Once, at the beginning of autumn, Kirila Petrovich was getting ready to go hunting. The previous evening orders had been given to the huntsmen and grooms to be ready by five in the morning. The tent and field kitchen were sent on ahead to the place where Kirila Petrovich was to dine. The host and guests went to the kennels, where more than five hundred hounds and borzoi lived in warmth and plenty, extolling Kirila Petrovich’s generosity in their doggy language. Here there was also a clinic for sick dogs, supervised by the staff medic Timoshka, and a section where noble bitches whelped and nursed their pups. Kirila Petrovich was proud of this fine institution and never missed a chance to boast of it to his guests, each of whom was already viewing it for at least the twentieth time. He strutted about the kennels, surrounded by his guests and accompanied by Timoshka and the chief huntsmen, stopped before certain kennels, now inquiring after the health of the sick, now making more or less stern and just observations, now calling over the dogs he knew and speaking amiably with them. The guests considered it their duty to admire Kirila Petrovich’s kennels. Dubrovsky alone frowned and kept silent. He was an ardent hunter. His situation allowed him to keep only two hounds and one leash of borzoi; he could not help being slightly envious at the sight of this magnificent institution.
“Why are you frowning, my friend?” Kirila Petrovich asked him. “Don’t you like my kennel?”
“No,” he replied severely, “the kennel’s a marvel; it’s unlikely your servants live as well as your dogs do.”
One of the huntsmen took offense.
“We don’t complain of our life,” he said, “thanks to God and the master, but it’s true enough that some gentleman wouldn’t do badly to exchange his estate for any of these kennels. He’d be warmer and better fed.”
Kirila Petrovich laughed loudly at his serf’s insolent remark, and the guests burst out laughing after him, though they sensed that the huntsman’s joke could refer just as well to them. Dubrovsky turned pale and did not say a word. Just then Kirila Petrovich was brought some newborn puppies in a basket; he busied himself with them, chose two, and ordered the others drowned. Meanwhile Andrei Gavrilovich disappeared, and nobody noticed it.
On returning from the kennels with his guests, Kirila Petrovich sat down to supper, and only then, not seeing Dubrovsky, did he notice his absence. The servants told him that Andrei Gavrilovich had gone home. Troekurov immediately told them to overtake him and bring him back without fail. Never yet had he gone hunting without Dubrovsky, an experienced and fine connoisseur of canine qualities and a faultless arbiter of various hunting disputes. The servant who galloped after him came back while they were still at the table and reported to his master that Andrei Gavrilovich refused to listen and would not come back. Kirila Petrovich, flushed with liqueurs as he usually was, became angry and sent the same servant a second time to tell Andrei Gavrilovich that if he did not come at once to spend the night at Pokrovskoe, he, Troekurov, would break with him forever. The servant rode off again, Kirila Petrovich got up from the table, dismissed his guests, and went to bed.
The next morning his first question was: Is Andrei Gavrilovich here? Instead of an answer, he was handed a letter folded into a triangle. Kirila Petrovich told his clerk to read it aloud, and this is what he heard:
My most gracious sir,
I have no intention of going to Pokrovskoe until you send me the huntsman Paramoshka with an apology. It will be up to me whether to punish or pardon him, but I have no intention of taking jokes from your serfs, nor will I endure them from you, because I am not a buffoon, but of ancient nobility.
With that I remain your most humble servant,
Andrei Dubrovsky.
By present-day notions of etiquette, this letter would be quite improper, but it angered Kirila Petrovich not by its odd style and attitude, but only by its substance.
“What?” Troekurov thundered, jumping out of bed barefoot. “Send him my servants with apologies, it’s for him to pardon or punish them! What on earth is he thinking of? Does he know who he’s dealing with? I’ll show him…He’ll rue the day! He’ll learn what it means to go against Troekurov!”
Kirila Petrovich dressed and rode out to the hunt with his usual splendor, but the hunt was no success. In the whole day they saw only one hare, and it got away. Dinner in the field under the tent was no success either, or at least it was not to the taste of Kirila Petrovich, who beat the cook, yelled at the guests, and on the way back deliberately rode with all his hunt across Dubrovsky’s fields.
