Once upon a time there lived a gentleman who was so angry that it was a real disaster: no one could please him. Everyone was afraid of him like hell. It happened that someone would come to him to ask for something, and he would bark: “What do you say?”, and out of fear the person would forget about his request.
“Nothing, lady, everything is fine,” the poor fellow replies.
- To the stables, you scoundrel! - the gentleman yells. - Give him a rod so that he doesn’t come here again!
This gentleman didn’t know how to talk to people any other way. And people were afraid to talk to him, otherwise if you said something wrong, against the grain, he would flog you to death.
One day a gentleman was playing cards and won an estate from a neighboring gentleman. It was in the spring. The gentleman got ready and went to inspect his new estate. And when he went, he stayed there for the whole summer: he really liked the new estate. And it is true that they say that the new sieve hangs on a nail, and the old one lies under the bench.
Meanwhile, a big disaster happened in the old estate. “How,” the clerk thinks, “can I tell the master about the trouble?” And he himself is afraid to go to him. And so he decided to send one of the servants. But there is no hunter for that: who wants to receive extra rods from the master?
And there was one person in that estate. He looks so-so, unprepossessing, but has a quick tongue: he won’t reach into his pocket for words. His name was Stepan, but everyone just called him Stepka. Styopka heard that the clerk was looking for someone to send to the master, came to him and said:
- Send me - I can talk to the gentleman.
The clerk was delighted. He gave Styopka bread, lard, a full handful of coppers and sent him on his way.
Styopka walks along, jingling his coppers, and won’t miss a single tavern. Whether he walked long or short, he finally came to a new estate. Styopka wanted to go straight to the master’s house, but the footman stopped him:
- Why are you staggering here, tramp!
And he set the dogs on him.
Styopka took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it to the dogs, and they stopped barking. Here Styopka again approached the porch.
- What do you want? - the footman shouts. - The gentleman himself lives here!
Styopka bowed to the footman and said:
- And my dear gentleman, it’s the gentleman himself that I need. I came to him from the old estate. The footman softened a little.
“Okay,” he says, “I’ll report you to the sir.” But tell me, how do you know that I am a master too?
- Hm! - Styopka coughed slyly. “I see: you’re a gentleman, not a gentleman, but just a half-punk, and your forehead is low, and your nose is slimy, so it’s clear that you licked the master’s bowls.”
The footman got angry, grabbed Styopka by the collar and started beating him. The gentleman saw this from the window and called the footman to him.
- What is this bang? - the gentleman asks the footman.
“Yes, some tramp from the master’s old estate,” answered the footman and bowed low to the master.
Pan remembered that he had not been to the old estate for a long time.
“Call him here,” he ordered the footman. The footman ran to call Styopka, and he took out a tobacco pouch, filled his pipe with tobacco, took tinder and flint out of his pocket, took the chair and started striking a fire. I lit a fire and lit a pipe. He smokes and spits on the gentleman's clean porch.
- Go to your chambers, the master is calling you! - the footman shouts to him.
- Is he shaking with a fever, or what? Will wait! - Styopka answers and smokes his pipe.
- Hurry up! - the footman gets angry. - Otherwise the master will beat you with rods...
- It won’t detect. I'll finish my pipe and then I'll go. I waited and waited for Mr. Styopka, but he didn’t wait. The footman calls again:
- Why doesn’t the pop come?
- He smokes a pipe.
The gentleman got angry:
- Drive him here!
Styopka finished smoking his pipe, knocked the ash out of it, hid it in his bosom, and then slowly moved into the master's chambers.
The footman runs ahead and opens the door for Styopka, like a gentleman.
Styopka came in and started coughing after drinking strong tobacco. He coughs, and the gentleman waits, only rolling his eyes angrily. Styopka cleared his throat somehow and said:
- Good afternoon, lady!
- What do you say? - the gentleman frowns.
- Everything is fine, lady.
- And after the good thing, what?
- Yes, lady, the clerk sent me. You know, the gentleman's pocket knife broke.
- What knife?
- Yes, apparently, the one who repaired the gentleman’s feathers.
- How did they break it?
“They say, sir, that you can’t weave a bast without a pile.” And every tool gets damaged when used. So it is with the master's knife. They wanted to skin the hound dog and put the lord’s boots on it, so they took a knife. And the master’s hound had a very strong skin. Well, the knife broke.
- Which hound? What are you weaving, scoundrel? - the evil master shouted and was about to order the servants to take Styopka to the stable and flog him with rods. But Styopka continued to talk further:
“The master’s hound, the same one—maybe the master remembers—that once jumped into a well, and Mikitka was sent to pull it out, and so he drowned himself there.” Yes, the same hound that the lord loved to take hunting. It seems, if I'm not mistaken, the gentleman gave three men to the neighboring gentleman for this dog...
“Well, does that mean my best hound is dead?”
- She died, sir.
- Why did she die?
- Yes, I ate too much horse meat, well, I immediately stretched my legs.
- What kind of horse meat?
- Yes, stallion meat.
-What stallion?
- Master's black stallion, with a star on his forehead.
- Well, he died too?
- I'm dead, sir. It's a pity, he was a good stallion.
- Oh, what a misfortune!
- Eh, sir, why be so sad? It is already known: if a foal is born with a star on its forehead, it will either die or the wolf will pick it off.
- Why did the stallion fall?
— It was blown up, apparently.
- Well, did they really work on it? They drove him away, or what?
- No, sir, they didn’t even ride him, he was standing in a stall.
- So what?
- They carried water on it, sir.
- Why was water needed?
- It’s not for nothing that people say, lady, that when you’re drowning, you’re clutching at straws. When the master's pigsty caught fire, the clerk ordered water to be carried on a stallion.
- What, did the pigsty burn down?
- Burnt out, sir.
- Why did it catch fire?
“Apparently, sir, he was standing close to the cowshed, and that’s why he caught fire.”
- So the barn burned down too?
- Burnt out, sir, like a candle.
- Why did it catch fire?
“I don’t really know this, sir: either the fire spread from the barn, or maybe from the house.”
- Oh, so the house burned down too?
“It’s burned, sir, it’s all completely burned, as if someone licked it off with his tongue.”
— And the whole estate burned down?
- Everything, sir: clean, smooth, even this turnip. The gentleman grabbed his head and started wailing.
- But why did the house catch fire? - the gentleman asks Styopka again.
- From the candles, sir.
- Why did you light the candles?
- Well, sir, candles are always lit if someone dies.
- Who died?
“The kingdom of heaven, so that she may hiccup easily in the next world,” the lady died.
- What, what?.. What are you saying?.. Lady died?!
- She died, sir...
The gentleman heard this and fell out of his chair. And Styopka lit a pipe and went home.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru