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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
+# 1 in our series by Anton Chekhov
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+The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
+
+by Anton Chekhov
+
+May, 1999  [Etext #1732]
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Schoolmistress and Other Stories
+by Anton Chekhov, #1 in our series by Chekhov
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+
+THE TALES OF CHEKHOV, VOLUME 9
+
+THE SCHOOLMISTRESS AND OTHER STORIES
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
+  A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
+  MISERY
+  CHAMPAGNE
+  AFTER THE THEATRE
+  A LADY'S STORY
+  IN EXILE
+  THE CATTLE-DEALERS
+  SORROW
+  ON OFFICIAL DUTY
+  THE FIRST-CLASS PASSENGER
+  A TRAGIC ACTOR
+  A TRANSGRESSION
+  SMALL FRY
+  THE REQUIEM
+  IN THE COACH-HOUSE
+  PANIC FEARS
+  THE BET
+  THE HEAD-GARDENER'S STORY
+  THE BEAUTIES
+  THE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVIL
+
+
+
+
+THE SCHOOLMISTRESS
+
+AT half-past eight they drove out of the town.
+
+The highroad was dry, a lovely April sun was shining warmly, but
+the snow was still lying in the ditches and in the woods. Winter,
+dark, long, and spiteful, was hardly over; spring had come all of
+a sudden. But neither the warmth nor the languid transparent
+woods, warmed by the breath of spring, nor the black flocks of
+birds flying over the huge puddles that were like lakes, nor the
+marvelous fathomless sky, into which it seemed one would have
+gone away so joyfully, presented anything new or interesting to
+Marya Vassilyevna who was sitting in the cart. For thirteen years
+she had been schoolmistress, and there was no reckoning how many
+times during all those years she had been to the town for her
+salary; and whether it were spring as now, or a rainy autumn
+evening, or winter, it was all the same to her, and she always --
+invariably -- longed for one thing only, to get to the end of her
+journey as quickly as could be.
+
+She felt as though she had been living in that part of the
+country for ages and ages, for a hundred years, and it seemed to
+her that she knew every stone, every tree on the road from the
+town to her school. Her past was here, her present was here, and
+she could imagine no other future than the school, the road to
+the town and back again, and again the school and again the road.
+. . .
+
+She had got out of the habit of thinking of her past before she
+became a schoolmistress, and had almost forgotten it. She had
+once had a father and mother; they had lived in Moscow in a big
+flat near the Red Gate, but of all that life there was left in
+her memory only something vague and fluid like a dream. Her
+father had died when she was ten years old, and her mother had
+died soon after. . . . She had a brother, an officer; at first
+they used to write to each other, then her brother had given up
+answering her letters, he had got out of the way of writing. Of
+her old belongings, all that was left was a photograph of her
+mother, but it had grown dim from the dampness of the school, and
+now nothing could be seen but the hair and the eyebrows.
+
+When they had driven a couple of miles, old Semyon, who was
+driving, turned round and said:
+
+"They have caught a government clerk in the town. They have taken
+him away. The story is that with some Germans he killed Alexeyev,
+the Mayor, in Moscow."
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"They were reading it in the paper, in Ivan Ionov's tavern."
+
+And again they were silent for a long time. Marya Vassilyevna
+thought of her school, of the examination that was coming soon,
+and of the girl and four boys she was sending up for it. And just
+as she was thinking about the examination, she was overtaken by
+a neighboring landowner called Hanov in a carriage with four
+horses, the very man who had been examiner in her school the year
+before. When he came up to her he recognized her and bowed.
+
+"Good-morning," he said to her. "You are driving home, I
+suppose."
+
+This Hanov, a man of forty with a listless expression and a face
+that showed signs of wear, was beginning to look old, but was
+still handsome and admired by women. He lived in his big
+homestead alone, and was not in the service; and people used to
+say of him that he did nothing at home but walk up and down the
+room whistling, or play chess with his old footman. People said,
+too, that he drank heavily. And indeed at the examination the
+year before the very papers he brought with him smelt of wine
+and scent. He had been dressed all in new clothes on that
+occasion, and Marya Vassilyevna thought him very attractive, and
+all the while she sat beside him she had felt embarrassed. She
+was accustomed to see frigid and sensible examiners at the
+school, while this one did not remember a single prayer, or know
+what to ask questions about, and was exceedingly courteous and
+delicate, giving nothing but the highest marks.
+
+"I am going to visit Bakvist," he went on, addressing Marya
+Vassilyevna, "but I am told he is not at home."
+
+They turned off the highroad into a by-road to the village, Hanov
+leading the way and Semyon following. The four horses moved at a
+walking pace, with effort dragging the heavy carriage through the
+mud. Semyon tacked from side to side, keeping to the edge of the
+road, at one time through a snowdrift, at another through a pool,
+often jumping out of the cart and helping the horse. Marya
+Vassilyevna was still thinking about the school, wondering
+whether the arithmetic questions at the examination would be
+difficult or easy. And she felt annoyed with the Zemstvo board at
+which she had found no one the day before. How unbusiness-like!
+Here she had been asking them for the last two years to dismiss
+the watchman, who did nothing, was rude to her, and hit the
+schoolboys; but no one paid any attention. It was hard to find
+the president at the office, and when one did find him he would
+say with tears in his eyes that he hadn't a moment to spare; the
+inspector visited the school at most once in three years, and
+knew nothing whatever about his work, as he had been in the
+Excise Duties Department, and had received the post of school
+inspector through influence. The School Council met very rarely,
+and there was no knowing where it met; the school guardian was
+an almost illiterate peasant, the head of a tanning business,
+unintelligent, rude, and a great friend of the watchman's -- and
+goodness knows to whom she could appeal with complaints or
+inquiries . . . .
+
+"He really is handsome," she thought, glancing at Hanov.
+
+The road grew worse and worse. . . . They drove into the wood.
+Here there was no room to turn round, the wheels sank deeply in,
+water splashed and gurgled through them, and sharp twigs struck
+them in the face.
+
+"What a road!" said Hanov, and he laughed.
+
+The schoolmistress looked at him and could not understand why
+this queer man lived here. What could his money, his interesting
+appearance, his refined bearing do for him here, in this mud, in
+this God-forsaken, dreary place? He got no special advantages
+out of life, and here, like Semyon, was driving at a jog-trot on
+an appalling road and enduring the same discomforts. Why live
+here if one could live in Petersburg or abroad? And one would
+have thought it would be nothing for a rich man like him to make
+a good road instead of this bad one, to avoid enduring this
+misery and seeing the despair on the faces of his coachman and
+Semyon; but he only laughed, and apparently did not mind, and
+wanted no better life. He was kind, soft, naive, and he did
+not understand this coarse life, just as at the examination he
+did not know the prayers. He subscribed nothing to the schools
+but globes, and genuinely regarded himself as a useful person and
+a prominent worker in the cause of popular education. And what
+use were his globes here?
+
+"Hold on, Vassilyevna!" said Semyon.
+
+The cart lurched violently and was on the point of upsetting;
+something heavy rolled on to Marya Vassilyevna's feet -- it was
+her parcel of purchases. There was a steep ascent uphill through
+the clay; here in the winding ditches rivulets were gurgling.
+The water seemed to have gnawed away the road; and how could one
+get along here! The horses breathed hard. Hanov got out of his
+carriage and walked at the side of the road in his long overcoat.
+He was hot.
+
+"What a road!" he said, and laughed again. "It would soon smash
+up one's carriage."
+
+"Nobody obliges you to drive about in such weather," said Semyon
+surlily. "You should stay at home."
+
+"I am dull at home, grandfather. I don't like staying at home."
+
+Beside old Semyon he looked graceful and vigorous, but yet in his
+walk there was something just perceptible which betrayed in him a
+being already touched by decay, weak, and on the road to ruin.
+And all at once there was a whiff of spirits in the wood. Marya
+Vassilyevna was filled with dread and pity for this man going to
+his ruin for no visible cause or reason, and it came into her
+mind that if she had been his wife or sister she would have
+devoted her wh ole life to saving him from ruin. His wife! Life
+was so ordered that here he was living in his great house alone,
+and she was living in a God-forsaken village alone, and yet for
+some reason the mere thought that he and she might be close to
+one another and equals seemed impossible and absurd. In reality,
+life was arranged and human relations were complicated so
+utterly beyond all understanding that when one thought about it
+one felt uncanny and one's heart sank.
+
+"And it is beyond all understanding," she thought, "why God gives
+beauty, this graciousness, and sad, sweet eyes to weak, unlucky,
+useless people -- why they are so charming."
+
+"Here we must turn off to the right," said Hanov, getting into
+his carriage. "Good-by! I wish you all things good!"
+
+And again she thought of her pupils, of the examination, of the
+watchman, of the School Council; and when the wind brought the
+sound of the retreating carriage these thoughts were mingled with
+others. She longed to think of beautiful eyes, of love,  of the
+happiness which would never be. . . .
+
+His wife? It was cold in the morning, there was no one to heat
+the stove, the watchman disappeared; the children came in as soon
+as it was light, bringing in snow and mud and making a noise: it
+was all so inconvenient, so comfortless. Her abode consisted of
+one little room and the kitchen close by. Her head ached every
+day after her work, and after dinner she had heart-burn. She had
+to collect money from the school-children for wood and for the
+watchman, and to give it to the school guardian, and then to
+entreat him -- that overfed, insolent peasant -- for God's sake
+to send her wood. And at night she dreamed of examinations,
+peasants, snowdrifts. And this life was making her grow old and
+coarse, making her ugly, angular, and awkward, as though she
+were made of lead. She was always afraid, and she would get up
+from her seat and not venture to sit down in the presence of a
+member of the Zemstvo or the school guardian. And she used
+formal, deferential expressions when she spoke of any one of
+them. And no one thought her attractive, and life was passing
+drearily, without affection, without friendly sympathy, without
+interesting acquaintances. How awful it would have been in her
+position if she had fallen in love!
+
+"Hold on, Vassilyevna!"
+
+Again a sharp ascent uphill. . . .
+
+She had become a schoolmistress from necessity, without feeling
+any vocation for it; and she had never thought of a vocation, of
+serving the cause of enlightenment; and it always seemed to her
+that what was most important in her work was not the children,
+nor enlightenment, but the examinations. And what time had she
+for thinking of vocation, of serving the cause of enlightenment?
+Teachers, badly paid doctors, and their assistants, with their
+terribly hard work, have not even the comfort of  thinking
+that they are serving an idea or the people, as their
+heads are always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of
+wood for the fire, of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a
+hard-working, an uninteresting life, and only silent, patient
+cart-horses like Mary Vassilyevna could put up with it for long;
+the lively, nervous, impressionable people who talked about
+vocation and serving the idea were soon weary of it and gave up
+the work.
+
+Semyon kept picking out the driest and shortest way, first by a
+meadow, then by the backs of the village huts; but in one place
+the peasants would not let them pass, in another it was the
+priest's land and they could not cross it, in another Ivan Ionov
+had bought a plot from the landowner and had dug a ditch round
+it. They kept having to turn back.
+
+They reached Nizhneye Gorodistche. Near the tavern on the
+dung-strewn earth, where the snow was still lying, there stood
+wagons that had brought great bottles of crude sulphuric acid.
+There were a great many people in the tavern, all drivers, and
+there was a smell of vodka, tobacco, and sheepskins. There was a
+loud noise of conversation and the banging of the swing-door.
+Through the wall, without ceasing for a moment, came the sound of
+a concertina being played in the shop. Marya Vassilyevna
+sat down and drank some tea, while at the next table peasants
+were drinking vodka and beer, perspiring from the tea they had
+just swallowed and the stifling fumes of the tavern.
+
+"I say, Kuzma!" voices kept shouting in confusion. "What there!"
+"The Lord bless us!" "Ivan Dementyitch, I can tell you that!"
+"Look out, old man!"
+
+A little pock-marked man with a black beard, who was quite drunk,
+was suddenly surprised by something and began using bad language.
+
+"What are you swearing at, you there?" Semyon, who was sitting
+some way off, responded angrily. "Don't you see the young lady?"
+
+"The young lady!" someone mimicked in another corner.
+
+"Swinish crow!"
+
+"We meant nothing . . ." said the little man in confusion. "I beg
+your pardon. We pay with our money and the young lady with hers.
+Good-morning!"
+
+"Good-morning," answered the schoolmistress.
+
+"And we thank you most feelingly."
+
+Marya Vassilyevna drank her tea with satisfaction, and she, too,
+began turning red like the peasants, and fell to thinking again
+about firewood, about the watchman. . . .
+
+"Stay, old man," she heard from the next table, "it's the
+schoolmistress from Vyazovye. . . . We know her; she's a good
+young lady."
+
+"She's all right!"
+
+The swing-door was continually banging, some coming in, others
+going out. Marya Vassilyevna sat on, thinking all the time of the
+same things, while the concertina went on playing and playing.
+The patches of sunshine had been on the floor, then they
+passed to the counter, to the wall, and disappeared altogether;
+so by the sun it was past midday. The peasants at the next table
+were getting ready to go. The little man, somewhat unsteadily,
+went up to Marya Vassilyevna and held out his hand to her;
+following his example, the others shook hands, too, at parting,
+and went out one after another, and the swing-door squeaked and
+slammed nine times.
+
+"Vassilyevna, get ready," Semyon called to her.
+
+They set off. And again they went at a walking pace.
+
+"A little while back they were building a school here in their
+Nizhneye Gorodistche," said Semyon, turning round. "It was a
+wicked thing that was done!"
+
+"Why, what?"
+
+"They say the president put a thousand in his pocket, and the
+school guardian another thousand in his, and the teacher five
+hundred."
+
+"The whole school only cost a thousand. It's wrong to slander
+people, grandfather. That's all nonsense."
+
+"I don't know, . . . I only tell you what folks say."
+
+But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the schoolmistress.
+The peasants did not believe her. They always thought she
+received too large a salary, twenty-one roubles a month (five
+would have been enough), and that of the money that she
+collected from the children for the firewood and the watchman the
+greater part she kept for herself. The guardian thought the same
+as the peasants, and he himself made a profit off the firewood
+and received payments from the peasants for being a guardian --
+without the knowledge of the authorities.
+
+The forest, thank God! was behind them, and now it would be flat,
+open ground all the way to Vyazovye, and there was not far to go
+now. They had to cross the river and then the railway line, and
+then Vyazovye was in sight.
+
+"Where are you driving?" Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon. "Take
+the road to the right to the bridge."
+
+"Why, we can go this way as well. It's not deep enough to
+matter."
+
+"Mind you don't drown the horse."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge," said Marya Vassilyevna,
+seeing the four horses far away to the right. "It is he, I
+think."
+
+"It is. So he didn't find Bakvist at home. What a pig-headed
+fellow he is. Lord have mercy upon us! He's driven over there,
+and what for? It's fully two miles nearer this way."
+
+They reached the river. In the summer it was a little stream
+easily crossed by wading. It usually dried up in August, but now,
+after the spring floods, it was a river forty feet in breadth,
+rapid, muddy, and cold; on the bank and right up to the water
+there were fresh tracks of wheels, so it had been crossed here.
+
+"Go on!" shouted Semyon angrily and anxiously, tugging violently
+at the reins and jerking his elbows as a bird does its wings. "Go
+on!"
+
+The horse went on into the water up to his belly and stopped, but
+at once went on again with an effort, and Marya Vassilyevna was
+aware of a keen chilliness in her feet.
+
+"Go on!" she, too, shouted, getting up. "Go on!"
+
+They got out on the bank.
+
+"Nice mess it is, Lord have mercy upon us!" muttered Semyon,
+setting straight the harness. "It's a perfect plague with this
+Zemstvo. . . ."
+
+Her shoes and goloshes were full of water, the lower part of her
+dress and of her coat and one sleeve were wet and dripping: the
+sugar and flour had got wet, and that was worst of all, and Marya
+Vassilyevna could only clasp her hands in despair and say:
+
+Oh, Semyon, Semyon! How tiresome you are really! . . ."
+
+The barrier was down at the railway crossing. A train was coming
+out of the station. Marya Vassilyevna stood at the crossing
+waiting till it should pass, and shivering all over with cold.
+Vyazovye was in sight now, and the school with the green roof,
+and the church with its crosses flashing in the evening sun: and
+the station windows flashed too, and a pink smoke rose from the
+engine . . . and it seemed to her that everything was trembling
+with cold.
+
+Here was the train; the windows reflected the gleaming light like
+the crosses on the church: it made her eyes ache to look at them.
+On the little platform between two first-class carriages a lady
+was standing, and Marya Vassilyevna glanced at her as she
+passed. Her mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had had just
+such luxuriant hair, just such a brow and bend of the head. And
+with amazing distinctness, for the first time in those thirteen
+years, there rose before her mind a vivid picture of her mother,
+her father, her brother, their flat in Moscow, the aquarium with
+little fish, everything to the tiniest detail; she heard the
+sound of the piano, her father's voice; she felt as she had been
+then, young, good-looking, well-dressed, in a bright warm room
+among her own people. A feeling of joy and happiness suddenly
+came over her, she pressed her hands to her temples in an
+ecstacy, and called softly, beseechingly:
+
+"Mother!"
+
+And she began crying, she did not know why. Just at that instant
+Hanov drove up with his team of four horses, and seeing him she
+imagined happiness such as she had never had, and smiled and
+nodded to him as an equal and a friend, and it seemed to her
+that her happiness, her triumph, was glowing in the sky and on
+all sides, in the windows and on the trees. Her father and mother
+had never died, she had never been a schoolmistress, it was a
+long, tedious, strange dream, and now she had awakened. . . .
+
+"Vassilyevna, get in!"
+
+And at once it all vanished. The barrier was slowly raised. Marya
+Vassilyevna, shivering and numb with cold, got into the cart. The
+carriage with the four horses crossed the railway line; Semyon
+followed it. The signalman took off his cap.
+
+"And here is Vyazovye. Here we are."
+
+A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
+
+A MEDICAL student called Mayer, and a pupil of the Moscow School
+of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture called Rybnikov, went
+one evening to see their friend Vassilyev, a law student, and
+suggested that he should go with them to S. Street. For a long
+time Vassilyev would not consent to go, but in the end he put on
+his greatcoat and went with them.
+
+He knew nothing of fallen women except by hearsay and from books,
+and he had never in his life been in the houses in which they
+live. He knew that there are immoral women who, under the
+pressure of fatal circumstances -- environment, bad education,
+poverty, and so on -- are forced to sell their honor for money.
+They know nothing of pure love, have no children, have no civil
+rights; their mothers and sisters weep over them as though they
+were dead, science treats of them as an evil, men address them
+with contemptuous familiarity. But in spite of all that, they do
+not lose the semblance and image of God. They all acknowledge
+their sin and hope for salvation. Of the means that lead to
+salvation they can avail themselves to the fullest extent.
+Society, it is true, will not forgive people their past, but in
+the sight of God St. Mary of Egypt is no lower than the other
+saints. When it had happened to Vassilyev in the street to
+recognize a fallen woman as such, by her dress or her manners,
+or to see a picture of one in a comic paper, he always remembered
+a story he had once read: a young man, pure and self-sacrificing,
+loves a fallen woman and urges her to become his wife; she,
+considering herself unworthy of such happiness, takes poison.
+
+Vassilyev lived in one of the side streets turning out of
+Tverskoy Boulevard. When he came out of the house with his two
+friends it was about eleven o'clock. The first snow had not long
+fallen, and all nature was under the spell of the fresh snow.
+There was the smell of snow in the air, the snow crunched softly
+under the feet; the earth, the roofs, the trees, the seats on the
+boulevard, everything was soft, white, young, and this made the
+houses look quite different from the day before; the street
+lamps burned more brightly, the air was more transparent, the
+carriages rumbled with a deeper note, and with the fresh, light,
+frosty air a feeling stirred in the soul akin to the white,
+youthful, feathery snow. "Against my will an unknown force,"
+hummed the medical student in his agreeable tenor, "has led me to
+these mournful shores."
+
+"Behold the mill . . ." the artist seconded him, "in ruins now. .
+. ."
+
+"Behold the mill . . . in ruins now," the medical student
+repeated, raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.
+
+He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words, and
+then sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round:
+
+        "Here in old days when I was free,
+         Love, free, unfettered, greeted me."
+
+The three of them went into a restaurant and, without taking off
+their greatcoats, drank a couple of glasses of vodka each. Before
+drinking the second glass, Vassilyev noticed a bit of cork in his
+vodka, raised the glass to his eyes, and gazed into
+it for a long time, screwing up his shortsighted eyes. The
+medical student did not understand his expression, and said:
+
+"Come, why look at it? No philosophizing, please. Vodka is given
+us to be drunk, sturgeon to be eaten, women to be visited, snow
+to be walked upon. For one evening anyway live like a human
+being!"
+
+"But I haven't said anything . . ." said Vassilyev, laughing. "Am
+I refusing to?"
+
+There was a warmth inside him from the vodka. He looked with
+softened feelings at his friends, admired them and envied them.
+In these strong, healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully
+balanced everything is, how finished and smooth is everything in
+their minds and souls! They sing, and have a passion for the
+theatre, and draw, and talk a great deal, and drink, and they
+don't have headaches the day after; they are both poetical and
+debauched, both soft and hard; they can work, too, and be
+indignant, and laugh without reason, and talk nonsense; they are
+warm, honest, self-sacrificing, and as men are in no way inferior
+to himself, Vassilyev, who watched over every step he took and
+every word he uttered, who was fastidious and cautious,
+and ready to raise every trifle to the level of a problem. And
+he longed for one evening to live as his friends did, to open
+out, to let himself loose from his own control. If vodka had to
+be drunk, he would drink it, though his head would be splitting
+next morning. If he were taken to the women he would go. He would
+laugh, play the fool, gaily respond to the passing advances of
+strangers in the street. . . .
+
+He went out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends --
+one in a crushed broad-brimmed hat, with an affectation of
+artistic untidiness; the other in a sealskin cap, a man not poor,
+though he affected to belong to the Bohemia of learning. He
+liked the snow, the pale street lamps, the sharp black tracks
+left in the first snow by the feet of the passers-by. He liked
+the air, and especially that limpid, tender, naive, as it were
+virginal tone, which can be seen in nature only twice in the
+year -- when everything is covered with snow, and in spring on
+bright days and moonlight evenings when the ice breaks on the
+river.
+
+     "Against my will an unknown force,
+      Has led me to these mournful shores,"
+
+he hummed in an undertone.
+
+And the tune for some reason haunted him and his friends all the
+way, and all three of them hummed it mechanically, not in time
+with one another.
+
+Vassilyev's imagination was picturing how, in another ten
+minutes, he and his friends would knock at a door; how by little
+dark passages and dark rooms they would steal in to the women;
+how, taking advantage of the darkness, he would strike a match,
+would light up and see the face of a martyr and a guilty smile.
+The unknown, fair or dark, would certainly have her hair down and
+be wearing a white dressing-jacket; she would be panic-stricken
+by the light, would be fearfully confused, and would say: "For
+God's sake, what are you doing! Put it out!" It would all be
+dreadful, but interesting and new.
+
+II
+
+The friends turned out of Trubnoy Square into Gratchevka, and
+soon reached the side street which Vassilyev only knew by
+reputation. Seeing two rows of houses with brightly lighted
+windows and wide-open doors, and hearing gay strains of pianos
+and violins, sounds which floated out from every door and
+mingled in a strange chaos, as though an unseen orchestra were
+tuning up in the darkness above the roofs, Vassilyev was
+surprised and said:
+
+"What a lot of houses!"
+
+"That's nothing," said the medical student. "In London there are
+ten times as many. There are about a hundred thousand such women
+there."
+
+The cabmen were sitting on their boxes as calmly and
+indifferently as in any other side street; the same passers-by
+were walking along the pavement as in other streets. No one was
+hurrying, no one was hiding his face in his coat-collar, no one
+shook his head reproachfully. . . . And in this indifference to
+the noisy chaos of pianos and violins, to the bright windows and
+wide-open doors, there was a feeling of something very open,
+insolent, reckless, and devil-may-care. Probably it was as gay
+and noisy at the slave-markets in their day, and people's faces
+and movements showed the same indifference.
+
+"Let us begin from the beginning," said the artist.
+
+The friends went into a narrow passage lighted by a lamp with a
+reflector. When they opened the door a man in a black coat, with
+an unshaven face like a flunkey's, and sleepy-looking eyes, got
+up lazily from a yellow sofa in the hall. The place smelt like a
+laundry with an odor of vinegar in addition. A door from the hall
+led into a brightly lighted room. The medical student and the
+artist stopped at this door and, craning their necks, peeped into
+the room.
+
+"Buona sera, signori, rigolleto -- hugenotti -- traviata!" began
+the artist, with a theatrical bow.
+
+"Havanna -- tarakano -- pistoleto!" said the medical student,
+pressing his cap to his breast and bowing low.
+
+Vassilyev was standing behind them. He would have liked to make a
+theatrical bow and say something silly, too, but he only smiled,
+felt an awkwardness that was like shame, and waited impatiently
+for what would happen next.
+
+A little fair girl of seventeen or eighteen, with short hair, in
+a short light-blue frock with a bunch of white ribbon on her
+bosom, appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Why do you stand at the door?" she said. "Take off your coats
+and come into the drawing-room."
+
+The medical student and the artist, still talking Italian, went
+into the drawing-room. Vassilyev followed them irresolutely.
+
+"Gentlemen, take off your coats!" the flunkey said sternly; "you
+can't go in like that."
+
+In the drawing-room there was, besides the girl, another woman,
+very stout and tall, with a foreign face and bare arms. She was
+sitting near the piano, laying out a game of patience on her lap.
+She took no notice whatever of the visitors.
+
+"Where are the other young ladies?" asked the medical student.
+
+"They are having their tea," said the fair girl. "Stepan," she
+called, "go and tell the young ladies some students have come!"
+
+A little later a third young lady came into the room. She was
+wearing a bright red dress with blue stripes. Her face was
+painted thickly and unskillfully, her brow was hidden under her
+hair, and there was an unblinking, frightened stare in her eyes.
+As she came in, she began at once singing some song in a coarse,
+powerful contralto. After her a fourth appeared, and after her a
+fifth. . . .
+
+In all this Vassilyev saw nothing new or interesting. It seemed
+to him that that room, the piano, the looking-glass in its cheap
+gilt frame, the bunch of white ribbon, the dress with the blue
+stripes, and the blank indifferent faces, he had seen before and
+more than once. Of the darkness, the silence, the secrecy, the
+guilty smile, of all that he had expected to meet here and had
+dreaded, he saw no trace.
+
+Everything was ordinary, prosaic, and uninteresting. Only one
+thing faintly stirred his curiosity -- the terrible, as it were
+intentionally designed, bad taste which was visible in the
+cornices, in the absurd pictures, in the dresses, in the bunch
+of ribbons. There was something characteristic and peculiar in
+this bad taste.
+
+"How poor and stupid it all is!" thought Vassilyev. "What is
+there in all this trumpery I see now that can tempt a normal man
+and excite him to commit the horrible sin of buying a human being
+for a rouble? I understand any sin for the sake of splendor,
+beauty, grace, passion, taste; but what is there here? What is
+there here worth sinning for? But . . . one mustn't think!"
+
+"Beardy, treat me to some porter!" said the fair girl, addressing
+him.
+
+Vassilyev was at once overcome with confusion.
+
+"With pleasure," he said, bowing politely. "Only excuse me,
+madam, I . . . I won't drink with you. I don't drink.
+
+Five minutes later the friends went off into another house.
+
+"Why did you ask for porter?" said the medical student angrily.
+"What a millionaire! You have thrown away six roubles for no
+reason whatever -- simply waste!"
+
+"If she wants it, why not let her have the pleasure?" said
+Vassilyev, justifying himself.
+
+"You did not give pleasure to her, but to the 'Madam.' They are
+told to ask the visitors to stand them treat because it is a
+profit to the keeper."
+
+"Behold the mill . . ." hummed the artist, "in ruins now. . . ."
+
+Going into the next house, the friends stopped in the hall and
+did not go into the drawing-room. Here, as in the first house, a
+figure in a black coat, with a sleepy face like a flunkey's, got
+up from a sofa in the hall. Looking at this flunkey, at
+his face and his shabby black coat, Vassilyev thought: "What
+must an ordinary simple Russian have gone through before fate
+flung him down as a flunkey here? Where had he been before and
+what had he done? What was awaiting him? Was he married? Where
+was his mother, and did she know that he was a servant here?"
+And Vassilyev could not help particularly noticing the flunkey in
+each house. In one of the houses -- he thought it was the fourth
+-- there was a little spare, frail-looking flunkey with
+a watch-chain on his waistcoat. He was reading a newspaper, and
+took no notice of them when they went in. Looking at his face
+Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man with such a face
+might steal, might murder, might bear false witness. But the
+face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little
+flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at
+the same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier
+overtaking a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch
+this man's hair, to see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be
+coarse like a dog's.
+
+III
+
+Having drunk two glasses of porter, the artist became suddenly
+tipsy and grew unnaturally lively.
+
+"Let's go to another!" he said peremptorily, waving his hands. "I
+will take you to the best one."
+
+When he had brought his fri ends to the house which in his
+opinion was the best, he declared his firm intention of dancing a
+quadrille. The medical student grumbled something about their
+having to pay the musicians a rouble, but agreed to be his
+_vis-a-vis_. They began dancing.
+
+It was just as nasty in the best house as in the worst. Here
+there were just the same looking-glasses and pictures, the same
+styles of coiffure and dress. Looking round at the furnishing of
+the rooms and the costumes, Vassilyev realized that this was not
+lack of taste, but something that might be called the taste, and
+even the style, of S. Street, which could not be found
+elsewhere--something intentional in its ugliness, not accidental,
+but elaborated in the course of years. After he had been in eight
+houses he was no longer surprised at the color of the dresses, at
+the long trains, the gaudy ribbons, the sailor dresses, and the
+thick purplish rouge on the cheeks; he saw that it all had to be
+like this, that if a single one of the women had been dressed
+like a human being, or if there had been one decent engraving on
+the wall, the general tone of the whole street would have
+suffered.
+
+"How unskillfully they sell themselves!" he thought. "How can
+they fail to understand that vice is only alluring when it is
+beautiful and hidden, when it wears the mask of virtue? Modest
+black dresses, pale faces, mournful smiles, and darkness would
+be far more effective than this clumsy tawdriness. Stupid things!
+If they don't understand it of themselves, their visitors might
+surely have taught them. . . ."
+
+A young lady in a Polish dress edged with white fur came up to
+him and sat down beside him.
+
+"You nice dark man, why aren't you dancing?" she asked. "Why are
+you so dull?"
+
+"Because it is dull."
+
+"Treat me to some Lafitte. Then it won't be dull."
+
+Vassilyev made no answer. He was silent for a little, and then
+asked:
+
+"What time do you get to sleep?"
+
+"At six o'clock."
+
+"And what time do you get up?"
+
+"Sometimes at two and sometimes at three."
+
+"And what do you do when you get up?"
+
+"We have coffee, and at six o'clock we have dinner."
+
+"And what do you have for dinner?"
+
+"Usually soup, beefsteak, and dessert. Our madam keeps the girls
+well. But why do you ask all this?"
+
+"Oh, just to talk. . . ."
+
+Vassilyev longed to talk to the young lady about many things. He
+felt an intense desire to find out where she came from, whether
+her parents were living, and whether they knew that she was here;
+how she had come into this house; whether she were cheerful and
+satisfied, or sad and oppressed by gloomy thoughts; whether she
+hoped some day to get out of her present position. . . . But he
+could not think how to begin or in what shape to put his
+questions so as not to seem impertinent. He thought
+for a long time, and asked:
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Eighty," the young lady jested, looking with a laugh at the
+antics of the artist as he danced.
+
+All at once she burst out laughing at something, and uttered a
+long cynical sentence loud enough to be heard by everyone.
+Vassilyev was aghast, and not knowing how to look, gave a
+constrained smile. He was the only one who smiled; all the
+others, his friends, the musicians, the women, did not even
+glance towards his neighbor, but seemed not to have heard her.
+
+"Stand me some Lafitte," his neighbor said again.
+
+Vassilyev felt a repulsion for her white fur and for her voice,
+and walked away from her. It seemed to him hot and stifling, and
+his heart began throbbing slowly but violently, like a hammer --
+one! two! three!
+
+"Let us go away!" he said, pulling the artist by his sleeve.
+
+"Wait a little; let me finish."
+
+While the artist and the medical student were finishing the
+quadrille, to avoid looking at the women, Vassilyev scrutinized
+the musicians. A respectable-looking old man in spectacles,
+rather like Marshal Bazaine, was playing the piano; a young man
+with a fair beard, dressed in the latest fashion, was playing the
+violin. The young man had a face that did not look stupid nor
+exhausted, but intelligent, youthful, and fresh. He was dressed
+fancifully and with taste; he played with feeling. It was
+a mystery how he and the respectable-looking old man had come
+here. How was it they were not ashamed to sit here? What were
+they thinking about when they looked at the women?
+
+If the violin and the piano had been played by men in rags,
+looking hungry, gloomy, drunken, with dissipated or stupid faces,
+then one could have understood their presence, perhaps. As it
+was, Vassilyev could not understand it at all. He recalled the
+story of the fallen woman he had once read, and he thought now
+that that human figure with the guilty smile had nothing in
+common with what he was seeing now. It seemed to him that he was
+seeing not fallen women, but some different world quite apart,
+alien to him and incomprehensible; if he had seen this world
+before on the stage, or read of it in a book, he would not have
+believed in it. . . .
+
+The woman with the white fur burst out laughing again and uttered
+a loathsome sentence in a loud voice. A feeling of disgust took
+possession of him. He flushed crimson and went out of the room.
