rendered, in ordering a refuge
to be built for them!
Thus was my Skinflint inwardly exulting over his house.
Then one of his acquaintances chanced along.
The Skinflint said, with rapture, to his friend,
'I think a great lot of the poor can be housed here!'
'Of course, a great many can live here;
But you cannot get in all whom you've sent wandering homeless o'er
the earth!'"

One of Khemnitzer's most intimate friends, and also one of the most
notable members of Derzhavin's circle (being related to the latter
through his wife), was Vasily Vasilievitch Kapnist (1757-1824), whose
ancestors had been members of an Italian family, the Counts Capnissi. He
owed his fame chiefly to his ode on "Slavery" (1783); to another, "On
the Extirpation in Russia of the Vocation of Slave by the Empress
Katherine II." (1786); and to a whole series celebrating the conquests
of the Russian arms in Turkey and Italy. But far more important are his
elegies and short lyrics, many of which are really very light and
graceful; and his translations of "The Monument," from Horace, which was
quite equal to Derzhavin's, or even Pushkin's. His masterpiece was the
comedy "Yabeda" (Calumny), which was written probably at the end of
Katherine's reign, and was printed under Paul I., in 1798. It contains a
sharp condemnation of the morals in the provincial courts of justice,
and of the incredible processes of chicanery and bribery through which
every business matter was forced to pass. The types which Kapnist put on
the stage, especially the pettifogger Pravoloff, and the types of the
presiding judge and members of the bench, were very accurately drawn,
and can hardly fail to have been taken from life. Alarmed by the
numerous persecutions of literary men which took place during the last
years of Katherine II.'s reign, Kapnist dared not publish his comedy
until the accession of the Emperor Paul I., when he dedicated it to the
Emperor, and set forth in a poetical preface the entire harmlessness of
his satire. But even this precaution was of no avail. The comedy created
a tremendous uproar and outcry from officialdom in general; the Emperor
was petitioned to prohibit the piece, and to administer severe
punishment to the "unpatriotic" author. The Emperor is said to have
taken the petition in good faith and to have ordered that Kapnist be
dispatched forthwith to Siberia. But after dinner his wrath cooled (the
petiti