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I, in my lifetime, have been so happy as to have been vouchsafed the bliss of beholding yon smile, and to all eternity it will never be erased from my heart!" And thereupon he would impart anecdotes from the life of Katherine such as it has never been my lot to read or hear anywhere. Here is one of them. Alexyéi Sergyéitch did not permit the slightest hint at the failings of the great Empress.
Alexyéi Sergyéitch himself was a very squat, pot-bellied, little old man, with a plump, but agreeable face all of one colour, with sunken lips and very vivacious little eyes beneath lofty eyebrows. He brushed his scanty hair over the back of his head; it was only since the year 1812 that he had discarded powder.
Alexyéi Sergyéitch drove him himself with the ends of the reins wound round his fists. "Well, robber, hast thou gathered a big lot of stolen goods?" he would say, looking the robber straight in the eye. "Everything is according to your grace," Antíp would reply merrily. "Grace is all right, only just look out for thyself, Micromegas! Don't dare to touch my peasants, my subjects behind my back!
Although I myself have served in the Guards, yet it was not for long, I thank you!" Alexyéi Sergyéitch preferred the olden days. "Things were freer then, more seemly, I assure you on my honour!
"Potyómkin, Grigóry Alexándritch, was a statesman, a theologian, a nursling of Katherine's, her offspring, one must say.... But enough of that, my little sir!" Alexyéi Sergyéitch was a very devout man and went to church regularly, although it was beyond his strength.
"But God have mercy, why isn't he a philosopher?" replied Alexyéi Sergyéitch. "Just observe, my little gentleman, how finely he holds his tongue!" "But why is he two-faced?" "Because, my young sir, he has one face outside; there it is for you, ninny, and judge it.... But the other, the real one, he hides.
Lo and behold! the captain of police comes to me; and he was a man I knew, Stepan Sergyeitch Kuzovkin, a good fellow; that's to say, really a regular bad lot. So he came up and said this and that, and "How could you do so, Piotr Petrovitch?... The liability is serious, and the laws very distinct on the subject."
And then Alexyéi Sergyéitch was greatly dismayed; but I said to him: 'Alexis, I said to him, 'please do not be dismayed; thou shouldst know me better! And he answered me: 'Be at ease, Mélanie! And those same diamonds I now have encircling a medallion of Alexyéi Grigórievitch I think, my dear, that thou hast seen me wear it on my shoulder on festival days, on a ribbon of St.
"Because, judge for thyself, little nephew, if thou hast nothing of thine own save the cross on thy neck, and that a brass one, don't hanker after other folks' things.... What sense is there in that?" There is no denying the fact that no one even thought of the so-called problem of the serfs at that epoch; and it could not disturb Alexyéi Sergyéitch.
He never went anywhere himself, and therefore did not visit us; but I was sent to pay my respects to him a couple of times a year, at first with my governor, and later on alone. Alexyéi Sergyéitch always received me very cordially, and I spent three or four days with him.
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