+
+"Wait a minute, we are coming too!" the artist shouted to him.
+
+IV
+
+"While we were dancing," said the medical student, as they all
+three went out into the street, "I had a conversation with my
+partner. We talked about her first romance. He, the hero, was an
+accountant at Smolensk with a wife and five children. She was
+seventeen, and she lived with her papa and mamma, who sold soap
+and candles."
+
+"How did he win her heart?" asked Vassilyev.
+
+"By spending fifty roubles on underclothes for her. What next!"
+
+"So he knew how to get his partner's story out of her," thought
+Vassilyev about the medical student. "But I don't know how to."
+
+"I say, I am going home!" he said.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Because I don't know how to behave here. Besides, I am bored,
+disgusted. What is there amusing in it? If they were human beings
+-- but they are savages and animals. I am going; do as you like."
+
+"Come, Grisha, Grigory, darling. . ." said the artist in a
+tearful voice, hugging Vassilyev, "come along! Let's go to one
+more together and damnation take them! . . . Please do, Grisha!"
+
+They persuaded Vassilyev and led him up a staircase. In the
+carpet and the gilt banisters, in the porter who opened the door,
+and in the panels that decorated the hall, the same S. Street
+style was apparent, but carried to a greater perfection, more
+imposing.
+
+"I really will go home!" said Vassilyev as he was taking off his
+coat.
+
+"Come, come, dear boy," said the artist, and he kissed him on the
+neck. "Don't be tiresome. . . . Gri-gri, be a good comrade! We
+came together, we will go back together. What a beast you are,
+really!"
+
+"I can wait for you in the street. I think it's loathsome,
+really!"
+
+"Come, come, Grisha. . . . If it is loathsome, you can observe
+it! Do you understand? You can observe!"
+
+"One must take an objective view of things," said the medical
+student gravely.
+
+Vassilyev went into the drawing-room and sat down. There were a
+number of visitors in the room besides him and his friends: two
+infantry officers, a bald, gray-haired gentleman in spectacles,
+two beardless youths from the institute of land-surveying, and a
+very tipsy man who looked like an actor. All the young ladies
+were taken up with these visitors and paid no attention to
+Vassilyev.
+
+Only one of them, dressed _a la Aida,_ glanced sideways at him,
+smiled, and said, yawning: "A dark one has come. . . ."
+
+Vassilyev's heart was throbbing and his face burned. He felt
+ashamed before these visitors of his presence here, and he felt
+disgusted and miserable. He was tormented by the thought that he,
+a decent and loving man (such as he had hitherto considered
+himself), hated these women and felt nothing but repulsion
+towards them. He felt pity neither for the women nor the
+musicians nor the flunkeys.
+
+"It is because I am not trying to understand them," he thought.
+"They are all more like animals than human beings, but of course
+they are human beings all the same , they have souls. One must
+understand them and then judge. . . ."
+
+"Grisha, don't go, wait for us," the artist shouted to him and
+disappeared.
+
+The medical student disappeared soon after.
+
+"Yes, one must make an effort to understand, one mustn't be like
+this. . ." Vassilyev went on thinking.
+
+And he began gazing at each of the women with strained attention,
+looking for a guilty smile. But either he did not know how to
+read their faces, or not one of these women felt herself to be
+guilty; he read on every face nothing but a blank expression of
+everyday vulgar boredom and complacency. Stupid faces, stupid
+smiles, harsh, stupid voices, insolent movements, and nothing
+else. Apparently each of them had in the past a romance with an
+accountant based on underclothes for fifty roubles, and looked
+for no other charm in the present but coffee, a dinner of three
+courses, wines, quadrilles, sleeping till two in the afternoon. .
+. .
+
+Finding no guilty smile, Vassilyev began to look whether there
+was not one intelligent face. And his attention was caught by one
+pale, rather sleepy, exhausted-looking face. . . . It was a dark
+woman, not very young, wearing a dress covered with spangles;
+she was sitting in an easy-chair, looking at the floor lost in
+thought. Vassilyev walked from one corner of the room to the
+other, and, as though casually, sat down beside her.
+
+"I must begin with something trivial," he thought, "and pass to
+what is serious. . . ."
+
+"What a pretty dress you have," and with his finger he touched
+the gold fringe of her fichu.
+
+"Oh, is it? . . ." said the dark woman listlessly.
+
+"What province do you come from?"
+
+"I? From a distance. . . . From Tchernigov."
+
+"A fine province. It's nice there."
+
+"Any place seems nice when one is not in it."
+
+"It's a pity I cannot describe nature," thought Vassilyev. "I
+might touch her by a description of nature in Tchernigov. No
+doubt she loves the place if she has been born there."
+
+"Are you dull here?" he asked.
+
+"Of course I am dull."
+
+"Why don't you go away from here if you are dull?"
+
+"Where should I go to? Go begging or what?"
+
+"Begging would be easier than living here."
+
+How do you know that? Have you begged?"
+
+"Yes, when I hadn't the money to study. Even if I hadn't anyone
+could understand that. A beggar is anyway a free man, and you are
+a slave."
+
+The dark woman stretched, and watched with sleepy eyes the
+footman who was bringing a trayful of glasses and seltzer water.
+
+"Stand me a glass of porter," she said, and yawned again.
+
+"Porter," thought Vassilyev. "And what if your brother or mother
+walked in at this moment? What would you say? And what would they
+say? There would be porter then, I imagine. . . ."
+
+All at once there was the sound of weeping. From the adjoining
+room, from which the footman had brought the seltzer water, a
+fair man with a red face and angry eyes ran in quickly. He was
+followed by the tall, stout "madam," who was shouting in a
+shrill voice:
+
+"Nobody has given you leave to slap girls on the cheeks! We have
+visitors better than you, and they don't fight! Impostor!"
+
+A hubbub arose. Vassilyev was frightened and turned pale. In the
+next room there was the sound of bitter, genuine weeping, as
+though of someone insulted. And he realized that there were real
+people living here who, like people everywhere else, felt
+insulted, suffered, wept, and cried for help. The feeling of
+oppressive hate and disgust gave way to an acute feeling of pity
+and anger against the aggressor. He rushed into the room where
+there was weeping. Across rows of bottles on a marble-top table
+he distinguished a suffering face, wet with tears, stretched out
+his hands towards that face, took a step towards the table, but
+at once drew back in horror. The weeping girl was drunk.
+
+As he made his way though the noisy crowd gathered about the fair
+man, his heart sank and he felt frightened like a child; and it
+seemed to him that in this alien, incomprehensible world people
+wanted to pursue him, to beat him, to pelt him with filthy
+words. . . . He tore down his coat from the hatstand and ran
+headlong downstairs.
+
+V
+
+Leaning against the fence, he stood near the house waiting for
+his friends to come out. The sounds of the pianos and violins,
+gay, reckless, insolent, and mournful, mingled in the air in a
+sort of chaos, and this tangle of sounds seemed again like an
+unseen orchestra tuning up on the roofs. If one looked upwards
+into the darkness, the black background was all spangled with
+white, moving spots: it was snow falling. As the snowflakes came
+into the light they floated round lazily in the air like
+down, and still more lazily fell to the ground. The snowflakes
+whirled thickly round Vassilyev and hung upon his beard, his
+eyelashes, his eyebrows. . . . The cabmen, the horses, and the
+passers-by were white.
+
+"And how can the snow fall in this street!" thought Vassilyev.
+"Damnation take these houses!"
+
+His legs seemed to be giving way from fatigue, simply from having
+run down the stairs; he gasped for breath as though he had been
+climbing uphill, his heart beat so loudly that he could hear it.
+He was consumed by a desire to get out of the street as quickly
+as possible and to go home, but even stronger was his desire to
+wait for his companions and vent upon them his oppressive
+feeling.
+
+There was much he did not understand in these houses, the souls
+of ruined women were a mystery to him as before; but it was clear
+to him that the thing was far worse than could have been
+believed. If that sinful woman who had poisoned herself was
+called fallen, it was difficult to find a fitting name for all
+these who were dancing now to this tangle of sound and uttering
+long, loathsome sentences. They were not on the road to ruin, but
+ruined.
+
+"There is vice," he thought, "but neither consciousness of sin
+nor hope of salvation. They are sold and bought, steeped in wine
+and abominations, while they, like sheep, are stupid,
+indifferent, and don't understand. My God! My God!"
+
+It was clear to him, too, that everything that is called human
+dignity, personal rights, the Divine image and semblance, were
+defiled to their very foundations -- "to the very marrow," as
+drunkards say -- and that not only the street and the stupid
+ women were responsible for it.
+
+A group of students, white with snow, passed him laughing and
+talking gaily; one, a tall thin fellow, stopped, glanced into
+Vassilyev's face, and said in a drunken voice:
+
+"One of us! A bit on, old man? Aha-ha! Never mind, have a good
+time! Don't be down-hearted, old chap!"
+
+He took Vassilyev by the shoulder and pressed his cold wet
+mustache against his cheek, then he slipped, staggered, and,
+waving both hands, cried:
+
+"Hold on! Don't upset!"
+
+And laughing, he ran to overtake his companions.
+
+Through the noise came the sound of the artist's voice:
+
+"Don't you dare to hit the women! I won't let you, damnation take
+you! You scoundrels!"
+
+The medical student appeared in the doorway. He looked from side
+to side, and seeing Vassilyev, said in an agitated voice:
+
+"You here! I tell you it's really impossible to go anywhere with
+Yegor! What a fellow he is! I don't understand him! He has got up
+a scene! Do you hear? Yegor!" he shouted at the door. Yegor!"
+
+"I won't allow you to hit women!" the artist's piercing voice
+sounded from above. Something heavy and lumbering rolled down the
+stairs. It was the artist falling headlong. Evidently he had been
+pushed downstairs.
+
+He picked himself up from the ground, shook his hat, and, with an
+angry and indignant face, brandished his fist towards the top of
+the stairs and shouted:
+
+"Scoundrels! Torturers! Bloodsuckers! I won't allow you to hit
+them! To hit a weak, drunken woman! Oh, you brutes! . . ."
+
+"Yegor! . . . Come, Yegor! . . ." the medical student began
+imploring him. "I give you my word of honor I'll never come with
+you again. On my word of honor I won't!"
+
+Little by little the artist was pacified and the friends went
+homewards.
+
+"Against my will an unknown force," hummed the medical student,
+"has led me to these mournful shores."
+
+"Behold t he mill," the artist chimed in a little later, "in
+ruins now. What a lot of snow, Holy Mother! Grisha, why did you
+go? You are a funk, a regular old woman."
+
+Vassilyev walked behind his companions, looked at their backs,
+and thought:
+
+"One of two things: either we only fancy prostitution is an evil,
+and we exaggerate it; or, if prostitution really is as great an
+evil as is generally assumed, these dear friends of mine are as
+much slaveowners, violators, and murderers, as the inhabitants
+of Syria and Cairo, that are described in the 'Neva.' Now they
+are singing, laughing, talking sense, but haven't they just been
+exploiting hunger, ignorance, and stupidity? They have -- I have
+been a witness of it. What is the use of their humanity, their
+medicine, their painting? The science, art, and lofty sentiments
+of these soul-destroyers remind me of the piece of bacon in the
+story. Two brigands murdered a beggar in a forest; they began
+sharing his clothes between them, and found in his wallet a piece
+of bacon. 'Well found,' said one of them, 'let us have a bit.'
+'What do you mean? How can you?' cried the other in horror. 'Have
+you forgotten that to-day is Wednesday?' And they would not eat
+it. After murdering a man, they came out of the forest in the
+firm conviction that they were keeping the fast. In the same way
+these men, after buying women, go their way imagining that they
+are artists and men of science. . . ."
+
+"Listen!" he said sharply and angrily. "Why do you come here? Is
+it possible -- is it possible you don't understand how horrible
+it is? Your medical books tell you that every one of these women
+dies prematurely of consumption or something; art tells you that
+morally they are dead even earlier. Every one of them dies
+because she has in her time to entertain five hundred men on an
+average, let us say. Each one of them is killed by five hundred
+men. You are among those five hundred! If each of you in the
+course of your lives visits this place or others like it two
+hundred and fifty times, it follows that one woman is killed for
+every two of you! Can't you understand that? Isn't it horrible to
+murder, two of you, three of you, five of you, a foolish, hungry
+woman! Ah! isn't it awful, my God!"
+
+"I knew it would end like that," the artist said frowning. "We
+ought not to have gone with this fool and ass! You imagine you
+have grand notions in your head now, ideas, don't you? No, it's
+the devil knows what, but not ideas. You are looking at me
+now with hatred and repulsion, but I tell you it's better you
+should set up twenty more houses like those than look like that.
+There's more vice in your expression than in the whole street!
+Come along, Volodya, let him go to the devil! He's a fool and an
+ass, and that's all. . . ."
+
+"We human beings do murder each other," said the medical student.
+"It's immoral, of course, but philosophizing doesn't help it.
+Good-by!"
+
+At Trubnoy Square the friends said good-by and parted. When he
+was left alone, Vassilyev strode rapidly along the boulevard. He
+felt frightened of the darkness, of the snow which was falling in
+heavy flakes on the ground, and seemed as though it would cover
+up the whole world; he felt frightened of the street lamps
+shining with pale light through the clouds of snow. His soul was
+possessed by an unaccountable, faint-hearted terror. Passers-by
+came towards him from time to time, but he timidly moved to one
+side; it seemed to him that women, none but women, were coming
+from all sides and staring at him. . . .
+
+"It's beginning," he thought, "I am going to have a breakdown."
+
+VI
+
+At home he lay on his bed and said, shuddering all over: "They
+are alive! Alive! My God, those women are alive!"
+
+He encouraged his imagination in all sorts of ways to picture
+himself the brother of a fallen woman, or her father; then a
+fallen woman herself, with her painted cheeks; and it all moved
+him to horror.
+
+It seemed to him that he must settle the question at once at all
+costs, and that this question was not one that did not concern
+him, but was his own personal problem. He made an immense effort,
+repressed his despair, and, sitting on the bed, holding his head
+in his hands, began thinking how one could save all the women he
+had seen that day. The method for attacking problems of all kinds
+was, as he was an educated man, well known to him. And, however
+excited he was, he strictly adhered to that method. He recalled
+the history of the problem and its literature, and for a quarter
+of an hour he paced from one end of the room to the other trying
+to remember all the methods practiced at the present time for
+saving women. He had very many good friends and acquaintances
+who lived in lodgings in Petersburg. . . . Among them were a good
+many honest and self-sacrificing men. Some of them had attempted
+to save women. . . .
+
+"All these not very numerous attempts," thought Vassilyev, "can
+be divided into three groups. Some, after buying the woman out of
+the brothel, took a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine,
+and she became a semptress. And whether he wanted to or
+ not, after having bought her out he made her his mistress; then
+when he had taken his degree, he went away and handed her into
+the keeping of some other decent man as though she were a thing.
+And the fallen woman remained a fallen woman. Others, after
+buying her out, took a lodging apart for her, bought the
+inevitable sewing-machine, and tried teaching her to read,
+preaching at her and giving her books. The woman lived and sewed
+as long as it was interesting and a novelty to her, then getting
+bored, began receiving men on the sly, or ran away and went back
+where she could sleep till three o'clock, drink coffee, and have
+good dinners. The third class, the most ardent and
+self-sacrificing, had taken a bold, resolute step. They had
+married them. And when the insolent and spoilt, or stupid and
+crushed animal became a wife, the head of a household, and
+afterwards a mother, it turned her whole existence and attitude
+to life upside down, so that it was hard to recognize the fallen
+woman afterwards in the wife and the mother. Yes, marriage was
+the best and perhaps the only means."
+
+"But it is impossible!" Vassilyev said aloud, and he sank upon
+his bed. "I, to begin with, could not marry one! To do that one
+must be a saint and be unable to feel hatred or repulsion. But
+supposing that I, the medical student, and the artist mastered
+ourselves and did marry them -- suppose they were all married.
+What would be the result? The result would be that while here in
+Moscow they were being married, some Smolensk accountant would be
+debauching another lot, and that lot would be streaming here to
+fill the vacant places, together with others from Saratov,
+Nizhni-Novgorod, Warsaw. . . . And what is one to do with the
+hundred thousand in London? What's one to do with those in
+Hamburg?"
+
+The lamp in which the oil had burnt down began to smoke.
+Vassilyev did not notice it. He began pacing to and fro again,
+still thinking. Now he put the question differently: what must be
+done that fallen women should not be needed? For that, it was
+essential that the men who buy them and do them to death should
+feel all the immorality of their share in enslaving them and
+should be horrified. One must save the men.
+
+"One won't do anything by art and science, that is clear . . ."
+thought Vassilyev. "The only way out of it is missionary work."
+
+And he began to dream how he would the next evening stand at the
+corner of the street and say to every passer-by: "Where are you
+going and what for? Have some fear of God!"
+
+He would turn to the apathetic cabmen and say to them: "Why are
+you staying here? Why aren't you revolted? Why aren't you
+indignant? I suppose you believe in God and know that it is a
+sin, that people go to hell for it? Why don't you speak? It is
+true that they are strangers to you, but you know even they have
+fathers, brothers like yourselves. . . ."
+
+One of Vassilyev's friends had once said of him that he was a
+talented man. There are all sorts of talents -- talent for
+writing, talent for the stage, talent for art; but he had a
+peculi ar talent -- a talent for _humanity_. He possessed an
+extraordinarily fine delicate scent for pain in general. As a
+good actor reflects in himself the movements and voice of others,
+so Vassilyev could reflect in his soul the sufferings of others.
+When he saw tears, he wept; beside a sick man, he felt sick
+himself and moaned; if he saw an act of violence, he felt as
+though he himself were the victim of it, he was frightened as a
+child, and in his fright ran to help. The pain of others worked
+on his nerves, excited him, roused him to a state of frenzy, and
+so on.
+
+Whether this friend were right I don't know, but what Vassilyev
+experienced when he thought this question was settled was
+something like inspiration. He cried and laughed, spoke aloud the
+words that he should say next day, felt a fervent love for those
+who would listen to him and would stand beside him at the corner
+of the street to preach; he sat down to write letters, made vows
+to himself. . . .
+
+All this was like inspiration also from the fact that it did not
+last long. Vassilyev was soon tired. The cases in London, in
+Hamburg, in Warsaw, weighed upon him by their mass as a mountain
+weighs upon the earth; he felt dispirited, bewildered, in
+the face of this mass; he remembered that he had not a gift for
+words, that he was cowardly and timid, that indifferent people
+would not be willing to listen and understand him, a law student
+in his third year, a timid and insignificant person; that
+genuine missionary work included not only teaching but deeds. . .
+
+
+When it was daylight and carriages were already beginning to
+rumble in the street, Vassilyev was lying motionless on the sofa,
+staring into space. He was no longer thinking of the women, nor
+of the men, nor of missionary work. His whole attention was
+turned upon the spiritual agony which was torturing him. It was a
+dull, vague, undefined anguish akin to misery, to an extreme form
+of terror and to despair. He could point to the place where the
+pain was, in his breast under his heart; but he could not
+compare it with anything. In the past he had had acute toothache,
+he had had pleurisy and neuralgia, but all that was insignificant
+compared with this spiritual anguish. In the presence of that
+pain life seemed loathsome. The dissertation,
+the excellent work he had written already, the people he loved,
+the salvation of fallen women -- everything that only the day
+before he had cared about or been indifferent to, now when he
+thought of them irritated him in the same way as the noise of
+the carriages, the scurrying footsteps of the waiters in the
+passage, the daylight. . . . If at that moment someone had
+performed a great deed of mercy or had committed a revolting
+outrage, he would have felt the same repulsion for both actions.
+Of all the thoughts that strayed through his mind only two did
+not irritate him: one was that at every moment he had the power
+to kill himself, the other that this agony would not last more
+than three days. This last he knew by experience.
+
+After lying for a while he got up and, wringing his hands, walked
+about the room, not as usual from corner to corner, but round the
+room beside the walls. As he passed he glanced at himself in the
+looking-glass. His face looked pale and sunken, his
+temples looked hollow, his eyes were bigger, darker, more
+staring, as though they belonged to someone else, and they had an
+expression of insufferable mental agony.
+
+At midday the artist knocked at the door.
+
+"Grigory, are you at home?" he asked.
+
+Getting no answer, he stood for a minute, pondered, and answered
+himself in Little Russian: "Nay. The confounded fellow has gone
+to the University."
+
+And he went away. Vassilyev lay down on the bed and, thrusting
+his head under the pillow, began crying with agony, and the more
+freely his tears flowed the more terrible his mental anguish
+became. As it began to get dark, he thought of the agonizing
+night awaiting him, and was overcome by a horrible despair. He
+dressed quickly, ran out of his room, and, leaving his door wide
+open, for no object or reason, went out into the street. Without
+asking himself where he should go, he walked quickly along
+Sadovoy Street.
+
+Snow was falling as heavily as the day before; it was thawing.
+Thrusting his hands into his sleeves, shuddering and frightened
+at the noises, at the trambells, and at the passers-by, Vassilyev
+walked along Sadovoy Street as far as Suharev Tower; then to the
+Red Gate; from there he turned off to Basmannya Street. He went
+into a tavern and drank off a big glass of vodka, but that did
+not make him feel better. When he reached Razgulya he turned to
+the right, and strode along side streets in which he had never
+been before in his life. He reached the old bridge by which the
+Yauza runs gurgling, and from which one can see long rows of
+lights in the windows of the Red Barracks. To distract his
+spiritual anguish by some new sensation or some other pain,
+Vassilyev, not knowing what to do, crying and shuddering, undid
+his greatcoat and jacket and exposed his bare chest to the wet
+snow and the wind. But that did not lessen his suffering either.
+Then he bent down over the rail of the bridge and looked down
+into the black, yeasty Yauza, and he longed to plunge down head
+foremost; not from loathing for life, not for the sake of
+suicide, but in order to bruise himself at least, and by one pain
+to ease the other. But the black water, the darkness, the
+deserted banks covered with snow were terrifying. He shivered and
+walked on. He walked up and down by the Red Barracks, then turned
+back and went down to a copse, from the copse back to the bridge
+again
+
+"No, home, home!" he thought. "At home I believe it's better. . ."
+
+And he went back. When he reached home he pulled off his wet coat
+and cap, began pacing round the room, and went on pacing round
+and round without stopping till morning.
+
+VII
+
+When next morning the artist and the medical student went in to
+him, he was moving about the room with his shirt torn, biting his
+hands and moaning with pain.
+
+"For God's sake!" he sobbed when he saw his friends, "take me
+where you please, do what you can; but for God's sake, save me
+quickly! I shall kill myself!"
+
+The artist turned pale and was helpless. The medical student,
+too, almost shed tears, but considering that doctors ought to be
+cool and composed in every emergency said coldly:
+
+"It's a nervous breakdown. But it's nothing. Let us go at once to
+the doctor."
+
+"Wherever you like, only for God's sake, make haste"
+
+"Don't excite yourself. You must try and control yourself."
+
+The artist and the medical student with trembling hands put
+Vassilyev's coat and hat on and led him out into the street.
+
+"Mihail Sergeyitch has been wanting to make your acquaintance for
+a long time," the medical student said on the way. "He is a very
+nice man and thoroughly good at his work. He took his degree in
+1882, and he has an immense practice already. He treats students
+as though he were one himself."
+
+"Make haste, make haste! . . ." Vassilyev urged.
+
+Mihail Sergeyitch, a stout, fair-haired doctor, received the
+friends with politeness and frigid dignity, and smiled only on
+one side of his face.
+
+"Rybnikov and Mayer have spoken to me of your illness already,"
+he said. "Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, I
+beg. . . ."
+
+He made Vassilyev sit down in a big armchair near the table, and
+moved a box of cigarettes towards him.
+
+"Now then!" he began, stroking his knees. "Let us get to work. .
+. . How old are you?"
+
+He asked questions and the medical student answered them. He
+asked whether Vassilyev's father had suffered from certain
+special diseases, whether he drank to excess, whether he were
+remarkable for cruelty or any peculiarities. He made similar
+inquiries about his grandfather, mother, sisters, and brothers.
+On learning that his mother had a beautiful voice and sometimes
+acted on the stage, he grew more animated at once, and asked:
+
+"Excuse me, but don't you remember, perhaps, your mother had a
+passion for the stage?"
+
+Twenty minutes passed. Vassilyev was annoyed by the way the docto
+r kept stroking his knees and talking of the same thing.
+
+"So far as I understand your questions, doctor," he said, "you
+want to know whether my illness is hereditary or not. It is not."
+
+The doctor proceeded to ask Vassilyev whether he had had any
+secret vices as a boy, or had received injuries to his head;
+whether he had had any aberrations, any peculiarities, or
+exceptional propensities. Half the questions usually asked by
+doctors of their patients can be left unanswered without the
+slightest ill effect on the health, but Mihail Sergeyitch, the
+medical student, and the artist all looked as though if Vassilyev
+failed to answer one question all would be lost. As he received
+answers, the doctor for some reason noted them down on a slip of
+paper. On learning that Vassilyev had taken his degree in natural
+science, and was now studying law, the doctor pondered.
+
+"He wrote a first-rate piece of original work last year, . . ."
+said the medical student.
+
+"I beg your pardon, but don't interrupt me; you prevent me from
+concentrating," said the doctor, and he smiled on one side of his
+face. "Though, of course, that does enter into the diagnosis.
+Intense intellectual work, nervous exhaustion. . . . Yes, yes. .
+. . And do you drink vodka?" he said, addressing Vassilyev.
+
+"Very rarely."
+
+Another twenty minutes passed. The medical student began telling
+the doctor in a low voice his opinion as to the immediate cause
+of the attack, and described how the day before yesterday the
+artist, Vassilyev, and he had visited S. Street.
+
+The indifferent, reserved, and frigid tone in which his friends
+and the doctor spoke of the women and that miserable street
+struck Vassilyev as strange in the extreme. . . .
+
+"Doctor, tell me one thing only," he said, controlling himself so
+as not to speak rudely. "Is prostitution an evil or not?"
+
+"My dear fellow, who disputes it?" said the doctor, with an
+expression that suggested that he had settled all such questions
+for himself long ago. "Who disputes it?"
+
+"You are a mental doctor, aren't you?" Vassilyev asked curtly.
+
+"Yes, a mental doctor."
+
+"Perhaps all of you are right!" said Vassilyev, getting up and
+beginning to walk from one end of the room to the other.
+"Perhaps! But it all seems marvelous to me! That I should have
+taken my degree in two faculties you look upon as a great
+achievement; because I have written a work which in three years
+will be thrown aside and forgotten, I am praised up to the skies;
+but because I cannot speak of fallen women as unconcernedly as of
+these chairs, I am being examined by a doctor, I am called mad,
+I am pitied!"
+
+Vassilyev for some reason felt all at once unutterably sorry for
+himself, and his companions, and all the people he had seen two
+days before, and for the doctor; he burst into tears and sank
+into a chair.
+
+His friends looked inquiringly at the doctor. The latter, with
+the air of completely comprehending the tears and the despair, of
+feeling himself a specialist in that line, went up to Vassilyev
+and, without a word, gave him some medicine to drink; and then,
+when he was calmer, undressed him and began to investigate the
+degree of sensibility of the skin, the reflex action of the
+knees, and so on.
+
+And Vassilyev felt easier. When he came out from the doctor's he
+was beginning to feel ashamed; the rattle of the carriages no
+longer irritated him, and the load at his heart grew lighter and
+lighter as though it were melting away. He had two prescriptions
+in his hand: one was for bromide, one was for morphia. . . . He
+had taken all these remedies before.
+
+In the street he stood still and, saying good-by to his friends,
+dragged himself languidly to the University.
+
+MISERY
+
+"To whom shall I tell my grief?"
+
+THE twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling
+lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and
+lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders,
+caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a
+ghost. He sits on the box without stirring, bent as double as the
+living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on him it
+seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to
+shake it off. . . . His little mare is white and motionless
+too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the
+stick-like straightness of her legs make her look like a
+halfpenny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost in thought.
+Anyone who has been torn away from the plough, from the familiar
+gray landscapes, and cast into this slough, full of monstrous
+lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying people, is bound to
+think.
+
+It is a long time since Iona and his nag have budged. They came
+out of the yard before dinnertime and not a single fare yet. But
+now the shades of evening are falling on the town. The pale light
+of the street lamps changes to a vivid color, and the
+bustle of the street grows noisier.
+
+"Sledge to Vyborgskaya!" Iona hears. "Sledge!"
+
+Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an
+officer in a military overcoat with a hood over his head.
+
+"To Vyborgskaya," repeats the officer. "Are you asleep? To
+Vyborgskaya!"
+
+In token of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends
+cakes of snow flying from the horse's back and shoulders. The
+officer gets into the sledge. The sledge-driver clicks to the
+horse, cranes his neck like a swan, rises in his seat, and more
+from habit than necessity brandishes his whip. The mare cranes
+her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and hesitatingly sets
+of. . . .
+
+"Where are you shoving, you devil?" Iona immediately hears shouts
+from the dark mass shifting to and fro before him. "Where the
+devil are you going? Keep to the r-right!"
+
+"You don't know how to drive! Keep to the right," says the
+officer angrily.
+
+A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian
+crossing the road and brushing the horse's nose with his shoulder
+looks at him angrily and shakes the snow off his sleeve. Iona
+fidgets on the box as though he were sitting on thorns, jerks
+his elbows, and turns his eyes about like one possessed as though
+he did not know where he was or why he was there.
+
+"What rascals they all are!" says the officer jocosely. "They are
+simply doing their best to run up against you or fall under the
+horse's feet. They must be doing it on purpose."
+
+Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips. . . . Apparently he
+means to say something, but nothing comes but a sniff.
+
+"What?" inquires the officer.
+
+Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out
+huskily: "My son . . . er . . . my son died this week, sir."
+
+"H'm! What did he die of?"
+
+Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says:
+
+"Who can tell! It must have been from fever. . . . He lay three
+days in the hospital and then he died. . . . God's will."
+
+"Turn round, you devil!" comes out of the darkness. "Have you
+gone cracked, you old dog? Look where you are going!"
+
+"Drive on! drive on! . . ." says the officer. "We shan't get
+there till to-morrow going on like this. Hurry up!"
+
+The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and
+with heavy grace swings his whip. Several times he looks round at
+the officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently
+disinclined to listen. Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya,
+Iona stops by a restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box.
+. . . Again the wet snow paints him and his horse white. One hour
+passes, and then another. . . .
+
+Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked,
+come up, railing at each other and loudly stamping on the
+pavement with their goloshes.
+
+"Cabby, to the Police Bridge!" the hunchback cries in a cracked
+voice. "The three of us, . . . twenty kopecks!"
+
+Iona tugs at the reins and clicks to his horse. Twenty kopecks is
+not a fair price, but he has no thoughts for that. Whether it is
+a rouble or whether it is five kopecks does not matter to him now
+so long as he has a fare. . . . The three young men, shoving
+each other and using bad language, go up to the sledge, and all
+three try to sit down at once. The question remains to be
+settled: Which are to sit down and which one is to stand? After
+a long altercation, ill-temper, and abuse, they come to the
+conclusion that the hunchback must stand because he is the
+shortest.
+
+"Well, drive on," says the hunchback in his cracked voice,
+settling himself and breathing down Iona's neck. "Cut along! What
+a cap you've got, my friend! You wouldn't find a worse one in all
+Petersburg. . . ."
+
+"He-he! . . . he-he! . . ." laughs Iona. "It's nothing to boast
+of!"
+
+"Well, then, nothing to boast of, drive on! Are you going to
+drive like this all the way? Eh? Shall I give you one in the
+neck?"
+
+"My head aches," says one of the tall ones. "At the Dukmasovs'
+yesterday Vaska and I drank four bottles of brandy between us."
+
+"I can't make out why you talk such stuff," says the other tall
+one angrily. "You lie like a brute."
+
+"Strike me dead, it's the truth! . . ."
+
+"It's about as true as that a louse coughs."
+
+"He-he!" grins Iona. "Me-er-ry gentlemen!"
+
+"Tfoo! the devil take you!" cries the hunchback indignantly.
+"Will you get on, you old plague, or won't you? Is that the way
+to drive? Give her one with the whip. Hang it all, give it her
+well."
+
+Iona feels behind his back the jolting person and quivering voice
+of the hunchback. He hears abuse addressed to him, he sees
+people, and the feeling of loneliness begins little by little to
+be less heavy on his heart. The hunchback swears at him, till he
+chokes over some elaborately whimsical string of epithets and is
+overpowered by his cough. His tall companions begin talking of a
+certain Nadyezhda Petrovna. Iona looks round at them. Waiting
+till there is a brief pause, he looks round once more and says:
+
+"This week . . . er. . . my. . . er. . . son died!"
+
+"We shall all die, . . ." says the hunchback with a sigh, wiping
+his lips after coughing. "Come, drive on! drive on! My friends, I
+simply cannot stand crawling like this! When will he get us
+there?"
+
+"Well, you give him a little encouragement . . . one in the
+neck!"
+
+"Do you hear, you old plague? I'll make you smart. If one stands
+on ceremony with fellows like you one may as well walk. Do you
+hear, you old dragon? Or don't you care a hang what we say? "
+
+And Iona hears rather than feels a slap on the back of his neck.
+
+"He-he! . . . " he laughs. "Merry gentlemen . . . . God give you
+health!"
+
+"Cabman, are you married?" asks one of the tall ones.
+
+"I? He he! Me-er-ry gentlemen. The only wife for me now is the
+damp earth. . . . He-ho-ho!. . . .The grave that is! . . . Here
+my son's dead and I am alive. . . . It's a strange thing, death
+has come in at the wrong door. . . . Instead of coming for me it
+went for my son. . . ."
