Frenchman, M. Beaupré, who was imported from Moscow at the same time as
the annual provision of wine and Provence oil. His arrival displeased
Savéliitch very much.

"It seems to me, thank heaven," murmured he, "the child was washed,
combed, and fed. What was the good of spending money and hiring a
'_moussié_,' as if there were not enough servants in the house?"

Beaupré, in his native country, had been a hairdresser, then a soldier
in Prussia, and then had come to Russia to be "_outchitel_," without
very well knowing the meaning of this word.[3] He was a good creature,
but wonderfully absent and hare-brained. His greatest weakness was a
love of the fair sex. Neither, as he said himself, was he averse to the
bottle, that is, as we say in Russia, that his passion was drink. But,
as in our house the wine only appeared at table, and then only in
_liqueur_ glasses, and as on these occasions it somehow never came to
the turn of the "_outchitel_" to be served at all, my Beaupré soon
accustomed himself to the Russian brandy, and ended by even preferring
it to all the wines of his native country as much better for the
stomach. We became great friends, and though, according to the contract,
he had engaged himself to teach me _French, German, and all the
sciences_, he liked better learning of me to chatter Russian
indifferently. Each of us busied himself with our own affairs; our
friendship was firm, and I did not wish for a better mentor. But Fate
soon parted us, and it was through an event which I am going to relate.

The washerwoman, Polashka, a fat girl, pitted with small-pox, and the
one-eyed cow-girl, Akoulka, came one fine day to my mother with such
stories against the "_moussié_," that she, who did not at all like these
kind of jokes, in her turn complained to my father, who, a man of hasty