He alone could benefit by informing against me and thus causing me, perhaps, to be removed from the fortress and parted from the Commandant’s family. I went to tell it all to Marya Ivanovna. She met me on the steps.

“What is the matter with you?” she said when she saw me. “How pale you are!”

“All is lost,” I answered, and gave her my father’s letter.

She turned pale, too. After reading the letter she returned it to me with a hand that shook, and said in a trembling voice: “It seems it is not to be…. Your parents do not want me in your family. God’s will be done! God knows better than we do what is good for us. There is nothing for it. Pyotr Andreyich, may you at least be happy….”

“This shall not be,” I cried, seizing her hand; “you love me; I am ready to face any risk. Let us go and throw ourselves at your parents’ feet; they are simple-hearted people, not hard and proud … they will bless us; we will be married … and then in time I am sure we will soften my father’s heart; my mother will intercede for us; he will forgive me.”

“No, Pyotr Andreyich,” Masha answered, “I will not marry you without your parents’ blessing. Without their blessing there can be no happiness for you. Let us submit to God’s will. If you find a wife, if you come to love another woman—God be with you, Pyotr Andreyich; I shall pray for you both….”

She burst into tears and left me; I was about to follow her indoors, but feeling that I could not control myself, returned home.

I was sitting plunged in deep thought when Savelyich broke in upon my reflections.

“Here, sir,” he said, giving me a piece of paper covered with writing, “see if I am an informer against my master and if I try to make mischief between father and son.”

I took the paper from his hands: it was Savelyich’s answer to my father’s letter. Here it is, word for word:

Dear Sir, Andrey Petrovich, our Gracious Father!

I have received your gracious letter, in which you are pleased to be angry with me, your servant, saying that I ought to be ashamed not to obey my master’s orders; I am not an old dog but your faithful servant; I obey your orders and have always served you zealously and have lived to be an old man. I have not written anything to you about Pyotr Andreyich’s wound, so as not to alarm you needlessly, for I hear that, as it is, the mistress, our mother Avdotya Vassilyevna, has been taken ill with fright, and I shall pray for her health. Pyotr Andreyich was wounded in the chest under the right shoulder, just under the bone, three inches deep, and he lay in the Commandant’s house where we carried him from the river bank, and the local barber, Stepan Paramonov, treated him, and now, thank God, Pyotr Andreyich is well and there is nothing but good to be said of him. His commanders, I hear, are pleased with him and Vasilisa Yegorovna treats him as though he were her own son. And as to his having got into trouble, that is no disgrace to him: a horse has four legs, and yet it stumbles. And you are pleased to write that you will send me to herd pigs. That is for you to decide as my master. Whereupon I humbly salute you.

Your faithful serf,
Arhip Savelyev

I could not help smiling more than once as I read the good old man’s epistle. I felt I could not answer my father, and Savelyich’s letter seemed to me sufficient to relieve my mother’s anxiety.

From that time my position changed. Marya Ivanovna hardly spoke to me and did her utmost to avoid me. The Commandant’s house lost all its attraction for me. I gradually accustomed myself to sit at home alone. Vasilisa Yegorovna chided me for it at first, but seeing my obstinacy, left me in peace. I only saw Ivan Kuzmich when my duties required it; I seldom met Shvabrin, and did so reluctantly, especially as I noticed his secret dislike of me, which confirmed my suspicions. Life became unbearable to me. I sank into despondent brooding, nurtured by idleness and isolation. My love grew more ardent in solitude and oppressed me more and more.