Ivan Petrovitch

“ At last Ivan and Yefim were obliged to depart—Ivan to his work in the city, the priest to one of the numerous services of his Church.
Then for the first time Petrovitch knew himself indeed alone. To darkness he was accustomed now, but the strange unwonted stillness "ached round him like a strong disease and new." No kindred voice would break the silence ever again upon earth. Such had been his deliberate choice, and he must bear it. But his strong heart sank lower and lower yet, even to the very depths—those deepest depths of all, which only strong hearts know how to sound. ”

“ Ivan Petrovitch talks in a loud bass voice and never laughs, while there is no making this fellow out, he pipes like a bird and keeps laughing.' You go near, you look, it really is Ivan Petrovitch! 'Aha!' you think to yourself. ... However, we will return to the characters of our story.
Tchitchikov, as we have seen already, had made up his mind not to stand on ceremony at all, and so, taking the cup of tea in his hand and pouring some home-made wine into it, he spoke as follows:
'You have a nice little village, ma'am. ”

“ The peasant men and women stayed outside. There remained two beggar women, sitting in one corner, whispering together and occasionally glancing at Ivan Petrovitch with an evident desire to wish his health and talk with him, and two lackeys, his own lackey, in livery, and the Chernuishefs', who had come with the old lady. These two were also whispering together with great animation when Ivan Petrovitch came out from behind the altar, and as soon as they saw him they stopped talking. ”

“ Fedya loved no one among those around him . . . . Woe to the heart that has not loved in youth!
Thus Ivan Petrovitch found him, and without loss of time he set to work to apply his system to him.
"I want above all to make a man, un homme, of him," he said to Glafira Petrovna, "and not only a man, but a Spartan." Ivan Petrovitch began carrying out his intentions by putting his son in a Scotch kilt; the twelve-year-old boy had to go about with bare knees and a plume stuck in his Scotch cap. The Swedish lady was replaced by a young Swiss tutor, who was versed in gymnastics to perfection. ”

“ But, marvelous to relate, while he had been transformed into an Anglomaniac, Ivan Petrovitch had at the same time become a patriot, at least he called himself a patriot, though he knew Russia little, had not retained a single Russian habit, and expressed himself in Russian rather queerly ”

“ His father was proud of him and called him in his strange jargon "a child of nature, my creation." When Fedya had reached his sixteenth year, Ivan Petrovitch thought it his duty in good time to instil into him a contempt for the female sex; and the young Spartan, with timidity in his heart and the first down on his lip, full of sap and strength and young blood, already tried to seem indifferent, cold, and rude. ”

“ At such terrible speeches Anna Pavlovna could only cross herself secretly. As for Ivan Petrovitch's wife, Piotr Andreitch at first would not even hear her name, and in answer to a letter of Pestov's, in which he mentioned his daughter-in-law, he went so far as to send him word that he knew nothing of any daughter-in-law, and that it was forbidden by law to harbour run-away wenches, a fact which he thought it his duty to remind him of. ”

“ He was evidently expected and watched for; quite a crowd of men, women, and children, servants or members of the family, hurried out to meet him, and his young companion shared the welcome and the greetings that followed. Ivan Petrovitch, however, took him by the hand, saying to those who were pressing around them, “Stand back, brothers and sisters; no one should speak to the little lord until he has been presented to our father.” ”

“ As for the management of the house, and the administration of the estate, Glafira Petrovna had undertaken these duties also; in spite of Ivan Petrovitch's intention,--more than once expressed--to breathe new life into this chaos, everything remained as before; only the rent was in some places raised, the mistress was more strict, and the peasants were forbidden to apply direct to Ivan Petrovitch. The patriot had already a great contempt for his fellow-countrymen. Ivan Petrovitch's system was applied in its full force only to Fedya; his education really underwent a "radical reformation;" ”

“ Hospitality is a plant that nourishes luxuriantly in Russian soil, and seems to find the smoky atmosphere of the izba as congenial as the clearer air of the palace. It was with great difficulty that Petrovitch could fix his departure for the next day but one; but a single day of rest for himself and of preparation for Ivan was all that the starost's importunities could obtain from him, since he knew his father's anxiety about the result of his mission. ”

