Fathers and Sons

“Well, Pyotr, still not in sight?” was the question asked on 20th May, 1859, by a gentleman of about forty, wearing a dusty overcoat and checked trousers, who came out hatless into the low porch of the posting station at X.
He was speaking to his servant, a chubby young fellow with whitish down growing on his chin and with dim little eyes.

The servant, in whom everything — the turquoise ring in his ear, the hair plastered down with grease and the polite flexibility of his movements — indicated a man of the new improved generation, glanced condescendingly along the road and answered,

“No, sir, definitely not in sight.”

“Not in sight?” repeated his master.

“No, sir,” replied the servant again.

His master sighed and sat down on a little bench.

We will introduce him to the reader while he sits, with his feet tucked in, looking thoughtfully around.

His name was Nikolai Petrovich Kirsanov.

He owned, about twelve miles from the posting station, a fine property of two hundred serfs or, as he called it — since he had arranged the division of his land with the peasants — a “farm” of nearly five thousand acres.

His father, a general in the army, who had served in 1812, a crude, almost illiterate, but good-natured type of Russian, had stuck to a routine job all his life, first commanding a brigade and later a division, and lived permanently in the provinces, where by virtue of his rank he was able to play a certain part.

Nikolai Petrovich was born in south Russia, as was his elder brother Pavel, of whom we shall hear more; till the age of fourteen he was educated at home, surrounded by cheap tutors, free-and-easy but fawning adjutants, and all the usual regimental and staff people.

His mother, a member of the Kolyazin family, was called Agatha as a girl, but as a general’s wife her name was Agafoklea Kuzminishna Kirsanov; she was a domineering military lady, wore gorgeous caps and rustling silk dresses; in church she was the first to go up to the cross, she talked a lot in a loud voice, let her children kiss her hand every morning and gave them her blessing at night — in fact, she enjoyed her life and got as much out of it as she could.

As a general’s son, Nikolai Petrovich — though so far from brave that he had even been called a “funk” — was intended, like his brother Pavel, to enter the army; but he broke his leg on the very day he obtained a commission and after spending two months in bed he never got rid of a slight limp for the rest of his life.