The next day Ivan Petrovich sent his father a letter, which was frigidly and ironically polite, and then betook himself to the estate of two of his second cousins,—­Dmitry Pestof, and his sister Marfa Timofeevna, with the latter of whom the reader is already acquainted.  He told them everything that had happened, announced his intention of going to St. Petersburg to seek an appointment, and begged them to give shelter to his wife, even if only for a time.  At the word “wife” he sobbed bitterly; and, in spite of his metropolitan education, and his philosophy, he humbly, like a thorough Russian peasant, knelt down at the feet of his relations, and even touched the floor with his forehead.

The Pestofs, who were kind and compassionate people, willingly consented to his request.  With them he spent three weeks, secretly expecting an answer from his father.  But no answer came; no answer could come.  Peter Andreich, when he received the news of the marriage, took to his bed, and gave orders that his son’s name should never again be mentioned to him; but Ivan’s mother, without her husband’s knowledge, borrowed five hundred paper roubles from a neighboring priest,[A] and sent them to her son, with a little sacred picture for his wife.  She was afraid of writing, but she told her messenger, a spare little peasant who could walk sixty versts in a day, to say to Ivan that he was not to fret too much; that please God, all would yet go right, and his father’s wrath would turn to kindness—­that she, too, would have preferred a different daughter-in-law; but that evidently God had willed it as it was, and that she sent her paternal benediction to Malania Sergievna.  The spare little peasant had a rouble given him, asked leave to see the new mistress, whose gossip[B] he was, kissed her hand, and returned home.

[Footnote A:  Literally, “from the Blagochinny” an ecclesiastic who exercises supervision over a number of churches or parishes, a sort of Rural Dean.]

[Footnote A:  The word is used in its old meaning of fellow-sponsor.]

So Ivan Petrovich betook himself to St. Petersburg with a light heart.  An unknown future lay before him.  Poverty might menace him; but he had broken with the hateful life in the country, and, above all, he had not fallen short of his instructors; he had really “put into action,” and indeed done justice to, the doctrines of Rousseau, Diderot, and the “Declaration of the Rights of Man.”  The conviction of having accomplished a duty, a sense of pride and of triumph, filled his soul; and the fact of having to separate from his wife did not greatly alarm him; he would far sooner have been troubled by the necessity of having constantly to live with her.  He had now to think of other affairs.  One task was finished.

In St. Petersburg, contrary to his own expectations, he was successful.  The Princess Kubensky—­whom M. Courtin had already flung aside, but who had not yet contrived to die—­in order that she might at least to some extent, make amends for her conduct towards her nephew, recommended him to all her friends, and gave him five thousand roubles—­almost all the money she had left—­and a watch, with his crest wrought on its back surrounded by a wreath of Cupids.