+
+And Iona turns round to tell them how his son died, but at that
+point the hunchback gives a faint sigh and announces that, thank
+God! they have arrived at last. After taking his twenty kopecks,
+Iona gazes for a long while after the revelers, who disappear
+into a dark entry. Again he is alone and again there is silence
+for him. . . . The misery which has been for a brief space eased
+comes back again and tears his heart more cruelly than ever. With
+a look of anxiety and suffering Iona's eyes stray restlessly
+among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the street:
+can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to
+him? But the crowds flit by heedless of him and his misery. . . .
+His misery is immense, beyond all bounds. If Iona's heart were
+to burst and his misery to flow out, it would flood the whole
+world, it seems, but yet it is not seen. It has found a
+hiding-place in such an insignificant shell that one would not
+have found it with a candle by daylight. . . .
+
+Iona sees a house-porter with a parcel and makes up his mind to
+address him.
+
+"What time will it be, friend?" he asks.
+
+"Going on for ten. . . . Why have you stopped here? Drive on!"
+
+Iona drives a few paces away, bends himself double, and gives
+himself up to his misery. He feels it is no good to appeal to
+people. But before five minutes have passed he draws himself up,
+shakes his head as though he feels a sharp pain, and tugs at the
+reins. . . . He can bear it no longer.
+
+"Back to the yard!" he thinks. "To the yard!"
+
+And his little mare, as though she knew his thoughts, falls to
+trotting. An hour and a half later Iona is sitting by a big dirty
+stove. On the stove, on the floor, and on the benches are people
+snoring. The air is full of smells and stuffiness. Iona looks at
+the sleeping figures, scratches himself, and regrets that he has
+come home so early. . . .
+
+"I have not earned enough to pay for the oats, even," he thinks.
+"That's why I am so miserable. A man who knows how to do his
+work, . . . who has had enough to eat, and whose horse has had
+enough to eat, is always at ease. . . ."
+
+In one of the corners a young cabman gets up, clears his throat
+sleepily, and makes for the water-bucket.
+
+"Want a drink?" Iona asks him.
+
+"Seems so."
+
+"May it do you good. . . . But my son is dead, mate. . . . Do you
+hear? This week in the hospital. . . . It's a queer business. . .
+."
+
+Iona looks to see the effect produced by his words, but he sees
+nothing. The young man has covered his head over and is already
+asleep. The old man sighs and scratches himself. . . . Just as
+the young man had been thirsty for water, he thirsts for speech.
+His son will soon have been dead a week, and he has not really
+talked to anybody yet . . . . He wants to talk of it properly,
+with deliberation. . . . He wants to tell how his son was taken
+ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died, how he died.
+. . . He wants to describe the funeral, and how he went to the
+hospital to get his son's clothes. He still has his daughter
+Anisya in the country. . . . And he wants to talk about her too.
+. . . Yes, he has plenty to talk about now. His
+listener ought to sigh and exclaim and lament. . . . It would be
+even better to talk to women. Though they are silly creatures,
+they blubber at the first word.
+
+"Let's go out and have a look at the mare," Iona thinks. "There
+is always time for sleep. . . . You'll have sleep enough, no
+fear. . . ."
+
+He puts on his coat and goes into the stables where his mare is
+standing. He thinks about oats, about hay, about the weather. . .
+. He cannot think about his son when he is alone. . . . To talk
+about him with someone is possible, but to think of him and
+picture him is insufferable anguish. . . .
+
+"Are you munching?" Iona asks his mare, seeing her shining eyes.
+"There, munch away, munch away. . . . Since we have not earned
+enough for oats, we will eat hay. . . . Yes, . . . I have grown
+too old to drive. . . . My son ought to be driving, not I. . . .
+He was a real cabman. . . . He ought to have lived. . . ."
+
+Iona is silent for a while, and then he goes on:
+
+"That's how it is, old girl. . . . Kuzma Ionitch is gone. . . .
+He said good-by to me. . . . He went and died for no reason. . .
+. Now, suppose you had a little colt, and you were own mother to
+that little colt. . . . And all at once that same little colt
+went and died. . . . You'd be sorry, wouldn't you? . . ."
+
+The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master's
+hands. Iona is carried away and tells her all about it.
+
+CHAMPAGNE
+
+A WAYFARER'S STORY
+
+IN the year in which my story begins I had a job at a little
+station on one of our southwestern railways. Whether I had a gay
+or a dull life at the station you can judge from the fact that
+for fifteen miles round there was not one human habitation,
+not one woman, not one decent tavern; and in those days I was
+young, strong, hot-headed, giddy, and foolish. The only
+distraction I could possibly find was in the windows of the
+passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged
+with thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a
+woman's head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a
+statue without breathing and stare at it until the train turned
+into an almost invisible speck; or one would drink all one could
+of the loathsome vodka till one was stupefied and did not feel
+the passing of the long hours and days. Upon me, a native of the
+no rth, the steppe produced the effect of a deserted Tatar
+cemetery. In the summer the steppe with its solemn calm, the
+monotonous chur of the grasshoppers, the transparent moonlight
+from which one could not hide, reduced me to listless melancholy;
+and in the winter the irreproachable whiteness of the steppe, its
+cold distance, long nights, and howling wolves oppressed me like
+a heavy nightmare. There were several people living at the
+station: my wife and I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk,
+and three watchmen. My assistant, a young man who was in
+consumption, used to go for treatment to the town, where he
+stayed for months at a time, leaving his duties to me together
+with the right of pocketing his salary. I had no children, no
+cake would have tempted visitors to come and see me, and I could
+only visit other officials on the line, and that no oftener than
+once a month.
+
+I remember my wife and I saw the New Year in. We sat at table,
+chewed lazily, and heard the deaf telegraph clerk monotonously
+tapping on his apparatus in the next room. I had already drunk
+five glasses of drugged vodka, and, propping my heavy head on my
+fist, thought of my overpowering boredom from which there was no
+escape, while my wife sat beside me and did not take her eyes off
+me. She looked at me as no one can look but a woman who has
+nothing in this world but a handsome husband. She loved me
+madly, slavishly, and not merely my good looks, or my soul, but
+my sins, my ill-humor and boredom, and even my cruelty when, in
+drunken fury, not knowing how to vent my ill-humor, I tormented
+her with reproaches.
+
+In spite of the boredom which was consuming me, we were preparing
+to see the New Year in with exceptional festiveness, and were
+awaiting midnight with some impatience. The fact is, we had in
+reserve two bottles of champagne, the real thing, with the label
+of Veuve Clicquot; this treasure I had won the previous autumn in
+a bet with the station-master of D. when I was drinking with him
+at a christening. It sometimes happens during a lesson in
+mathematics, when the very air is still with boredom, a
+butterfly flutters into the class-room; the boys toss their heads
+and begin watching its flight with interest, as though they saw
+before them not a butterfly but something new and strange; in the
+same way ordinary champagne, chancing to come into our dreary
+station, roused us. We sat in silence looking alternately at the
+clock and at the bottles.
+
+When the hands pointed to five minutes to twelve I slowly began
+uncorking a bottle. I don't know whether I was affected by the
+vodka, or whether the bottle was wet, but all I remember is that
+when the cork flew up to the ceiling with a bang, my bottle
+slipped out of my hands and fell on the floor. Not more than a
+glass of the wine was spilt, as I managed to catch the bottle and
+put my thumb over the foaming neck.
+
+"Well, may the New Year bring you happiness!" I said, filling two
+glasses. "Drink!"
+
+My wife took her glass and fixed her frightened eyes on me. Her
+face was pale and wore a look of horror.
+
+"Did you drop the bottle?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. But what of that?"
+
+"It's unlucky," she said, putting down her glass and turning
+paler still. "It's a bad omen. It means that some misfortune will
+happen to us this year."
+
+"What a silly thing you are," I sighed. "You are a clever woman,
+and yet you talk as much nonsense as an old nurse. Drink."
+
+"God grant it is nonsense, but . . . something is sure to happen!
+You'll see."
+
+She did not even sip her glass, she moved away and sank into
+thought. I uttered a few stale commonplaces about superstition,
+drank half a bottle, paced up and down, and then went out of the
+room.
+
+Outside there was the still frosty night in all its cold,
+inhospitable beauty. The moon and two white fluffy clouds beside
+it hung just over the station, motionless as though glued to the
+spot, and looked as though waiting for something. A faint
+transparent light came from them and touched the white earth
+softly, as though afraid of wounding her modesty, and lighted up
+everything -- the snowdrifts, the embankment. . . . It was still.
+
+I walked along the railway embankment.
+
+"Silly woman," I thought, looking at the sky spangled with
+brilliant stars. "Even if one admits that omens sometimes tell
+the truth, what evil can happen to us? The misfortunes we have
+endured already, and which are facing us now, are so great that
+it is difficult to imagine anything worse. What further harm can
+you do a fish which has been caught and fried and served up with
+sauce?"
+
+A poplar covered with hoar frost looked in the bluish darkness
+like a giant wrapt in a shroud. It looked at me sullenly and
+dejectedly, as though like me it realized its loneliness. I stood
+a long while looking at it.
+
+"My youth is thrown away for nothing, like a useless cigarette
+end," I went on musing. "My parents died when I was a little
+child; I was expelled from the high school, I was born of a noble
+family, but I have received neither education nor breeding, and
+I have no more knowledge than the humblest mechanic. I have no
+refuge, no relations, no friends, no work I like. I am not fitted
+for anything, and in the prime of my powers I am good for nothing
+but to be stuffed into this little station; I have known nothing
+but trouble and failure all my life. What can happen worse?"
+
+Red lights came into sight in the distance. A train was moving
+towards me. The slumbering steppe listened to the sound of it. My
+thoughts were so bitter that it seemed to me that I was thinking
+aloud and that the moan of the telegraph wire and the rumble of
+the train were expressing my thoughts.
+
+"What can happen worse? The loss of my wife?" I wondered. "Even
+that is not terrible. It's no good hiding it from my conscience:
+I don't love my wife. I married her when I was only a wretched
+boy; now I am young and vigorous, and she has gone off and grown
+older and sillier, stuffed from her head to her heels with
+conventional ideas. What charm is there in her maudlin love, in
+her hollow chest, in her lusterless eyes? I put up with her, but
+I don't love her. What can happen? My youth is being wasted, as
+the saying is, for a pinch of snuff. Women flit before my eyes
+only in the carriage windows, like falling stars. Love I never
+had and have not. My manhood, my courage, my power of feeling are
+going to ruin. . . . Everything is being  thrown away like dirt,
+and all my wealth here in the steppe is not worth a farthing."
+
+The train rushed past me with a roar and indifferently cast the
+glow of its red lights upon me. I saw it stop by the green lights
+of the station, stop for a minute and rumble off again. After
+walking a mile and a half I went back. Melancholy thoughts
+haunted me still. Painful as it was to me, yet I remember I tried
+as it were to make my thoughts still gloomier and more
+melancholy. You know people who are vain and not very clever have
+moments when the consciousness that they are miserable affords
+them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their
+misery for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of
+truth in what I thought, but there was also a great deal that was
+absurd and conceited, and there was something boyishly defiant
+in my question: "What could happen worse?"
+
+"And what is there to happen?" I asked myself. "I think I have
+endured everything. I've been ill, I've lost money, I get
+reprimanded by my superiors every day, and I go hungry, and a mad
+wolf has run into the station yard. What more is there? I have
+been insulted, humiliated, . . . and I have insulted others in my
+time. I have not been a criminal, it is true, but I don't think I
+am capable of crime -- I am not afraid of being hauled up for
+it."
+
+The two little clouds had moved away from the moon and stood at a
+little distance, looking as though they were whispering about
+something which the moon must not know. A light breeze was racing
+across the steppe, bringing the faint rumble of the retreating
+train.
+
+My wife met me at the doorway. Her eyes were laughing gaily and
+her whole face was beaming with good-humor.
+
+"There is news for you!" she whispered. "Make haste, go to your
+room and put on your new coat; we have a visitor."
+
+"What visitor?"
+
+"Aunt Natalya Petrovna has just come by the train."
+
+"What Natalya Petrovna?"
+
+"The wife of my uncle Semyon Fyodoritch. You don't know her. She
+is a very nice, good woman."
+
+Probably I frowned, for my wife looked grave and whispered
+rapidly:
+
+"Of course it is queer her having come, but don't be cross,
+Nikolay, and don't be hard on her. She is unhappy, you know;
+Uncle Semyon Fyodoritch really is ill-natured and tyrannical, it
+is difficult to live with him. She says she will only stay three
+days with us, only till she gets a letter from her brother."
+
+My wife whispered a great deal more nonsense to me about her
+despotic uncle; about the weakness of mankind in general and of
+young wives in particular; about its being our duty to give
+shelter to all, even great sinners, and so on. Unable to make
+head or tail of it, I put on my new coat and went to make
+acquaintance with my "aunt."
+
+A little woman with large black eyes was sitting at the table. My
+table, the gray walls, my roughly-made sofa, everything to the
+tiniest grain of dust seemed to have grown younger and more
+cheerful in the presence of this new, young, beautiful, and
+dissolute creature, who had a most subtle perfume about her. And
+that our visitor was a lady of easy virtue I could see from her
+smile, from her scent, from the peculiar way in which she glanced
+and made play with her eyelashes, from the tone in which she
+talked with my wife -- a respectable woman. There was no need to
+tell me she had run away from her husband, that her husband was
+old and despotic, that she was good-natured and lively; I took it
+all in at the first glance. Indeed, it is doubtful whether there
+is a man in all Europe who cannot spot at the first glance a
+woman of a certain temperament.
+
+"I did not know I had such a big nephew!" said my aunt, holding
+out her hand to me and smiling.
+
+"And I did not know I had such a pretty aunt," I answered.
+
+Supper began over again. The cork flew with a bang out of the
+second bottle, and my aunt swallowed half a glassful at a gulp,
+and when my wife went out of the room for a moment my aunt did
+not scruple to drain a full glass. I was drunk both with the
+wine and with the presence of a woman. Do you remember the song?
+
+       "Eyes black as pitch, eyes full of passion,
+        Eyes burning bright and beautiful,
+        How I love you,
+        How I fear you!"
+
+I don't remember what happened next. Anyone who wants to know how
+love begins may read novels and long stories; I will put it
+shortly and in the words of the same silly song:
+
+       "It was an evil hour
+        When first I met you."
+
+Everything went head over heels to the devil. I remember a
+fearful, frantic whirlwind which sent me flying round like a
+feather. It lasted a long while, and swept from the face of the
+earth my wife and my aunt herself and my strength. From the
+little station in the steppe it has flung me, as you see, into
+this dark street.
+
+Now tell me what further evil can happen to me?
+
+AFTER THE THEATRE
+
+NADYA ZELENIN had just come back with her mamma from the theatre
+where she had seen a performance of "Yevgeny Onyegin." As soon as
+she reached her own room she threw off her dress, let down her
+hair, and in her petticoat and white dressing-jacket hastily sat
+down to the table to write a letter like Tatyana's.
+
+"I love you," she wrote, "but you do not love me, do not love
+me!"
+
+She wrote it and laughed.
+
+She was only sixteen and did not yet love anyone. She knew that
+an officer called Gorny and a student called Gruzdev loved her,
+but now after the opera she wanted to be doubtful of their love.
+To be unloved and unhappy -- how interesting that was. There is
+something beautiful, touching, and poetical about it when one
+loves and the other is indifferent. Onyegin was interesting
+because he was not in love at all, and Tatyana was fascinating
+because she was so much in love; but if they had been equally in
+love with each other and had been happy, they would perhaps have
+seemed dull.
+
+"Leave off declaring that you love me," Nadya went on writing,
+thinking of Gorny. "I cannot believe it. You are very clever,
+cultivated, serious, you have immense talent, and perhaps a
+brilliant future awaits you, while I am an uninteresting girl of
+no importance, and you know very well that I should be only a
+hindrance in your life. It is true that you were attracted by me
+and thought you had found your ideal in me, but that was a
+mistake, and now you are asking yourself in despair: 'Why did I
+meet that girl?' And only your goodness of heart prevents you
+from owning it to yourself. . . ."
+
+Nadya felt sorry for herself, she began to cry, and went on:
+
+"It is hard for me to leave my mother and my brother, or I should
+take a nun's veil and go whither chance may lead me. And you
+would be left free and would love another. Oh, if I were dead! "
+
+She could not make out what she had written through her tears;
+little rainbows were quivering on the table, on the floor, on the
+ceiling, as though she were looking through a prism. She could
+not write, she sank back in her easy-chair and fell to thinking
+of Gorny.
+
+My God! how interesting, how fascinating men were! Nadya recalled
+the fine expression, ingratiating, guilty, and soft, which came
+into the officer's face when one argued about music with him, and
+the effort he made to prevent his voice from betraying his
+passion. In a society where cold haughtiness and indifference are
+regarded as signs of good breeding and gentlemanly bearing, one
+must conceal one's passions. And he did try to conceal them, but
+he did not succeed, and everyone knew very well that he had a
+passionate love of music. The endless discussions about music and
+the bold criticisms of people who knew nothing about it kept him
+always on the strain; he was frightened, timid, and silent. He
+played the piano magnificently, like a professional pianist, and
+if he had not been in the army he would certainly have been a
+famous musician.
+
+The tears on her eyes dried. Nadya remembered that Gorny had
+declared his love at a Symphony concert, and again downstairs by
+the hatstand where there was a tremendous draught blowing in all
+directions.
+
+"I am very glad that you have at last made the acquaintance of
+Gruzdev, our student friend," she went on writing. "He is a very
+clever man, and you will be sure to like him. He came to see us
+yesterday and stayed till two o'clock. We were all delighted
+with him, and I regretted that you had not come. He said a great
+deal that was remarkable."
+
+Nadya laid her arms on the table and leaned her head on them, and
+her hair covered the letter. She recalled that the student, too,
+loved her, and that he had as much right to a letter from her as
+Gorny. Wouldn't it be better after all to write to Gruzdev?
+There was a stir of joy in her bosom for no reason whatever; at
+first the joy was small, and rolled in her bosom like an
+india-rubber ball; then it became more massive, bigger, and
+rushed like a wave. Nadya forgot Gorny and Gruzdev; her thoughts
+were in a tangle and her joy grew and grew; from her bosom it
+passed into her arms and legs, and it seemed as though a light,
+cool breeze were breathing on her head and ruffling her hair. Her
+shoulders quivered with subdued laughter, the table and the lamp
+chimney shook, too, and tears from her eyes splashed on the
+letter. She could not stop laughing, and to prove to herself that
+she was not laughing about nothing she made haste to think of
+something funny.
+
+"What a funny poodle," she said, feeling as though she would
+choke with laughter. "What a funny poodle! "
+
+She thought how, after tea the evening before, Gruzdev had played
+with Maxim the poodle, and afterwards had told them about a very
+intelligent poodle who had run after a crow in the yard, and the
+crow had looked round at him and said: "Oh, you scamp! "
+
+The poodle, not knowing he had to do with a learned crow, was
+fearfully confused and retreated in perplexity, then began
+barking. . . .
+
+"No, I had better love Gruzdev," Nadya decided, and she tore up
+the letter to Gorny.
+
+She fell to thinking of the student, of his love, of her love;
+but the thoughts in her head insisted on flowing in all
+directions, and she thought about everything -- about her mother,
+about the street, about the pencil, about the piano. . . . She
+thought of them joyfully, and felt that everything was good,
+splendid, and her joy told her that this was not all, that in a
+little while it would be better still. Soon it would be spring,
+summer, going with her mother to Gorbiki. Gorny would come for
+his furlough, would walk about the garden with her and make love
+to her. Gruzdev would come too. He would play croquet and
+skittles with her, and would tell her wonderful things. She had a
+passionate longing for the garden, the darkness, the pure sky,
+the stars. Again her shoulders shook with laughter, and it seemed
+to her that there was a scent of wormwood in the room and that a
+twig was tapping at the window.
+
+She went to her bed, sat down, and not knowing what to do with
+the immense joy which filled her with yearning, she looked at the
+holy image hanging at the back of her bed, and said:
+
+"Oh, Lord God! Oh, Lord God!"
+
+A LADY'S STORY
+
+NINE years ago Pyotr Sergeyitch, the deputy prosecutor, and I
+were riding towards evening in hay-making time to fetch the
+letters from the station.
+
+The weather was magnificent, but on our way back we heard a peal
+of thunder, and saw an angry black storm-cloud which was coming
+straight towards us. The storm-cloud was approaching us and we
+were approaching it.
+
+Against the background of it our house and church looked white
+and the tall poplars shone like silver. There was a scent of rain
+and mown hay. My companion was in high spirits. He kept laughing
+and talking all sorts of nonsense. He said it would be
+ nice if we could suddenly come upon a medieval castle with
+turreted towers, with moss on it and owls, in which we could take
+shelter from the rain and in the end be killed by a thunderbolt.
+. . .
+
+Then the first wave raced through the rye and a field of oats,
+there was a gust of wind, and the dust flew round and round in
+the air. Pyotr Sergeyitch laughed and spurred on his horse.
+
+"It's fine!" he cried, "it's splendid!"
+
+Infected by his gaiety, I too began laughing at the thought that
+in a minute I should be drenched to the skin and might be struck
+by lightning.
+
+Riding swiftly in a hurricane when one is breathless with the
+wind, and feels like a bird, thrills one and puts one's heart in
+a flutter. By the time we rode into our courtyard the wind had
+gone down, and big drops of rain were pattering on the grass and
+on the roofs. There was not a soul near the stable.
+
+Pyotr Sergeyitch himself took the bridles off, and led the horses
+to their stalls. I stood in the doorway waiting for him to
+finish, and watching the slanting streaks of rain; the sweetish,
+exciting scent of hay was even stronger here than in the fields;
+the storm-clouds and the rain made it almost twilight.
+
+"What a crash!" said Pyotr Sergeyitch, coming up to me after a
+very loud rolling peal of thunder when it seemed as though the
+sky were split in two. "What do you say to that?"
+
+He stood beside me in the doorway and, still breathless from his
+rapid ride, looked at me. I could see that he was admiring me.
+
+"Natalya Vladimirovna," he said, "I would give anything only to
+stay here a little longer and look at you. You are lovely
+to-day."
+
+His eyes looked at me with delight and supplication, his face was
+pale. On his beard and mustache were glittering raindrops, and
+they, too, seemed to be looking at me with love.
+
+"I love you," he said. "I love you, and I am happy at seeing you.
+I know you cannot be my wife, but I want nothing, I ask nothing;
+only know that I love you. Be silent, do not answer me, take no
+notice of it, but only know that you are dear to me and let me
+look at you."
+
+His rapture affected me too; I looked at his enthusiastic face,
+listened to his voice which mingled with the patter of the rain,
+and stood as though spellbound, unable to stir.
+
+I longed to go on endlessly looking at his shining eyes and
+listening.
+
+"You say nothing, and that is splendid," said Pyotr Sergeyitch.
+"Go on being silent."
+
+I felt happy. I laughed with delight and ran through the
+drenching rain to the house; he laughed too, and, leaping as he
+went, ran after me.
+
+Both drenched, panting, noisily clattering up the stairs like
+children, we dashed into the room. My father and brother, who
+were not used to seeing me laughing and light-hearted, looked at
+me in surprise and began laughing too.
+
+The storm-clouds had passed over and the thunder had ceased, but
+the raindrops still glittered on Pyotr Sergeyitch's beard. The
+whole evening till supper-time he was singing, whistling, playing
+noisily with the dog and racing about the room after it, so that
+he nearly upset the servant with the samovar. And at supper he
+ate a great deal, talked nonsense, and maintained that when one
+eats fresh cucumbers in winter there is the fragrance of spring
+in one's mouth.
+
+When I went to bed I lighted a candle and threw my window wide
+open, and an undefined feeling took possession of my soul. I
+remembered that I was free and healthy, that I had rank and
+wealth, that I was beloved; above all, that I had rank and
+wealth, rank and wealth, my God! how nice that was! . . . Then,
+huddling up in bed at a touch of cold which reached me from the
+garden with the dew, I tried to discover whether I loved Pyotr
+Sergeyitch or not, . . . and fell asleep unable to reach any
+conclusion.
+
+And when in the morning I saw quivering patches of sunlight and
+the shadows of the lime trees on my bed, what had happened
+yesterday rose vividly in my memory. Life seemed to me rich,
+varied, full of charm. Humming, I dressed quickly and went out
+into the garden. . . .
+
+And what happened afterwards? Why -- nothing. In the winter when
+we lived in town Pyotr Sergeyitch came to see us from time to
+time. Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and
+in summer; in the town and in winter they lose their charm. When
+you pour out tea for them in the town it seems as though they are
+wearing other people's coats, and as though they stirred their
+tea too long. In the town, too, Pyotr Sergeyitch spoke sometimes
+of love, but the effect was not at all the same as in the
+country. In the town we were more vividly conscious of the wall
+that stood between us. I had rank and wealth, while he was poor,
+and he was not even a nobleman, but only the son of a deacon and
+a deputy public prosecutor; we both of us -- I through my youth
+and he for some unknown reason -- thought of that wall as very
+high and thick, and when he was with us in the town he would
+criticize aristocratic society with a forced smile, and maintain
+a sullen silence when there was anyone else in the drawing-room.
+There is no wall that cannot be broken through, but the heroes of
+the modern romance, so far as I know them, are too timid,
+spiritless, lazy, and oversensitive, and are too ready to resign
+themselves to the thought that they are doomed to failure, that
+personal life has disappointed them; instead of struggling they
+merely criticize, calling the world vulgar and forgetting that
+their criticism passes little by little into vulgarity.
+
+I was loved, happiness was not far away, and seemed to be almost
+touching me; I went on living in careless ease without trying to
+understand myself, not knowing what I expected or what I wanted
+from life, and time went on and on. . . . People passed by me
+with their love, bright days and warm nights flashed by, the
+nightingales sang, the hay smelt fragrant, and all this, sweet
+and overwhelming in remembrance, passed with me as with everyone
+rapidly, leaving no trace, was not prized, and vanished like
+mist. . . . Where is it all?
+
+My father is dead, I have grown older; everything that delighted
+me, caressed me, gave me hope -- the patter of the rain, the
+rolling of the thunder, thoughts of happiness, talk of love --
+all that has become nothing but a memory, and I see before me a
+flat desert dist ance; on the plain not one living soul, and out
+there on the horizon it is dark and terrible. . . .
+
+A ring at the bell. . . . It is Pyotr Sergeyitch. When in the
+winter I see the trees and remember how green they were for me in
+the summer I whisper:
+
+"Oh, my darlings!"
+
+And when I see people with whom I spent my spring-time, I feel
+sorrowful and warm and whisper the same thing.
+
+He has long ago by my father's good offices been transferred to
+town. He looks a little older, a little fallen away. He has long
+given up declaring his love, has left off talking nonsense,
+dislikes his official work, is ill in some way and
+disillusioned; he has given up trying to get anything out of
+life, and takes no interest in living. Now he has sat down by the
+hearth and looks in silence at the fire. . . .
+
+Not knowing what to say I ask him:
+
+"Well, what have you to tell me?"
+
+"Nothing," he answers.
+
+And silence again. The red glow of the fire plays about his
+melancholy face.
+
+I thought of the past, and all at once my shoulders began
+quivering, my head dropped, and I began weeping bitterly. I felt
+unbearably sorry for myself and for this man, and passionately
+longed for what had passed away and what life refused us now. And
+now I did not think about rank and wealth.
+
+I broke into loud sobs, pressing my temples, and muttered:
+
+"My God! my God! my life is wasted!"
+
+And he sat and was silent, and did not say to me: "Don't weep."
+He understood that I must weep, and that the time for this had
+come.
+
+I saw from his eyes that he was sorry for me; and I was sorry for
+him, too, and vexed with this timid, unsuccessful man who could
+not make a life for me, nor for himself.
+
+When I saw him to the door, he was, I fancied, purposely a long
+while putting on his coat. Twice he kissed my hand without a
+word, and looked a long while into my tear-stained face. I
+believe at that moment he recalled the storm, the streaks of
+rain, our laughter, my face that day; he longed to say something
+to me, and he would have been glad to say it; but he said
+nothing, he merely shook his head and pressed my hand. God help
+him!
+
+After seeing him out, I went back to my study and again sat on
+the carpet before the fireplace; the red embers were covered with
+ash and began to grow dim. The frost tapped still more angrily at
+the windows, and the wind droned in the chimney.
+
+The maid came in and, thinking I was asleep, called my name.
+
+IN EXILE
+
+OLD SEMYON, nicknamed Canny, and a young Tatar, whom no one knew
+by name, were sitting on the river-bank by the camp-fire; the
+other three ferrymen were in the hut. Semyon, an old man of
+sixty, lean and toothless, but broad shouldered and still
+healthy-looking, was drunk; he would have gone in to sleep long
+before, but he had a bottle in his pocket and he was afraid that
+the fellows in the hut would ask him for vodka. The Tatar was ill
+and weary, and wrapping himself up in his rags was describing
+how nice it was in the Simbirsk province, and what a beautiful
+and clever wife he had left behind at home. He was not more than
+twenty five, and now by the light of the camp-fire, with his pale
+and sick, mournful face, he looked like a boy.
+
+"To be sure, it is not paradise here," said Canny. "You can see
+for yourself, the water, the bare banks, clay, and nothing else.
+. . . Easter has long passed and yet there is ice on the river,
+and this morning there was snow. . ."
+
+"It's bad! it's bad!" said the Tatar, and looked round him in
+terror.
+
+The dark, cold river was flowing ten paces away; it grumbled,
+lapped against the hollow clay banks and raced on swiftly towards
+the far-away sea. Close to the bank there was the dark blur of a
+big barge, which the ferrymen called a "karbos." Far away on the
+further bank, lights, dying down and flickering up again,
+zigzagged like little snakes; they were burning last year's
+grass. And beyond the little snakes there was darkness again.
+There little icicles could be heard knocking against the barge
+It was damp and cold. . . .
+
+The Tatar glanced at the sky. There were as many stars as at
+home, and the same blackness all round, but something was
+lacking. At home in the Simbirsk province the stars were quite
+different, and so was the sky.
+
+"It's bad! it's bad!" he repeated.
+
+"You will get used to it," said Semyon, and he laughed. "Now you
+are young and foolish, the milk is hardly dry on your lips, and
+it seems to you in your foolishness that you are more wretched
+than anyone; but the time will come when you will say to
+yourself: 'I wish no one a better life than mine.' You look at
+me. Within a week the floods will be over and we shall set up the
+ferry; you will all go wandering off about Siberia while I shall
+stay and shall begin going from bank to bank. I've been going
+like that for twenty-two years, day and night. The pike and the
+salmon are under the water while I am on the water. And thank God
+for it, I want nothing; God give everyone such a life."
+
+The Tatar threw some dry twigs on the camp-fire, lay down closer
+to the blaze, and said:
+
+"My father is a sick man. When he dies my mother and wife will
+come here. They have promised."
+
+"And what do you want your wife and mother for?" asked Canny.
+"That's mere foolishness, my lad. It's the devil confounding you,
+damn his soul! Don't you listen to him, the cursed one. Don't let
+him have his way. He is at you about the women, but you spite
+him; say, 'I don't want them!' He is on at you about freedom, but
+you stand up to him and say: 'I don't want it!' I want nothing,
+neither father nor mother, nor wife, nor freedom, nor post, nor
+paddock; I want nothing, damn their souls!"
+
+Semyon took a pull at the bottle and went on:
+
+"I am not a simple peasant, not of the working class, but the son
+of a deacon, and when I was free I lived at Kursk; I used to wear
+a frockcoat, and now I have brought myself to such a pass that I
+can sleep naked on the ground and eat grass. And I wish no one a
+better life. I want nothing and I am afraid of nobody, and the
+way I look at it is that there is nobody richer and freer than I
+am. When they sent me here from Russia from the first day I stuck
+it out; I want nothing! The devil was at me about my wife and
+about my home and about freedom, but I told him: 'I want
+nothing.' I stuck to it, and here you see I live well, and I
+don't complain, and if anyone gives way to the devil and listens
+to him, if but once, he is lost, there is no salvation for him:
+he is sunk in the bog to the crown of his head and will never get
+out.
+
+"It is not only a foolish peasant like you, but even gentlemen,
+well-educated people, are lost. Fifteen years ago they sent a
+gentleman here from Russia. He hadn't shared something with his
+brothers and had forged something in a will. They did say he was
+a prince or a baron, but maybe he was simply an official -- who
+knows? Well, the gentleman arrived here, and first thing he
+bought himself a house and land in Muhortinskoe. 'I want to live
+by my own work,' says he, 'in the sweat of my brow, for I am not
+a gentleman now,' says he, 'but a settler.' 'Well,' says I, 'God
+help you, that's the right thing.' He was a young man then, busy
+and careful; he used to mow himself and catch fish and ride sixty
+miles on horseback. Only this is what happened: from the very
+first year he took to riding to Gyrino for the post; he used to
+stand on my ferry and sigh: 'Ech, Semyon, how long it is since
+they sent me any money from home!' 'You don't want money, Vassily
+Sergeyitch,' says I. 'What use is it to you? You cast away the
+past, and forget it as though it had never been at all, as though
+it had been a dream, and begin to live anew. Don't listen to the
+devil,' says I; 'he will bring you to no good, he'll draw you
+into a snare. Now you want money,' says I, ' but in a very
+little while you'll be wanting something else, and then more and
+more. If you want to be happy,' says I, the chief thing is not to
+want anything. Yes. . . . If,' says I, 'if Fate has wronged you
+and me cruelly it's no good asking for her favor and bowing down
+to her, but you despise her and laugh at her, or else she will
+laugh at you.' That's what I said to him. . . .
