caused your wound? God sees that I was running to put my breast
before you, to receive the sword of Alexis. This cursed age of mine
hindered me. But what have I done to your mother?"

"What have you done? Who charged you to write an accusation against
me? Were you taken into my service to play the spy on me?"

"I write an accusation?" replied the old man, quite broken down, "O
God! King of heaven! Here, read what the master writes me, and you
shall see if I denounced thee." At the same time he drew from his
pocket a letter which he gave me, and I read what follows:

"Shame upon you, you old dog, that notwithstanding my strict orders
you wrote me nothing regarding my son, leaving to strangers the duty
of telling me of his follies. Is it thus you do your duty and fulfill
your master's will? I shall send you to keep the pigs, for having
concealed the truth, and for your condescension to the young man.
Upon receipt of this letter inform me immediately of the state of his
health, which is, I hear, improving, and tell me precisely the place
of his wound, and whether he has well attended."

Evidently Saveliitch was not in the wrong, and I had offended him by my
suspicions and reproaches. I asked him to forgive me, but the old man
was inconsolable. "See to what I have lived!" he repeated; "see what
thanks I have merited from my masters for all my long services! I am
an old dog! I am a swine-herd, and more than all that, I caused your
wound. No, no, Peter, I am not in fault, it is the cursed Frenchman
who taught thee to play with these steel blades, and to stamp and
dance, as if by thrusting and dancing you could defend yourself from
a bad man."