an exceedingly aged man, redolent of train-oil and pitch; his beard began just under his eyes, while his eyebrows fell in little cascades to meet his beard. He was so deliberate in all his movements that it took him five minutes to take a pinch of snuff, two minutes to stick his whip in his belt, and more than two hours to harness the Immovable alone. His name was Perfishka. If, when the Subotchevs were driving, their carriage had to go ever so little uphill, they were invariably alarmed (they were as frightened, however, going downhill), hung on to the straps of the carriage, and both repeated aloud: 'God grant the horses─the horses . . . the strength of Samuel, and make us . . . us light as a feather, light as a feather! . . .'
The Subotchevs were regarded by everyone in the town as eccentric, almost as mad; and indeed they were conscious themselves that they were not in touch with the life of the day . . . but they did not trouble themselves very much about that: the manner of life to which they had been born and bred and married they adhered to. Only one peculiarity of that manner of life had not clung to them: from their birth up they had never punished any one, never had any one flogged. If any servant of theirs proved to be an irreclaimable thief or drunkard,
209
