will Foma Opiskin be your toady, your flatterer, your sycophant! I can assure you of that, if of anything. …”
“Oh, Foma! You misunderstand me, Foma.”
“No, Colonel; I have seen through you for a long time, I know you through and through. You are devoured by boundless vanity. You have pretensions to an incomparable keenness of wit, and forget that wit is blunted by pretension. You …”
“Oh, stop, Foma, for God’s sake! Have some shame, if only before people!”
“It’s sad, you know, to see all this, Colonel, and it’s im-
possible to be silent when one sees it. I am poor, I am living at the expense of your mother. It may be expected, perhaps, that I should flatter you by my silence, and I don’t care for any milksop to take me for your toady! Possibly when I came into this room just now I intentionally accentuated my truthful candour, was forced to be intentionally rude, just because you yourself put me into such a position. You are too haughty with me, Colonel, I may be taken for your slave, your toady. Your pleasure is to humiliate me before strangers, while I am really your equal — your equal in every respect. Perhaps I am doing you a favour in living with you, and not you doing me one. I am insulted, so I am forced to sing my own praises — that’s natural I I cannot help speaking, I must speak, I am bound at once to protest, and that is why I tell you straight out that you are phenomenally envious. You see, for instance, someone in a simple friendly conversation unconsciously reveals his knowledge, his reading, his taste, and so you are annoyed, you can’t sit still. ‘Let me display my knowledge and my taste,’ you think! And what taste have you, if you will allow me to ask? You know as much about art — if you will excuse my saying so, Colonel — as a bull about beef! That’s harsh and rude, I admit; anyway it is straightforward and just. You won’t hear that from your flatterers, Colonel.’
“Oh, Foma! …”
“It is ‘Oh, Foma,’ to be sure. The truth is not a feather bed, it seems. Very well, then, we will speak later about this, but now let me entertain the company a little. You can’t be the only one to distinguish yourself all the time. Pavel Semyonitch, have you seen this sea monster in human form? I have been observing him for a long time. Look well at him; why, he would like to devour me whole, at one gulp.”
He was speaking of Gavrila. The old servant was standing at the door, and certainly was looking on with distress at the scolding of his master.
“I want to entertain you, too, with a performance, Pavel Semyonitch. Come here, you scarecrow, come here! Condescend to approach us a little nearer, Gavrila Ignatitch! Here you see, Pavel Semyonitch, is Gavrila; as a punishment for rudeness he is studying the French dialect. Like Orpheus, I soften the manners of these parts not only with songs but with the French dialect. Come, Mossoo Frenchy — he can’t bear to be called Mossoo — do you know your lesson?”
“I have learnt it,” said Gavrila, hanging his head.
‘‘Well, Parlay — voo — fransay?’’
“Vee, moossyu, zhe — le — pari — on — peu. …”
I don’t know whether it was Gavrila’s mournful face as he uttered the French phrase, or whether they were all aware of Foma’s desire that they should laugh, but anyway they all burst into a roar of laughter as soon as Gavrila opened his lips. Even Madame la Générale deigned to be amused. Anfisa Petrovna, sinking back on the sofa, shrieked, hiding her face behind her fan. What seemed most ludicrous was that Gavrila, seeing what his examination was being turned into, could not restrain himself from spitting and commenting reproachfully: “To think of having lived to such disgrace in my old age!”
Foma Fomitch was startled.
“What? What did you say? So you think fit to be rude?”
“No, Foma Fomitch,” Gavnla replied with dignity. “My words were no rudeness, and it’s not for me, a serf, to be rude to you, a gentleman born. But every man bears the image of God upon him, His image and semblance. I am sixty-three years old. My father remembers Pugatchev, the monster, and my grandfather helped his master, Matvey Nikititch — God grant him the kingdom of heaven — to hang Pugatchev on an aspen tree, for which my father was honoured beyond all others by our late master, Afanasy Matveyitch: he was his valet, and ended his life as butler. As for me, Foma Fomitch, sir, though I am my master’s bondman, I have never known such a shame done me from my birth upward till now.”
And at the last word Gavrila spread out his hands and hung his head. My uncle was watching him uneasily.
“Come, that’s enough, Gavrila,” he cried. “No need to say more, that’s enough!”
“Never mind, never mind,” said Foma, turning a little pale and giving a forced smile. “Let him speak, these are the fruits of your …”
“I will tell you everything,” said Gavrila with extraordinary fervour, “I will conceal nothing! You may bind the hands, but there is no binding the tongue. Though I may seem beside you, Foma Fomitch, a low man, in fact a slave, yet I can feel insulted! Service and obedience I am always bound to give you, because I am born a slave and must do my duty in fear and trembling. You sit writing a book, it’s my duty not to let you be interrupted — that is my real duty. Any service that is needed I am pleased to do. But in my old age to bleat in some outlandish way and be put to shame before folk! Why, I can’t go into the servants’ room now: ‘You are a Frenchyl’ they say, ‘a Frenchy!’ No, Foma Fomitch, sir, it’s not only a fool like me, but all good folks have begun to say the same: that you have become now a wicked man and that our master is nothing but a little child before you, that though you are a gentleman by birth and a general’s son, and yourself may be near being a general too, yet you are as wicked as a real fury must be.”
Gavrila had finished. I was beside myself with delight. Foma Fomitch sat pale with rage in the midst of the general discomfiture and seemed unable to recover from Gavrila’s sudden attack upon him; he seemed at that moment to be deliberating how far his wrath should carry him. At last the outburst followed.
“What, he dares to be rude to me — me! but this is mutiny!” shrieked Foma, and he leapt up from his chair.
Madame la Générale followed his example, clasping her hands. There was a general commotion, my uncle rushed to turn the culprit out, “Put him in fetters, put him in fetters!” cried Madame la G£nerale. “Take him to the town at once and send him for a soldier, Yegorushka, or you shall not have my blessing. Fix the fetters on him at once, and send him for a soldier.”
“What!” cried Foma. “Slave! Lout! Hamlet! He dares to be rude to me! He, he, a rag to wipe my boots! He dares to call me a fury!”
I slipped forward with unusual determination.
“I must confess that in this affair I am completely of Gavrila’s opinion,” I said, looking Foma Fomitch straight in the face and trembling with excitement.
He was so taken aback by this onslaught that for the first minute he seemed unable to believe his ears.
“What’s this now?” he cried out at last, pouncing upon me in a frenzy, and fixing his little bloodshot eyes upon me. “Why, who are you?”
“Foma Fomitch ..,” my uncle, utterly distracted, began, “this is Seryozha, my nephew… .”
“The learned gentleman!” yelled Foma. “So he’s the learned gentleman! Liberie — egahte — fratermte. Journal des