+
+"Two years later I ferried him across to this side, and he was
+rubbing his hands and laughing. ' I am going to Gyrino to meet my
+wife,' says he. 'She was sorry for me,' says he; 'she has come.
+She is good and kind.' And he was breathless with joy. So a day
+later he came with his wife. A beautiful young lady in a hat; in
+her arms was a baby girl. And lots of luggage of all sorts. And
+my Vassily Sergeyitch was fussing round her; he couldn't take his
+eyes off her and couldn't say enough in praise of her. 'Yes,
+brother Semyon, even in Siberia people can live!' 'Oh, all
+right,' thinks I, 'it will be a different tale presently.' And
+from that time forward he went almost every week to inquire
+whether money had not come from Russia. He wanted a lot of
+money. 'She is losing her youth and beauty here in Siberia for my
+sake,' says he, 'and sharing my bitter lot with me, and so I
+ought,' says he, 'to provide her with every comfort. . . .'
+
+"To make it livelier for the lady he made acquaintance with the
+officials and all sorts of riff-raff. And of course he had to
+give food and drink to all that crew, and there had to be a piano
+and a shaggy lapdog on the sofa -- plague take it! . . . Luxury,
+in fact, self-indulgence. The lady did not stay with him long.
+How could she? The clay, the water, the cold, no vegetables for
+you, no fruit. All around you ignorant and drunken people and no
+sort of manners, and she was a spoilt lady from Petersburg or
+Moscow. . . . To be sure she moped. Besides, her husband, say
+what you like, was not a gentleman now, but a settler -- not the
+same rank.
+
+"Three years later, I remember, on the eve of the Assumption,
+there was shouting from the further bank. I went over with the
+ferry, and what do I see but the lady, all wrapped up, and with
+her a young gentleman, an official. A sledge with three horses.
+. . . I ferried them across here, they got in and away like the
+wind. They were soon lost to sight. And towards morning Vassily
+Sergeyitch galloped down to the ferry. 'Didn't my wife come this
+way with a gentleman in spectacles, Semyon?' 'She did,' said I;
+'you may look for the wind in the fields!' He galloped in pursuit
+of them. For five days and nights he was riding after them. When
+I ferried him over to the other side afterwards, he flung himself
+on the ferry and beat his head on  the boards of the ferry and
+howled. 'So that's how it is,' says I. I laughed, and reminded
+him 'people can live even in Siberia!' And he beat his head
+harder than ever. . . .
+
+"Then he began longing for freedom. His wife had slipped off to
+Russia, and of course he was drawn there to see her and to get
+her away from her lover. And he took, my lad, to galloping almost
+every day, either to the post or the town to see the commanding
+officer; he kept sending in petitions for them to have mercy on
+him and let him go back home; and he used to say that he had
+spent some two hundred roubles on telegrams alone. He sold his
+land and mortgaged his house to the Jews. He grew gray and bent,
+and yellow in the face, as though he was in consumption. If he
+talked to you he would go, khee -- khee -- khee,. . . and there
+were tears in his eyes. He kept rushing about like this with
+petitions for eight years, but now he has grown brighter and
+more cheerful again: he has found another whim to give way to.
+You see, his daughter has grown up. He looks at her, and she is
+the apple of his eye. And to tell the truth she is all right,
+good-looking, with black eyebrows and a lively disposition.
+Every Sunday he used to ride with her to church in Gyrino. They
+used to stand on the ferry, side by side, she would laugh and he
+could not take his eyes off her. 'Yes, Semyon,' says he, 'people
+can live even in Siberia. Even in Siberia there is happiness.
+Look,' says he, 'what a daughter I have got! I warrant you
+wouldn't find another like her for a thousand versts round.'
+'Your daughter is all right,' says I, 'that's true, certainly.'
+But to myself I thought: 'Wait a bit,  the wench is young,
+her blood is dancing, she wants to live, and there is no
+life here.' And she did begin to pine, my lad. . . .
+She faded and faded, and now she can hardly crawl about.
+Consumption.
+
+"So you see what Siberian happiness is, damn its soul! You see
+how people can live in Siberia. . . . He has taken to going from
+one doctor to another and taking them home with him. As soon as
+he hears that two or three hundred miles away there is a
+doctor or a sorcerer, he will drive to fetch him. A terrible lot
+of money he spent on doctors, and to my thinking he had better
+have spent the money on drink. . . . She'll die just the same.
+She is certain to die, and then it will be all over with him.
+He'll hang himself from grief or run away to Russia -- that's a
+sure thing. He'll run away and they'll catch him, then he will be
+tried, sent to prison, he will have a taste of the lash. . . ."
+
+"Good! good!" said the Tatar, shivering with cold.
+
+"What is good?" asked Canny.
+
+"His wife, his daughter. . . . What of prison and what of sorrow!
+-- anyway, he did see his wife and his daughter. . . . You say,
+want nothing. But 'nothing' is bad! His wife lived with him three
+years -- that was a gift from God. 'Nothing' is bad,
+but three years is good. How not understand?"
+
+Shivering and hesitating, with effort picking out the Russian
+words of which he knew but few, the Tatar said that God forbid
+one should fall sick and die in a strange land, and be buried in
+the cold and dark earth; that if his wife came to him for one
+day, even for one hour, that for such happiness he would be ready
+to bear any suffering and to thank God. Better one day of
+happiness than nothing.
+
+Then he described again what a beautiful and clever wife he had
+left at home. Then, clutching his head in both hands, he began
+crying and assuring Semyon that he was not guilty, and was
+suffering for nothing. His two brothers and an uncle had carried
+off a peasant's horses, and had beaten the old man till he was
+half dead, and the commune had not judged fairly, but had
+contrived a sentence by which all the three brothers were sent to
+Siberia, while the uncle, a rich man, was left at home.
+
+"You will get used to it!" said Semyon.
+
+The Tatar was silent, and stared with tear-stained eyes at the
+fire; his face expressed bewilderment and fear, as though he
+still did not understand why he was here in the darkness and the
+wet, beside strangers, and not in the Simbirsk province.
+
+Canny lay near the fire, chuckled at something, and began humming
+a song in an undertone.
+
+"What joy has she with her father?" he said a little later. "He
+loves her and he rejoices in her, that's true; but, mate, you
+must mind your ps and qs with him, he is a strict old man, a
+harsh old man. And young wenches don't want strictness. They
+want petting and ha-ha-ha! and ho-ho-ho! and scent and pomade.
+Yes. . . . Ech! life, life," sighed Semyon, and he got up
+heavily. "The vodka is all gone, so it is time to sleep. Eh? I am
+going, my lad. . . ."
+
+Left alone, the Tatar put on more twigs, lay down and stared at
+the fire; he began thinking of his own village and of his wife.
+If his wife could only come for a month, for a day; and then if
+she liked she might go back again. Better a month or even a day
+than nothing. But if his wife kept her promise and came, what
+would he have to feed her on? Where could she live here?
+
+"If there were not something to eat, how could she live?" the
+Tatar asked aloud.
+
+He was paid only ten kopecks for working all day and all night at
+the oar; it is true that travelers gave him tips for tea and for
+vodkas but the men shared all they received among themselves, and
+gave nothing to the Tatar, but only laughed at him.
+And from poverty he was hungry, cold, and frightened. . . . Now,
+when his whole body was aching and shivering, he ought to go into
+the hut and lie down to sleep; but he had nothing to cover him
+there, and it was colder than on the river-bank; here he had
+nothing to cover him either, but at least he could make up the
+fire. . . .
+
+In another week, when the floods were quite ov er and they set
+the ferry going, none of the ferrymen but Semyon would be wanted,
+and the Tatar would begin going from village to village begging
+for alms and for work. His wife was only seventeen; she was
+beautiful, spoilt, and shy; could she possibly go from village to
+village begging alms with her face unveiled? No, it was terrible
+even to think of that. . . .
+
+It was already getting light; the barge, the bushes of willow on
+the water, and the waves could be clearly discerned, and if one
+looked round there was the steep clay slope; at the bottom of it
+the hut thatched with dingy brown straw, and the huts of the
+village lay clustered higher up. The cocks were already crowing
+in the village.
+
+The rusty red clay slope, the barge, the river, the strange,
+unkind people, hunger, cold, illness, perhaps all that was not
+real. Most likely it was all a dream, thought the Tatar. He felt
+that he was asleep and heard his own snoring. . . . Of course he
+was at home in the Simbirsk province, and he had only to call his
+wife by name for her to answer; and in the next room was his
+mother. . . . What terrible dreams there are, though! What are
+they for? The Tatar smiled and opened his eyes. What river was
+this, the Volga?
+
+Snow was falling.
+
+"Boat!" was shouted on the further side. "Boat!"
+
+The Tatar woke up, and went to wake his mates and row over to the
+other side. The ferrymen came on to the river-bank, putting on
+their torn sheepskins as they walked, swearing with voices husky
+from sleepiness and shivering from the cold. On waking
+from their sleep, the river, from which came a breath of
+piercing cold, seemed to strike them as revolting and horrible.
+They jumped into the barge without hurrying themselves. . . . The
+Tatar and the three ferrymen took the long, broad-bladed oars,
+which in the darkness looked like the claws of crabs; Semyon
+leaned his stomach against the tiller. The shout on the other
+side still continued, and two shots were fired from a revolver,
+probably with the idea that the ferrymen were asleep or had gone
+to the pot-house in the village.
+
+"All right, you have plenty of time," said Semyon in the tone of
+a man convinced that there was no necessity in this world to
+hurry -- that it would lead to nothing, anyway.
+
+The heavy, clumsy barge moved away from the bank and floated
+between the willow-bushes, and only the willows slowly moving
+back showed that the barge was not standing still but moving. The
+ferrymen swung the oars evenly in time; Semyon lay with his
+stomach on the tiller and, describing a semicircle in the air,
+flew from one side to the other. In the darkness it looked as
+though the men were sitting on some antediluvian animal with long
+paws, and were moving on it through a cold, desolate land, the
+land of which one sometimes dreams in nightmares.
+
+They passed beyond the willows and floated out into the open. The
+creak and regular splash of the oars was heard on the further
+shore, and a shout came: "Make haste! make haste!"
+
+Another ten minutes passed, and the barge banged heavily against
+the landing-stage.
+
+"And it keeps sprinkling and sprinkling," muttered Semyon, wiping
+the snow from his face; "and where it all comes from God only
+knows."
+
+On the bank stood a thin man of medium height in a jacket lined
+with fox fur and in a white lambskin cap. He was standing at a
+little distance from his horses and not moving; he had a gloomy,
+concentrated expression, as though he were trying to remember
+something and angry with his untrustworthy memory. When Semyon
+went up to him and took off his cap, smiling, he said:
+
+"I am hastening to Anastasyevka. My daughter's worse again, and
+they say that there is a new doctor at Anastasyevka."
+
+They dragged the carriage on to the barge and floated back. The
+man whom Semyon addressed as Vassily Sergeyitch stood all the
+time motionless, tightly compressing his thick lips and staring
+off into space; when his coachman asked permission to smoke in
+his presence he made no answer, as though he had not heard.
+Semyon, lying with his stomach on the tiller, looked mockingly at
+him and said:
+
+"Even in Siberia people can live -- can li-ive!"
+
+There was a triumphant expression on Canny's face, as though he
+had proved something and was delighted that things had happened
+as he had foretold. The unhappy helplessness of the man in the
+foxskin coat evidently afforded him great pleasure.
+
+"It's muddy driving now, Vassily Sergeyitch," he said when the
+horses were harnessed again on the bank. "You should have put off
+going for another fortnight, when it will be drier. Or else not
+have gone at all. . . . If any good would come of your going --
+but as you know yourself, people have been driving about for
+years and years, day and night, and it's alway's been no use.
+That's the truth."
+
+Vassily Sergeyitch tipped him without a word, got into his
+carriage and drove off.
+
+"There, he has galloped off for a doctor!" said Semyon, shrinking
+from the cold. "But looking for a good doctor is like chasing the
+wind in the fields or catching the devil by the tail, plague take
+your soul! What a queer chap, Lord forgive me a sinner!"
+
+The Tatar went up to Canny, and, looking at him with hatred and
+repulsion, shivering, and mixing Tatar words with his broken
+Russian, said: "He is good . . . good; but you are bad! You are
+bad! The gentleman is a good soul, excellent, and you are a
+beast, bad! The gentleman is alive, but you are a dead carcass.
+. . . God created man to be alive, and to have joy and grief and
+sorrow; but you want nothing, so you are not alive, you are
+stone, clay! A stone wants nothing and you want nothing. You are
+a stone, and God does not love you, but He loves the gentleman!"
+
+Everyone laughed; the Tatar frowned contemptuously, and with a
+wave of his hand wrapped himself in his rags and went to the
+campfire. The ferrymen and Semyon sauntered to the hut.
+
+"It's cold," said one ferryman huskily as he stretched himself on
+the straw with which the damp clay floor was covered.
+
+"Yes, its not warm," another assented. "It's a dog's life. . . ."
+
+They all lay down. The door was thrown open by the wind and the
+snow drifted into the hut; nobody felt inclined to get up and
+shut the door: they were cold, and it was too much trouble.
+
+"I am all right," said Semyon as he began to doze. "I wouldn't
+wish anyone a better life."
+
+"You are a tough one, we all know. Even the devils won't take
+you!"
+
+Sounds like a dog's howling came from outside.
+
+"What's that? Who's there?"
+
+"It's the Tatar crying."
+
+"I say. . . . He's a queer one!"
+
+"He'll get u-used to it!" said Semyon, and at once fell asleep.
+
+The others were soon asleep too. The door remained unclosed.
+
+THE CATTLE-DEALERS
+
+THE long goods train has been standing for hours in the little
+station. The engine is as silent as though its fire had gone out;
+there is not a soul near the train or in the station yard.
+
+A pale streak of light comes from one of the vans and glides over
+the rails of a siding. In that van two men are sitting on an
+outspread cape: one is an old man with a big gray beard, wearing
+a sheepskin coat and a high lambskin hat, somewhat like a busby;
+the other a beardless youth in a threadbare cloth reefer jacket
+and muddy high boots. They are the owners of the goods. The old
+man sits, his legs stretched out before him, musing in silence;
+the young man half reclines and softly strums on a cheap
+accordion. A lantern with a tallow candle in it is hanging on the
+wall near them.
+
+The van is quite full. If one glances in through the dim light of
+the lantern, for the first moment the eyes receive an impression
+of something shapeless, monstrous, and unmistakably alive,
+something very much like gigantic crabs which move their claws
+and feelers, crowd together, and noiselessly climb up the walls
+to the ceiling; but if one looks more closely, horns and their
+shadows, long lean backs, dirty hides, tails, eyes begin to stand
+out in the dusk. They are cattle and their shadows. There are
+eight of them in the van. Some turn round and stare at the men
+and swing their tails. Others try to stand or lie d own more
+comfortably. They are crowded. If one lies down the others must
+stand and huddle closer. No manger, no halter, no litter, not a
+wisp of hay. . . .*
+
+At last the old man pulls out of his pocket a silver watch and
+looks at the time: a quarter past two.
+
+"We have been here nearly two hours," he says, yawning. "Better
+go and stir them up, or we may be here till morning. They have
+gone to sleep, or goodness knows what they are up to."
+
+The old man gets up and, followed by his long shadow, cautiously
+gets down from the van into the darkness. He makes his way along
+beside the train to the engine, and after passing some two dozen
+vans sees a red open furnace; a human figure sits motionless
+facing it; its peaked cap, nose, and knees are lighted up by the
+crimson glow, all the rest is black and can scarcely be
+distinguished in the darkness.
+
+"Are we going to stay here much longer?" asks the old man.
+
+No answer. The motionless figure is evidently asleep. The old man
+clears his throat impatiently and, shrinking from the penetrating
+damp, walks round the engine, and as he does so the brilliant
+light of the two engine lamps dazzles his eyes for an instant
+and makes the night even blacker to him; he goes to the station.
+
+The platform and steps of the station are wet. Here and there are
+white patches of freshly fallen melting snow. In the station
+itself it is light and as hot as a steam-bath. There is a smell
+of paraffin. Except for the weighing-machine and a yellow seat on
+which a man wearing a guard's uniform is asleep, there is no
+furniture in the place at all. On the left are two wide-open
+doors. Through one of them the telegraphic apparatus and a lamp
+with a green shade on it can be seen; through the other, a small
+room, half of it taken up by a dark cupboard. In this room the
+head guard and the engine-driver are sitting on the window-sill.
+They are both feeling a cap with their fingers and disputing.
+
+"That's not real beaver, it's imitation," says the engine-driver.
+"Real beaver is not like that. Five roubles would be a high price
+for the whole cap, if you care to know!"
+
+"You know a great deal about it, . . ." the head guard says,
+offended. "Five roubles, indeed! Here, we will ask the merchant.
+Mr. Malahin," he says, addressing the old man, "what do you say:
+is this imitation beaver or real?"
+
+Old Malahin takes the cap into his hand, and with the air of a
+connoisseur pinches the fur, blows on it, sniffs at it, and a
+contemptuous smile lights up his angry face.
+
+"It must be imitation!" he says gleefully. "Imitation it is."
+
+A dispute follows. The guard maintains that the cap is real
+beaver, and the engine-driver and Malahin try to persuade him
+that it is not. In the middle of the argument the old man
+suddenly remembers the object of his coming.
+
+"Beaver and cap is all very well, but the train's standing still,
+gentlemen!" he says. "Who is it we are waiting for? Let us
+start!"
+
+"Let us," the guard agrees. "We will smoke another cigarette and
+go on. But there is no need to be in a hurry. . . . We shall be
+delayed at the next station anyway!"
+
+"Why should we?"
+
+"Oh, well. . . . We are too much behind time. . . . If you are
+late at one station you can't help being delayed at the other
+stations to let the trains going the opposite way pass. Whether
+we set off now or in the morning we shan't be number fourteen.
+We shall have to be number twenty-three."
+
+"And how do you make that out?"
+
+"Well, there it is."
+
+Malahin looks at the guard, reflects, and mutters mechanically as
+though to himself:
+
+"God be my judge, I have reckoned it and even jotted it down in a
+notebook; we have wasted thirty-four hours standing still on the
+journey. If you go on like this, either the cattle will die, or
+they won't pay me two roubles for the meat when I do get there.
+It's not traveling, but ruination."
+
+The guard raises his eyebrows and sighs with an air that seems to
+say: "All that is unhappily true!" The engine-driver sits silent,
+dreamily looking at the cap. From their faces one can see that
+they have a secret thought in common, which they do not utter,
+not because they want to conceal it, but because such thoughts
+are much better expressed by signs than by words. And the old man
+understands. He feels in his pocket, takes out a ten-rouble note,
+and without preliminary words, without any change in the tone of
+his voice or the expression of his face, but with the confidence
+and directness with which probably only Russians give and take
+bribes, he gives the guard the note. The latter takes it, folds
+it in four, and without undue haste  puts it in his pocket.
+After that all three go out of the room, and waking the sleeping
+guard on the way, go on to the platform.
+
+"What weather!" grumbles the head guard, shrugging his shoulders.
+"You can't see your hand before your face."
+
+"Yes, it's vile weather."
+
+From the window they can see the flaxen head of the telegraph
+clerk appear beside the green lamp and the telegraphic apparatus;
+soon after another head, bearded and wearing a red cap, appears
+beside it -- no doubt that of the station-master. The
+station-master bends down to the table, reads something on a blue
+form, rapidly passing his cigarette along the lines. . . .
+Malahin goes to his van.
+
+The young man, his companion, is still half reclining and hardly
+audibly strumming on the accordion. He is little more than a boy,
+with no trace of a mustache; his full white face with its broad
+cheek-bones is childishly dreamy; his eyes have a melancholy and
+tranquil look unlike that of a grown-up person, but he is broad,
+strong, heavy and rough like the old man; he does not stir nor
+shift his position, as though he is not equal to moving his big
+body. It seems as though any movement he made would tear his
+clothes and be so noisy as to frighten both him and the cattle.
+From under his big fat fingers that clumsily pick out the stops
+and keys of the accordion comes a steady flow of thin, tinkling
+sounds which blend into a simple, monotonous little tune; he
+listens to it, and is evidently much pleased with his
+performance.
+
+A bell rings, but with such a muffled note that it seems to come
+from far away. A hurried second bell soon follows, then a third
+and the guard's whistle. A minute passes in profound silence; the
+van does not move, it stands still, but vague sounds begin to
+come from beneath it, like the crunch of snow under
+sledge-runners; the van begins to shake and the sounds cease.
+Silence reigns again. But now comes the clank of buffers, the
+violent shock makes the van start and, as it were, give a lurch
+forward, and all the cattle fall against one another.
+
+"May you be served the same in the world to come," grumbles the
+old man, setting straight his cap, which had slipped on the back
+of his head from the jolt. "He'll maim all my cattle like this!"
+
+Yasha gets up without a word and, taking one of the fallen beasts
+by the horns, helps it to get on to its legs. . . . The jolt is
+followed by a stillness again. The sounds of crunching snow come
+from under the van again, and it seems as though the train had
+moved back a little.
+
+"There will be another jolt in a minute," says the old man. And
+the convulsive quiver does, in fact, run along the train, there
+is a crashing sound and the bullocks fall on one another again.
+
+"It's a job!" says Yasha, listening. "The train must be heavy. It
+seems it won't move."
+
+"It was not heavy before, but now it has suddenly got heavy. No,
+my lad, the guard has not gone shares with him, I expect. Go and
+take him something, or he will be jolting us till morning."
+
+Yasha takes a three-rouble note from the old man and jumps out of
+the van. The dull thud of his heavy footsteps resounds outside
+the van and gradually dies away. Stillness. . . . In the next
+van a bullock utters a prolonged subdued "moo," as though
+it were singing.
+
+Yasha comes back. A cold damp wind darts into the van.
+
+"Shut the door, Yasha, and we will go to bed," says the old man.
+"Why burn a candle for nothing?"
+
+Yasha moves the heavy door; there is a sound of a whistle, the
+engine and the train set off.
+
+
+"It's cold," mutters the old man, stretching himself on the cape
+and laying his head on a bundle. "It is very different at home!
+It's warm and clean and soft, and there is room to say your
+prayers, but here we are worse off than any pigs. It's four
+days and nights since I have taken off my boots."
+
+Yasha, staggering from the jolting of the train, opens the
+lantern and snuffs out the wick with his wet fingers. The light
+flares up, hisses like a frying pan and goes out.
+
+"Yes, my lad," Malahin goes on, as he feels Yasha lie down beside
+him and the young man's huge back huddle against his own, "it's
+cold. There is a draught from every crack. If your mother or your
+sister were to sleep here for one night they would be dead by
+morning. There it is, my lad, you wouldn't study and go to the
+high school like your brothers, so you must take the cattle with
+your father. It's your own fault, you have only yourself to
+blame. . . . Your brothers are asleep in their beds now, they
+are snug under the bedclothes, but you, the careless and lazy
+one, are in the same box as the cattle. . . . Yes. . . . "
+
+The old man's words are inaudible in the noise of the train, but
+for a long time he goes on muttering, sighing and clearing his
+throat. . . . The cold air in the railway van grows thicker and
+more stifling The pungent odor of fresh dung and smoldering
+candle makes it so repulsive and acrid that it irritates Yasha's
+throat and chest as he falls asleep. He coughs and sneezes, while
+the old man, being accustomed to it, breathes with his whole
+chest as though nothing were amiss, and merely clears his throat.
+
+To judge from the swaying of the van and the rattle of the wheels
+the train is moving rapidly and unevenly. The engine breathes
+heavily, snorting out of time with the pulsation of the train,
+and altogether there is a medley of sounds. The bullocks huddle
+together uneasily and knock their horns against the walls.
+
+When the old man wakes up, the deep blue sky of early morning is
+peeping in at the cracks and at the little uncovered window. He
+feels unbearably cold, especially in the back and the feet. The
+train is standing still; Yasha, sleepy and morose, is busy with
+the cattle.
+
+The old man wakes up out of humor. Frowning and gloomy, he clears
+his throat angrily and looks from under his brows at Yasha who,
+supporting a bullock with his powerful shoulder and slightly
+lifting it, is trying to disentangle its leg.
+
+"I told you last night that the cords were too long," mutters the
+old man; "but no, 'It's not too long, Daddy.' There's no making
+you do anything, you will have everything your own way. . . .
+Blockhead!"
+
+He angrily moves the door open and the light rushes into the van.
+A passenger train is standing exactly opposite the door, and
+behind it a red building with a roofed-in platform -- a big
+station with a refreshment bar. The roofs and bridges of the
+trains, the earth, the sleepers, all are covered with a thin
+coating of fluffy, freshly fallen snow. In the spaces between the
+carriages of the passenger train the passengers can be seen
+moving to and fro, and a red-haired, red-faced gendarme walking
+up and down; a waiter in a frock-coat and a snow-white
+shirt-front, looking cold and sleepy, and probably very much
+dissatisfied with his fate, is running along the platform
+carrying a glass of tea and two rusks on a tray.
+
+The old man gets up and begins saying his prayers towards the
+east. Yasha, having finished with the bullock and put down the
+spade in the corner, stands beside him and says his prayers also.
+He merely moves his lips and crosses himself; the father prays
+in a loud whisper and pronounces the end of each prayer aloud and
+distinctly.
+
+". . . And the life of the world to come. Amen," the old man says
+aloud, draws in a breath, and at once whispers another prayer,
+rapping out clearly and firmly at the end: " . . . and lay calves
+upon Thy altar!"
+
+After saying his prayers, Yasha hurriedly crosses himself and
+says: "Five kopecks, please."
+
+And on being given the five-kopeck piece, he takes a red copper
+teapot and runs to the station for boiling water. Taking long
+jumps over the rails and sleepers, leaving huge tracks in the
+feathery snow, and pouring away yesterday's tea out of the
+teapot he runs to the refreshment room and jingles his
+five-kopeck piece against his teapot. From the van the bar-keeper
+can be seen pushing away the big teapot and refusing to give half
+of his samovar for five kopecks, but Yasha turns the tap himself
+and, spreading wide his elbows so as not to be interfered with
+fills his teapot with boiling water.
+
+"Damned blackguard!" the bar-keeper shouts after him as he runs
+back to the railway van.
+
+The scowling face of Malahin grows a little brighter over the
+tea.
+
+"We know how to eat and drink, but we don't remember our work.
+Yesterday we could do nothing all day but eat and drink, and I'll
+be bound we forgot to put down what we spent. What a memory! Lord
+have mercy on us!"
+
+The old man recalls aloud the expenditure of the day before, and
+writes down in a tattered notebook where and how much he had
+given to guards, engine-drivers, oilers. . . .
+
+Meanwhile the passenger train has long ago gone off, and an
+engine runs backwards and forwards on the empty line, apparently
+without any definite object, but simply enjoying its freedom. The
+sun has risen and is playing on the snow; bright drops are
+falling from the station roof and the tops of the vans.
+
+Having finished his tea, the old man lazily saunters from the van
+to the station. Here in the middle of the first-class
+waiting-room he sees the familiar figure of the guard standing
+beside the station-master, a young man with a handsome beard and
+in a magnificent rough woollen overcoat. The young man, probably
+new to his position, stands in the same place, gracefully
+shifting from one foot to the other like a good racehorse, looks
+from side to side, salutes everyone that passes by, smiles and
+screws up his eyes. . . . He is red-cheeked, sturdy, and
+good-humored; his face is full of eagerness, and is as fresh as
+though he had just fallen from the sky with the feathery snow.
+Seeing Malahin, the guard sighs guiltily and throws up his
+hands.
+
+"We can't go number fourteen," he says. "We are very much behind
+time. Another train has gone with that number."
+
+The station-master rapidly looks through some forms, then turns
+his beaming blue eyes upon Malahin, and, his face radiant with
+smiles and freshness, showers questions on him:
+
+"You are Mr. Malahin? You have the cattle? Eight vanloads? What
+is to be done now? You are late and I let number fourteen go in
+the night. What are we to do now?"
+
+The young man discreetly takes hold of the fur of Malahin's coat
+with two pink fingers and, shifting from one foot to the other,
+explains affably and convincingly that such and such numbers have
+gone already, and that such and such are going, and that he is
+ready to do for Malahin everything in his power. And from his
+face it is evident that he is ready to do anything to please not
+only Malahin, but the whole world -- he is so happy, so pleased,
+and so delighted! The old man listens, and though he can make
+absolutely nothing of the intricate system of numbering the
+trains, he nods his head approvingly, and he, too, puts two
+fingers on the soft wool of the rough coat. He enjoys seeing and
+hearing the polite and genial young man. To show goodwill on his
+side also, he takes out a ten-rouble note and, after a moment's
+thought, adds a couple of rouble notes to it, and gives them to
+the station-master. The latter takes them, puts his finger to his
+cap, and gracefully thrusts them into his pocket.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, can't we arrange it like this?" he says,
+kindled by a new idea that has flashed on him. "The troop train
+is late, . . . as you see, it is not here, . . . so why shouldn't
+you go as the troop train?** And I will let the troop train
+go as twenty-eight. Eh?"
+
+"If you like," agrees the guard.
+
+"Excellent!" the station-master says, delighted. "In that case
+there is no need for you to wait here; you can set off at once.
+I'll dispatch you immediately. Excellent!"
+
+He salutes Malahin and runs off to his room, reading forms as he
+goes. The old man is very much pleased by the conversation that
+has just taken place; he smiles and looks about the room as
+though looking for something else agreeable.
+
+"We'll have a drink, though," he says, taking the guard's arm.
+
+"It seems a little early for drinking."
+
+"No, you must let me treat you to a glass in a friendly way."
+
+They both go to the refreshment bar. After having a drink the
+guard spends a long time selecting something to eat.
+
+He is a very stout, elderly man, with a puffy and discolored
+face. His fatness is unpleasant, flabby-looking, and he is sallow
+as people are who drink too much and sleep irregularly.
+
+"And now we might have a second glass," says Malahin. "It's cold
+now, it's no sin to drink. Please take some. So I can rely upon
+you, Mr. Guard, that there will be no hindrance or unpleasantness
+for the rest of the journey. For you know in moving cattle every
+hour is precious. To-day meat is one price; and to-morrow, look
+you, it will be another. If you are a day or two late and don't
+get your price, instead of a profit you get home -- excuse my
+saying it -- with out your breeches. Pray take a little. . . .
+I rely on you, and as for standing you something or what you
+like, I shall be pleased to show you my respect at any time."
+
+After having fed the guard, Malahin goes back to the van.
+
+"I have just got hold of the troop train," he says to his son.
+"We shall go quickly. The guard says if we go all the way with
+that number we shall arrive at eight o'clock to-morrow evening.
+If one does not bestir oneself, my boy, one gets nothing. . . .
+That's so. . . . So you watch and learn. . . ."
+
+After the first bell a man with a face black with soot, in a
+blouse and filthy frayed trousers hanging very slack, comes to
+the door of the van. This is the oiler, who had been creeping
+under the carriages and tapping the wheels with a hammer.
+
+"Are these your vans of cattle?" he asks.
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"Why, because two of the vans are not safe. They can't go on,
+they must stay here to be repaired."
+
+"Oh, come, tell us another! You simply want a drink, to get
+something out of me. . . . You should have said so."
+
+"As you please, only it is my duty to report it at once."
+
+Without indignation or protest, simply, almost mechanically, the
+old man takes two twenty-kopeck pieces out of his pocket and
+gives them to the oiler. He takes them very calmly, too, and
+looking good-naturedly at the old man enters into conversation.
+
+"You are going to sell your cattle, I suppose. . . . It's good
+business!"
+
+Malahin sighs and, looking calmly at the oiler's black face,
+tells him that trading in cattle used certainly to be profitable,
+but now it has become a risky and losing business.
+
+"I have a mate here," the oiler interrupts him. "You merchant
+gentlemen might make him a little present. . .."
+
+Malahin gives something to the mate too. The troop train goes
+quickly and the waits at the stations are comparatively short.
+The old man is pleased. The pleasant impression made by the young
+man in the rough overcoat has gone deep, the vodka he has
+drunk slightly clouds his brain, the weather is magnificent, and
+everything seems to be going well. He talks without ceasing, and
+at every stopping place runs to the refreshment bar. Feeling the
+need of a listener, he takes with him first the guard, and then
+the engine-driver, and does not simply drink, but makes a long
+business of it, with suitable remarks and clinking of glasses.
+
+"You have your job and we have ours," he says with an affable
+smile. "May God prosper us and you, and not our will but His be
+done."
+
+The vodka gradually excites him and he is worked up to a great
+pitch of energy. He wants to bestir himself, to fuss about, to
+make inquiries, to talk incessantly. At one minute he fumbles in
+his pockets and bundles and looks for some form. Then he thinks
+of something and cannot remember it; then takes out his
+pocketbook, and with no sort of object counts over his money. He
+bustles about, sighs and groans, clasps his hands. . . . Laying
+out before him the letters and telegrams from the meat salesmen
+in the city, bills, post office and telegraphic receipt forms,
+and his note book, he reflects aloud and insists on Yasha's
+listening.
+
+And when he is tired of reading over forms and talking about
+prices, he gets out at the stopping places, runs to the vans
+where his cattle are, does nothing, but simply clasps his hands
+and exclaims in horror.
+
+"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" he says in a complaining voice. "Holy
+Martyr Vlassy! Though they are bullocks, though they are beasts,
+yet they want to eat and drink as men do. . . . It's four days
+and nights since they have drunk or eaten. Oh, dear! oh, dear!"
+
+Yasha follows him and does what he is told like an obedient son.
+He does not like the old man's frequent visits to the refreshment
+bar. Though he is afraid of his father, he cannot refrain from
+remarking on it.
+
+"So you have begun already!" he says, looking sternly at the old
+man. "What are you rejoicing at? Is it your name-day or what?"
