled at it.....
[1] Khlyeb-sol.
[2] Voprosui kadetskikh korpusof.
[3] Batyushka.
[4] Vashe vuisokoprevaskhadityelstvo.
[5] Moskva-to, Moskva-to matushka byelokamennaya.
[6] Shiushka.
[7] Liturgy in behalf of the Emperor and his family.
[8] Batyushka, angel tui moï.
[9] The priest was very angry, because I kept watching him all the time.
[10] “Like a malefactor.”
[11] Ekonomichesky krestyanin was formerly a peasant who belonged to a monastery and was subject to an ekonom or steward.
[12] Izba-kontora.
[13] Blazhennaya, an eccentric, fanatic woman.
[14] S Bogom, baushka; baushka for babushka, old woman.
[15] Chornaya izba, dark room of the hut, in contradistinction to the chistaya izba, the room where there is no oven.
[16] Bog pomotch, zdravstvuïte.
[17] The old peasant calls the German word Vorreiter, foletorui.