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THE AGENT
Twelve miles from my place lives an acquaintance of mine, a landowner and a retired officer in the Guards—Arkady Pavlitch Pyenotchkin. He has a great deal of game on his estate, a house built after the design of a French architect, and servants dressed after the English fashion; he gives capital dinners, and a cordial reception to visitors, and, with all that, one goes to see him reluctantly. He is a sensible and practical man, has received the excellent education now usual, has been in the service, mixed in the highest society, and is now devoting himself to his estate with great success. Arkady Pavlitch is, to judge by his own words, severe but just; he looks after the good of the peasants under his control and punishes them—for their good. 'One has to treat them like children,' he says on such occasions; 'their ignorance, mon cher; il faut prendre cela en considération.' When this so-called painful necessity arises, he eschews all sharp or violent gestures, and prefers not to raise his voice, but with a
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