“ They keep close on each other’s heels.”
“How has she happened to leave the general? She said she couldn’t bear to be away from him.”
“Except to see Annouchka,” replied Ivan. “She wanted to see her, and talked so about it when I was there that even Feodor Feodorovitch was rather scandalized at her and Matrena Petrovna reproved her downright rudely. But what a girl wishes the gods bring about. That’s the way.”
“That’s so, I know,” put in Athanase. “Ivan Petrovitch is right. Natacha hasn’t been able to hold herself in since she read that Annouchka was going to make her debut at Krestowsky. ”

“ Pskov, which had been in a state of defence, and kept constantly fortified, for hundreds of years, on account of the proximity of the Germans, possessed stone ramparts, to which a strong surrounding palisade had recently been added. Within the walls two Princes of the Chouïski family, Vassili Feodorovitch and Ivan Petrovitch—the last-named a grandson of the Regent, with whom we made acquaintance during Ivan's minority—both of them brave and experienced men, commanded 30,000 troops, according to Russian authorities, or 40,000, according to the Poles. ”

“ But, Prince Ivan, I am talking wildly, perhaps idly and sinfully. Forget what I have said. After all, Alexander Paulovitch is the Lord's anointed."
"And you know that, since last April, he has been in the field with his army—where he ought to be."
"Where he ought not to be!" thundered Petrovitch angrily. "What we ask from our Czar is not the cheap courage of the recruit, whose one virtue is to stand and be shot at, but the far higher courage to think, to decide, to act for fifty millions of men. ”

“ The aged face quivered with suppressed emotion, yet Petrovitch drew his hand away. “You cannot love me, Prince Ivan Pojarsky,” he said, “if you love not the land of your fathers.”
“The land of my fathers!” repeated Ivan in surprise. “What can you mean?”
“Stand up, Prince Ivan,” continued the old man, still speaking with sternness; “the posture of a suppliant does not become you. Do you think it is anything to me that you have lost a few thousand roubles at play? ”

“ My readers will recollect the episode of the Polish letters intercepted by Ivan. Some of the persons for whom these missives had been intended, and on whom suspicion now fell—old Ivan Petrovitch Tcheliadnine and his wife, Prince Ivan Kourakine-Boulgakov, three Princes Rostovski, and others—were whirled into the tempest, handed over to the executioner, tortured horribly, and put to death. Even the Church had her turn. ”

“ My country, O God, my country!"
"But our cause is just," said Ivan. "Surely every Russian will fight to the death."
"This, indeed, will be a death-struggle," Petrovitch resumed. "Do you not understand? It is all the world against holy Russia—all the world, except England and Spain: England, far away, safe within her God-given rampart of crested foam; Spain already bleeding beneath the talons of the vulture. Russia, Russia only, stands upright, and refuses, as Pope Yefim expresses it, to bow the knee to the Baal, or rather to the Moloch of France. ”

“ But, indeed, could one expect convictions from a young man of fifty years ago, when even at the present day we have not succeeded in attaining them? The guests, too, who frequented his father's house, were oppressed by Ivan Petrovitch's presence ”

“ Malanya Sergyevna's maids pitied her, and so did even Piotr Andreitch. The old man missed her silent presence. "Forgive me . . . farewell, my meek one!" he whispered, as he took leave of her the last time in church. He wept as he threw a handful of earth in the grave.
He did not survive her long, not more than five years. In the winter of the year 1819, he died peacefully in Moscow, where he had moved with Glafira and his grandson, and left instructions that he should be buried beside Anna Pavlovna and "Malasha." Ivan Petrovitch was then in Paris amusing himself ”

