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A House of Gentlefolk
By Ivan Turgenev
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Marya Dmitrievna Kalitin, a widow.
Marfa Timofyevna Pestov, her aunt.
Sergei Petrovitch Gedeonovsky, a state councillor.
Fedor Ivanitch Lavretsky, kinsman of Marya.
Elisaveta Mihalovna (Lisa),
daughters of Marya.
Lenotchka,
Shurotchka, an orphan girl, ward of Marfa.
Nastasya Karpovna Ogarkoff, dependent of Marfa.
Vladimir Nikolaitch Panshin, of the Ministry of the Interior.
Christopher Fedoritch Lemm, a German musician.
Piotr Andreitch Lavretsky, grandfather of Fedor.
Anna Pavlovna, grandmother of Fedor.
Ivan Petrovitch, father of Fedor.
Glafira Petrovna, aunt of Fedor.
Malanya Sergyevna, mother of Fedor.
Mihalevitch, a student friend of Fedor.
Pavel Petrovitch Korobyin, father of Varvara.
Kalliopa Karlovna, mother of Varvara.
Varvara Pavlovna, wife of Fedor.
Anton,
old servants of Fedor.
Apraxya,
Agafya Vlasyevna, nurse of Lisa.
Chapter I
A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear
heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be
sinking into its depths of blue.
In a handsome house in one of the outlying streets of the government
town of O---- (it was in the year 1842) two women were sitting at an
open window; one was about fifty, the other an old lady of seventy.
The name of the former was Marya Dmitrievna Kalitin. Her husband, a
shrewd determined man of obstinate bilious temperament, had been dead
for ten years. He had been a provincial public prosecutor, noted in his
own day as a successful man of business. He had received a fair
education and had been to the university; but having been born in narrow
circumstances he realized early in life the necessity of pushing his own
way in the world and making money. It had been a love-match on Marya
Dmitrievna's side. He was not bad-looking, was clever and could be very
agreeable when he chose. Marya Dmitrievna Pesto--that was her maiden
name--had lost her parents in childhood. She spent some years in a
boarding-school in Moscow, and after leaving school, lived on the family
estate of Pokrovskoe, about forty miles from O----, with her aunt and
her elder brother. This brother soon after obtained a post in
Petersburg, and made them a scanty allowance. He treated his aunt and
sister very shabbily till his sudden death cut short his career. Marya
Dmitrievna inherited Pokrovskoe, but she did not live there long. Two
years after her marriage with Kalitin, who succeeded in winning her
heart in a few days, Pokrovskoe was exchanged for another estate, which
yielded a much larger income, but was utterly unattractive and had no
house. At the same time Kalitin took a house in the town of O----, in
which he and his wife took up their permanent abode. There was a large
garden round the house, which on one side looked out upon the open
country away from the town.
"And so," decided Kalitin, who had a great distaste for the quiet of
country life, "there would be no need for them to be dragging themselves
off into the country." In her heart Marya Dmitrievna more than once
regretted her pretty Pokrovskoe, with its babbling brook, its wide
meadows, and green copses; but she never opposed her husband in anything
and had the greatest veneration for his wisdom and knowledge of the
world. When after fifteen years of married life he died leaving her with
a son and two daughters, Marya Dmitrievna had grown so accustomed to her
house and to town life that she had no inclination to leave O----.
In her youth Marya Dmitrievna had always been spoken of as a pretty
blonde; and at fifty her features had not lost all charm, though they
were somewhat coarser and less delicate in outline. She was more
sentimental than kindhearted; and even at her mature age, she retained
the manners of the boarding-school. She was self-indulgent and easily
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