could oppose her. Her husband was a trifling creature, and drank. Arina Petrovna used to say of herself that she was neither a widow nor a married woman. Some of the children were in St. Petersburg, the others took after their father and were relegated to the class of "horrid creatures," who were unfit for household duties. In these circumstances Arina Petrovna soon began to feel all left alone, and grew totally disaccustomed to family life, although the word "family" was constantly on her lips, and outwardly she seemed to be exclusively guided in all her work by the desire to build up the family estate and keep the family affairs in order.

The head of the family, Vladimir Mikhailych Golovliov, was known from his youth as a dissolute, quarrelsome fellow, with nothing in his character that would be sympathetic to a serious, active woman like Arina Petrovna. He led a lazy, good-for-nothing existence, usually stayed locked up in his room, where he imitated the warble of the starlings, the crowing of cocks, and the like, and composed ribald doggerel. In bursts of confidence he would boast that he had been a friend of the poet Barkov, intimating that the poet had blessed him on his deathbed. Arina Petrovna disliked her husband's verses from the very first. "Nasty stuff!" "Trash!" she called them. And since Vladimir Mikhailych's very object in marrying had been to have someone ever at hand to listen to his poetry, the result was that quarrels soon began, which grew worse and worse and more frequent until they ended with Arina Petrovna utterly indifferent and contemptuous of her clown husband, and Vladimir Mikhailych hating his wife sincerely, with a hatred considerably mixed with fear. The husband called the wife a "hag" and a "devil"; the wife called the husband a "windmill" and a "balalaika without strings."

They lived together in this way for more than forty years, and it never occurred to either of them that there was anything unnatural in such a life. Time did not diminish Vladimir Mikhailych's quarrelsomeness; on the contrary, it took on a still sharper edge. Apart from the poetical exercising in Barkov's spirit that he did, he began to drink and to lie in wait eagerly for the servant girls in the corridors. At first Arina Petrovna looked on this new occupation of her husband's with repugnance. She even got wrought up over it, not so much from jealousy as that she felt it to be an interference with her authority. After a while, however, she shrugged her shoulders, and merely watched out that the "dirty wenches" should not fetch brandy for their master.

From that time on, having said to herself once for all that her husband was not a companion, she directed her efforts exclusively to one object, the building up of the estate. And in the forty years of her married life she actually succeeded in multiplying her property tenfold. With astonishing patience and acumen she kept her eye on the near and distant villages, found out in secret ways the relations that existed between the neighboring landowners and the board of trustees, and always appeared at the auctions like snow on the head. In this fantastic hunt for new acquisitions Vladimir Mikhailych receded more and more into the background, turned seedy and at last dropped out of social life completely. He was now a decrepit old man already, keeping his bed almost the whole time. On the rare occasions that he left his room it was only to stick his head through the half-open door of his wife's bedroom and shout: "Devil!" After which he would go back and close himself up in his own room again.

Arina Petrovna was not much happier in her children. She was of a celibate nature, so to speak, independent and self-sufficient, and her children were nothing to her but a useless burden. The only times when she breathed freely was when she was alone with her accounts and her household affairs, and when no one interfered with her business talks with her managers, stewards, housekeepers, and so on. In her eyes, children were one of the preordained things in life that she felt she had no right to protest against. Nevertheless they did not touch a single chord in her inner being, which was given over wholly to the numberless details of the household.

There were four children, one daughter and three sons. Of the oldest son and the daughter she did not even like to speak; toward the youngest son she was indifferent. It was only for the middle one, Porfisha, that she cherished any feeling at all, a feeling not of love, but of something very akin to fear.

Stepan Vladimirych, the oldest son, passed in the family by the name of Simple Simon, or The Saucebox. He was very young when he was put into the class of "horrid creatures," and from childhood up played the rôle of half pariah, half clown. Unfortunately he was a bright child, susceptible to the impressions of his environment. From his father he inherited an irresistible inclination to play tricks, from his mother the ability to divine the weak sides of people's natures. The first characteristic soon made him his father's favorite, which still further intensified his mother's dislike of him. Often when the mother was absent on business, the father and the boy would betake themselves into the study adorned with the portrait of Barkov, read ribald poems, and gossip, the chief butt of their raillery being the "hag," that is to say, Arina Petrovna. The "hag," instinctively divining their occupation, would drive up to the front steps very quietly, then tiptoe to the study door and listen to their fun-making. The murderous punishment of Simple Simon followed swift and cruel. But Stiopka was not subdued. He was impervious either to blows or to admonitions, and in half an hour was back again at his tricks. He would cut up Aniutka's, the servant girl's, scarf, or he would stick flies into Vasiutka's mouth while he slept, or he would run into the kitchen and carry off a cake (Arina Petrovna kept her children half hungry), which he always divided with his brothers.

"You ought to be killed," his mother said. "I'll kill you, and I won't have to answer for it either. Even God won't punish me for it."

This humiliation, constantly put upon a nature soft, yielding and forgetful, did not remain without its effect. It did not embitter him, nor did it make him rebellious. It made him servile, disposed to buffoonery, with no sense of the fitness of things, and devoid of all foresight and prudence. Such natures yield to all influences and may become almost anything—drunkards, beggars, buffoons, even criminals.

At the age of twenty Stepan Golovliov graduated from the gymnasium in Moscow and entered the university. But his student's life was a bitter one. In the first place, his mother gave him just enough money to keep him from dying of hunger. Secondly, he did not show the least inclination to work. Instead, he developed an accursed talent, which expressed itself chiefly in mimickry. And he suffered from a desire for constant companionship. He hated to be alone a single instant. So he played the light rôle of hanger-on and parasite, and thanks to his readiness for any prank he soon became the favorite of the rich students. However, though they received him into their society, they looked on him, not as one of them, but as a clown; and the reputation clung to him. Once placed on such a plane, he naturally slid down lower and lower, and at the end of the fourth year was thoroughly confirmed in his clownship. Nevertheless, thanks to his receptive ability and good memory, he passed the examinations successfully and received his bachelor's degree.

When he appeared before his mother with the diploma, she merely shrugged her shoulders and said: "Well, that's funny." Then, after letting him spend a month in the country, she shipped him back to St. Petersburg with an allowance of a hundred rubles a month. Now there began for him endless visits to various government offices. He had neither patrons nor the determination to make his own way by hard work. The lad's mind had lost so completely the habit of concentration