+
+"Don't you dare teach your father."
+
+"Fine goings on!"
+
+When he has not to follow his father along the other vans Yasha
+sits on the cape and strums on the accordion. Occasionally he
+gets out and walks lazily beside the train; he stands by the
+engine and turns a prolonged, unmoving stare on the wheels or
+on the workmen tossing blocks of wood into the tender; the hot
+engine wheezes, the falling blocks come down with the mellow,
+hearty thud of fresh wood; the engine-driver and his assistant,
+very phlegmatic and imperturbable persons, perform
+incomprehensible movements and don't hurry themselves. After
+standing for a while by the engine, Yasha saunters lazily to the
+station; here he looks at the eatables in the refreshment bar,
+reads aloud some quite uninteresting notice, and goes back
+slowly to the cattle van. His face expresses neither boredom nor
+desire; apparently he does not care where he is, at home, in the
+van, or by the engine.
+
+Towards evening the train stops near a big station. The lamps
+have only just been lighted along the line; against the blue
+background in the fresh limpid air the lights are bright and pale
+like stars; they are only red and glowing under the station
+roof, where it is already dark. All the lines are loaded up with
+carriages, and it seems that if another train came in there would
+be no place for it. Yasha runs to the station for boiling water
+to make the evening tea. Well-dressed ladies and high-school
+boys are walking on the platform. If one looks into the distance
+from the platform there are far-away lights twinkling in the
+evening dusk on both sides of the station -- that is the town.
+What town? Yasha does not care to know. He sees only the dim
+lights and wretched buildings beyond the station, hears the
+cabmen shouting, feels a sharp, cold wind on his face, and
+imagines that the town is probably disagreeable, uncomfortable,
+and dull.
+
+While they are having tea, when it is quite dark and a lantern is
+hanging on the wall again as on the previous evening, the train
+quivers from a slight shock and begins moving backwards. After
+going a little way it stops; they hear indistinct shouts,
+someone sets the chains clanking near the buffers and shouts,
+"Ready!" The train moves and goes forward. Ten minutes later it
+is dragged back again.
+
+Getting out of the van, Malahin does not recognize his train. His
+eight vans of bullocks are standing in the same row with some
+trolleys which were not a part of the train before. Two or three
+of these are loaded with rubble and the others are empty. The
+guards running to and fro on the platform are strangers. They
+give unwilling and indistinct answers to his questions. They have
+no thoughts to spare for Malahin; they are in a hurry to get the
+train together so as to finish as soon as possible and be back
+in the warmth.
+
+"What number is this?" asks Malahin
+
+"Number eighteen."
+
+"And where is the troop train? Why have you taken me off the
+troop train?"
+
+Getting n o answer, the old man goes to the station. He looks
+first for the familiar figure of the head guard and, not finding
+him, goes to the station-master. The station-master is sitting at
+a table in his own room, turning over a bundle of forms. He is
+busy, and affects not to see the newcomer. His appearance is
+impressive: a cropped black head, prominent ears, a long hooked
+nose, a swarthy face; he has a forbidding and, as it were,
+offended expression. Malahin begins making his complaint at
+great length.
+
+"What?" queries the station-master. "How is this?" He leans
+against the back of his chair and goes on, growing indignant:
+"What is it? and why shouldn't you go by number eighteen? Speak
+more clearly, I don't understand! How is it? Do you want me to
+be everywhere at once?"
+
+He showers questions on him, and for no apparent reason grows
+sterner and sterner. Malahin is already feeling in his pocket for
+his pocketbook, but in the end the station-master, aggrieved and
+indignant, for some unknown reason jumps up from his seat and
+runs out of the room. Malahin shrugs his shoulders, and goes out
+to look for someone else to speak to.
+
+From boredom or from a desire to put the finishing stroke to a
+busy day, or simply that a window with the inscription
+"Telegraph! " on it catches his eye, he goes to the window and
+expresses a desire to send off a telegram. Taking up a pen, he
+thinks for a moment, and writes on a blue form: "Urgent. Traffic
+Manager. Eight vans of live stock. Delayed at every station.
+Kindly send an express number. Reply paid. Malahin."
+
+Having sent off the telegram, he goes back to the
+station-master's room. There he finds, sitting on a sofa covered
+with gray cloth, a benevolent-looking gentleman in spectacles and
+a cap of raccoon fur; he is wearing a peculiar overcoat very much
+like a lady's, edged with fur, with frogs and slashed sleeves.
+Another gentleman, dried-up and sinewy, wearing the uniform of a
+railway inspector, stands facing him.
+
+"Just think of it," says the inspector, addressing the gentleman
+in the queer overcoat. " I'll tell you an incident that really is
+A1! The Z. railway line in the coolest possible way stole three
+hundred trucks from the N. line. It's a fact, sir! I swear it!
+They carried them off, repainted them, put their letters on them,
+and that's all about it. The N. line sends its agents everywhere,
+they hunt and hunt. And then -- can you imagine it? -- the
+Company happen to come upon a broken-down carriage of the Z.
+line. They repair it at their depot, and all at once, bless my
+soul! see their own mark on the wheels What do you say to that?
+Eh? If I did it they would send me to Siberia, but the railway
+companies simply snap their fingers at it!"
+
+It is pleasant to Malahin to talk to educated, cultured people.
+He strokes his beard and joins in the conversation with dignity.
+
+"Take this case, gentlemen, for instance," he says. I am
+transporting cattle to X. Eight vanloads. Very good. . . . Now
+let us say they charge me for each vanload as a weight of ten
+tons; eight bullocks don't weigh ten tons, but much less, yet
+they don't take any notice of that. . . ."
+
+At that instant Yasha walks into the room looking for his father.
+He listens and is about to sit down on a chair, but probably
+thinking of his weight goes and sits on the window-sill
+
+"They don't take any notice of that," Malahin goes on, "and
+charge me and my son the third-class fare, too, forty-two
+roubles, for going in the van with the bullocks. This is my son
+Yakov. I have two more at home, but they have gone in for study.
+Well and apart from that it is my opinion that the railways have
+ruined the cattle trade. In old days when they drove them in
+herds it was better."
+
+The old man's talk is lengthy and drawn out. After every sentence
+he looks at Yasha as though he would say: "See how I am talking
+to clever people."
+
+"Upon my word!" the inspector interrupts him. "No one is
+indignant, no one criticizes. And why? It is very simple. An
+abomination strikes the eye and arouses indignation only when it
+is exceptional, when the established order is broken by it. Here,
+where, saving your presence, it constitutes the long-established
+program and forms and enters into the basis of the order itself,
+where every sleeper on the line bears the trace of it and stinks
+of it, one too easily grows accustomed to it! Yes, sir!"
+
+The second bell rings, the gentlemen in the queer overcoat gets
+up. The inspector takes him by the arm and, still talking with
+heat, goes off with him to the platform. After the third bell the
+station-master runs into his room, and sits down at his table.
+
+"Listen, with what number am I to go?" asks Malahin.
+
+The station-master looks at a form and says indignantly:
+
+"Are you Malahin, eight vanloads? You must pay a rouble a van and
+six roubles and twenty kopecks for stamps. You have no stamps.
+Total, fourteen roubles, twenty kopecks."
+
+Receiving the money, he writes something down, dries it with
+sand, and, hurriedly snatching up a bundle of forms, goes quickly
+out of the room.
+
+At ten o'clock in the evening Malahin gets an answer from the
+traffic manager: "Give precedence."
+
+Reading the telegram through, the old man winks significantly
+and, very well pleased with himself, puts it in his pocket.
+
+"Here," he says to Yasha, "look and learn."
+
+At midnight his train goes on. The night is dark and cold like
+the previous one; the waits at the stations are long. Yasha sits
+on the cape and imperturbably strums on the accordion, while the
+old man is still more eager to exert himself. At one of
+the stations he is overtaken by a desire to lodge a complaint.
+At his request a gendarme sits down and writes:
+
+"November 10, 188-. -- I, non-commissioned officer of the Z.
+section of the N. police department of railways, Ilya Tchered, in
+accordance with article II of the statute of May 19, 1871, have
+drawn up this protocol at the station of X. as herewith follows.
+. . . "
+
+"What am I to write next?" asks the gendarme.
+
+Malahin lays out before him forms, postal and telegraph receipts,
+accounts. . . . He does not know himself definitely what he wants
+of the gendarme; he wants to describe in the protocol not any
+separate episode but his whole journey, with all his losses and
+conversations with station-masters -- to describe it lengthily
+and vindictively.
+
+"At the station of Z.," he says, "write that the station-master
+unlinked my vans from the troop train because he did not like my
+countenance."
+
+And he wants the gendarme to be sure to mention his countenance.
+The latter listens wearily, and goes on writing without hearing
+him to the end. He ends his protocol thus:
+
+"The above deposition I, non-commissioned officer Tchered, have
+written down in this protocol with a view to present it to the
+head of the Z. section, and have handed a copy thereof to Gavril
+Malahin."
+
+The old man takes the copy, adds it to the papers with which his
+side pocket is stuffed, and, much pleased, goes back to his van.
+
+In the morning Malahin wakes up again in a bad humor, but his
+wrath vents itself not on Yasha but the cattle.
+
+"The cattle are done for!" he grumbles. "They are done for! They
+are at the last gasp! God be my judge! they will all die. Tfoo!"
+
+The bullocks, who have had nothing to drink for many days,
+tortured by thirst, are licking the hoar frost on the walls, and
+when Malachin goes up to them they begin licking his cold fur
+jacket. From their clear, tearful eyes it can be seen that they
+are exhausted by thirst and the jolting of the train, that they
+are hungry and miserable.
+
+"It's a nice job taking you by rail, you wretched brutes!"
+mutters Malahin. "I could wish you were dead to get it over! It
+makes me sick to look at you!"
+
+At midday the train stops at a big station where, according to
+the regulations, there was drinking water provided for cattle.
+
+Water is given to the cattle, but the bullocks will not drink it:
+the water is too cold. . . .
+
+           *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+Two more days and nights pass, and at last in the distance in the
+murky fog the city comes into sight. The jou rney is over. The
+train comes to a standstill before reaching the town, near a
+goods' station. The bullocks, released from the van, stagger and
+stumble as though they were walking on slippery ice.
+
+Having got through the unloading and veterinary inspection,
+Malahin and Yasha take up their quarters in a dirty, cheap hotel
+in the outskirts of the town, in the square in which the
+cattle-market is held. Their lodgings are filthy and their food
+is disgusting, unlike what they ever have at home; they sleep to
+the harsh strains of a wretched steam hurdy-gurdy which plays day
+and night in the restaurant under their lodging.
+
+The old man spends his time from morning till night going about
+looking for purchasers, and Yasha sits for days in the hotel
+room, or goes out into the street to look at the town. He sees
+the filthy square heaped up with dung, the signboards of
+restaurants, the turreted walls of a monastery in the fog.
+Sometimes he runs across the street and looks into the grocer's
+shop, admires the jars of cakes of different colors, yawns, and
+lazily saunters back to his room. The city does not interest him.
+
+At last the bullocks are sold to a dealer. Malahin hires drovers.
+The cattle are divided into herds, ten in each, and driven to the
+other end of the town. The bullocks, exhausted, go with drooping
+heads through the noisy streets, and look indifferently at what
+they see for the first and last time in their lives. The tattered
+drovers walk after them, their heads drooping too. They are
+bored. . . . Now and then some drover starts out of his brooding,
+remembers that there are cattle in front of him intrusted to his
+charge, and to show that he is doing his duty brings a stick down
+full swing on a bullock's back. The bullock staggers with the
+pain, runs forward a dozen paces, and looks about him as though
+he were ashamed at being beaten before people.
+
+After selling the bullocks and buying for his family presents
+such as they could perfectly well have bought at home, Malahin
+and Yasha get ready for their journey back. Three hours before
+the train goes the old man, who has already had a drop too much
+with the purchaser and so is fussy, goes down with Yasha to the
+restaurant and sits down to drink tea. Like all provincials, he
+cannot eat and drink alone: he must have company as fussy and as
+fond of sedate conversation as himself.
+
+"Call the host!" he says to the waiter; "tell him I should like
+to entertain him."
+
+The hotel-keeper, a well-fed man, absolutely indifferent to his
+lodgers, comes and sits down to the table.
+
+"Well, we have sold our stock," Malahin says, laughing. "I have
+swapped my goat for a hawk. Why, when we set off the price of
+meat was three roubles ninety kopecks, but when we arrived it had
+dropped to three roubles twenty-five. They tell us we are too
+late, we should have been here three days earlier, for now there
+is not the same demand for meat, St. Philip's fast has come. . .
+. Eh? It's a nice how-do-you-do! It meant a loss of fourteen
+roubles on each bullock. Yes. But only think what it costs to
+bring the stock! Fifteen roubles carriage, and you must put down
+six roubles for each bullock, tips, bribes, drinks, and one thing
+and another. . . ."
+
+The hotel-keeper listens out of politeness and reluctantly drinks
+tea. Malahin sighs and groans, gesticulates, jests about his
+ill-luck, but everything shows that the loss he has sustained
+does not trouble him much. He doesn't mind whether he has lost
+or gained as long as he has listeners, has something to make a
+fuss about, and is not late for his train.
+
+An hour later Malahin and Yasha, laden with bags and boxes, go
+downstairs from the hotel room to the front door to get into a
+sledge and drive to the station. They are seen off by the
+hotel-keeper, the waiter, and various women. The old man is
+touched. He thrusts ten-kopeck pieces in all directions, and says
+in a sing-song voice:
+
+"Good by, good health to you! God grant that all may be well with
+you. Please God if we are alive and well we shall come again in
+Lent. Good-by. Thank you. God bless you!"
+
+Getting into the sledge, the old man spends a long time crossing
+himself in the direction in which the monastery walls make a
+patch of darkness in the fog. Yasha sits beside him on the very
+edge of the seat with his legs hanging over the side. His face
+as before shows no sign of emotion and expresses neither boredom
+nor desire. He is not glad that he is going home, nor sorry that
+he has not had time to see the sights of the city.
+
+"Drive on!"
+
+The cabman whips up the horse and, turning round, begins swearing
+at the heavy and cumbersome luggage.
+
+---- * On many railway lines, in order to avoid accidents, it is
+against the regulations to carry hay on the trains, and so live
+stock are without fodder on the journey. -- Author's Note.
+
+**The train destined especially for the transport of troops is
+called the troop train; when they are no troops it takes goods,
+and goes more rapidly than ordinary goods train. -- Author's
+Note.
+
+SORROW
+
+THE turner, Grigory Petrov, who had been known for years past as
+a splendid craftsman, and at the same time as the most senseless
+peasant in the Galtchinskoy district, was taking his old woman to
+the hospital. He had to drive over twenty miles, and
+it was an awful road. A government post driver could hardly have
+coped with it, much less an incompetent sluggard like Grigory. A
+cutting cold wind was blowing straight in his face. Clouds of
+snowflakes were whirling round and round in all directions, so
+that one could not tell whether the snow was falling from the sky
+or rising from the earth. The fields, the telegraph posts, and
+the forest could not be seen for the fog of snow. And when a
+particularly violent gust of wind swooped down on Grigory, even
+the yoke above the horse's head could not be seen. The wretched,
+feeble little nag crawled slowly along. It took all its strength
+to drag its legs out of the snow and to tug with its head. The
+turner was in a hurry. He kept restlessly hopping up and down on
+the front seat and lashing the horse's back.
+
+"Don't cry, Matryona, . . ." he muttered. "Have a little
+patience. Please God we shall reach the hospital, and in a trice
+it will be the right thing for you. . . . Pavel Ivanitch will
+give you some little drops, or tell them to bleed you; or maybe
+his honor will be pleased to rub you with some sort of spirit --
+it'll . . . draw it out of your side. Pavel Ivanitch will do his
+best. He will shout and stamp about, but he will do his best. . .
+. He is a nice gentleman, affable, God give him health! As soon
+as we get there he will dart out of his room and will begin
+calling me names. 'How? Why so?' he will cry. 'Why did you not
+come at the right time? I am not a dog to be hanging about
+waiting on you devils all day. Why did you not come
+in the morning? Go away! Get out of my sight. Come again
+to-morrow.' And I shall say: 'Mr. Doctor! Pavel Ivanitch! Your
+honor!' Get on, do! plague take you, you devil! Get on!"
+
+The turner lashed his nag, and without looking at the old woman
+went on muttering to himself:
+
+"'Your honor! It's true as before God. . . . Here's the Cross
+for you, I set off almost before it was light. How could I be
+here in time if the Lord. . . .The Mother of God . . . is wroth,
+and has sent such a snowstorm? Kindly look for yourself. .
+. . Even a first-rate horse could not do it, while mine -- you
+can see for yourself -- is not a horse but a disgrace.' And Pavel
+Ivanitch will frown and shout: 'We know you! You always find some
+excuse! Especially you, Grishka; I know you of old! I'll be
+bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!' And I shall say:
+'Your honor! am I a criminal or a heathen? My old woman is giving
+up her soul to God, she is dying, and am I going to run from
+tavern to tavern! What an idea, upon my word! Plague take them,
+the taverns!' Then Pavel Ivanitch will order you to be taken into
+the hospital, and I shall fall at his feet. . . . 'Pavel
+Ivanitch! Your honor, we thank you most humbly! Forgive us fools
+and anathemas, don't be hard on us peasants! We deserve a good
+kicking, whi le you graciously put yourself out and mess your
+feet in the snow!' And Pavel Ivanitch will give me a look as
+though he would like to hit me, and will say: 'You'd much better
+not be swilling vodka, you fool, but taking pity on your old
+woman instead of falling at my feet. You want a thrashing!' 'You
+are right there -- a thrashing, Pavel Ivanitch, strike me God!
+But how can we help bowing down at your feet if you are our
+benefactor, and a real father to us? Your honor! I give you my
+word, . . . here as before God, . . . you may spit in my face if
+I deceive you: as soon as my Matryona, this same here, is well
+again and restored to her natural condition, I'll make anything
+for your honor that you would like to order! A cigarette-case,
+if you like, of the best birchwood, . . . balls for croquet,
+skittles of the most foreign pattern I can turn. . . . I will
+make anything for you! I won't take a farthing from you. In
+Moscow they would charge you four roubles for such a
+cigarette-case, but I won't take a farthing.' The doctor will
+laugh and say: 'Oh, all right, all right. . . . I see! But it's a
+pity you are a drunkard. . . .' I know how to manage the gentry,
+old girl. There isn't a gentleman I couldn't talk to. Only God
+grant we don't get off the road. Oh, how it is blowing! One's
+eyes are full of snow."
+
+And the turner went on muttering endlessly. He prattled on
+mechanically to get a little relief from his depressing feelings.
+He had plenty of words on his tongue, but the thoughts and
+questions in his brain were even more numerous. Sorrow had come
+upon the turner unawares, unlooked-for, and unexpected, and now
+he could not get over it, could not recover himself. He had lived
+hitherto in unruffled calm, as though in drunken
+half-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, and now he was
+suddenly aware of a dreadful pain in his heart. The careless
+idler and drunkard found himself quite suddenly in the position
+of a busy man, weighed down by anxieties and haste, and even
+struggling with nature.
+
+The turner remembered that his trouble had begun the evening
+before. When he had come home yesterday evening, a little drunk
+as usual, and from long-established habit had begun swearing and
+shaking his fists, his old woman had looked at her rowdy spouse
+as she had never looked at him before. Usually, the expression in
+her aged eyes was that of a martyr, meek like that of a dog
+frequently beaten and badly fed; this time she had looked at him
+sternly and immovably, as saints in the holy pictures or dying
+people look. From that strange, evil look in her eyes the trouble
+had begun. The turner, stupefied with amazement, borrowed a horse
+from a neighbor, and now was taking his old woman to the hospital
+in the hope that, by means of powders and ointments, Pavel
+Ivanitch would bring back his old woman's habitual expression.
+
+"I say, Matryona, . . ." the turner muttered, "if Pavel Ivanitch
+asks you whether I beat you, say, 'Never!' and I never will beat
+you again. I swear it. And did I ever beat you out of spite? I
+just beat you without thinking. I am sorry for you. Some men
+wouldn't trouble, but here I am taking you. . . . I am doing my
+best. And the way it snows, the way it snows! Thy Will be done, O
+Lord! God grant we don't get off the road. . . . Does your side
+ache, Matryona, that you don't speak? I ask you, does your side
+ache?"
+
+It struck him as strange that the snow on his old woman's face
+was not melting; it was queer that the face itself looked somehow
+drawn, and had turned a pale gray, dingy waxen hue and had grown
+grave and solemn.
+
+"You are a fool!" muttered the turner. . . . "I tell you on my
+conscience, before God,. . . and you go and . . . Well, you are a
+fool! I have a good mind not to take you to Pavel Ivanitch!"
+
+The turner let the reins go and began thinking. He could not
+bring himself to look round at his old woman: he was frightened.
+He was afraid, too, of asking her a question and not getting an
+answer. At last, to make an end of uncertainty, without looking
+round he felt his old woman's cold hand. The lifted hand fell
+like a log.
+
+"She is dead, then! What a business!"
+
+And the turner cried. He was not so much sorry as annoyed. He
+thought how quickly everything passes in this world! His trouble
+had hardly begun when the final catastrophe had happened. He had
+not had time to live with his old woman, to show her he was
+sorry for her before she died. He had lived with her for forty
+years, but those forty years had passed by as it were in a fog.
+What with drunkenness, quarreling, and poverty, there had been no
+feeling of life. And, as though to spite him, his old woman died
+at the very time when he felt he was sorry for her, that he could
+not live without her, and that he had behaved dreadfully badly to
+her.
+
+"Why, she used to go the round of the village," he remembered. "I
+sent her out myself to beg for bread. What a business! She ought
+to have lived another ten years, the silly thing; as it is I'll
+be bound she thinks I really was that sort of man. . . . Holy
+Mother! but where the devil am I driving? There's no need for a
+doctor now, but a burial. Turn back!"
+
+Grigory turned back and lashed the horse with all his might. The
+road grew worse and worse every hour. Now he could not see the
+yoke at all. Now and then the sledge ran into a young fir tree, a
+dark object scratched the turner's hands and flashed before his
+eyes, and the field of vision was white and whirling again.
+
+"To live over again," thought the turner.
+
+He remembered that forty years ago Matryona had been young,
+handsome, merry, that she had come of a well-to-do family. They
+had married her to him because they had been attracted by his
+handicraft. All the essentials for a happy life had been there,
+but the trouble was that, just as he had got drunk after the
+wedding and lay sprawling on the stove, so he had gone on without
+waking up till now. His wedding he remembered, but of what
+happened after the wedding -- for the life of him he could
+remember nothing, except perhaps that he had drunk, lain on the
+stove, and quarreled. Forty years had been wasted like that.
+
+The white clouds of snow were beginning little by little to turn
+gray. It was getting dusk.
+
+"Where am I going?" the turner suddenly bethought him with a
+start. "I ought to be thinking of the burial, and I am on the way
+to the hospital. . . . It as is though I had gone crazy."
+
+Grigory turned round again, and again lashed his horse. The
+little nag strained its utmost and, with a snort, fell into a
+little trot. The turner lashed it on the back time after time. .
+. . A knocking was audible behind him, and though he did not
+look round, he knew it was the dead woman's head knocking against
+the sledge. And the snow kept turning darker and darker, the wind
+grew colder and more cutting. . . .
+
+"To live over again!" thought the turner. "I should get a new
+lathe, take orders, . . . give the money to my old woman. . . ."
+
+And then he dropped the reins. He looked for them, tried to pick
+them up, but could not -- his hands would not work. . . .
+
+"It does not matter," he thought, "the horse will go of itself,
+it knows the way. I might have a little sleep now. . . . Before
+the funeral or the requiem it would be as well to get a little
+rest. . . ."
+
+The turner closed his eyes and dozed. A little later he heard the
+horse stop; he opened his eyes and saw before him something dark
+like a hut or a haystack. . . .
+
+He would have got out of the sledge and found out what it was,
+but he felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed better to
+freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep.
+
+He woke up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sunlight was
+streaming in at the windows. The turner saw people facing him,
+and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a respectable
+man who knew how things should be done.
+
+"A requiem, brothers, for my old woman," he said. "The priest
+should be told. . . ."
+
+"Oh, all right, all right; lie down," a voice cut him short.
+
+"Pavel Ivanitch!" the turner cried in surprise, seeing the doctor
+before him. "Your honor, benefactor! "
+
+He wanted to leap up and fall on his knees before the doctor,
+but felt that his arms and legs would not obey him.
+
+"Your honor, where are my legs, where are my arms!"
+
+"Say good-by to your arms and legs. . . . They've been frozen
+off. Come, come! . . . What are you crying for ? You've lived
+your life, and thank God for it! I suppose you have had sixty
+years of it -- that's enough for you! . . ."
+
+"I am grieving. . . . Graciously forgive me! If I could have
+another five or six years! . . ."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"The horse isn't mine, I must give it back. . . . I must bury my
+old woman. . . . How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your
+honor, Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of the best!
+I'll turn you croquet balls. . . ."
+
+The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand. It was
+all over with the turner.
+
+ON OFFICIAL DUTY
+
+THE deputy examining magistrate and the district doctor were
+going to an inquest in the village of Syrnya. On the road they
+were overtaken by a snowstorm; they spent a long time going round
+and round, and arrived, not at midday, as they had intended, but
+in the evening when it was dark. They put up for the night at the
+Zemstvo hut. It so happened that it was in this hut that the dead
+body was lying -- the corpse of the Zemstvo insurance agent,
+Lesnitsky, who had arrived in Syrnya three
+days before and, ordering the samovar in the hut, had shot
+himself, to the great surprise of everyone; and the fact that he
+had ended his life so strangely, after unpacking his eatables and
+laying them out on the table, and with the samovar before him,
+led many people to suspect that it was a case of murder; an
+inquest was necessary.
+
+In the outer room the doctor and the examining magistrate shook
+the snow off themselves and knocked it off their boots. And
+meanwhile the old village constable, Ilya Loshadin, stood by,
+holding a little tin lamp. There was a strong smell of paraffin.
+
+"Who are you?" asked the doctor.
+
+"Conshtable, . . ." answered the constable.
+
+He used to spell it "conshtable" when he signed the receipts at
+the post office.
+
+"And where are the witnesses?"
+
+"They must have gone to tea, your honor."
+
+On the right was the parlor, the travelers' or gentry's room; on
+the left the kitchen, with a big stove and sleeping shelves under
+the rafters. The doctor and the examining magistrate, followed by
+the constable, holding the lamp high above his head, went into
+the parlor. Here a still, long body covered with white linen was
+lying on the floor close to the table-legs. In the dim light of
+the lamp they could clearly see, besides the white covering, new
+rubber goloshes, and everything about it was uncanny and
+sinister: the dark walls, and the silence, and the goloshes, and
+the stillness of the dead body. On the table stood a samovar,
+cold long ago; and round it parcels, probably the eatables.
+
+"To shoot oneself in the Zemstvo hut, how tactless!" said the
+doctor. "If one does want to put a bullet through one's brains,
+one ought to do it at home in some outhouse."
+
+He sank on to a bench, just as he was, in his cap, his fur coat,
+and his felt overboots; his fellow-traveler, the examining
+magistrate, sat down opposite.
+
+"These hysterical, neurasthenic people are great egoists," the
+doctor went on hotly. "If a neurasthenic sleeps in the same room
+with you, he rustles his newspaper; when he dines with you, he
+gets up a scene with his wife without troubling about your
+presence; and when he feels inclined to shoot himself, he shoots
+himself in a village in a Zemstvo hut, so as to give the maximum
+of trouble to everybody. These gentlemen in every circumstance of
+life think of no one but themselves! That's why the elderly so
+dislike our 'nervous age.'"
+
+"The elderly dislike so many things," said the examining
+magistrate, yawning. "You should point out to the elder
+generation what the difference is between the suicides of the
+past and the suicides of to-day. In the old days the so-called
+gentleman shot himself because he had made away with Government
+money, but nowadays it is because he is sick of life, depressed.
+. . . Which is better?"
+
+"Sick of life, depressed; but you must admit that he might have
+shot himself somewhere else."
+
+"Such trouble!" said the constable, "such trouble! It's a real
+affliction. The people are very much upset, your honor; they
+haven't slept these three nights. The children are crying. The
+cows ought to be milked, but the women won't go to the stall --
+they are afraid . . . for fear the gentleman should appear to
+them in the darkness. Of course they are silly women, but some of
+the men are frightened too. As soon as it is dark they won't go
+by the hut one by one, but only in a flock together. And the
+witnesses too. . . ."
+
+Dr. Startchenko, a middle-aged man in spectacles with a dark
+beard, and the examining magistrate Lyzhin, a fair man, still
+young, who had only taken his degree two years before and looked
+more like a student than an official, sat in silence, musing.
+They were vexed that they were late. Now they had to wait till
+morning, and to stay here for the night, though it was not yet
+six o'clock; and they had before them a long evening, a dark
+night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, beetles, and cold in the
+morning; and listening to the blizzard that howled in the chimney
+and in the loft, they both thought how unlike all this was the
+life which they would have chosen for themselves and of which
+they had once dreamed, and how far away they both were from
+their contemporaries, who were at that moment walking about the
+lighted streets in town without noticing the weather, or were
+getting ready for the theatre, or sitting in their studies over a
+book. Oh, how much they would have given now only to stroll
+along the Nevsky Prospect, or along Petrovka in Moscow, to listen
+to decent singing, to sit for an hour or so in a restaurant!
+
+"Oo-oo-oo-oo!" sang the storm in the loft, and something outside
+slammed viciously, probably the signboard on the hut.
+"Oo-oo-oo-oo!"
+
+"You can do as you please, but I have no desire to stay here,"
+said Startchenko, getting up. "It's not six yet, it's too early
+to go to bed; I am off. Von Taunitz lives not far from here, only
+a couple of miles from Syrnya. I shall go to see him and spend
+the evening there. Constable, run and tell my coachman not to
+take the horses out. And what are you going to do?" he asked
+Lyzhin.
+
+"I don't know; I expect I shall go to sleep."
+
+The doctor wrapped himself in his fur coat and went out. Lyzhin
+could hear him talking to the coachman and the bells beginning to
+quiver on the frozen horses. He drove off.
+
+"It is not nice for you, sir, to spend the night in here," said
+the constable; "come into the other room. It's dirty, but for one
+night it won't matter. I'll get a samovar from a peasant and heat
+it directly. I'll heap up some hay for you, and then
+ you go to sleep, and God bless you, your honor."
+
+A little later the examining magistrate was sitting in the
+kitchen drinking tea, while Loshadin, the constable, was standing
+at the door talking. He was an old man about sixty, short and
+very thin, bent and white, with a naive smile on his face
+and watery eyes, and he kept smacking with his lips as though he
+were sucking a sweetmeat. He was wearing a short sheepskin coat
+and high felt boots, and held his stick in his hands all the
+time. The youth of the examining magistrate aroused his
+compassion, and that was probably why he addressed him
+familiarly.
+
+"The elder gave orders that he was to be informed when the police
+superintendent or the examining magistrate came," he said, "so I
+suppose I must go now. . . . It's nearly three miles to the
+_volost_, and the storm, the snowdrifts, are something terrible
+-- maybe one won't get there before midnight. Ough! how the wind
+roars!"
+
+"I don't need the elder," said Lyzhin. "There is nothing for him
+to do here."
+
+He looked at the old man with curiosity, and asked:
+
+"Tell me, grandfather, how many years have you been constable? "
+
+"How many? Why, thirty years. Five years after the Freedom I
+began going as constable, that's how I reckon it. And from that
+time I have been going every day since. Other people have
+holidays, but I am always going. When it's Easter and the church
+bells are ringing and Christ has risen, I still go about with my
+bag -- to the treasury, to the post, to the police
+superintendent's lodgings, to the rural captain, to the tax
+inspector, to the municipal office, to the gentry, to the
+peasants, to all orthodox Christians. I carry parcels, notices,
+tax papers, letters, forms of different sorts, circulars, and to
+be sure, kind gentleman, there are all sorts of forms nowadays,
+so as to note down the numbers -- yellow, white, and red -- and
+every gentleman or priest or well-to-do peasant must write down
+a dozen times in the year how much he has sown and harvested, how
+many quarters or poods he has of rye, how many of oats, how many
+of hay, and what the weather's like, you know, and insects, too,
+of all sorts. To be sure you can write what you like, it's only a
+regulation, but one must go and give out the notices and then go
+again and collect them. Here, for instance, there's no need to
+cut open the gentleman; you know yourself it's a silly thing,
+it's only dirtying your hands, and here you have been put to
+trouble, your honor; you have come because it's the regulation;
+you can't help it. For thirty years I have been going round
+according to regulation. In the summer it is all right, it is
+warm and dry; but in winter and autumn it's uncomfortable At
+times I have been almost drowned and almost frozen; all sorts of
+things have happened -- wicked people set on me in the forest and
+took away my bag; I have been beaten, and I have been before a
+court of law."
+
+"What were you accused of?"
+
+"Of fraud."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Why, you see, Hrisanf Grigoryev, the clerk, sold the contractor
+some boards belonging to someone else -- cheated him, in fact. I
+was mixed up in it. They sent me to the tavern for vodka; well,
+the clerk did not share with me -- did not even offer me a glass;
+but as through my poverty I was -- in appearance, I mean -- not a
+man to be relied upon, not a man of any worth, we were both
+brought to trial; he was sent to prison, but, praise God! I was
+acquitted on all points. They read a notice, you know, in the
+court. And they were all in uniforms -- in the court, I mean. I
+can tell you, your honor, my duties for anyone not used to them
+are terrible, absolutely killing; but to me it is nothing. In
+fact, my feet ache when I am not walking. And at home it is worse
+for me. At home one has to heat the stove for the clerk in the
+_volost_ office, to fetch water for him, to clean his boots."