“ There was only one person who ventured to take liberties with the patriarch—to tease him, coax him, sometimes even jest with him, always to claim his caresses as a matter of right, not, like the others, as a rare, occasional favour. This was little Feodor, a bright, black-eyed boy about three years younger than Ivan. The mother of this favourite grandson had been the only daughter of Petrovitch, and she was dead. Much of the old man's heart was in the grave with her, nor could his seven brave and prosperous sons wholly supply her place. ”

“ Stay with me for a little while. And if Prince Ivan will forget his worldly rank in the presence of great Death, who makes all men equal, I pray you both to partake with me of what may be to all of us our last meal upon earth.”
Ivan readily consented; and the attendants left in the house, who watched carefully over their aged master, served a comfortable repast. One of them informed Ivan that his servant was in their quarters, awaiting his orders. Michael had been a deeply-moved spectator of the parting between Petrovitch and his family. ”

“ He was to associate with her sons, and to share with them the instructions of the French tutor whose services were then considered indispensable to every young Russian of noble birth. For these advantages Petrovitch paid very liberally: in many families, even of the highest position, good silver roubles were not as plentiful as they were desirable, and were not likely to be rejected when they presented themselves for acceptance.
Feodor was deputed to accompany Ivan to his new home, since the elder members of the family did not care to present themselves. ”

“ Once only did Ivan see her really provoked. He often visited his kind old friend Petrovitch, as indeed for every reason he was bound to do. The easiest way of reaching or returning from the merchants’ quarter was by crossing the river, in summer by a ferry-boat, in winter on foot or in a sledge. Once, however, just when the ice was beginning to break, and the passage was difficult and rather unsafe, Ivan stayed with the Petrovitches for dinner, and came home in the evening in a drosky by a longer route. ”

“ In Bazarov's repetition of Paul Petrovitch's words there echoed, this time, a note of pride.
Paul Petrovitch knit his brows.
"So, so!" he said in a voice that was curiously calm. "Nihilism is designed to combat our every ill, and you alone are to act as our saviours and our heroes! Well, well! But in what consider you yourselves and your censorious friends to excel the rest of us? ”

“ He did not forget to send a messenger to the dwelling of Petrovitch to learn the latest tidings of the heroic old man; and was told that he had left the house, with his grandson Feodor, on the first intimation of the approach of the French.
The first regiment of Frenchmen who advanced that day along the great Smolensko road to the Gate of Triumph could151 have told Ivan something more. Just outside the gate, under a green and spreading oak-tree, sat a venerable old man, with hair and beard of silver whiteness; while beside him stood a slight, tall stripling of some sixteen summers. ”

“ The swallows flew high; the wind had quite died away, belated bees hummed slowly and drowsily among the lilac blossom; a swarm of midges hung like a cloud over a solitary branch which stood out against the sky. 'How beautiful, my God!' thought Nikolai Petrovitch, and his favourite verses were almost on his lips; he remembered Arkady's Stoff und Kraft—and was silent, but still he sat there, still he gave himself up to the sorrowful consolation of solitary thought. He was fond of dreaming; his country life had developed the tendency in him. ”

“ Chodkiewicz, Gregory, Grand Hetman of Lithuania, 194, 212, 303
Choisnin, reference to, 208
Chouïski, Andrew, 120, 122
Ivan, 120
Ivan Petrovitch, death of, 268 party, the, 120, 121, 224
Peter, 311; death of, 247
Prince Alexander Borissovitch, death of, 247
Vassili Vassilévitch, 120
Christian II. of Denmark, 185, 186
'Chronicle of Khrouchtchov,' 134
Chtchelkalov, Andrew, Russian councillor, 290, 292, 295, 296, 297, 303
Church, the, despotic influence of, 10; lands held by, 17, 18; wealth of, 27–29; power of, 26, 27; primacy, struggle for, 29; Greek element in, 31 ”

“ 'A man's capable of understanding anything—how the æther vibrates, and what's going on in the sun—but how any other man can blow his nose differently from him, that he's incapable of understanding.'
'What, is that an epigram?' observed Pavel Petrovitch inquiringly, and he walked away. ”

“ A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.'
'Well, and is that good?' interrupted Pavel Petrovitch. ”