A son, an heir! To whom shall I give my capital after my
death? Who shall pray for my sins? Shall I give it to a cloister? I have
given them enough! Or shall I leave it to you? What a fine pilgrim you
are! Even in church you think only of fish pies. If I die, you'll marry
again, and my money will be turned over to some fool. Do you think this
is what I am working for?"

And he was seized with sardonic anguish, for he felt that his life was
aimless if he should have no son to follow him.

During the nine years of their married life his wife had borne him four
daughters, all of whom had passed away. While Ignat had awaited their
birth tremblingly, he mourned their death but little--at any rate they
were unnecessary to him. He began to beat his wife during the second
year of their married life; at first he did it while being intoxicated
and without animosity, but just according to the proverb: "Love your
wife like your soul and shake her like a pear-tree;" but after each
confinement, deceived in his expectation, his hatred for his wife grew
stronger, and he began to beat her with pleasure, in revenge for not
bearing him a son.

Once while on business in the province of Samarsk, he received a
telegram from relatives at home, informing him of his wife's death.
He made the sign of the cross, thought awhile and wrote to his friend
Mayakin:

"Bury her in my absence; look after my property."

Then he went to the church to serve the mass for the dead, and, having
prayed for the repose of the late Aquilina's soul, he began to think
that it was necessary for him to marry as soon as possible.

He was then forty-three years old, tall, broad-shouldered, with a heavy
bass voice, like an arch-deacon; his large eyes looked bold and wise
from under his dark eyebrows; in his sunburnt face, overgrown with a
thick, black beard, and in all his mighty figure there was much truly
Russian, crude and healthy beauty; in his easy motions as well as in
his slow, proud walk, a consciousness of power was evident--a firm
confidence in himself. He was liked by women and did not avoid them.

Ere six months had passed after the death of his wife, he courted the
daughter of an Ural Cossack. The father of the bride, notwithstanding
that Ignat was known even in Ural as a "pranky" man, gave him his
daughter in marriage, and toward autumn Ignat Gordyeeff came home with
a young Cossack-wife. Her name was Natalya. Tall, well-built, with large
blue eyes a