“Enough nonsense, Anton Pafnutych. We know you. Where do you go spending any money? At home you live like a pig, you don’t receive anybody, you fleece your peasants, hoarding is all you know.”
“You keep joking, my dear Kirila Petrovich,” Anton Pafnutych muttered with a smile, “but, by God, we’re completely ruined”—and having swallowed his host’s cavalier joke, he bit into a hunk of rich meat pie. Kirila Petrovich dropped him and turned to the new police chief, who was visiting him for the first time and was sitting at the other end of the table next to the tutor.
“And so, Mister Police Chief, will you at least catch Dubrovsky?”
The police chief shrank, bowed, smiled, stammered, and finally managed to say: “We’ll try hard, Your Excellency.”
“Hm, ‘we’ll try hard.’ They’ve been trying for a long, long time now, but nothing’s come of it. And, indeed, why catch him? Dubrovsky’s robberies are blessings for the police chiefs: travels, investigations, supplies, and money in the pocket. Why rid yourself of such a benefactor? Isn’t that so, Mister Police Chief?”
“Quite so, Your Excellency,” replied the totally embarrassed police chief.
The guests burst out laughing.
“I love the lad for his sincerity,” said Kirila Petrovich, “but it’s a pity about our late police chief Taras Alexeevich; if they hadn’t burned him up, the neighborhood would be much quieter. But what news of Dubrovsky? Where was he last seen?”
“At my house, Kirila Petrovich,” squeaked a lady’s fat voice. “Last Tuesday he dined at my house…”
All eyes turned to Anna Savishna Globova, a rather simple widow, loved by all for her kind and cheerful nature. They all prepared themselves with curiosity to hear her story.
“You should know that three weeks ago I sent my steward to the post office with money for my Vanyusha. I don’t spoil my son, and I’m not in a position to spoil him even if I wanted to; however, you yourselves will kindly agree that an officer of the guards needs to keep up a proper appearance, so I share my little income with Vanyusha as far as I can. So I sent him two thousand roubles. Though Dubrovsky came to my mind more than once, still I thought: the town’s close by, five miles at most, maybe God will spare us. In the evening my steward comes back, pale, ragged, and on foot—I just gasped: ‘What is it? What’s happened to you?’ He says: ‘Anna Savishna, dear, thieves robbed me; they nearly killed me, Dubrovsky himself was there, he wanted to hang me, then had pity and let me go, but he robbed me of everything, took the horse and the cart.’ My heart sank. Lord in Heaven, what will happen to my Vanyusha? Nothing to be done: I wrote a letter to my son, told him everything, and sent him my blessing without a penny.
