'I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, I didn't know,' stammered Shtoppel; 'I didn't know....'
'And beg his too!' vociferated the implacable Panteley.
'I beg your pardon too,' added Rostislav Adamitch, addressing Nedopyuskin, who was shaking as if he were in an ague.
Tchertop-hanov calmed down; he went up to Tihon Ivanitch, took him by the hand, looked fiercely round, and, as not one pair of eyes ventured to meet his, he walked triumphantly amid profound silence out of the room, with the new owner of the lawfully acquired village of Bezselendyevka.
From that day they never parted again. (The village of Bezselendyevka was only seven miles from Bezsonovo.) The boundless gratitude of Nedopyuskin soon passed into the most adoring veneration. The weak, soft, and not perfectly stainless Tihon bowed down in the dust before the fearless and irreproachable Panteley. 'It's no slight thing,' he thought to himself sometimes, 'to talk to the governor, look him straight in the face.... Christ have mercy on us, doesn't he look at him!'
He marvelled at him, he exhausted all the force of his soul in his admiration of him, he regarded him as an extraordinary man, as clever, as learned. And there's no denying that, bad as Tchertop-hanov's education might be, still, in comparison with Tihon's education, it might pass for brilliant. Tchertop-hanov, it is true, had read little Russian, and knew French very badly--so badly that once, in reply to the question of a Swiss tutor: '_Vous parlez français, monsieur?_' he answered: '_Je ne comprehend_' and after a moment's thought, he added _pa_; but any way he was aware that Voltaire had once existed, and was a very witty writer, and that Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, had been distinguished as a great military commander. Of Russian writers he respected Derzhavin, but liked Marlinsky, and called Ammalat-Bek the best of the pack....
A few days after my first meeting with the two friends, I set off for the village of Bezsonovo to see Panteley Eremyitch. His little house could be seen a long way off; it stood out on a bare place, half a mile from the village, on the 'bluff,' as it is called, like a hawk on a ploughed field. Tchertop-hanov's homestead consisted of nothing more than four old tumble-down buildings of different sizes--that is, a lodge, a stable, a barn, and a bath-house. Each building stood apart by itself; there was neither a fence round nor a gate to be seen. My coachman stopped in perplexity at a well which was choked up and had almost disappeared. Near the barn some thin and unkempt puppies were mangling a dead horse, probably Orbassan; one of them lifted up the bleeding nose, barked hurriedly, and again fell to devouring the bare ribs. Near the horse stood a boy of seventeen, with a puffy, yellow face, dressed like a Cossack, and barelegged; he looked with a responsible air at the dogs committed to his charge, and now and then gave the greediest a lash with his whip.