+
+"And what wages do you get?" Lyzhin asked.
+
+"Eighty-four roubles a year."
+
+"I'll bet you get other little sums coming in. You do, don't
+you?"
+
+"Other little sums? No, indeed! Gentlemen nowadays don't often
+give tips. Gentlemen nowadays are strict, they take offense at
+anything. If you bring them a notice they are offended, if you
+take off your cap before them they are offended. 'You have come
+to the wrong entrance,' they say. 'You are a drunkard,' they say.
+'You smell of onion; you are a blockhead; you are the son of a
+bitch.' There are kind-hearted ones, of course; but what does one
+get from them? They only laugh and call one all sorts of names.
+Mr. Altuhin, for instance, he is a good-natured gentleman; and if
+you look at him he seems sober and in his right mind, but so soon
+as he sees me he shouts and does not know what he means himself.
+He gave me such a name 'You,' said he, . . ." The constable
+uttered some word, but in such a low voice that it was impossible
+to make out what he said.
+
+"What?" Lyzhin asked. "Say it again."
+
+" 'Administration,' " the constable repeated aloud. "He has been
+calling me that for a long while, for the last six years. 'Hullo,
+Administration!' But I don't mind; let him, God bless him!
+Sometimes a lady will send one a glass of vodka and a bit of pie
+and one drinks to her health. But peasants give more; peasants
+are more kind-hearted, they have the fear of God in their hearts:
+one will give a bit of bread, another a drop of cabbage soup,
+another will stand one a glass. The village elders treat one to
+tea in the tavern. Here the witnesses have gone to their tea.
+'Loshadin,' they said, 'you stay here and keep watch for us,' and
+they gave me a kopeck each. You see, they are frightened, not
+being used to it, and yesterday they gave me fifteen kopecks and
+offered me a glass."
+
+"And you, aren't you frightened?"
+
+"I am, sir; but of course it is my duty, there is no getting away
+from it. In the summer I was taking a convict to the town, and he
+set upon me and gave me such a drubbing! And all around were
+fields, forest -- how could I get away from him? It's just the
+same here. I remember the gentleman, Mr. Lesnitsky, when he was
+so high, and I knew his father and mother. I am from the village
+of Nedoshtchotova, and they, the Lesnitsky family, were not more
+than three-quarters of a mile from us and less
+than that, their ground next to ours, and Mr. Lesnitsky had a
+sister, a God-fearing and tender-hearted lady. Lord keep the soul
+of Thy servant Yulya, eternal memory to her! She was never
+married, and when she was dying she divided all her property;
+she left three hundred acres to the monastery, and six hundred
+to the commune of peasants of Nedoshtchotova to commemorate her
+soul; but her brother hid the will, they do say burnt it in the
+stove, and took all this land for himself. He thought, to
+be sure, it was for his benefit; but -- nay, wait a bit, you
+won't get on in the world through injustice, brother. The
+gentleman did not go to confession for twenty years after. He
+kept away from the church, to be sure, and died impenitent. He
+burst. He was a very fat man, so he burst lengthways. Then
+everything was taken from the young master, from Seryozha, to pay
+the debts -- everything there was. Well, he had not gone very far
+in his studies, he couldn't do anything, and the president
+of the Rural Board, his uncle -- 'I'll take him' -- Seryozha, I
+mean -- thinks he, 'for an agent; let him collect the insurance,
+that's not a difficult job,' and the gentleman was young and
+proud, he wanted to be living on a bigger scale and in better
+style and with more freedom. To be sure it was a come-down for
+him to be jolting about the district in a wretched cart and
+talking to the peasants; he would walk and keep looking on the
+ground, looking on the ground and saying nothing; if you
+called his name right in his ear, 'Sergey Sergeyitch!' he would
+look round like this, 'Eh?' and look down on the ground again,
+and now you see he has laid hands on himself. There's no sense in
+it, your honor, it's not right, and there's no making out what's
+the meaning of it, merciful Lord! Say your father was rich and
+you are poor; it is mortifying, there's no doubt about it, but
+there, you must make up your mind to it. I used to live in good
+style, too; I had two horses, your honor, three cows, I used to
+keep twenty head of sheep; but the time has come, and I am left
+with nothing but a wretched bag, and even that is not mine but
+Government property. And now in our Nedoshtchotova, if the truth
+is to be told, my house is the worst of the lot. Makey had four
+footmen, and now Makey is a footman himself. Petrak had four
+laborers, and now Petrak is a laborer himself."
+
+"How was it you became poor?" asked the examining magistrate.
+
+"My sons drink terribly. I could not tell you how they drink, you
+wouldn't believe it."
+
+Lyzhin listened and thought how he, Lyzhin, would go back sooner
+or later to Moscow, while this old man would stay here for ever,
+and would always be walking and walking. And how many times in
+his life he would come across such battered, unkempt old men,
+not "men of any worth," in whose souls fifteen kopecks, glasses
+of vodka, and a profound belief that you can't get on in this
+life by dishonesty, were equally firmly rooted.
+
+Then he grew tired of listening, and told the old man to bring
+him some hay for his bed, There was an iron bedstead with a
+pillow and a quilt in the traveler's room, and it could be
+fetched in ; but the dead man had been lying by it for nearly
+three days (and perhaps sitting on it just before his death),
+and it would be disagreeable to sleep upon it now. . . .
+
+"It's only half-past seven," thought Lyzhin, glancing at his
+watch. "How awful it is!"
+
+He was not sleepy, but having nothing to do to pass away the
+time, he lay down and covered himself with a rug. Loshadin went
+in and out several times, clearing away the tea-things; smacking
+his lips and sighing, he kept tramping round the table; at
+last he took his little lamp and went out, and, looking at his
+long, gray-headed, bent figure from behind, Lyzhin thought:
+
+"Just like a magician in an opera."
+
+It was dark. The moon must have been behind the clouds, as the
+windows and the snow on the window-frames could be seen
+distinctly.
+
+"Oo-oo-oo!" sang the storm, "Oo-oo-oo-oo!"
+
+"Ho-ho-ly sa-aints!" wailed a woman in the loft, or it sounded
+like it. "Ho-ho-ly sa-aints!"
+
+"B-booh!" something outside banged against the wall. "Trah!"
+
+The examining magistrate listened: there was no woman up there,
+it was the wind howling. It was rather cold, and he put his fur
+coat over his rug. As he got warm he thought how remote all this
+-- the storm, and the hut, and the old man, and the dead body
+lying in the next room -- how remote it all was from the life he
+desired for himself, and how alien it all was to him, how petty,
+how uninteresting. If this man had killed himself in Moscow or
+somewhere in the neighborhood, and he had had to hold an inquest
+on him there, it would have been interesting, important, and
+perhaps he might even have been afraid to sleep in the next room
+to the corpse. Here, nearly a thousand miles from Moscow, all
+this was seen somehow in a different light; it was not life,
+they were not human beings, but something only existing
+"according to the regulation," as Loshadin said; it would leave
+not the faintest trace in the memory, and would be forgotten as
+soon as he, Lyzhin, drove away from Syrnya. The fatherland, the
+real Russia, was Moscow, Petersburg; but here he was in the
+provinces, the colonies. When one dreamed of playing a leading
+part, of becoming a popular figure, of being, for instance,
+examining magistrate in particularly important cases or
+prosecutor in a circuit court, of being a society lion, one
+always thought of Moscow. To live, one must be in Moscow; here
+one cared for nothing, one grew easily resigned to one's
+insignificant position, and only expected one thing of life --
+to get away quickly, quickly. And Lyzhin mentally moved about the
+Moscow streets, went into the familiar houses, met his kindred,
+his comrades, and there was a sweet pang at his heart at the
+thought that he was only twenty-six, and that if in five or ten
+years he could break away from here and get to Moscow, even then
+it would not be too late and he would still have a whole life
+before him. And as he sank into unconsciousness, as his thoughts
+began to be confused, he imagined the long corridor of the court
+at Moscow, himself delivering a speech, his sisters, the
+orchestra which for some reason kept droning: "Oo-oo-oo-oo!
+Oo-oooo-oo!"
+
+"Booh! Trah!" sounded again. "Booh!"
+
+And he suddenly recalled how one day, when he was talking to the
+bookkeeper in the little office of the Rural Board, a thin, pale
+gentleman with black hair and dark eyes walked in; he had a
+disagreeable look in his eyes such as one sees in people who
+have slept too long after dinner, and it spoilt his delicate,
+intelligent profile; and the high boots he was wearing did not
+suit him, but looked clumsy. The bookkeeper had introduced him:
+"This is our insurance agent."
+
+"So that was Lesnitsky, . . . this same man," Lyzhin reflected
+now.
+
+He recalled Lesnitsky's soft voice, imagined his gait, and it
+seemed to him that someone was walking beside him now with a step
+like Lesnitsky's.
+
+All at once he felt frightened, his head turned cold.
+
+"Who's there?" he asked in alarm.
+
+"The conshtable!"
+
+"What do you want here?"
+
+"I have come to ask, your honor -- you said this evening that you
+did not want the elder, but I am afraid he may be angry. He told
+me to go to him. Shouldn't I go?"
+
+"That's enough, you bother me," said Lyzhin with vexation, and he
+covered himself up again.
+
+"He may be angry. . . . I'll go, your honor. I hope you will be
+comfortable," and Loshadin went out.
+
+In the passage there was coughing and subdued voices. The
+witnesses must have returned.
+
+"We'll let those poor beggars get away early to-morrow, . . ."
+thought the examining magistrate; "we'll begin the inquest as
+soon as it is daylight."
+
+He began sinking into forgetfulness when suddenly there were
+steps again, not timid this time but rapid and noisy. There was
+the slam of a door, voices, the scratching of a match. . . .
+
+"Are you asleep? Are you asleep?" Dr. Startchenko was asking him
+hurriedly and angrily as he struck one match after another; he
+was covered with snow, and brought a chill air in with him. "Are
+you asleep? Get up! Let us go to Von Taunitz's. He has sent his
+own horses for you. Come along. There, at any rate, you will have
+supper, and sleep like a human being. You see I have come for you
+myself. The horses are splendid, we shall get there in twenty
+minutes."
+
+"And what time is it now?"
+
+"A quarter past ten."
+
+Lyzhin, sleepy and discontented, put on his felt overboots, his
+furlined coat, his cap and hood, and went out with the doctor.
+There was not a very sharp frost, but a violent and piercing wind
+was blowing and driving along the street the clouds of snow
+which seemed to be racing away in terror: high drifts were heaped
+up already under the fences and at the doorways. The doctor and
+the examining magistrate got into the sledge, and the white
+coachman bent over them to button up the cover. They were both
+hot.
+
+"Ready!"
+
+They drove through the village. "Cutting a feathery furrow,"
+thought the examining magistrate, listlessly watching the action
+of the trace horse's legs. There were lights in all the huts, as
+though it were the eve of a great holiday: the peasants had not
+gone to bed because they were afraid of the dead body. The
+coachman preserved a sullen silence, probably he had felt dreary
+while he was waiting by the Zemstvo hut, and now he, too, was
+thinking of the dead man.
+
+"At the Von Taunitz's," said Startchenko, "they all set upon me
+when they heard that you were left to spend the night in the hut,
+and asked me why I did not bring you with me."
+
+As they drove out of the village, at the turning the coachman
+suddenly shouted at the top of his voice: "Out of the way!"
+
+They caught a glimpse of a man: he was standing up to his knees
+in the snow, moving off the road and staring at the horses. The
+examining magistrate saw a stick with a crook, and a beard and a
+bag, and he fancied that it was Loshadin, and even fancied that
+he was smiling. He flashed by and disappeared.
+
+The road ran at first along the edge of the forest, then along a
+broad forest clearing; they caught glimpses of old pines and a
+young birch copse, and tall, gnarled young oak trees standing
+singly in the clearings where the wood had lately been cut; but
+soon it was all merged in the clouds of snow. The coachman said
+he could see the forest; the examining magistrate could see
+nothing but the trace horse. The wind blew on their backs.
+
+All at once the horses stopped.
+
+"Well, what is it now?" asked Startchenko crossly.
+
+The coachman got down from the box without a word and began
+running round the sledge, treading on his heels; he made larger
+and larger circles, getting further and further away from the
+sledge, and it looked as though he were dancing; at last he came
+back and began to turn off to the right.
+
+"You've got off the road, eh?" asked Startchenko.
+
+"It's all ri-ight. . . ."
+
+Then there was a little village and not a single light in it.
+Again the forest and the fields. Again they lost the road, and
+again the coachman got down from the box and danced round the
+sledge. The sledge flew along a dark avenue, flew swiftly on.
+And the heated trace horse's hoofs knocked against the sledge .
+Here there was a fearful roaring sound from the trees, and
+nothing could be seen, as though they were flying on into space;
+and all at once the glaring light at the entrance and the
+windows flashed upon their eyes, and they heard the good-natured,
+drawn-out barking of dogs. They had arrived.
+
+While they were taking off their fur coats and their felt boots
+below, "Un Petit Verre de Clicquot" was being played upon the
+piano overhead, and they could hear the children beating time
+with their feet. Immediately on going in they were aware of the
+snug warmth and special smell of the old apartments of a mansion
+where, whatever the weather outside, life is so warm and clean
+and comfortable.
+
+"That's capital!" said Von Taunitz, a fat man with an incredibly
+thick neck and with whiskers, as he shook the examining
+magistrate's hand. "That's capital! You are very welcome,
+delighted to make your acquaintance. We are colleagues to some
+extent, you know. At one time I was deputy prosecutor; but not
+for long, only two years. I came here to look after the estate,
+and here I have grown old -- an old fogey, in fact. You are very
+welcome," he went on, evidently restraining his voice so as not
+to speak too loud; he was going upstairs with his guests. "I have
+no wife, she's dead. But here, I will introduce my daughters,"
+and turning round, he shouted down the stairs in a voice of
+thunder: "Tell Ignat to have the sledge ready at eight o'clock
+to-morrow morning."
+
+His four daughters, young and pretty girls, all wearing gray
+dresses and with their hair done up in the same style, and their
+cousin, also young and attractive, with her children, were in the
+drawingroom. Startchenko, who knew them already, began at once
+begging them to sing something, and two of the young ladies spent
+a long time declaring they could not sing and that they had no
+music; then the cousin sat down to the piano, and with trembling
+voices, they sang a duet from "The Queen of Spades." Again "Un
+Petit Verre de Clicquot" was played, and the children skipped
+about, beating time with their feet. And Startchenko pranced
+about too. Everybody laughed.
+
+Then the children said good-night and went off to bed. The
+examining magistrate laughed, danced a quadrille, flirted, and
+kept wondering whether it was not all a dream? The kitchen of the
+Zemstvo hut, the heap of hay in the corner, the rustle of the
+beetles, the revolting poverty-stricken surroundings, the voices
+of the witnesses, the wind, the snow storm, the danger of being
+lost; and then all at once this splendid, brightly lighted room,
+the sounds of the piano, the lovely girls, the curly-headed
+children, the gay, happy laughter -- such a transformation seemed
+to him like a fairy tale, and it seemed incredible that such
+transitions were possible at the distance of some two miles in
+the course of one hour. And dreary thoughts prevented him from
+enjoying himself, and he kept thinking this was not life here,
+but bits of life fragments, that everything here was accidental,
+that one could draw no conclusions from it; and he even felt
+sorry for these girls, who were living and would end their lives
+in the wilds, in a province far away from the center of culture,
+where nothing is accidental, but everything is in accordance with
+reason and law, and where, for instance, every suicide is
+intelligible, so that one can explain why it has happened and
+what is its significance in the general scheme of things. He
+imagined that if the life surrounding him here in the wilds were
+not intelligible to him, and if he did not see it, it meant that
+it did not exist at all.
+
+At supper the conversation turned on Lesnitsky
+
+"He left a wife and child," said Startchenko. "I would forbid
+neurasthenics and all people whose nervous system is out of order
+to marry, I would deprive them of the right and possibility of
+multiplying their kind. To bring into the world nervous, invalid
+children is a crime."
+
+"He was an unfortunate young man," said Von Taunitz, sighing
+gently and shaking his head. "What a lot one must suffer and
+think about before one brings oneself to take one's own life, . .
+. a young life! Such a misfortune may happen in any family, and
+that is awful. It is hard to bear such a thing, insufferable. . .
+."
+
+And all the girls listened in silence with grave faces, looking
+at their father. Lyzhin felt that he, too, must say something,
+but he couldn't think of anything, and merely said:
+
+"Yes, suicide is an undesirable phenomenon."
+
+He slept in a warm room, in a soft bed covered with a quilt under
+which there were fine clean sheets, but for some reason did not
+feel comfortable: perhaps because the doctor and Von Taunitz
+were, for a long time, talking in the adjoining room, and
+overhead he heard, through the ceiling and in the stove, the
+wind roaring just as in the Zemstvo hut, and as plaintively
+howling: "Oo-oo-oo-oo!"
+
+Von Taunitz's wife had died two years before, and he was still
+unable to resign himself to his loss and, whatever he was talking
+about, always mentioned his wife; and there was no trace of a
+prosecutor left about him now.
+
+"Is it possible that I may some day come to such a condition?"
+thought Lyzhin, as he fell asleep, still hearing through the wall
+his host's subdued, as it were bereaved, voice.
+
+The examining magistrate did not sleep soundly. He felt hot and
+uncomfortable, and it seemed to him in his sleep that he was not
+at Von Taunitz's, and not in a soft clean bed, but still in the
+hay at the Zemstvo hut, hearing the subdued voices of the
+witnesses; he fancied that Lesnitsky was close by, not fifteen
+paces away. In his dreams he remembered how the insurance agent,
+black-haired and pale, wearing dusty high boots, had come into
+the bookkeeper's office. "This is our insurance agent.
+ . . ."
+
+Then he dreamed that Lesnitsky and Loshadin the constable were
+walking through the open country in the snow, side by side,
+supporting each other; the snow was whirling about their heads,
+the wind was blowing on their backs, but they walked on,
+singing: We go on, and on, and on. . . ."
+
+The old man was like a magician in an opera, and both of them
+were singing as though they were on the stage:
+
+"We go on, and on, and on! . . . You are in the warmth, in the
+light and snugness, but we are walking in the frost and the
+storm, through the deep snow. . . . We know nothing of ease, we
+know nothing of joy. . . . We bear all the burden of this life,
+yours and ours. . . . Oo-oo-oo! We go on, and on, and on. . . ."
+
+Lyzhin woke and sat up in bed. What a confused, bad dream! And
+why did he dream of the constable and the agent together? What
+nonsense! And now while Lyzhin's heart was throbbing violently
+and he was sitting on his bed, holding his head in his hands, it
+seemed to him that there really was something in common between
+the lives of the insurance agent and the constable. Don't they
+really go side by side holding each other up? Some tie unseen,
+but significant and essential, existed between them, and even
+between them and Von Taunitz and between all men -- all men; in
+this life, even in the remotest desert, nothing is accidental,
+everything is full of one common idea, everything has one soul,
+one aim, and to understand it it is not enough to think, it is
+not enough to reason, one must have also, it seems, the gift of
+insight into life, a gift which is evidently not bestowed on all.
+And the unhappy man who had broken down, who had killed himself
+-- the "neurasthenic," as the doctor called him -- and the old
+peasant who spent every day of his life going from one man to
+another, were only accidental, were only fragments of life for
+one who thought of his own life as accidental, but were parts of
+one organism -- marvelous and rational -- for one who thought of
+his own life as part of that universal whole and understood it.
+So thought Lyzhin, and it was a thought that had long lain hidden
+in his soul, and only now it was unfolded broadly and clearly to
+his consciousness.
+
+He lay down and began to drop asleep; and again they were going
+along together, singing: "We go on, and on, and on. . . . We take
+from life what  is hardest and bitterest in it, and we leave you
+what is easy and joyful; and sitting at supper, you can coldly
+and sensibly discuss why we suffer and perish, and why we are not
+as sound and as satisfied as you."
+
+What they were singing had occurred to his mind before, but the
+thought was somewhere in the background behind his other
+thoughts, and flickered timidly like a faraway light in foggy
+weather. And he felt that this suicide and the peasant's
+sufferings lay upon his conscience, too; to resign himself to the
+fact that these people, submissive to their fate, should take up
+the burden of what was hardest and gloomiest in life -- how awful
+it was! To accept this, and to desire for himself a life full of
+light and movement among happy and contented people, and to be
+continually dreaming of such, means dreaming of fresh suicides of
+men crushed by toil and anxiety, or of men weak and outcast whom
+people only talk of sometimes at supper with annoyance or
+mockery, without going to their help. . . . And again:
+
+"We go on, and on, and on . . ." as though someone were beating
+with a hammer on his temples.
+
+He woke early in the morning with a headache, roused by a noise;
+in the next room Von Taunitz was saying loudly to the doctor:
+
+"It's impossible for you to go now. Look what's going on outside.
+Don't argue, you had better ask the coachman; he won't take you
+in such weather for a million."
+
+"But it's only two miles," said the doctor in an imploring voice.
+
+"Well, if it were only half a mile. If you can't, then you can't.
+Directly you drive out of the gates it is perfect hell, you would
+be off the road in a minute. Nothing will induce me to let you
+go, you can say what you like."
+
+"It's bound to be quieter towards evening," said the peasant who
+was heating the stove.
+
+And in the next room the doctor began talking of the rigorous
+climate and its influence on the character of the Russian, of the
+long winters which, by preventing movement from place to place,
+hinder the intellectual development of the people; and Lyzhin
+listened with vexation to these observations and looked out of
+window at the snow drifts which were piled on the fence. He gazed
+at the white dust which covered the whole visible expanse, at the
+trees which bowed their heads despairingly to right and then to
+left, listened to the howling and the banging, and thought
+gloomily:
+
+"Well, what moral can be drawn from it? It's a blizzard and that
+is all about it. . . ."
+
+At midday they had lunch, then wandered aimlessly about the
+house; they went to the windows.
+
+"And Lesnitsky is lying there," thought Lyzhin, watching the
+whirling snow, which raced furiously round and round upon the
+drifts. "Lesnitsky is lying there, the witnesses are waiting. . .
+."
+
+They talked of the weather, saying that the snowstorm usually
+lasted two days and nights, rarely longer. At six o'clock they
+had dinner, then they played cards, sang, danced; at last they
+had supper. The day was over, they went to bed.
+
+In the night, towards morning, it all subsided. When they got up
+and looked out of window, the bare willows with their weakly
+drooping branches were standing perfectly motionless; it was dull
+and still, as though nature now were ashamed of its orgy, of its
+mad nights, and the license it had given to its passions. The
+horses, harnessed tandem, had been waiting at the front door
+since five o'clock in the morning. When it was fully daylight the
+doctor and the examining magistrate put on their fur coats and
+felt boots, and, saying good-by to their host, went out.
+
+At the steps beside the coachman stood the familiar figure of the
+constable, Ilya Loshadin, with an old leather bag across his
+shoulder and no cap on his head, covered with snow all over, and
+his face was red and wet with perspiration. The footman who had
+come out to help the gentlemen and cover their legs looked at him
+sternly and said:
+
+"What are you standing here for, you old devil? Get away!"
+
+"Your honor, the people are anxious," said Loshadin, smiling
+naively all over his face, and evidently pleased at seeing
+at last the people he had waited for so long. "The people are
+very uneasy, the children are crying. . . . They thought, your
+honor, that you had gone back to the town again. Show us the
+heavenly mercy, our benefactors! . . ."
+
+The doctor and the examining magistrate said nothing, got into
+the sledge, and drove to Syrnya.
+
+THE FIRST-CLASS PASSENGER
+
+A FIRST-CLASS passenger who had just dined at the station and
+drunk a little too much lay down on the velvet-covered seat,
+stretched himself out luxuriously, and sank into a doze. After a
+nap of no more than five minutes, he looked with oily eyes at
+his _vis-a-vis,_ gave a smirk, and said:
+
+"My father of blessed memory used to like to have his heels
+tickled by peasant women after dinner. I am just like him, with
+this difference, that after dinner I always like my tongue and my
+brains gently stimulated. Sinful man as I am, I like empty
+talk on a full stomach. Will you allow me to have a chat with
+you?"
+
+"I shall be delighted," answered the _vis-a-vis._
+
+"After a good dinner the most trifling subject is sufficient to
+arouse devilishly great thoughts in my brain. For instance, we
+saw just now near the refreshment bar two young men, and you
+heard one congratulate the other on being celebrated. 'I
+congratulate you,' he said; 'you are already a celebrity and are
+beginning to win fame.' Evidently actors or journalists of
+microscopic dimensions. But they are not the point. The question
+that is occupying my mind at the moment, sir, is exactly what is
+to be understood by the word _fame_ or _charity_. What do you
+think? Pushkin called fame a bright patch on a ragged garment; we
+all understand it as Pushkin does -- that is, more or less
+subjectively -- but no one has yet given a clear, logical
+definition of the word. . . . I would give a good deal for such a
+definition!"
+
+"Why do you feel such a need for it?"
+
+"You see, if we knew what fame is, the means of attaining it
+might also perhaps be known to us," said the first-class
+passenger, after a moment's thought. I must tell you, sir, that
+when I was younger I strove after celebrity with every fiber of
+my being. To be popular was my craze, so to speak. For the sake of
+it I studied, worked, sat up at night, neglected my meals. And I
+fancy, as far as I can judge without partiality, I had all the
+natural gifts for attaining it. To begin with, I am an engineer
+by profession. In the course of my life I have built in Russia
+some two dozen magnificent bridges, I have laid aqueducts for
+three towns; I have worked in Russia, in England, in Belgium. . .
+. Secondly, I am the author of several special treatises in my
+own line. And thirdly, my dear sir, I have from a boy had a
+weakness for chemistry. Studying that science in my leisure
+hours, I discovered methods of obtaining certain organic acids,
+so that you will find my name in all the foreign manuals of
+chemistry. I have always been in the service, I have risen to the
+grade of actual civil councilor, and I have an unblemished
+record. I will not fatigue your attention by enumerating my works
+and my merits, I will only say that I have done far more than some
+celebrities. And yet here I am in my old age, I am getting ready
+for my coffin, so to say, and I am as celebrated as that black dog
+yonder running on the embankment."
+
+"How can you tell? Perhaps you are celebrated."
+
+"H'm! Well, we will test it at once. Tell me, have you ever heard
+the name Krikunov?"
+
+The _vis-a-vis_ raised his eyes to the ceiling, thought a minute,
+and laughed.
+
+"No, I haven't heard it, . . ." he said.
+
+"That is my surname. You, a man of education, getting on in
+years, have never heard of me -- a convincing proof! It is
+evident that in my efforts to gain fame I have not done the right
+thing at all: I did not know the right way to set to work, and,
+trying to catch fame by the tail, got on the wrong side of her."
+
+"What is the right way to set to work?"
+
+"Well, the devil only knows! Talent, you say? Genius?
+Originality? Not a bit of it, sir!. . . People have lived and
+made a career side by side with me who were worthless, trivial,
+and even contemptible compared with me. They did not do one-tenth
+of the work I did, did not put themselves out, were not
+distinguished for their talents, and did not make an effort to be
+celebrated, but just look at them! Their names are continually in
+the newspapers and on men's lips! If you are not tired of
+listening I will illustrate it by an example. Some years ago I
+built a bridge in the town of K. I must tell you that the
+dullness of that scurvy little town was terrible. If it had not
+been for women and cards I believe I should have gone out of my
+mind. Well, it's an old story: I was so bored that I got into an
+affair with a singer. Everyone was enthusiastic about her, the
+devil only knows why; to my thinking she was -- what shall I say?
+-- an ordinary, commonplace creature, like lots of others. The
+hussy was empty-headed, ill-tempered, greedy, and what's more,
+she was a fool.
+
+"She ate and drank a vast amount, slept till five o clock in the
+afternoon -- and I fancy did nothing else. She was looked upon as
+a cocotte, and that was indeed her profession; but when people
+wanted to refer to her in a literary fashion, they called her an
+actress and a singer. I used to be devoted to the theatre, and
+therefore this fraudulent pretense of being an actress made me
+furiously indignant. My young lady had not the slightest right to
+call herself an actress or a singer. She was a creature entirely
+devoid of talent, devoid of feeling -- a pitiful creature one may
+say. As far as I can judge she sang disgustingly. The whole charm
+of her 'art' lay in her kicking up her legs on every suitable
+occasion, and not being embarrassed when people walked into her
+dressing-room. She usually selected translated vaudevilles, with
+singing in them, and opportunities for disporting herself in male
+attire, in tights. In fact it was -- ough! Well, I ask your
+attention. As I remember now, a public ceremony took place to
+celebrate the opening of the newly constructed bridge. There was
+a religious service, there were speeches, telegrams, and so on. I
+hung about my cherished creation, you know, all the while afraid
+that my heart would burst with the excitement of an author. Its
+an old story and there's no need for false modesty, and so I will
+tell you that my bridge was a magnificent work! It was not a
+bridge but a picture, a perfect delight! And who would not have
+been excited when the whole town came to the opening? 'Oh,' I
+thought, 'now the eyes of all the public will be on me! Where
+shall I hide myself?' Well, I need not have worried myself, sir
+-- alas! Except the official personages, no one took the
+slightest notice of me. They stood in a crowd on the river-bank,
+gazed like sheep at the bridge, and did not concern themselves to
+know who had built it. And it was from that time, by the way,
+that I began to hate our estimable public -- damnation take
+them! Well, to continue. All at once the public became agitated;
+a whisper ran through the crowd, . . . a smile came on their
+faces, their shoulders began to move. 'They must have seen me,' I
+thought. A likely idea! I looked, and my singer, with a train of
+young scamps, was making her way through the crowd. The eyes of
+the crowd were hurriedly following this procession. A whisper
+began in a thousand voices: 'That's so-and-so. . . . Charming!
+Bewitching!' Then it was they noticed me. . . . A couple of
+young milksops, local amateurs of the scenic art, I presume,
+looked at me, exchanged glances, and whispered: 'That's her
+lover!' How do you like that? And an unprepossessing individual
+in a top-hat, with a chin that badly needed shaving, hung round
+me, shifting from one foot to the other, then turned to me with
+the words:
+
+"'Do you know who that lady is, walking on the other bank? That's
+so-and-so. . . . Her voice is beneath all criticism, but she has
+a most perfect mastery of it! . . .'
+
+" 'Can you tell me,' I asked the unprepossessing individual, 'who
+built this bridge?'
+
+" 'I really don't know,' answered the individual; some engineer,
+I expect.'
+
+" 'And who built the cathedral in your town?' I asked again.
+
+" 'I really can't tell you.'
+
+"Then I asked him who was considered the best teacher in K., who
+the best architect, and to all my questions the unprepossessing
+individual answered that he did not know.
+
+" 'And tell me, please,' I asked in conclusion, with whom is that
+singer living?'
+
+" 'With some engineer called Krikunov.'
+
+"Well, how do you like that, sir? But to proceed. There are no
+minnesingers or bards nowadays, and celebrity is created almost
+exclusively by the newspapers. The day after the dedication of
+the bridge, I greedily snatched up the local _Messenger,_ and
+looked for myself in it. I spent a long time running my eyes over
+all the four pages, and at last there it was -- hurrah! I began
+reading: 'Yesterday in beautiful weather, before a vast concourse
+of people, in the presence of His Excellency the Governor of the
+province, so-and-so, and other dignitaries, the ceremony of the
+dedication of the newly constructed bridge took place,' and so
+on. . . . Towards the end: Our talented actress so-and-so, the
+favorite of the K. public, was present at the dedication looking
+very beautiful. I need not say that her arrival created a
+sensation. The star was wearing . . .' and so on. They might have
+given me one word! Half a word. Petty as it seems, I actually
+cried with vexation!
+
+"I consoled myself with the reflection that the provinces are
+stupid, and one could expect nothing of them and for celebrity
+one must go to the intellectual centers -- to Petersburg and to
+Moscow. And as it happened, at that very time there was a work
+of mine in Petersburg which I had sent in for a competition. The
+date on which the result was to be declared was at hand.
+
+"I took leave of K. and went to Petersburg. It is a long journey
+from K. to Petersburg, and that I might not be bored on the
+journey I took a reserved compartment and -- well -- of course, I
+took my singer. We set off, and all the way we were eating,
+drinking champagne, and -- tra-la--la! But behold, at last we
+reach the intellectual center. I arrived on the very day the
+result was declared, and had the satisfaction, my dear sir, of
+celebrating my own success: my work received the first prize.
+Hurrah! Next day I went out along the Nevsky and spent seventy
+kopecks on various newspapers. I hastened to my hotel room, lay
+down on the sofa, and, controlling a quiver of excitement, made
+haste to read. I ran through one newspaper -- nothing. I ran
+through a second -- nothing either; my God! At last, in the
+fourth, I lighted upon the following paragraph: 'Yesterday the
+well-known provincial actress so-and-so arrived by express in
+Petersburg. We note with pleasure that the climate of the South
+has had a beneficial effect on our fair friend; her charming
+stage appearance. . .' and I don't remember the rest! Much lower
+down than that paragraph I found, printed in the smallest type:
+first prize in the competition was adjudged to an engineer
+called so-and-so.' That was all! And to make things better, they
+even misspelt my name: instead of Krikunov it was Kirkutlov. So
+much for your intellectual center! But that was not all. . . . By
+the time I left Petersburg, a month later, all the newspapers
+were vying with one another in discussing our incomparable,
+divine, highly talented actress, and my mistress was referred to,
+not by her surname, but by her Christian name and her father's. .
+. .
