Fortune’s Fool by Ivan Turgenev. Short summary

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Landlord Tropachev and his jester Karpachev visit the Yeletskys. They get the Yeletsky’s freeloader Kuzovkin drunk, and he says that Olga Yeletskaya is his daughter. For money, he retracts his words.

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The landowners Yeletsky come to their estate. This is Olga Petrovna and her husband, Pavel Nikolaevich, an official from St. Petersburg. The estate belongs to Olga, and she has not been here in seven years.

A nobleman Vasily Kuzovknin lives in the estate as a freeloader, and the household is run by the dishonest Yegor Kartashov. Their new owners are visited by their neighbor, the landowner Tropachev. He and his clown Karpachev persuade Pavel Eletsky to get Kuzovkin drunk and then tell him about his life and grievances. But Kuzovkin unexpectedly declares that Pavel’s wife Olga is his daughter.

Yeletsky has decided to transfer the old nobleman, but Olga first asks him to tell him how it was. He declared that Olga’s mother had not got on with her father, who after the death of her two sons had not really lived with her, but had cheated with a neighbor and beaten his wife. Then the landowner fell off his horse and died, and after Olga’s birth her mother became ill and also died.

Olga and Pavel began to persuade the old man to take 10,000 rubles, and not to talk about his paternity any more.