Ivan Matveitch was quite indignant, and often afterwards quoted the phrase
as an example of the senselessness and absurdity of the Russian tongue.
'What does it mean, that same's self-understood?' he would ask in Russian,
with emphasis on each syllable. 'Why not simply that's understood, and why
same and self?'

Ivan Matveitch did not, however, dismiss Mr. Ratsch, he did not even
deprive him of his position. But my stepfather kept his word: he never
forgot it.

I began to notice a change in Ivan Matveitch. He was low-spirited,
depressed, his health broke down a little. His fresh, rosy face grew
yellow and wrinkled; he lost a front tooth. He quite ceased going out,
and gave up the reception-days he had established for the peasants,
without the assistance of the priest, _sans le concours du clerge_.
On such days Ivan Matveitch had been in the habit of going in to the
peasants in the hall or on the balcony, with a rose in his buttonhole,
and putting his lips to a silver goblet of vodka, he would make them a
speech something like this: 'You are content with my actions, even as I
am content with your zeal, whereat I rejoice truly. We are all _brothers_;
at our birth we are equal; I drink your health!' He bowed to them, and
the peasants bowed to him, but only from the waist, no prostrating
themselves to the ground, that was strictly forbidden. The peasants were
entertained with good cheer as before, but Ivan Matveitch no longer
showed himself to his subjects. Sometimes he interrupted my reading with
exclamations: 'La machine se detraque! Cela se gate!' Even his
eyes--those bright, stony eyes--began to grow dim and, as it were,
smaller; he dozed oftener than ever and breathed hard in his sleep. His
manner with me was unchanged; only a shade of chivalrous deference began
to be perceptible in it. He never failed to get up--though with