Chapter 33 - Page 2

dutiful son Peter from the service, she had wholly changed
her mode of living. It seems her property had never been a large
one--merely a hundred souls or so--[This refers, of course, to the
days of serfdom.]and that during her previous life of gaiety she
had spent a great deal. Consequently, when, some ten years ago,
those portions of the property which had been mortgaged and re-
mortgaged had been foreclosed upon and compulsorily sold by
auction, she had come to the conclusion that all these unpleasant
details of distress upon and valuation of her property had been
due not so much to failure to pay the interest as to the fact
that she was a woman: wherefore she had written to her son (then
serving with his regiment) to come and save his mother from her
embarrassments, and he, like a dutiful son--conceiving that his
first duty was to comfort his mother in her old age--had
straightway resigned his commission (for all that he had been
doing well in his profession, and was hoping soon to become
independent), and had come to join her in the country.

Despite his plain face, uncouth demeanour, and fault of
stuttering, Peter was a man of unswerving principles and of the
most extraordinary good sense. Somehow--by small borrowings,
sundry strokes of business, petitions for grace, and promises to
repay--he contrived to carry on the property, and, making himself
overseer, donned his father's greatcoat (still preserved in a
drawer), dispensed with horses and carriages, discouraged guests
from calling at Mitishtchi, fashioned his own sleighs, increased
his arable land and curtailed that of the serfs, felled his own
timber, sold his produce in person, and saw to matters generally.
Indeed, he swore, and kept his oath, that, until all outstanding
debts were paid, he would never wear any clothes than his
father's greatcoat and a corduroy jacket which he had made for
himself, nor yet ride in aught but a country waggon, drawn by
peasants' horses. This stoical mode of life he sought to apply
also to his family, so far as the sympathetic respect which he
conceived to be his mother's due would allow of; so that,
although, in the drawing-room, he would show her only stuttering
servility, and fulfil all her wishes, and blame any one who did
not do precisely as she bid them, in his study or his office he
would overhaul the cook if she had served up so much as a duck
without his orders, or any one responsible for sending a serf
(even though at Madame's own bidding) to inquire after a
neighbour's health or for despatching the peasant girls into the
wood to gather wild raspberries instead of setting them to weed
the kitchen-garden.

Within four years every debt had been repaid, and Peter had gone
to Moscow