human
What a storm! she said.
gpt
Grigory went off somewhere and I was left quite alone in the house.
human
But you are not afraid of storms,
gpt
No, she said,
human
she went on, sitting down opposite her brother.
gpt
There's some pleasant memory in every room. In my room, only fancy, Grigory's grandfather shot himself.
human
In August we shall have the money to do up the lodge in the garden,
gpt
For some reason when it thunders I think of that grandfather, Zina went on.
human
And in this dining-room somebody was flogged to death.
gpt
That's an actual fact, said Vlassitch, and he looked with wide-open eyes at Pyotr Mihalitch.
human
Sometime in the forties this place was let to a Frenchman called Olivier. The portrait of his daughter is lying in an attic now--a very pretty girl. This Olivier, so my father told me, despised Russians for their ignorance and treated them with cruel derision. Thus, for instance, he insisted on the priest walking without his hat for half a mile round his house, and on the church bells being rung when the Olivier family drove through the village. The serfs and altogether the humble of this world, of course, he treated with even less ceremony. Once there came along this road one of the simple-hearted sons of wandering Russia, somewhat after the style of Gogol's divinity student, Homa Brut. He asked for a night's lodging, pleased the bailiffs, and was given a job at the office of the estate. There are many variations of the story. Some say the divinity student stirred up the peasants, others that Olivier' s daughter fell in love with him. I don't know which is true, only one fine evening Olivier called him in here and cross-examined him, then ordered him to be beaten. Do you know, he sat here at this table drinking claret while the stable-boys beat the man. He must have tried to wring something out of him. Towards morning the divinity student died of the torture and his body was hidden. They say it was thrown into Koltovitch's pond. There was an inquiry, but the Frenchman paid some thousands to some one in authority and went away to Alsace. His lease was up just then, and so the matter ended.
gpt
What scoundrels!
human
My father remembered Olivier and his daughter well. He used to say she was remarkably beautiful and eccentric. I imagine the divinity student had done both--stirred up the peasants and won the daughter's heart. Perhaps he wasn't a divinity student at all, but some one travelling incognito.
gpt
How do you like being here?