Chapter Chapter 2 · He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son

. He Gets Rid Of His Eldest Son

You can easily imagine what a father such a man could be and how he

would bring up his children. His behavior as a father was exactly what

might be expected. He completely abandoned the child of his marriage

with Adelaïda Ivanovna, not from malice, nor because of his matrimonial

grievances, but simply because he forgot him. While he was wearying

every one with his tears and complaints, and turning his house into a

sink of debauchery, a faithful servant of the family, Grigory, took the

three-year-old Mitya into his care. If he hadn’t looked after him there

would have been no one even to change the baby’s little shirt.

It happened moreover that the child’s relations on his mother’s side

forgot him too at first. His grandfather was no longer living, his

widow, Mitya’s grandmother, had moved to Moscow, and was seriously ill,

while his daughters were married, so that Mitya remained for almost a

whole year in old Grigory’s charge and lived with him in the servant’s

cottage. But if his father had remembered him (he could not, indeed,

have been altogether unaware of his existence) he would have sent him

back to the cottage, as the child would only have been in the way of

his debaucheries. But a cousin of Mitya’s mother, Pyotr Alexandrovitch

Miüsov, happened to return from Paris. He lived for many years

afterwards abroad, but was at that time quite a young man, and

distinguished among the Miüsovs as a man of enlightened ideas and of

European culture, who had been in the capitals and abroad. Towards the

end of his life he became a Liberal of the type common in the forties

and fifties. In the course of his career he had come into contact with

many of the most Liberal men of his epoch, both in Russia and abroad.

He had known Proudhon and Bakunin personally, and in his declining

years was very fond of describing the three days of the Paris

Revolution of February 1848, hinting that he himself had almost taken

part in the fighting on the barricades. This was one of the most

grateful recollections of his youth. He had an independent property of

about a thousand souls, to reckon in the old style. His splendid estate

lay on the outskirts of our little town and bordered on the lands of

our famous monastery, with which Pyotr Alexandrovitch began an endless

lawsuit, almost as soon as he came into the estate, concerning the

rights of fishing in the river or wood-cutting in the forest, I don’t

know exactly which. He regarded it as his duty as a citizen and a man

of culture to open an attack upon the “clericals.” Hearing all about

Adelaïda Ivanovna, whom he, of course, remembered, and in whom he had

at one time been interested, and learning of the existence of Mitya, he

intervened, in spite of all his youthful indignation and contempt for

Fyodor Pavlovitch. He made the latter’s acquaintance for the first

time, and told him directly that he wished to undertake the child’s

education. He used long afterwards to tell as a characteristic touch,

that when he began to speak of Mitya, Fyodor Pavlovitch looked for some

time as though he did not understand what child he was talking about,

and even as though he was surprised to hear that he had a little son in

the house. The story may have been exaggerated, yet it must have been

something like the truth.

Fyodor Pavlovitch was all his life fond of acting, of suddenly playing

an unexpected part, sometimes without any motive for doing so, and even

to his own direct disadvantage, as, for instance, in the present case.

This habit, however, is characteristic of a very great number of

people, some of them very clever ones, not like Fyodor Pavlovitch.

Pyotr Alexandrovitch carried the business through vigorously, and was

appointed, with Fyodor Pavlovitch, joint guardian of the child, who had

a small property, a house and land, left him by his mother. Mitya did,

in fact, pass into this cousin’s keeping, but as the latter had no

family of his own, and after securing the revenues of his estates was

in haste to return at once to Paris, he left the boy in charge of one

of his cousins, a lady living in Moscow. It came to pass that, settling

permanently in Paris he, too, forgot the child, especially when the

Revolution of February broke out, making an impression on his mind that

he remembered all the rest of his life. The Moscow lady died, and Mitya

passed into the care of one of her married daughters. I believe he

changed his home a fourth time later on. I won’t enlarge upon that now,

as I shall have much to tell later of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s firstborn,

and must confine myself now to the most essential facts about him,

without which I could not begin my story.

In the first place, this Mitya, or rather Dmitri Fyodorovitch, was the

only one of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s three sons who grew up in the belief

that he had property, and that he would be independent on coming of

age. He spent an irregular boyhood and youth. He did not finish his

studies at the gymnasium, he got into a military school, then went to

the Caucasus, was promoted, fought a duel, and was degraded to the

ranks, earned promotion again, led a wild life, and spent a good deal

of money. He did not begin to receive any income from Fyodor Pavlovitch

until he came of age, and until then got into debt. He saw and knew his

father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the first time on coming of age, when he

visited our neighborhood on purpose to settle with him about his

property. He seems not to have liked his father. He did not stay long

with him, and made haste to get away, having only succeeded in

obtaining a sum of money, and entering into an agreement for future

payments from the estate, of the revenues and value of which he was

unable (a fact worthy of note), upon this occasion, to get a statement

from his father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for the first time then

(this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had a vague and exaggerated

idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well satisfied with

this, as it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the

young man was frivolous, unruly, of violent passions, impatient, and

dissipated, and that if he could only obtain ready money he would be

satisfied, although only, of course, for a short time. So Fyodor

Pavlovitch began to take advantage of this fact, sending him from time

to time small doles, installments. In the end, when four years later,

Mitya, losing patience, came a second time to our little town to settle

up once for all with his father, it turned out to his amazement that he

had nothing, that it was difficult to get an account even, that he had

received the whole value of his property in sums of money from Fyodor

Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even in debt to him, that by various

agreements into which he had, of his own desire, entered at various

previous dates, he had no right to expect anything more, and so on, and

so on. The young man was overwhelmed, suspected deceit and cheating,

and was almost beside himself. And, indeed, this circumstance led to

the catastrophe, the account of which forms the subject of my first

introductory story, or rather the external side of it. But before I

pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovitch’s other two

sons, and of their origin.