+
+"Some years later I was in Moscow. I was summoned there by a
+letter, in the mayor's own handwriting, to undertake a work for
+which Moscow, in its newspapers, had been clamoring for over a
+hundred years. In the intervals of my work I delivered five
+public lectures, with a philanthropic object, in one of the
+museums there. One would have thought that was enough to make one
+known to the whole town for three days at least, wouldn't one?
+But, alas! not a single Moscow gazette said a word about me
+There was something about houses on fire, about an operetta,
+sleeping town councilors, dr unken shop keepers -- about
+everything; but about my work, my plans, my lectures -- mum. And
+a nice set they are in Moscow! I got into a tram. . . . It was
+packed full; there were ladies and military men and students of
+both sexes, creatures of all sorts in couples.
+
+"'I am told the town council has sent for an engineer to plan
+such and such a work!' I said to my neighbor, so loudly that all
+the tram could hear. 'Do you know the name of the engineer?'
+
+"My neighbor shook his head. The rest of the public took a
+cursory glance at me, and in all their eyes I read: 'I don't
+know.'
+
+"'I am told that there is someone giving lectures in such and
+such a museum?' I persisted, trying to get up a conversation. 'I
+hear it is interesting.'
+
+"No one even nodded. Evidently they had not all of them heard of
+the lectures, and the ladies were not even aware of the existence
+of the museum. All that would not have mattered, but imagine, my
+dear sir, the people suddenly leaped to their feet and struggled
+to the windows. What was it? What was the matter?
+
+"'Look, look!' my neighbor nudged me. 'Do you see that dark man
+getting into that cab? That's the famous runner, King!'
+
+"And the whole tram began talking breathlessly of the runner who
+was then absorbing the brains of Moscow.
+
+"I could give you ever so many other examples, but I think that
+is enough. Now let us assume that I am mistaken about myself,
+that I am a wretchedly boastful and incompetent person; but apart
+from myself I might point to many of my contemporaries, men
+remarkable for their talent and industry, who have nevertheless
+died unrecognized. Are Russian navigators, chemists, physicists,
+mechanicians, and agriculturists popular with the public? Do our
+cultivated masses know anything of Russian artists,
+sculptors, and literary men? Some old literary hack,
+hard-working and talented, will wear away the doorstep of the
+publishers' offices for thirty-three years, cover reams of paper,
+be had up for libel twenty times, and yet not step beyond his
+ant-heap. Can you mention to me a single representative of our
+literature who would have become celebrated if the rumor had not
+been spread over the earth that he had been killed in a duel,
+gone out of his mind, been sent into exile, or had cheated at
+cards?"
+
+The first-class passenger was so excited that he dropped his
+cigar out of his mouth and got up.
+
+"Yes," he went on fiercely, "and side by side with these people I
+can quote you hundreds of all sorts of singers, acrobats,
+buffoons, whose names are known to every baby. Yes!"
+
+The door creaked, there was a draught, and an individual of
+forbidding aspect, wearing an Inverness coat, a top-hat, and blue
+spectacles, walked into the carriage. The individual looked round
+at the seats, frowned, and went on further.
+
+"Do you know who that is?" there came a timid whisper from the
+furthest corner of the compartment.
+
+That is N. N., the famous Tula cardsharper who was had up in
+connection with the Y. bank affair."
+
+"There you are!" laughed the first-class passenger. He knows a
+Tula cardsharper, but ask him whether he knows Semiradsky,
+Tchaykovsky, or Solovyov the philosopher -- he'll shake his head.
+. . . It swinish!"
+
+Three minutes passed in silence.
+
+"Allow me in my turn to ask you a question," said the _vis-a-vis_
+timidly, clearing his throat. Do you know the name of Pushkov?"
+
+"Pushkov? H'm! Pushkov. . . . No, I don't know it!"
+
+"That is my name,. . ." said the _vis-a-vis,_, overcome with
+embarrassment. "Then you don't know it? And yet I have been a
+professor at one of the Russian universities for thirty-five
+years, . . . a member of the Academy of Sciences, . . . have
+published more than one work. . . ."
+
+The first-class passenger and the _vis-a-vis_ looked at each
+other and burst out laughing.
+
+A TRAGIC ACTOR
+
+IT was the benefit night of Fenogenov, the tragic actor. They
+were acting "Prince Serebryany." The tragedian himself was
+playing Vyazemsky; Limonadov, the stage manager, was playing
+Morozov; Madame Beobahtov, Elena. The performance was a grand
+success. The tragedian accomplished wonders indeed. When he was
+carrying off Elena, he held her in one hand above his head as he
+dashed across the stage. He shouted, hissed, banged with his
+feet, tore his coat across his chest. When he refused to fight
+Morozov, he trembled all over as nobody ever trembles in reality,
+and gasped loudly. The theatre shook with applause. There were
+endless calls. Fenogenov was presented with a silver
+cigarette-case and a bouquet tied with long ribbons. The ladies
+waved their handkerchiefs and urged their men to applaud, many
+shed tears. . . . But the one who was the most enthusiastic and
+most excited was Masha, daughter of Sidoretsky the police
+captain. She was sitting in the first row of the stalls beside
+her papa; she was ecstatic and could not take her eyes off the
+stage even between the acts. Her delicate little hands and feet
+were quivering, her eyes were full of tears, her cheeks turned
+paler and paler. And no wonder -- she was at the theatre for the
+first time in her life.
+
+"How well they act! how splendidly!" she said to her papa the
+police captain, every time the curtain fell. How good Fenogenov
+is!"
+
+And if her papa had been capable of reading faces he would have
+read on his daughter's pale little countenance a rapture that was
+almost anguish. She was overcome by the acting, by the play, by
+the surroundings. When the regimental band began playing between
+the acts, she closed her eyes, exhausted.
+
+"Papa!" she said to the police captain during the last interval,
+"go behind the scenes and ask them all to dinner to-morrow!"
+
+The police captain went behind the scenes, praised them for all
+their fine acting, and complimented Madame Beobahtov.
+
+"Your lovely face demands a canvas, and I only wish I could wield
+the brush!"
+
+And with a scrape, he thereupon invited the company to dinner.
+
+"All except the fair sex," he whispered. "I don't want the
+actresses, for I have a daughter."
+
+Next day the actors dined at the police captain's. Only three
+turned up, the manager Limonadov, the tragedian Fenogenov, and
+the comic man Vodolazov; the others sent excuses. The dinner was
+a dull affair. Limonadov kept telling the police captain how
+much he respected him, and how highly he thought of all persons
+in authority; Vodolazov mimicked drunken merchants and Armenians;
+and Fenogenov (on his passport his name was Knish), a tall, stout
+Little Russian with black eyes and frowning brow,
+declaimed "At the portals of the great," and "To be or not to
+be." Limonadov, with tears in his eyes, described his interview
+with the former Governor, General Kanyutchin. The police captain
+listened, was bored, and smiled affably. He was well satisfied,
+although Limonadov smelt strongly of burnt feathers, and
+Fenogenov was wearing a hired dress coat and boots trodden down
+at heel. They pleased his daughter and made her lively, and that
+was enough for him. And Masha never took her eyes off the
+actors. She had never before seen such clever, exceptional
+people!
+
+In the evening the police captain and Masha were at the theatre
+again. A week later the actors dined at the police captain's
+again, and after that came almost every day either to dinner or
+supper. Masha became more and more devoted to the theatre, and
+went there every evening.
+
+She fell in love with the tragedian. One fine morning, when the
+police captain had gone to meet the bishop, Masha ran away with
+Limonadov's company and married her hero on the way. After
+celebrating the wedding, the actors composed a long and touching
+letter and sent it to the police captain.
+
+It was the work of their combined efforts.
+
+"Bring out the motive, the motive!" Limonadov kept saying as he
+dictated to the comic man. "Lay on the respect. . . . These
+official chaps like it. Add something of a sort . . . to draw a
+tear."
+
+The answer to this letter was most discomforting. The police
+captain disowned his daughter for marrying, as he said, "a
+stupid, idle Little Russian with no fixed home or occupation."
+
+And the day after this answer was received M asha was writing to
+her father.
+
+"Papa, he beats me! Forgive us!"
+
+He had beaten her, beaten her behind the scenes, in the presence
+of Limonadov, the washerwoman, and two lighting men. He
+remembered how, four days before the wedding, he was sitting in
+the London Tavern with the whole company, and all were talking
+about Masha. The company were advising him to "chance it," and
+Limonadov, with tears in his eyes urged: "It would be stupid and
+irrational to let slip such an opportunity! Why, for a sum like
+that one would go to Siberia, let alone getting married! When
+you marry and have a theatre of your own, take me into your
+company. I shan't be master then, you'll be master."
+
+Fenogenov remembered it, and muttered with clenched fists:
+
+"If he doesn't send money I'll smash her! I won't let myself be
+made a fool of, damn my soul!"
+
+At one provincial town the company tried to give Masha the slip,
+but Masha found out, ran to the station, and got there when the
+second bell had rung and the actors had all taken their seats.
+
+"I've been shamefully treated by your father," said the
+tragedian; "all is over between us!"
+
+And though the carriage was full of people, she went down on her
+knees and held out her hands, imploring him:
+
+"I love you! Don't drive me away, Kondraty Ivanovitch," she
+besought him. "I can't live without you!"
+
+They listened to her entreaties, and after consulting together,
+took her into the company as a "countess" -- the name they used
+for the minor actresses who usually came on to the stage in
+crowds or in dumb parts. To begin with Masha used to play
+maid-servants and pages, but when Madame Beobahtov, the flower of
+Limonadov's company, eloped, they made her _ingenue_. She acted
+badly, lisped, and was nervous. She soon grew used to it,
+however, and began to be liked by the audience. Fenogenov was
+much displeased.
+
+"To call her an actress!" he used to say. "She has no figure, no
+deportment, nothing whatever but silliness."
+
+In one provincial town the company acted Schiller's " Robbers."
+Fenogenov played Franz, Masha, Amalie. The tragedian shouted and
+quivered. Masha repeated her part like a well-learnt lesson, and
+the play would have gone off as they generally did had
+it not been for a trifling mishap. Everything went well up to
+the point where Franz declares his love for Amalie and she seizes
+his sword. The tragedian shouted, hissed, quivered, and squeezed
+Masha in his iron embrace. And Masha, instead of repulsing him
+and crying "Hence! " trembled in his arms like a bird and did not
+move, . . .she seemed petrified.
+
+"Have pity on me!" she whispered in his ear. "Oh, have pity on
+me! I am so miserable!"
+
+"You don't know your part! Listen to the prompter!" hissed the
+tragedian, and he thrust his sword into her hand.
+
+After the performance, Limonadov and Fenogenov were sitting in
+the ticket box-office engaged in conversation.
+
+"Your wife does not learn her part, you are right there," the
+manager was saying. "She doesn't know her line. . . . Every man
+has his own line, . . . but she doesn't know hers. . . ."
+
+Fenogenov listened, sighed, and scowled and scowled.
+
+Next morning, Masha was sitting in a little general shop writing:
+
+"Papa, he beats me! Forgive us! Send us some money!"
+
+A TRANSGRESSION
+
+A COLLEGIATE assessor called Miguev stopped at a telegraph-post
+in the course of his evening walk and heaved a deep sigh. A week
+before, as he was returning home from his evening walk, he had
+been overtaken at that very spot by his former housemaid, Agnia,
+who said to him viciously:
+
+"Wait a bit! I'll cook you such a crab that'll teach you to ruin
+innocent girls! I'll leave the baby at your door, and I'll have
+the law of you, and I'll tell your wife, too. . . ."
+
+And she demanded that he should put five thousand roubles into
+the bank in her name. Miguev remembered it, heaved a sigh, and
+once more reproached himself with heartfelt repentance for the
+momentary infatuation which had caused him so much worry and
+misery.
+
+When he reached his bungalow, he sat down to rest on the
+doorstep. It was just ten o'clock, and a bit of the moon peeped
+out from behind the clouds. There was not a soul in the street
+nor near the bungalows; elderly summer visitors were already
+going to bed, while young ones were walking in the wood. Feeling
+in both his pockets for a match to light his cigarette, Miguev
+brought his elbow into contact with something soft. He looked
+idly at his right elbow, and his face was instantly contorted by
+a look of as much horror as though he had seen a snake beside
+him. On the step at the very door lay a bundle. Something oblong
+in shape was wrapped up in something -- judging by the feel of
+it, a wadded quilt. One end of the bundle was a little open, and
+the collegiate assessor, putting in his hand, felt something damp
+and warm. He leaped on to his feet in horror, and looked about
+him like a criminal trying to escape from his warders. . . .
+
+"She has left it!" he muttered wrathfully through his teeth,
+clenching his fists. "Here it lies. . . . Here lies my
+transgression! O Lord!"
+
+He was numb with terror, anger, and shame. . . What was he to do
+now? What would his wife say if she found out? What would his
+colleagues at the office say? His Excellency would be sure to dig
+him in the ribs, guffaw, and say: "I congratulate you! . . .
+He-he-he! Though your beard is gray, your heart is gay. . . . You
+are a rogue, Semyon Erastovitch!" The whole colony of summer
+visitors would know his secret now, and probably the respectable
+mothers of families would shut their doors to him.
+Such incidents always get into the papers, and the humble name
+of Miguev would be published all over Russia. . . .
+
+The middle window of the bungalow was open and he could
+distinctly hear his wife, Anna Filippovna, laying the table for
+supper; in the yard close to the gate Yermolay, the porter, was
+plaintively strumming on the balalaika. The baby had only to wake
+up and begin to cry, and the secret would be discovered. Miguev
+was conscious of an overwhelming desire to make haste.
+
+"Haste, haste! . . ." he muttered, "this minute, before anyone
+sees. I'll carry it away and lay it on somebody's doorstep. . .
+."
+
+Miguev took the bundle in one hand and quietly, with a deliberate
+step to avoid awakening suspicion, went down the street. . . .
+
+"A wonderfully nasty position!" he reflected, trying to assume an
+air of unconcern. "A collegiate assessor walking down the street
+with a baby! Good heavens! if anyone sees me and understands the
+position, I am done for. . . . I'd better put it on this
+doorstep. . . . No, stay, the windows are open and perhaps
+someone is looking. Where shall I put it? I know! I'll take it to
+the merchant Myelkin's.. .. Merchants are rich people and
+tenderhearted; very likely they will say thank you and adopt
+it."
+
+And Miguev made up his mind to take the baby to Myelkin's,
+although the merchant's villa was in the furthest street, close
+to the river.
+
+"If only it does not begin screaming or wriggle out of the
+bundle," thought the collegiate assessor. "This is indeed a
+pleasant surprise! Here I am carrying a human being under my arm
+as though it were a portfolio. A human being, alive, with soul,
+with feelings like anyone else. . . . If by good luck the
+Myelkins adopt him, he may turn out somebody. . . . Maybe he will
+become a professor, a great general, an author. . . . Anything
+may happen! Now I am carrying him under my arm like a bundle of
+rubbish, and perhaps in thirty or forty years I may not dare to
+sit down in his presence. . . .
+
+As Miguev was walking along a narrow, deserted alley, beside a
+long row of fences, in the thick black shade of the lime trees,
+it suddenly struck him that he was doing something very cruel and
+criminal.
+
+"How mean it is really!" he thought. "So mean that one can't
+imagine anything meaner. . . . Why are we shifting this poor baby
+from door to door? It's not its fault that it's been born. It's
+done us no harm. We are scoundrels. . . . We take our pleasure,
+and the innocent babies have to pay the penalty. Only to think of
+all this wretched business!
+I've done wrong and the child has a cruel fate before it. If I
+lay it at the Myelkins' door, they'll send it to the foundling
+hospital, and there it will grow up among strangers, in
+mechanical routine, . . . no love, no petting, no spoiling. . . .
+And then he'll be apprenticed to a shoemaker, . . . he'll take to
+drink, will learn to use filthy language, will go hungry. A
+shoemaker! and he the son of a collegiate assessor, of good
+family. . . . He is my flesh and blood, . . . "
+
+Miguev came out of the shade of the lime trees into the bright
+moonlight of the open road, and opening the bundle, he looked at
+the baby.
+
+"Asleep!" he murmured. "You little rascal! why, you've an
+aquiline nose like your father's. . . . He sleeps and doesn't
+feel that it's his own father looking at him! . . . It's a drama,
+my boy. . . Well, well, you must forgive me. Forgive me, old
+boy. . . . It seems it's your fate. . . ."
+
+The collegiate assessor blinked and felt a spasm running down his
+cheeks. . . . He wrapped up the baby, put him under his arm, and
+strode on. All the way to the Myelkins' villa social questions
+were swarming in his brain and conscience was gnawing in his
+bosom.
+
+"If I were a decent, honest man, he thought, "I should damn
+everything, go with this baby to Anna Filippovna, fall on my
+knees before her, and say: 'Forgive me! I have sinned! Torture
+me, but we won't ruin an innocent child. We have no children; let
+us adopt him!" She's a good sort, she'd consent. . . . And then
+my child would be with me. . . . Ech!"
+
+He reached the Myelkins' villa and stood still hesitating. He
+imagined himself in the parlor at home, sitting reading the paper
+while a little boy with an aquiline nose played with the tassels
+of his dressing gown. At the same time visions forced themselves
+on his brain of his winking colleagues, and of his Excellency
+digging him in the ribs and guffawing. . . . Besides the pricking
+of his conscience, there was something warm, sad, and tender in
+his heart. . . .
+
+Cautiously the collegiate assessor laid the baby on the verandah
+step and waved his hand. Again he felt a spasm run over his face.
+. . .
+
+"Forgive me, old fellow! I am a scoundrel, he muttered. "Don't
+remember evil against me."
+
+He stepped back, but immediately cleared his throat resolutely
+and said:
+
+"Oh, come what will! Damn it all! I'll take him, and let people
+say what they like!"
+
+Miguev took the baby and strode rapidly back.
+
+"Let them say what they like," he thought. "I'll go at once, fall
+on my knees, and say: 'Anna Filippovna!' Anna is a good sort,
+she'll understand. . . . And we'll bring him up. . . . If it's a
+boy we'll call him Vladimir, and if it's a girl we'll call her
+Anna! Anyway, it will be a comfort in our old age."
+
+And he did as he determined. Weeping and almost faint with shame
+and terror, full of hope and vague rapture, he went into his
+bungalow, went up to his wife, and fell on his knees before her.
+
+"Anna Filippovna!" he said with a sob, and he laid the baby on
+the floor. "Hear me before you punish. . . . I have sinned! This
+is my child. . . . You remember Agnia? Well, it was the devil
+drove me to it. . . ."
+
+And, almost unconscious with shame and terror, he jumped up
+without waiting for an answer, and ran out into the open air as
+though he had received a thrashing. . . .
+
+"I'll stay here outside till she calls me," he thought. "I'll
+give her time to recover, and to think it over. . . ."
+
+The porter Yermolay passed him with his balalaika, glanced at him
+and shrugged his shoulders. A minute later he passed him again,
+and again he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Here's a go! Did you ever!" he muttered grinning. "Aksinya, the
+washer-woman, was here just now, Semyon Erastovitch. The silly
+woman put her baby down on the steps here, and while she was
+indoors with me, someone took and carried off the baby. . .
+Who'd have thought it!"
+
+"What? What are you saying?" shouted Miguev at the top of his
+voice.
+
+Yermolay, interpreting his master's wrath in his own fashion,
+scratched his head and heaved a sigh.
+
+"I am sorry, Semyon Erastovitch," he said, "but it's the summer
+holidays, . . . one can't get on without . . . without a woman, I
+mean. . . ."
+
+And glancing at his master's eyes glaring at him with anger and
+astonishment, he cleared his throat guiltily and went on:
+
+"It's a sin, of course, but there -- what is one to do?. . .
+You've forbidden us to have strangers in the house, I know, but
+we've none of our own now. When Agnia was here I had no women to
+see me, for I had one at home; but now, you can see for
+yourself, sir, . . . one can't help having strangers. In Agnia's
+time, of course, there was nothing irregular, because. . ."
+
+"Be off, you scoundrel!" Miguev shouted at him, stamping, and he
+went back into the room.
+
+Anna Filippovna, amazed and wrathful, was sitting as before, her
+tear-stained eyes fixed on the baby. . . .
+
+"There! there!" Miguev muttered with a pale face, twisting his
+lips into a smile. "It was a joke. . . . It's not my baby, . . .
+it's the washer-woman's! . . . I . . . I was joking. . . . Take
+it to the porter."
+
+SMALL FRY
+
+"HONORED Sir, Father and Benefactor!" a petty clerk called
+Nevyrazimov was writing a rough copy of an Easter congratulatory
+letter. "I trust that you may spend this Holy Day even as many
+more to come, in good health and prosperity. And to your family
+also I . . ."
+
+The lamp, in which the kerosene was getting low, was smoking and
+smelling. A stray cockroach was running about the table in alarm
+near Nevyrazimov's writing hand. Two rooms away from the office
+Paramon the porter was for the third time cleaning his
+best boots, and with such energy that the sound of the
+blacking-brush and of his expectorations was audible in all the
+rooms.
+
+"What else can I write to him, the rascal?" Nevyrazimov wondered,
+raising his eyes to the smutty ceiling.
+
+On the ceiling he saw a dark circle -- the shadow of the
+lamp-shade. Below it was the dusty cornice, and lower still the
+wall, which had once been painted a bluish muddy color. And the
+office seemed to him such a place of desolation that he felt
+sorry, not only for himself, but even for the cockroach.
+
+"When I am off duty I shall go away, but he'll be on duty here
+all his cockroach-life," he thought, stretching. "I am bored!
+Shall I clean my boots?"
+
+And stretching once more, Nevyrazimov slouched lazily to the
+porter's room. Paramon had finished cleaning his boots. Crossing
+himself with one hand and holding the brush in the other, he was
+standing at the open window-pane, listening.
+
+"They're ringing," he whispered to Nevyrazimov, looking at him
+with eyes intent and wide open. "Already!"
+
+Nevyrazimov put his ear to the open pane and listened. The Easter
+chimes floated into the room with a whiff of fresh spring air.
+The booming of the bells mingled with the rumble of carriages,
+and above the chaos of sounds rose the brisk tenor tones
+of the nearest church and a loud shrill laugh.
+
+"What a lot of people!" sighed Nevyrazimov, looking down into the
+street, where shadows of men flitted one after another by the
+illumination lamps. "They're all hurrying to the midnight
+service. . . . Our fellows have had a drink by now, you may be
+sure, and are strolling about the town. What a lot of laughter,
+what a lot of talk! I'm the only unlucky one, to have to sit here
+on such a day: And I have to do it every year!"
+
+"Well, nobody forces you to take the job. It's not your turn to
+be on duty today, but Zastupov hired you to take his place. When
+other folks are enjoying themselves you hire yourself out. It's
+greediness!"
+
+"Devil a bit of it! Not much to be greedy over -- two roubles is
+all he gives me; a necktie as an extra. . . . It's poverty, not
+greediness. And it would be jolly, now, you know, to be going
+with a party to the service, and then to break the fast. . . .
+To drink and to have a bit of supper and tumble off to sleep. . .
+. One sits down to the table, there's an Easter cake and the
+samovar hissing, and some charming little thing beside you. . . .
+You drink a glass and chuck her under the chin, and it's first-
+rate. . . . You feel you're somebody. . . . Ech h-h! . . . I've
+made a mess of things! Look at that hussy driving by in her
+carriage, while I have to sit here and brood."
+
+"We each have our lot in life, Ivan Danilitch. Please God, you'll
+be promoted and drive about in your carriage one day."
+
+"I? No, brother, not likely. I shan't get beyond a 'titular,' not
+if I try till I burst. I'm not an educated man."
+
+"Our General has no education either, but . . ."
+
+"Well, but the General stole a hundred thousand before he got his
+position. And he's got very different manners and deportment from
+me, brother. With my manners and deportment one can't get far!
+And such a scoundrelly surname, Nevyrazimov! It's a hopeless
+position, in fact. One may go on as one is, or one may hang
+oneself . . ."
+
+He moved away from the window and walked wearily about the rooms.
+The din of the bells grew louder and louder. . . . There was no
+need to stand by the window to hear it. And the better he could
+hear the bells and the louder the roar of the carriages, the
+darker seemed the muddy walls and the smutty cornice and the more
+the lamp smoked.
+
+"Shall I hook it and leave the office?" thought Nevyrazimov.
+
+But such a flight promised nothing worth having. . . . After
+coming out of the office and wandering about the town,
+Nevyrazimov would have gone home to his lodging, and in his
+lodging it was even grayer and more depressing than in the
+office. . . .
+Even supposing he were to spend that day pleasantly and with
+comfort, what had he beyond? Nothing but the same gray walls, the
+same stop-gap duty and complimentary letters. . . .
+
+Nevyrazimov stood still in the middle of the office and sank into
+thought. The yearning for a new, better life gnawed at his heart
+with an intolerable ache. He had a passionate longing to find
+himself suddenly in the street, to mingle with the living crowd,
+to take part in the solemn festivity for the sake of which all
+those bells were clashing and those carriages were rumbling. He
+longed for what he had known in childhood -- the family circle,
+the festive faces of his own people, the white cloth, light,
+warmth . . . ! He thought of the carriage in which the lady had
+just driven by, the overcoat in which the head clerk was so
+smart, the gold chain that adorned the secretary's chest. . . .
+He thought of a warm bed, of the Stanislav order, of new boots,
+of a uniform without holes in the elbows. . . . He thought of all
+those things because he had none of them.
+
+"Shall I steal?" he thought. "Even if stealing is an easy
+matter, hiding is what's difficult. Men run away to America, they
+say, with what they've stolen, but the devil knows where that
+blessed America is. One must have education even to steal, it
+seems."
+
+The bells died down. He heard only a distant noise of carriages
+and Paramon's cough, while his depression and anger grew more and
+more intense and unbearable. The clock in the office struck
+half-past twelve.
+
+"Shall I write a secret report? Proshkin did, and he rose
+rapidly."
+
+Nevyrazimov sat down at his table and pondered. The lamp in which
+the kerosene had quite run dry was smoking violently and
+threatening to go out. The stray cockroach was still running
+about the table and had found no resting-place.
+
+"One can always send in a secret report, but how is one to make
+it up? I should want to make all sorts of innuendoes and
+insinuations, like Proshkin, and I can't do it. If I made up
+anything I should be the first to get into trouble for it. I'm an
+ass, damn my soul!"
+
+And Nevyrazimov, racking his brain for a means of escape from his
+hopeless position, stared at the rough copy he had written. The
+letter was written to a man whom he feared and hated with his
+whole soul, and from whom he had for the last ten years been
+trying to wring a post worth eighteen roubles a month, instead of
+the one he had at sixteen roubles.
+
+"Ah, I'll teach you to run here, you devil!" He viciously slapped
+the palm of his hand on the cockroach, who had the misfortune to
+catch his eye. "Nasty thing!"
+
+The cockroach fell on its back and wriggled its legs in despair.
+Nevyrazimov took it by one leg and threw it into the lamp. The
+lamp flared up and spluttered.
+
+And Nevyrazimov felt better.
+
+THE REQUIEM
+
+IN the village church of Verhny Zaprudy mass was just over. The
+people had begun moving and were trooping out of church. The only
+one who did not move was Andrey Andreyitch, a shopkeeper and old
+inhabitant of Verhny Zaprudy. He stood waiting, with his elbows
+on the railing of the right choir. His fat and shaven face,
+covered with indentations left by pimples, expressed on this
+occasion two contradictory feelings: resignation in the face of
+inevitable destiny, and stupid, unbounded disdain for
+the smocks and striped kerchiefs passing by him. As it was
+Sunday, he was dressed like a dandy. He wore a long cloth
+overcoat with yellow bone buttons, blue trousers not thrust into
+his boots, and sturdy goloshes -- the huge clumsy goloshes only
+seen on the feet of practical and prudent persons of firm
+religious convictions.
+
+His torpid eyes, sunk in fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He
+saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey
+puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened
+candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov
+running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to
+the churchwarden. . . . All these things he had seen for years,
+and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand. .
+. . There was only one thing, however, that was somewhat strange
+and unusual. Father Grigory, still in his vestments, was standing
+at the north door, twitching his thick eyebrows angrily.
+
+"Who is it he is winking at? God bless him!" thought the
+shopkeeper. "And he is beckoning with his finger! And he stamped
+his foot! What next! What's the matter, Holy Queen and Mother!
+Whom does he mean it for?"
+
+Andrey Andreyitch looked round and saw the church completely
+deserted. There were some ten people standing at the door, but
+they had their backs to the altar.
+
+"Do come when you are called! Why do you stand like a graven
+image?" he heard Father Grigory's angry voice. "I am calling
+you."
+
+The shopkeeper looked at Father Grigory's red and wrathful face,
+and only then realized that the twitching eyebrows and beckoning
+finger might refer to him. He started, left the railing, and
+hesitatingly walked towards the altar, tramping with his heavy
+goloshes.
+
+"Andrey Andreyitch, was it you asked for prayers for the rest of
+Mariya's soul?" asked the priest, his eyes angrily transfixing
+the shopkeeper's fat, perspiring face.
+
+"Yes, Father."
+
+"Then it was you wrote this? You?" And Father Grigory angrily
+thrust before his eyes the little note.
+
+And on this little note, handed in by Andrey Andreyitch before
+mass, was written in big, as it were staggering, letters:
+
+"For the rest of the soul of the servant of God, the harlot
+Mariya."
+
+"Yes, certainly I wrote it, . . ." answered the shopkeeper.
+
+"How dared you write it?" whispered the priest, and in his husky
+whisper there was a note of wrath and alarm.
+
+The shopkeeper looked at him in blank amazement; he was
+perplexed, and he, too, was alarmed. Father Grigory had never in
+his life spoken in such a tone to a leading resident of Verhny
+Zaprudy. Both were silent for a minute, staring into each other's
+face. The shopkeeper's amazement was so great that his fat face
+spread in all directions like spilt dough.
+
+"How dared you?" repeated the priest.
+
+"Wha . . . what?" asked Andrey Andreyitch in bewilderment.
+
+"You don't understand?" whispered Father Grigory, stepping back
+in astonishment and clasping his hands. "What have you got on
+your shoulders, a head or some other object? You send a note up
+to the altar, and write a word in it which it would be unseemly
+even to utter in the street! Why are you rolling your eyes?
+Surely you know the meaning of the word?"
+
+"Are you referring to the word harlot?" muttered the shopkeeper,
+flushing crimson and blinking. "But you know, the Lord in His
+mercy . . . forgave this very thing, . . . forgave a harlot. . .
+. He has prepared a place for her, and indeed from the life of
+the holy saint, Mariya of Egypt, one may see in what sense the
+word is used -- excuse me . . ."
+
+The shopkeeper wanted to bring forward some other argument in his
+justification, but took fright and wiped his lips with his sleeve
+
+"So that's what you make of it!" cried Father Grigory, clasping
+his hands. "But you see God has forgiven her -- do you
+understand? He has forgiven, but you judge her, you slander her,
+call her by an unseemly name, and whom! Your own deceased
+daughter! Not only in Holy Scripture, but even in worldly
+literature you won't read of such a sin! I tell you again,
+Andrey, you mustn't be over-subtle! No, no, you mustn't be
+over-subtle, brother! If God has given you an inquiring mind, and
+if you cannot direct it, better not go into things. . . . Don't
+go into things, and hold your peace!"
+
+"But you know, she, . . . excuse my mentioning it, was an
+actress!" articulated Andrey Andreyitch, overwhelmed.
+
+"An actress! But whatever she was, you ought to forget it all now
+she is dead, instead of writing it on the note."
+
+"Just so, . . ." the shopkeeper assented.
+
+"You ought to do penance," boomed the deacon from the depths of
+the altar, looking contemptuously at Andrey Andreyitch's
+embarrassed face, "that would teach you to leave off being so
+clever! Your daughter was a well-known actress. There were even
+notices of her death in the newspapers. . . . Philosopher!"
+
+"To be sure, . . . certainly," muttered the shopkeeper, "the word
+is not a seemly one; but I did not say it to judge her, Father
+Grigory, I only meant to speak spiritually, . . . that it might
+be clearer to you for whom you were praying. They write
+in the memorial notes the various callings, such as the infant
+John, the drowned woman Pelagea, the warrior Yegor, the murdered
+Pavel, and so on. . . . I meant to do the same."
+
+"It was foolish, Andrey! God will forgive you, but beware another
+time. Above all, don't be subtle, but think like other people.
+Make ten bows and go your way."
+
+"I obey," said the shopkeeper, relieved that the lecture was
+over, and allowing his face to resume its expression of
+importance and dignity. "Ten bows? Very good, I understand. But
+now, Father, allow me to ask you a favor. . . . Seeing that I am,
+anyway, her father, . . . you know yourself, whatever she was,
+she was still my daughter, so I was, . . . excuse me, meaning to
+ask you to sing the requiem today. And allow me to ask you,
+Father Deacon!"
+
+"Well, that's good," said Father Grigory, taking off his
+vestments. "That I commend. I can approve of that! Well, go your
+way. We will come out immediately."
+
+Andrey Andreyitch walked with dignity from the altar, and with a
+solemn, requiem-like expression on his red face took his stand in
+the middle of the church. The verger Matvey set before him a
+little table with the memorial food upon it, and a little later
+the requiem service began.
+
+There was perfect stillness in the church. Nothing could be heard
+but the metallic click of the censer and slow singing. . . . Near
+Andrey Andreyitch stood the verger Matvey, the midwife
+Makaryevna, and her one-armed son Mitka. There was no one else.
+The sacristan sang badly in an unpleasant, hollow bass, but the
+tune and the words were so mournful that the shopkeeper little by
+little lost the expression of dignity and was plunged in sadness.
