follies of young people; she folds her hands over her bosom, throws back
her head, puckers up her eyes, and sits smiling at them, then all of a
sudden she heaves a sigh, and says, 'Ah, my children, my children!'...
Sometimes one longs to go up to her, take hold of her hands and say:
'Let me tell you, Tatyana Borissovna, you don't know your own value; for
all your simplicity and lack of learning, you're an extraordinary
creature!' Her very name has a sweet familiar ring; one is glad to utter
it; it calls up a kindly smile at once. How often, for instance, have I
chanced to ask a peasant: 'Tell me, my friend, how am I to get to
Gratchevka?' let us say. 'Well, sir, you go on first to Vyazovoe, and
from there to Tatyana Borissovna's, and from Tatyana Borissovna's any
one will show you the way.' And at the name of Tatyana Borissovna the
peasant wags his head in quite a special way. Her household is small, in
accordance with her means. The house, the laundry, the stores and the
kitchen, are in the charge of the housekeeper, Agafya, once her nurse, a
good-natured, tearful, toothless creature; she has under her two
stalwart girls with stout crimson cheeks like Antonovsky apples. The
duties of valet, steward, and waiter are filled by Policarp, an
extraordinary old man of seventy, a queer fellow, full of erudition,
once a violinist and worshipper of Viotti, with a personal hostility to
Napoleon, or, as he calls him, Bonaparty, and a passion for
nightingales. He always keeps five or six of the latter in his room; in
early spring he will sit for whole days together by the cage, waiting
for the first trill, and when he hears it, he covers his face with his
hands, and moans, 'Oh, piteous, piteous!' and sheds tears in floods.
Policarp has, to help him, his grandson Vasya, a curly-headed,
sharp-eyed boy of twelve; Policarp adores him, and grumbles at him from
morning till night. He undertakes his education too. 'Vasya,' he says,
'say Bonaparty was a scoundrel.' 'And what'll you give me, granddad?'
'What'll I give you?... I'll give you nothing.... Why, what are you?