The Privy Councillor
"The Privy Councillor" () is an 1886 short story by Anton Chekhov. Publication history. The story was first published on 6 May 1886 by "Novoye Vremya" (Issue No. 3657, pp.2-3). It was included into the 1888 collection "Rasskazy" (Stories, Рассказы), published in Saint Petersburg. Chekhov included it into the Volume 4 of his Collected Works, published by Adolf Marks in 1899–1901. During the author's lifetime "The Privy Councillor" was translated into the German, Slovak and Czech languages. Published in Prague in 1892, it proved to be Chekhov's first story to come out there as a  separate edition. It was translated into German by Elsa Goeller. Judging by her 9 October 1898 letter (from Prague), at least one episode of the story was considered to be autobiographical. She wrote: "The Privy Councillor is also brilliant, and how I laughed at this episode of your youth!.. This "I won't let her!" from both Fyodor and Pobedimsky, is just charming." Plot summary. Klavdiya Arkhipovna is greatly excited: her brother Ivan Arkhipovich Gundasov, who is a privy councillor, with the rank of a general, has informed her in a letter that due to financial difficulties, instead of his  usual trip to Marienbad he was going to spend the summer with her and her family in their Kochuyevka village. Much effort goes into the preparations, most of the culinary order. The house is cleaned, washed and turned inside out, and the boy, Andrey, and his tutor Pobedimsky receive new costumes, made by the local tailor. Upon his uncle's arrival the boy is disappointed. The general does not look at all like a fierce war hero with a sabre as he'd imagined him to be. He is a shifty, youngish middle-aged man who is extraordinary absent-minded  and totally delighted with the way how everything around him here is "so very real." He is infatuated with Tatyana Ivanovna, the wife of the estate's manager Fyodor. So as to accommodate the guest and his lackey properly, the boy and his teacher are moved to the couple's lodge. Here the foursome amuse themselves by singing, much to the delight of the general, who makes it a habit to visit them regularly. The idyll goes all pear-shaped one evening when the latter, having forgotten that she has a husband, asks Tatyana (whom he insists on calling Pelageya  Ivanovna) to go with himself to Saint Petersburg. The outraged Fyodor Petrovich, who is present, first throws the general out of the outbuilding, then Pobedimsky, who rather stupidly betrays his own feelings towards Tatyana Ivanovna. Klavdiya Ivanovna offers his brother three thousand rubles, for him to travel to Marienbad, after all.