y. Knowing
his kind-heartedness, I was surprised at his words.--It is a difficult
matter to judge between parents and children.--"A vast ravine begins
with a tiny rift," Alexyei Sergyeitch had said to me on another
occasion, referring to the same subject. "A wound an arshin long will
heal over, but if you cut off so much as a nail, it will not grow
again!"

I have an idea that the daughters were ashamed of their eccentric old
folks.

A month later Malanya Pavlovna expired also. She hardly rose from her
bed again after the day of Alexyei Sergyeitch's death, and did not
array herself; but they buried her in the blue jacket, and with the
medal of Orloff on her shoulder, only minus the diamonds. The daughters
shared those between them, under the pretext that those diamonds were to
be used for the setting of holy pictures; but as a matter of fact they
used them to adorn their own persons.

And now how vividly do my old people stand before me, and what a good
memory I cherish of them! And yet, during my very last visit to them (I
was already a student at the time) an incident occurred which injected
some discord into the harmoniously-patriarchal mood with which the
Telyegin house inspired me.

Among the number of the household serfs was a certain Ivan, nicknamed
"Sukhikh--the coachman, or the little coachman, as he was called, on
account of his small size, in spite of his years, which were not few. He
was a tiny scrap of a man, nimble, snub-nosed, curly-haired, with a
perennial smile on his infantile countenance, and little, mouse-like
eyes. He was a great joker and buffoon; he was able to acquire any
trick; he set off fireworks, snakes, played all card-games, galloped his
horse while standing erect on it, flew higher than any one else in the
swing, and even knew how to present Chinese shadows. There was no one
who could amuse children better than he, and he would have been only
too glad to occupy himself with them all day long. When he got to
laughing he set the whole house astir. People would answer him from this
point and that--every one would join in.... They would both abuse him
and laugh.--Ivan danced marvellously--especially 'the fish.'--The chorus
would thunder out a dance tune, the young fellow would step into the
middle of the circle, and begin to leap and twist about and stamp his
feet, and then come down with a crash on the ground--and there represent
the movements of a fish which has been thrown out of the w