LinguaBoosterlearning foreign languages

The Golovlyov Family

✒ Author
📖 Pages548
⏰ Reading time 18 hours 45 minutes
💡 Originally published1880
🌏 Original language Russian
📌 Type Novels
📌 Genres Realism, Social

Work in other languages

Read the book

BOOK I — THE FAMILY COUNCIL - CHAPTER I

Anton Vasilyev, the manager of a remote estate, was giving his mistress, Arina Petrovna Golovliov, an account of his trip to Moscow. He had gone there to collect the money due from those of her peasant serfs who bought the right to live in the city by paying her a tax. When he had finished with his report, she told him he might retire, but he lingered on irresolutely, as though he had something else to say, yet could not make up his mind to say it.
Arina Petrovna knew her servants through and through; she knew the meaning of their slightest gestures, she could even divine their inmost thoughts. And her steward's manner immediately aroused her disquietude.
"What else?" she asked, looking at him keenly.
"That's all," he replied evasively.
"Don't lie. There is something else. I can see it by your eyes."
Anton Vasilyev still hesitated and continued to shift from one foot to the other.
"What is it? Tell me!" she shouted imperiously. "Out with it, out with it! And don't wag your whole body like a dog, Telltale!"
Arina Petrovna liked to call her managers and domestics by nicknames.
She used Telltale for Anton Vasilyev, not because she had found him to carry gossip treacherously, but simply because he had a loose tongue.
The centre of the estate that he managed was an important trading village in which there were many taverns.
He liked to take a glass of tea in a tavern and boast of his mistress's great power. And in the course of his boasting he would sometimes unconsciously blab out secrets.
His mistress was always with a lawsuit on her hands, so that her trusty's garrulousness sometimes brought her sly stratagems to the surface before they could be executed.
"Yes, I have got something else to say," Anton finally mumbled.
"What is it?" Arina Petrovna asked excitedly.
An imperious woman, with an extraordinarily lively imagination, she instantly pictured all sorts of disagreeable opposition and antagonism, and the thought so instantly took complete possession of her that she turned white and jumped up from her chair.
"Stepan Vladimirych's house in Moscow has been sold," Anton said after a pause.
"Well?"
"It's been sold."
"Why? How? Tell me."
"For debts, I suppose.
Of course it can't be because of something nice."
Page 1 of 548

You can use the left and right keys on the keyboard to navigate between book pages.

Suggest a quote

Download the book for free in PDF, FB2, EPUb, DOC and TXT

Download the free e-book by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, «The Golovlyov Family» , in English. You can also print the text of the book. For this, the PDF and DOC formats are suitable.

You may be interested in

Be the first to comment

Add

Add comment