On a hot summer day, Yermolai and I returned from hunting in a cart. We drove into the dense thickets of bushes, we decided to hunt black grouse. After the first shot, a horse rode up to us and asked by what right I was hunting here. Looking at him, I realized that I had never seen anything like it. He was small in stature, blond, with a red upturned nose, long red mustache and pale blue glass eyes that scattered like a drunk. A pointed Persian hat covered his forehead at the very eyebrows, a horn hung over his shoulder, and a dagger stuck behind his belt. He sat on a stunted red horse. The stranger's whole being breathed extravagant courage and exorbitant pride.
Finding out that I was a nobleman, he graciously allowed me to hunt and introduced himself as Pantelei Chertophanov. Trumpeting the horn, he rushed off headlong. Before I could come to my senses, a fat man of about 40 on a small black horse was quietly rode out of the bushes. His puffy and round face expressed shyness, good nature and meek humility, a round, mottled with blue veins, nose exposed voluptuous, narrow eyes affectionately blinked. Inquiring from me where Chertophanov went, he ruffled after him. Yermolai told me that it was Tikhon Ivanovich Nedopyuskin, he lives with Chertophanov and is his best friend.
These friends aroused my curiosity. Here is what I learned about them. Pantelei Yeremeich Chertophanov was known as a dangerous and extravagant man, a proud man and a bully. For a very short time he served in the army and retired "out of trouble." He came from an old, once rich, family. His father, Yeremey Lukich, left the heirloom of the village of Bessonovo to the heir when he went to the 19th year. Quite unexpectedly, Pantelei from a wealthy heir turned into a poor man. He went wild, became hardened and turned into a proud man and a bully who stopped recognizing with his neighbors and, for the slightest reason, suggested cutting himself with knives.
Nedopyuskin’s father left the classrooms and won the nobility for forty years. He was one of the people who are constantly pursued by misfortune, and died without earning children a piece of bread. During his life, his father managed to arrange Tikhon as a freelance official in the office, but after his death Tikhon resigned. Tikhon was a sensitive, lazy, gentle creature, gifted with a subtle sense of smell and taste, intended for enjoyment. Fate hobbled them all over Russia. Tikhon was both the majordom of the grumpy mistress, and the parasite of the wealthy haggard merchant, and the half-palace half-jester of the canine hunter. This position was even more painful because Tikhon did not have the gift to make people laugh.
The last of the benefactors left the village of Besselendeevka by testament. While reading a will over Tikhon, one of the heirs began to mock. From this humiliating situation Chertophanov, who was also among the heirs, saved him. From that day on, they no longer parted. Tikhon reverent before the fearless and disinterested Chertophanov.
A few days later I went to the village of Bessonovo to Pantelei Yeremeich. His small house stuck out from scratch, like a hawk on arable land. After talking with me and showing his pack of greyhounds, Chertophanov called Masha. She turned out to be a beautiful woman of about 20, tall and slender, with a gypsy swarthy face, brown eyes, a black scythe and a face expressing wayward passion and carefree boldness. Chertophanov introduced her as "almost a wife." Masha took the guitar, and after half an hour we chatted and naughty, like children. Late in the evening I left Bessonov.
