The Party | Page 5

children of Madame Tchizhevsky, who had
only just arrived, made their appearance in the avenue, accompanied by
their tutor, a student wearing a white tunic and very narrow trousers.
When they reached Pyotr Dmitritch, the boys and the student stopped,
and probably congratulated him on his name-day. With a graceful
swing of his shoulders, he patted the children on their cheeks, and
carelessly offered the student his hand without looking at him. The
student must have praised the weather and compared it with the climate

of Petersburg, for Pyotr Dmitritch said in a loud voice, in a tone as
though he were not speaking to a guest, but to an usher of the court or a
witness:
"What! It's cold in Petersburg? And here, my good sir, we have a
salubrious atmosphere and the fruits of the earth in abundance. Eh?
What?"
And thrusting one hand in his pocket and snapping the fingers of the
other, he walked on. Till he had disappeared behind the nut bushes,
Olga Mihalovna watched the back of his head in perplexity. How had
this man of thirty-four come by the dignified deportment of a general?
How had he come by that impressive, elegant manner? Where had he
got that vibration of authority in his voice? Where had he got these
"what's," "to be sure's," and "my good sir's"?
Olga Mihalovna remembered how in the first months of her marriage
she had felt dreary at home alone and had driven into the town to the
Circuit Court, at which Pyotr Dmitritch had sometimes presided in
place of her godfather, Count Alexey Petrovitch. In the presidential
chair, wearing his uniform and a chain on his breast, he was completely
changed. Stately gestures, a voice of thunder, "what," "to be sure,"
careless tones. . . . Everything, all that was ordinary and human, all that
was individual and personal to himself that Olga Mihalovna was
accustomed to seeing in him at home, vanished in grandeur, and in the
presidential chair there sat not Pyotr Dmitritch, but another man whom
every one called Mr. President. This consciousness of power prevented
him from sitting still in his place, and he seized every opportunity to
ring his bell, to glance sternly at the public, to shout. . . . Where had he
got his short-sight and his deafness when he suddenly began to see and
hear with difficulty, and, frowning majestically, insisted on people
speaking louder and coming closer to the table? From the height of his
grandeur he could hardly distinguish faces or sounds, so that it seemed
that if Olga Mihalovna herself had gone up to him he would have
shouted even to her, "Your name?" Peasant witnesses he addressed
familiarly, he shouted at the public so that his voice could be heard
even in the street, and behaved incredibly with the lawyers. If a lawyer

had to speak to him, Pyotr Dmitritch, turning a little away from him,
looked with half-closed eyes at the ceiling, meaning to signify thereby
that the lawyer was utterly superfluous and that he was neither
recognizing him nor listening to him; if a badly-dressed lawyer spoke,
Pyotr Dmitritch pricked up his ears and looked the man up and down
with a sarcastic, annihilating stare as though to say: "Queer sort of
lawyers nowadays!"
"What do you mean by that?" he would interrupt.
If a would-be eloquent lawyer mispronounced a foreign word, saying,
for instance, "factitious" instead of "fictitious," Pyotr Dmitritch
brightened up at once and asked, "What? How? Factitious? What does
that mean?" and then observed impressively: "Don't make use of words
you do not understand." And the lawyer, finishing his speech, would
walk away from the table, red and perspiring, while Pyotr Dmitritch;
with a self-satisfied smile, would lean back in his chair triumphant. In
his manner with the lawyers he imitated Count Alexey Petrovitch a
little, but when the latter said, for instance, "Counsel for the defence,
you keep quiet for a little!" it sounded paternally good-natured and
natural, while the same words in Pyotr Dmitritch's mouth were rude
and artificial.
II
There were sounds of applause. The young man had finished playing.
Olga Mihalovna remembered her guests and hurried into the
drawing-room.
"I have so enjoyed your playing," she said, going up to the piano. "I
have so enjoyed it. You have a wonderful talent! But don't you think
our piano's out of tune?"
At that moment the two schoolboys walked into the room,
accompanied by the student.
"My goodness! Mitya and Kolya," Olga Mihalovna drawled joyfully,
going to meet them: "How big they have grown! One would not know

you! But where is your mamma?"
"I congratulate you on the name-day," the student began in a
free-and-easy tone, "and I wish you all happiness. Ekaterina
Andreyevna sends her congratulations and begs