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Yes, I have been meaning to tell you for a long time, Matushka." "Frivolity, flightiness and the desire to please are not such terrible crimes. But the whole town knows that you have accumulated money through bribery that you robbed your own nieces and had them locked up in an asylum. Yet my Grandmother and I have received you in our house, and you take it upon yourself to lecture us."
It depends upon which place a man is used to there he is better off." Doulebova laughed viperously. Shabalov said in a preceptorial manner: "The orthodox matushka Russia! Is it possible to compare any kingdom with ours? Have you heard how our native land is called? Holy Russia, Mother Russia, the holy Russian soil. And you are an idiot, blockhead, a little swine.
In the garden the tea was not very good, and the weedy-looking chorus of women, the inevitable adjunct to every eating establishment at the Fair, as we had learned, sang wretchedly, and were rewarded accordingly when one of their number came round to take up a collection. But the view! Far below, at our feet, swept broad "Matushka Volga." The wharves were crowded with vessels.
Before I had sailed four and twenty hours on the broad bosom of Matushka Volga, I was able to pick out the steamers of all the rival lines at sight with the accuracy of a veteran river pilot. There was no great cleverness in that, I hasten to add; anybody but a blind man could have done as much; but that only makes my point the more forcible.
"Now, if I address one of these men, he will call me batiushka, and he will call you matushka."* * A respectfully affectionate diminutive, equivalent to dear little father, dear little mother. We began to price shoes, new and old, and so forth, with the result which the count had predicted.
When dust is ankle-deep that is not very feasible. It rose in clouds, as we met the long lines of Tatar carters, transporting flour and other merchandise to and from the wharves across the "dam" which connects the town, in summer low water, with Mother Volga. In spring floods Matushka Volga threatens to wash away the very walls of the Kremlin, and our present path is under water.
The feeling of the Russian peasant toward the rough corn-brandy of his own country is characteristic. The Russian language is full of diminutives expressive of affection. The peasant addresses his superior as Batushka, the affectionate diminutive of the word which means father; he addresses the mistress of the house as Matushka, which is the affectionate diminutive of the Russian word for mother.
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