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Matvei Savvich
also: Матвей Саввич
A traveling townsman and orchard-lessee who lodges overnight at Dyudya's house and narrates, with self-righteous piety, the story of his adopted son Kuzka's parents -- a tale in which his own seduction of a soldier's wife sets off her husband's fatal beating of her and her eventual conviction and death for poisoning him.