Sergeitch saw little; and they did not care much for him, called him a queer fish, stuck up, and a scoffer, and even a 'martiniste' who recognised no authorities, though they had no clear idea of the meaning of this term. To a certain extent the neighbours were right: Alexey Sergeitch had lived in his Suhodol for almost seventy years on end, and had had hardly anything whatever to do with the existing authorities, with the police or the law-courts. 'Police-courts are for the robber, and discipline for the soldier,' he used to say; 'but I, thank God, am neither robber nor soldier!' Rather queer Alexey Sergeitch certainly was, but the soul within him was by no means a petty one. I will tell you something about him.
To tell the truth, I never knew what were his political opinions, if an expression so modern can be used in reference to him; but, in his own way, he was an aristocrat—more an aristocrat than a typical Russian country gentleman. More than once he expressed his regret that God had not given him a son and heir, 'for the honour of our name, to keep up the family.' In his own room there hung on the wall the family-tree of the Teliegins, with many branches, and a multitude of little circles like apples in a golden frame. 'We Teliegins,' he used to say, ' are an ancient line, from long, long ago: however many there've been of us Teliegins, we have never hung about great men's ante-rooms;
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