Interrupted Stories

The freed prisoner Mitka, without the slightest resentment, prepared himself, like a practiced reader, to take turns reading the Psalter throughout the night with the local clerk and the sexton. He only asked the Moldavian woman to give him some stronger tobacco, in case sleep should overcome him.

The household staff was frightened. They were left to an unknown master. They had become accustomed to the temper of the old master, but now they had to begin their service anew; how and what would happen, who would remain in Lipovka and who would go to St. Petersburg, and under what terms, all this agitated their minds and made them almost pity the deceased.

Two days later, after extraordinary strain, Tit wrote the following letter to the future owner:

“Most Merciful Sovereign,

Sovereign Father and our only Intercessor,

Mikhaylo Stepanovich.

“By order of Her Excellency, your aunt and our mistress, Marfa Petrovna, I take the boldness to trace these lines to you, Father Mikhaylo Stepanovich, as they themselves do not feel the strength to write due to their great grief. It pleased God to visit them with a great misfortune

with the loss of their and our father and benefactor, for the repose of whose soul we must pray to the Lord until the end of our days, and for your uncle, His Excellency Lev Stepanovich, now deceased, who deigned to depart this life on the twenty-third day of the month, at 6 o'clock in the afternoon. The funeral of his body is tomorrow.

“As we are known to you, Father and most merciful Sovereign, may you look after us like orphans deprived of a father, and do not abandon your unworthy subjects with your mercy. We feel how obligated we are with zeal for your health until the end of our lives, which is the same for the late uncle as it is for you, both for the whole household and for the elected Trofim Kuzmin with the village commune.

Remaining your humble servant Tit—if you deign to remember that I served as valet under the late uncle.”