ny goods
stored in them--some of them, in fact, were in an extremely delapidated
condition--but they had been there in olden days and were consequently
allowed to remain.

The Subotchevs had only two ancient shaggy saddle horses, one of which,
called the Immovable, had turned grey from old age. They were harnessed
several times a month to an extraordinary carriage, known to the whole
town, which bore a faint resemblance to a terrestrial globe with a
quarter of it cut away in front, and was upholstered inside with some
foreign, yellowish stuff, covered with a pattern of huge dots, looking
for all the world like warts. The last yard of this stuff must have
been woven in Utrecht or Lyons in the time of the Empress Elisabeth! The
Subotchev's coachman, too, was old--an ancient, ancient old man with a
constant smell of tar and cart-oil about him. His beard began just below
the eyes, while the eyebrows fell in little cascades to meet it. He was
called Perfishka, and was extremely slow in his movements. It took him
at least five minutes to take a pinch of snuff, two minutes to fasten
the whip in his girdle, and two whole hours to harness the Immovable
alone. If when out driving in their carriage the Subotchevs were ever
compelled to go the least bit up or down hill, they would become quite
terrified, would cling to the straps, and both cry aloud, "Oh Lord...
give.. the horses... the horses... the strength of Samson... and make
us... as light as a feather!"

The Subotchevs were regarded by everyone in the town as very eccentric,
almost mad, and indeed they too felt that they were not in keeping with
modern times. This, however, did not grieve them very much, and they
quietly continued to follow the manner of life in which they had been
born and bred and married. One custom of that time, however, did not
cling to them; from their earliest childhood they had never punished
any of their servants. If one of them turned out to be a thief or a
drunkard, then they bore with him for a long time, as one bears with bad
weather, and when their patience was quite exhausted they would get rid
of him by passing him on to someone else. "Let others bear with him
a little," they would say. But any such misfortune rarely happened to
them, so rarely that it became an epoch in their lives. They would
say, for instance, "Oh, it was long ago; it happened when we had that
impudent Aldoshka with us," or "When grandfather's fur cap with
the fox's tail