+He thought of his Mashutka, . . . he remembered
+she had been born when he was still a lackey in the service of
+the owner of Verhny Zaprudy. In his busy life as a lackey he had
+not noticed how his girl had grown up. That long period during
+which she was being shaped into a graceful creature, with
+a little flaxen head and dreamy eyes as big as kopeck-pieces
+passed unnoticed by him. She had been brought up like all the
+children of favorite lackeys, in ease and comfort in the company
+of the young ladies. The gentry, to fill up their idle time,
+had taught her to read, to write, to dance; he had had no hand
+in her bringing up. Only from time to time casually meeting her
+at the gate or on the landing of the stairs, he would remember
+that she was his daughter, and would, so far as he had leisure
+for it, begin teaching her the prayers and the scripture. Oh,
+even then he had the reputation of an authority on the church
+rules and the holy scriptures! Forbidding and stolid as her
+father's face was, yet the girl listened readily. She repeated
+the prayers after him yawning, but on the other hand, when he,
+hesitating and trying to express himself elaborately, began
+telling her stories, she was all attention. Esau's pottage, the
+punishment of Sodom, and the troubles of the boy Joseph made her
+turn pale and open her blue eyes wide.
+
+Afterwards when he gave up being a lackey, and with the money he
+had saved opened a shop in the village, Mashutka had gone away to
+Moscow with his master's family. . . .
+
+Three years before her death she had come to see her father. He
+had scarcely recognized her. She was a graceful young woman with
+the manners of a young lady, and dressed like one. She talked
+cleverly, as though from a book, smoked, and slept till midday.
+When Andrey Andreyitch asked her what she was doing, she had
+announced, looking him boldly straight in the face: "I am an
+actress." Such frankness struck the former flunkey as the acme of
+cynicism. Mashutka had begun boasting of her successes and her
+stage life; but seeing that her father only turned crimson and
+threw up his hands, she ceased. And they spent a fortnight
+together without speaking or looking at one another till the day
+she went away. Before she went away she asked her father to come
+for a walk on the bank of the river. Painful as it was for him to
+walk in the light of day, in the sight of all honest people, with
+a daughter who was an actress, he yielded to her request.
+
+"What a lovely place you live in!" she said enthusiastically.
+"What ravines and marshes! Good heavens, how lovely my native
+place is!"
+
+And she had burst into tears.
+
+"The place is simply taking up room, . . ." Andrey Andreyvitch
+had thought, looking blankly at the ravines, not understanding
+his daughter's enthusiasm. "There is no more profit from them
+than milk from a billy-goat."
+
+And she had cried and cried, drawing her breath greedily with her
+whole chest, as though she felt she had not a long time left to
+breathe.
+
+Andrey Andreyitch shook his head like a horse that has been
+bitten, and to stifle painful memories began rapidly crossing
+himself. . . .
+
+"Be mindful, O Lord," he muttered, "of Thy departed servant, the
+harlot Mariya, and forgive her sins, voluntary or involuntary. .
+. ."
+
+The unseemly word dropped from his lips again, but he did not
+notice it: what is firmly imbedded in the consciousness cannot be
+driven out by Father Grigory's exhortations or even knocked out
+by a nail. Makaryevna sighed and whispered something, drawing in
+a deep breath, while one-armed Mitka was brooding over something.
+. . .
+
+"Where there is no sickness, nor grief, nor sighing," droned the
+sacristan, covering his right cheek with his hand.
+
+Bluish smoke coiled up from the censer and bathed in the broad,
+slanting patch of sunshine which cut across the gloomy, lifeless
+emptiness of the church. And it seemed as though the soul of the
+dead woman were soaring into the sunlight together with the
+smoke. The coils of smoke like a child's curls eddied round and
+round, floating upwards to the window and, as it were, holding
+aloof from the woes and tribulations of which that poor soul was
+full.
+
+IN THE COACH-HOUSE
+
+IT was between nine and ten o'clock in the evening. Stepan the
+coachman, Mihailo the house-porter, Alyoshka the coachman's
+grandson, who had come up from the village to stay with his
+grandfather, and Nikandr, an old man of seventy, who used to come
+into the yard every evening to sell salt herrings, were sitting
+round a lantern in the big coach-house, playing "kings." Through
+the wide-open door could be seen the whole yard, the big house,
+where the master's family lived, the gates, the cellars, and the
+porter's l odge. It was all shrouded in the darkness of night,
+and only the four windows of one of the lodges which was let were
+brightly lit up. The shadows of the coaches and sledges with
+their shafts tipped upwards stretched from the walls to the
+doors, quivering and cutting across the shadows cast by the
+lantern and the players. . . . On the other side of the thin
+partition that divided the coach-house from the stable were the
+horses. There was a scent of hay, and a disagreeable smell of
+salt herrings coming from old Nikandr.
+
+The porter won and was king; he assumed an attitude such as was
+in his opinion befitting a king, and blew his nose loudly on a
+red-checked handkerchief.
+
+"Now if I like I can chop off anybody's head," he said. Alyoshka,
+a boy of eight with a head of flaxen hair, left long uncut, who
+had only missed being king by two tricks, looked angrily and with
+envy at the porter. He pouted and frowned.
+
+"I shall give you the trick, grandfather," he said, pondering
+over his cards; "I know you have got the queen of diamonds."
+
+"Well, well, little silly, you have thought enough!"
+
+Alyoshka timidly played the knave of diamonds. At that moment a
+ring was heard from the yard.
+
+"Oh, hang you!" muttered the porter, getting up. "Go and open the
+gate, O king!"
+
+When he came back a little later, Alyoshka was already a prince,
+the fish-hawker a soldier, and the coachman a peasant.
+
+"It's a nasty business," said the porter, sitting down to the
+cards again. "I have just let the doctors out. They have not
+extracted it."
+
+"How could they? Just think, they would have to pick open the
+brains. If there is a bullet in the head, of what use are
+doctors?"
+
+"He is lying unconscious," the porter went on. "He is bound to
+die. Alyoshka, don't look at the cards, you little puppy, or I
+will pull your ears! Yes, I let the doctors out, and the father
+and mother in. . . They have only just arrived. Such crying and
+wailing, Lord preserve us! They say he is the only son. . . .
+It's a grief!"
+
+All except Alyoshka, who was absorbed in the game, looked round
+at the brightly lighted windows of the lodge.
+
+"I have orders to go to the police station tomorrow," said the
+porter. "There will be an inquiry . . . But what do I know about
+it? I saw nothing of it. He called me this morning, gave me a
+letter, and said: 'Put it in the letter-box for me.' And his
+eyes were red with crying. His wife and children were not at
+home. They had gone out for a walk. So when I had gone with the
+letter, he put a bullet into his forehead from a revolver. When I
+came back his cook was wailing for the whole yard to hear."
+
+"It's a great sin," said the fish-hawker in a husky voice, and he
+shook his head, "a great sin!"
+
+"From too much learning," said the porter, taking a trick; "his
+wits outstripped his wisdom. Sometimes he would sit writing
+papers all night. . . . Play, peasant! . . . But he was a nice
+gentleman. And so white skinned, black-haired and tall! . . .
+He was a good lodger."
+
+"It seems the fair sex is at the bottom of it," said the
+coachman, slapping the nine of trumps on the king of diamonds.
+"It seems he was fond of another man's wife and disliked his own;
+it does happen."
+
+"The king rebels," said the porter.
+
+At that moment there was again a ring from the yard. The
+rebellious king spat with vexation and went out. Shadows like
+dancing couples flitted across the windows of the lodge. There
+was the sound of voices and hurried footsteps in the yard.
+
+"I suppose the doctors have come again," said the coachman. "Our
+Mihailo is run off his legs. . . ."
+
+A strange wailing voice rang out for a moment in the air.
+Alyoshka looked in alarm at his grandfather, the coachman; then
+at the windows, and said:
+
+"He stroked me on the head at the gate yesterday, and said, 'What
+district do you come from, boy?' Grandfather, who was that howled
+just now?"
+
+His grandfather trimmed the light in the lantern and made no
+answer.
+
+"The man is lost," he said a little later, with a yawn. "He is
+lost, and his children are ruined, too. It's a disgrace for his
+children for the rest of their lives now."
+
+The porter came back and sat down by the lantern.
+
+"He is dead," he said. "They have sent to the almshouse for the
+old women to lay him out."
+
+"The kingdom of heaven and eternal peace to him!" whispered the
+coachman, and he crossed himself.
+
+Looking at him, Alyoshka crossed himself too.
+
+"You can't pray for such as him," said the fish-hawker.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's a sin."
+
+"That's true," the porter assented. "Now his soul has gone
+straight to hell, to the devil. . . ."
+
+"It's a sin," repeated the fish-hawker; "such as he have no
+funeral, no requiem, but are buried like carrion with no
+respect."
+
+The old man put on his cap and got up.
+
+"It was the same thing at our lady's," he said, pulling his cap
+on further. "We were serfs in those days; the younger son of our
+mistress, the General's lady, shot himself through the mouth with
+a pistol, from too much learning, too. It seems that by law such
+have to be buried outside the cemetery, without priests, without
+a requiem service; but to save disgrace our lady, you know,
+bribed the police and the doctors, and they gave her a paper to
+say her son had done it when delirious, not knowing what he was
+doing. You can do anything with money. So he had a funeral with
+priests and every honor, the music played, and he was buried in
+the church; for the deceased General had built that church with
+his own money, and all his family were buried there. Only this
+is what happened, friends. One month passed, and then another,
+and it was all right. In the third month they informed the
+General's lady that the watchmen had come from that same church.
+What did they want? They were brought to her, they fell at her
+feet. 'We can't go on serving, your excellency,' they said. 'Look
+out for other watchmen and graciously dismiss us.' 'What for?'
+'No,' they said, 'we can't possibly; your son howls under the
+church all night.' "
+
+Alyoshka shuddered, and pressed his face to the coachman's back
+so as not to see the windows.
+
+"At first the General's lady would not listen," continued the old
+man. "'All this is your fancy, you simple folk have such
+notions,' she said. 'A dead man cannot howl.' Some time
+afterwards the watchmen came to her again, and with them the
+sacristan. So the sacristan, too, had heard him howling. The
+General's lady saw that it was a bad job; she locked herself in
+her bedroom with the watchmen. 'Here, my friends, here are
+twenty-five roubles for you, and for that go by night in secret,
+so that no one should hear or see you, dig up my unhappy son, and
+bury him,' she said, 'outside the cemetery.' And I suppose she
+stood them a glass . . . And the watchmen did so. The stone with
+the inscription on it is there to this day, but he himself, the
+General's son, is outside the cemetery. . . . O Lord, forgive us
+our transgressions!" sighed the fish-hawker. "There is only one
+day in the year when one may pray for such people: the Saturday
+before Trinity. . . . You mustn't give alms
+to beggars for their sake, it is a sin, but you may feed the
+birds for the rest of their souls. The General's lady used to go
+out to the crossroads every three days to feed the birds. Once at
+the cross-roads a black dog suddenly appeared; it ran up
+to the bread, and was such a . . . we all know what that dog
+was. The General's lady was like a half-crazy creature for five
+days afterwards, she neither ate nor drank. . . . All at once she
+fell on her knees in the garden, and prayed and prayed. .
+ . . Well, good-by, friends, the blessing of God and the Heavenly
+Mother be with you. Let us go, Mihailo, you'll open the gate for
+me."
+
+The fish-hawker and the porter went out. The coachman and
+Alyoshka went out too, so as not to be left in the coach-house.
+
+"The man was living and is dead!" said the coachman, looking
+towards the windows where shadows were still flitting to and fro.
+"Only this morning he was walking about the yard, and now he is
+lying dead."
+
+"The time will come and we shall die too," said the porter,
+walking away with the fish -hawker, and at once they both
+vanished from sight in the darkness.
+
+The coachman, and Alyoshka after him, somewhat timidly went up to
+the lighted windows. A very pale lady with large tear stained
+eyes, and a fine-looking gray headed man were moving two
+card-tables into the middle of the room, probably with the
+intention of laying the dead man upon them, and on the green
+cloth of the table numbers could still be seen written in chalk.
+The cook who had run about the yard wailing in the morning was
+now standing on a chair, stretching up to try and cover the
+looking glass with a towel.
+
+"Grandfather what are they doing?" asked Alyoshka in a whisper.
+
+"They are just going to lay him on the tables," answered his
+grandfather. "Let us go, child, it is bedtime."
+
+The coachman and Alyoshka went back to the coach-house. They said
+their prayers, and took off their boots. Stepan lay down in a
+corner on the floor, Alyoshka in a sledge. The doors of the coach
+house were shut, there was a horrible stench from the
+extinguished lantern. A little later Alyoshka sat up and looked
+about him; through the crack of the door he could still see a
+light from those lighted windows.
+
+"Grandfather, I am frightened!" he said.
+
+"Come, go to sleep, go to sleep! . . ."
+
+"I tell you I am frightened!"
+
+"What are you frightened of? What a baby!"
+
+They were silent.
+
+Alyoshka suddenly jumped out of the sledge and, loudly weeping,
+ran to his grandfather.
+
+"What is it? What's the matter?" cried the coachman in a fright,
+getting up also.
+
+"He's howling!"
+
+"Who is howling?"
+
+"I am frightened, grandfather, do you hear?"
+
+The coachman listened.
+
+"It's their crying," he said. "Come! there, little silly! They
+are sad, so they are crying."
+
+"I want to go home, . . ." his grandson went on sobbing and
+trembling all over. "Grandfather, let us go back to the village,
+to mammy; come, grandfather dear, God will give you the heavenly
+kingdom for it. . . ."
+
+"What a silly, ah! Come, be quiet, be quiet! Be quiet, I will
+light the lantern, . . . silly!"
+
+The coachman fumbled for the matches and lighted the lantern. But
+the light did not comfort Alyoshka.
+
+"Grandfather Stepan, let's go to the village!" he besought him,
+weeping. "I am frightened here; oh, oh, how frightened I am! And
+why did you bring me from the village, accursed man?"
+
+"Who's an accursed man? You mustn't use such disrespectable words
+to your lawful grandfather. I shall whip you."
+
+"Do whip me, grandfather, do; beat me like Sidor's goat, but only
+take me to mammy, for God's mercy! . . ."
+
+"Come, come, grandson, come!" the coachman said kindly. "It's all
+right, don't be frightened. . . .I am frightened myself. . . .
+Say your prayers!"
+
+The door creaked and the porter's head appeared. "Aren't you
+asleep, Stepan?" he asked. "I shan't get any sleep all night," he
+said, coming in. "I shall be opening and shutting the gates all
+night. . . . What are you crying for, Alyoshka?"
+
+"He is frightened," the coachman answered for his grandson.
+
+Again there was the sound of a wailing voice in the air. The
+porter said:
+
+"They are crying. The mother can't believe her eyes. . . . It's
+dreadful how upset she is."
+
+"And is the father there?"
+
+"Yes. . . . The father is all right. He sits in the corner and
+says nothing. They have taken the children to relations. . . .
+Well, Stepan, shall we have a game of trumps?"
+
+"Yes," the coachman agreed, scratching himself, "and you,
+Alyoshka, go to sleep. Almost big enough to be married, and
+blubbering, you rascal. Come, go along, grandson, go along. . . .
+
+The presence of the porter reassured Alyoshka. He went, not very
+resolutely, towards the sledge and lay down. And while he was
+falling asleep he heard a half-whisper.
+
+"I beat and cover," said his grandfather.
+
+"I beat and cover," repeated the porter.
+
+The bell rang in the yard, the door creaked and seemed also
+saying: "I beat and cover." When Alyoshka dreamed of the
+gentleman and, frightened by his eyes, jumped up and burst out
+crying, it was morning, his grandfather was snoring, and the
+coach-house no longer seemed terrible.
+
+PANIC FEARS
+
+DURING all the years I have been living in this world I have only
+three times been terrified.
+
+The first real terror, which made my hair stand on end and made
+shivers run all over me, was caused by a trivial but strange
+phenomenon. It happened that, having nothing to do one July
+evening, I drove to the station for the newspapers. It was a
+still, warm, almost sultry evening, like all those monotonous
+evenings in July which, when once they have set in, go on for a
+week, a fortnight, or sometimes longer, in regular unbroken
+succession, and are suddenly cut short by a violent thunderstorm
+and a lavish downpour of rain that refreshes everything for a
+long time.
+
+The sun had set some time before, and an unbroken gray dusk lay
+all over the land. The mawkishly sweet scents of the grass and
+flowers were heavy in the motionless, stagnant air.
+
+I was driving in a rough trolley. Behind my back the gardener's
+son Pashka, a boy of eight years old, whom I had taken with me to
+look after the horse in case of necessity, was gently snoring,
+with his head on a sack of oats. Our way lay along a narrow
+by-road, straight as a ruler, which lay hid like a great snake in
+the tall thick rye. There was a pale light from the afterglow of
+sunset; a streak of light cut its way through a narrow,
+uncouth-looking cloud, which seemed sometimes like a boat and
+sometimes like a man wrapped in a quilt. . . .
+
+I had driven a mile and a half, or two miles, when against the
+pale background of the evening glow there came into sight one
+after another some graceful tall poplars; a river glimmered
+beyond them, and a gorgeous picture suddenly, as though by
+magic, lay stretched before me. I had to stop the horse, for our
+straight road broke off abruptly and ran down a steep incline
+overgrown with bushes. We were standing on the hillside and
+beneath us at the bottom lay a huge hole full of twilight, of
+fantastic shapes, and of space. At the bottom of this hole, in a
+wide plain guarded by the poplars and caressed by the gleaming
+river, nestled a village. It was now sleeping. . . . Its huts,
+its church with the belfry, its trees, stood out against the
+gray twilight and were reflected darkly in the smooth surface of
+the river.
+
+I waked Pashka for fear he should fall out and began cautiously
+going down.
+
+"Have we got to Lukovo?" asked Pashka, lifting his head lazily.
+
+"Yes. Hold the reins! . . ."
+
+I led the horse down the hill and looked at the village. At the
+first glance one strange circumstance caught my attention: at the
+very top of the belfry, in the tiny window between the cupola and
+the bells, a light was twinkling. This light was like that of a
+smoldering lamp, at one moment dying down, at another flickering
+up. What could it come from?
+
+Its source was beyond my comprehension. It could not be burning
+at the window, for there were neither ikons nor lamps in the top
+turret of the belfry; there was nothing there, as I knew, but
+beams, dust, and spiders' webs. It was hard to climb up into
+that turret, for the passage to it from the belfry was closely
+blocked up.
+
+It was more likely than anything else to be the reflection of
+some outside light, but though I strained my eyes to the utmost,
+I could not see one other speck of light in the vast expanse that
+lay before me. There was no moon. The pale and, by now,
+quite dim streak of the afterglow could not have been reflected,
+for the window looked not to the west, but to the east. These and
+other similar considerations were straying through my mind all
+the while that I was going down the slope with the horse. At the
+bottom I sat down by the roadside and looked again at the light.
+As before it was glimmering and flaring up.
+
+"Strange," I thought, lost in conjecture. "Very strange."
+
+And little by little I was overcome by an unpleasant feeling. At
+first I thought that this was vexation at not being able to
+explain a simple phenomenon; but afterwards, when I suddenly
+turned away from the light in horror and caugh t hold of Pashka
+with one hand, it became clear that I was overcome with terror. .
+. .
+
+I was seized with a feeling of loneliness, misery, and horror, as
+though I had been flung down against my will into this great hole
+full of shadows, where I was standing all alone with the belfry
+looking at me with its red eye.
+
+"Pashka!" I cried, closing my eyes in horror.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Pashka, what's that gleaming on the belfry?"
+
+Pashka looked over my shoulder at the belfry and gave a yawn.
+
+"Who can tell?"
+
+This brief conversation with the boy reassured me for a little,
+but not for long. Pashka, seeing my uneasiness, fastened his big
+eyes upon the light, looked at me again, then again at the light.
+. . .
+
+"I am frightened," he whispered.
+
+At this point, beside myself with terror, I clutched the boy with
+one hand, huddled up to him, and gave the horse a violent lash.
+
+"It's stupid!" I said to myself. "That phenomenon is only
+terrible because I don't understand it; everything we don't
+understand is mysterious."
+
+I tried to persuade myself, but at the same time I did not leave
+off lashing the horse. When we reached the posting station I
+purposely stayed for a full hour chatting with the overseer, and
+read through two or three newspapers, but the feeling of
+uneasiness did not leave me. On the way back the light was not to
+be seen, but on the other hand the silhouettes of the huts, of
+the poplars, and of the hill up which I had to drive, seemed to
+me as though animated. And why the light was there I don't know
+to this day.
+
+The second terror I experienced was excited by a circumstance no
+less trivial. . . . I was returning from a romantic interview. It
+was one o'clock at night, the time when nature is buried in the
+soundest, sweetest sleep before the dawn. That time nature was
+not sleeping, and one could not call the night a still one.
+Corncrakes, quails, nightingales, and woodcocks were calling,
+crickets and grasshoppers were chirruping. There was a light mist
+over the grass, and clouds were scurrying straight
+ahead across the sky near the moon. Nature was awake, as though
+afraid of missing the best moments of her life.
+
+I walked along a narrow path at the very edge of a railway
+embankment. The moonlight glided over the lines which were
+already covered with dew. Great shadows from the clouds kept
+flitting over the embankment. Far ahead, a dim green light was
+glimmering peacefully.
+
+"So everything is well," I thought, looking at them.
+
+I had a quiet, peaceful, comfortable feeling in my heart. I was
+returning from a tryst, I had no need to hurry; I was not sleepy,
+and I was conscious of youth and health in every sigh, every step
+I took, rousing a dull echo in the monotonous hum of
+the night. I don't know what I was feeling then, but I remember
+I was happy, very happy.
+
+I had gone not more than three-quarters of a mile when I suddenly
+heard behind me a monotonous sound, a rumbling, rather like the
+roar of a great stream. It grew louder and louder every second,
+and sounded nearer and nearer. I looked round; a hundred paces
+from me was the dark copse from which I had only just come; there
+the embankment turned to the right in a graceful curve and
+vanished among the trees. I stood still in perplexity and waited.
+A huge black body appeared at once at the turn, noisily darted
+towards me, and with the swiftness of a bird flew past me along
+the rails. Less than half a minute passed and the blur had
+vanished, the rumble melted away into the noise of the night.
+
+It was an ordinary goods truck. There was nothing peculiar about
+it in itself, but its appearance without an engine and in the
+night puzzled me. Where could it have come from and what force
+sent it flying so rapidly along the rails? Where did it come
+from and where was it flying to?
+
+If I had been superstitious I should have made up my mind it was
+a party of demons and witches journeying to a devils' sabbath,
+and should have gone on my way; but as it was, the phenomenon was
+absolutely inexplicable to me. I did not believe my eyes, and
+was entangled in conjectures like a fly in a spider's web. . . .
+
+I suddenly realized that I was utterly alone on the whole vast
+plain; that the night, which by now seemed inhospitable, was
+peeping into my face and dogging my footsteps; all the sounds,
+the cries of the birds, the whisperings of the trees, seemed
+sinister, and existing simply to alarm my imagination. I dashed
+on like a madman, and without realizing what I was doing I ran,
+trying to run faster and faster. And at once I heard something to
+which I had paid no attention before: that is, the plaintive
+whining of the telegraph wires.
+
+"This is beyond everything," I said, trying to shame myself.
+"It's cowardice! it's silly!"
+
+But cowardice was stronger than common sense. I only slackened my
+pace when I reached the green light, where I saw a dark
+signal-box, and near it on the embankment the figure of a man,
+probably the signalman.
+
+"Did you see it?" I asked breathlessly.
+
+"See whom? What?"
+
+"Why, a truck ran by."
+
+"I saw it, . . ." the peasant said reluctantly. "It broke away
+from the goods train. There is an incline at the ninetieth mile .
+. .; the train is dragged uphill. The coupling on the last truck
+gave way, so it broke off and ran back. . . . There is
+ no catching it now! . . ."
+
+The strange phenomenon was explained and its fantastic character
+vanished. My panic was over and I was able to go on my way.
+
+My third fright came upon me as I was going home from stand
+shooting in early spring. It was in the dusk of evening. The
+forest road was covered with pools from a recent shower of rain,
+and the earth squelched under one's feet. The crimson glow of
+sunset flooded the whole forest, coloring the white stems of the
+birches and the young leaves. I was exhausted and could hardly
+move.
+
+Four or five miles from home, walking along the forest road, I
+suddenly met a big black dog of the water spaniel breed. As he
+ran by, the dog looked intently at me, straight in my face, and
+ran on.
+
+"A nice dog!" I thought. "Whose is it?"
+
+I looked round. The dog was standing ten paces off with his eyes
+fixed on me. For a minute we scanned each other in silence, then
+the dog, probably flattered by my attention, came slowly up to me
+and wagged his tail.
+
+I walked on, the dog following me.
+
+"Whose dog can it be?" I kept asking myself. "Where does he come
+from?"
+
+I knew all the country gentry for twenty or thirty miles round,
+and knew all their dogs. Not one of them had a spaniel like that.
+How did he come to be in the depths of the forest, on a track
+used for nothing but carting timber? He could hardly have
+dropped behind someone passing through, for there was nowhere for
+the gentry to drive to along that road.
+
+I sat down on a stump to rest, and began scrutinizing my
+companion. He, too, sat down, raised his head, and fastened upon
+me an intent stare. He gazed at me without blinking. I don't know
+whether it was the influence of the stillness, the shadows and
+sounds of the forest, or perhaps a result of exhaustion, but I
+suddenly felt uneasy under the steady gaze of his ordinary doggy
+eyes. I thought of Faust and his bulldog, and of the fact that
+nervous people sometimes when exhausted have hallucinations.
+That was enough to make me get up hurriedly and hurriedly walk
+on. The dog followed me.
+
+"Go away!" I shouted.
+
+The dog probably liked my voice, for he gave a gleeful jump and
+ran about in front of me.
+
+"Go away!" I shouted again.
+
+The dog looked round, stared at me intently, and wagged his tail
+good-humoredly. Evidently my threatening tone amused him. I ought
+to have patted him, but I could not get Faust's dog out of my
+head, and the feeling of panic grew more and more acute. . .
+Darkness was coming on, which completed my confusion, and every
+time the dog ran up to me and hit me with his tail, like a coward
+I shut my eyes. The same thing happened as with the light in the
+belfry and the truck on the railway: I could not stand it and
+rushed away.
+
+At home I found a visitor, an old friend, who, after greeting me,
+began to complain that as he wa s driving to me he had lost his
+way in the forest, and a splendid valuable dog of his had dropped
+behind.
+
+THE BET
+
+IT WAS a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and
+down his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had
+given a party one autumn evening. There had been many clever men
+there, and there had been interesting conversations. Among other
+things they had talked of capital punishment. The majority of the
+guests, among whom were many journalists and intellectual men,
+disapproved of the death penalty. They considered that form of
+punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable for Christian
+States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty ought to
+be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life.
+
+"I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not
+tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if
+one may judge _a priori_, the death penalty is more moral and
+more humane than imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills
+a man at once, but lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which
+executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes
+or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years?"
+
+"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they
+both have the same object -- to take away life. The State is not
+God. It has not the right to take away what it cannot restore
+when it wants to."
+
+Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of
+five-and-twenty. When he was asked his opinion, he said:
+
+"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral,
+but if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment
+for life, I would certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is
+better than not at all."
+
+A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more
+nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement;
+he struck the table with his fist and shouted at the young man:
+
+"It's not true! I'll bet you two millions you wouldn't stay in
+solitary confinement for five years."
+
+"If you mean that in earnest," said the young man, "I'll take the
+bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen years."
+
+"Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two
+millions!"
+
+"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said
+the young man.
+
+And this wild, senseless bet was carried out! The banker, spoilt
+and frivolous, with millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted
+at the bet. At supper he made fun of the young man, and said:
+
+"Think better of it, young man, while there is still time. To me
+two millions are a trifle, but you are losing three or four of
+the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you
+won't stay longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that
+voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than
+compulsory. The thought that you have the right to step out in
+liberty at any moment will poison your whole existence in prison.
+I am sorry for you."
+
+And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and
+asked himself: "What was the object of that bet? What is the good
+of that man's losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing
+away two millions? Can it prove that the death penalty is better
+or worse than imprisonment for life? No, no. It was all
+nonsensical and meaningless. On my part it was the caprice of a
+pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money. . . ."
+
+Then he remembered what followed that evening. It was decided
+that the young man should spend the years of his captivity under
+the strictest supervision in one of the lodges in the banker's
+garden. It was agreed that for fifteen years he should not
+be free to cross the threshold of the lodge, to see human
+beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive letters and
+newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument and
+books, and was allowed to write letters, to drink wine, and to
+smoke. By the terms of the agreement, the only relations he
+could have with the outer world were by a little window made
+purposely for that object. He might have anything he wanted --
+books, music, wine, and so on -- in any quantity he desired by
+writing an order, but could only receive them through the
+window. The agreement provided for every detail and every trifle
+that would make his imprisonment strictly solitary, and bound the
+young man to stay there _exactly_ fifteen years, beginning from
+twelve o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at twelve
+o'clock of November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt on his part
+to break the conditions, if only two minutes before the end,
+released the banker from the obligation to pay him two millions.
+
+For the first year of his confinement, as far as one could judge
+from his brief notes, the prisoner suffered severely from
+loneliness and depression. The sounds of the piano could be heard
+continually day and night from his lodge. He refused wine and
+tobacco. Wine, he wrote, excites the desires, and desires are the
+worst foes of the prisoner; and besides, nothing could be more
+dreary than drinking good wine and seeing no one. And tobacco
+spoilt the air of his room. In the first year the books he sent
+for were principally of a light character; novels with a
+complicated love plot, sensational and fantastic stories, and so
+on.
+
+In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the
+prisoner asked only for the classics. In the fifth year music was
+audible again, and the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched
+him through the window said that all that year he spent doing
+nothing but eating and drinking and lying on his bed, frequently
+yawning and angrily talking to himself. He did not read books.
+Sometimes at night he would sit down to write; he would spend
+hours writing, and in the morning tear up all that he had
+written. More than once he could be heard crying.
+
+In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began zealously
+studying languages, philosophy, and history. He threw himself
+eagerly into these studies -- so much so that the banker had
+enough to do to get him the books he ordered. In the course
+of four years some six hundred volumes were procured at his
+request. It was during this period that the banker received the
+following letter from his prisoner:
+
+"My dear Jailer, I write you these lines in six languages. Show
+them to people who know the languages. Let them read them. If
+they find not one mistake I implore you to fire a shot in the
+garden. That shot will show me that my efforts have not been
+thrown away. The geniuses of all ages and of all lands speak
+different languages, but the same flame burns in them all. Oh, if
+you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels now from
+being able to understand them!" The prisoner's desire was
+fulfilled. The banker ordered two shots to be fired in the
+garden.
+
+Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the
+table and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the
+banker that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred
+learned volumes should waste nearly a year over one thin book
+easy of comprehension. Theology and histories of religion
+followed the Gospels.
+
+In the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
+immense quantity of books quite indiscriminately. At one time he
+was busy with the natural sciences, then he would ask for Byron
+or Shakespeare. There were notes in which he demanded at the
+same time books on chemistry, and a manual of medicine, and a
+novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. His reading
+suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his
+ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at
+one spar and then at another.
+
+II
+
+The old banker remembered all this, and thought:
+
+"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he will regain his freedom. By our
+agreement I ought to pay him two millions. If I do pay him, it is
+all over with me: I shall be utterly ruined."
+
+Fifteen years before, his millions had been beyond his reckoning;
+now he was afraid to ask himself which were greater, his debts or
+his assets. Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild
+speculation and the excitability whic h he could not get over
+even in advancing years, had by degrees led to the decline of his
+fortune and the proud, fearless, self-confident millionaire had
+become a banker of middling rank, trembling at every rise and
+fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old man,
+clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die? He is only
+forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry,
+will enjoy life, will gamble on the Exchange; while I shall look
+at him with envy like a beggar, and hear from him every day the
+same sentence: 'I am indebted to you for the happiness of my
+life, let me help you!' No, it is too much! The one means of
+being saved from bankruptcy and disgrace is the death of that
+man!"
+
+It struck three o'clock, the banker listened; everyone was asleep
+in the house and nothing could be heard outside but the rustling
+of the chilled trees. Trying to make no noise, he took from a
+fireproof safe the key of the door which had not been opened for
+fifteen years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house.
+
+It was dark and cold in the garden. Rain was falling. A damp
+cutting wind was racing about the garden, howling and giving the
+trees no rest. The banker strained his eyes, but could see
+neither the earth nor the white statues, nor the lodge, nor the
+trees. Going to the spot where the lodge stood, he twice called
+the watchman. No answer followed. Evidently the watchman had
+sought shelter from the weather, and was now asleep somewhere
+either in the kitchen or in the greenhouse.
+
+"If I had the pluck to carry out my intention," thought the old
+man, "Suspicion would fall first upon the watchman."
+
+He felt in the darkness for the steps and the door, and went into
+the entry of the lodge. Then he groped his way into a little
+passage and lighted a match. There was not a soul there. There
+was a bedstead with no bedding on it, and in the corner there
+was a dark cast-iron stove. The seals on the door leading to the
+prisoner's rooms were intact.
+
+When the match went out the old man, trembling with emotion,
+peeped through the little window. A candle was burning dimly in
+the prisoner's room. He was sitting at the table. Nothing could
+be seen but his back, the hair on his head, and his hands. Open
+books were lying on the table, on the two easy-chairs, and on the
+carpet near the table.
+
+Five minutes passed and the prisoner did not once stir. Fifteen
+years' imprisonment had taught him to sit still. The banker
+tapped at the window with his finger, and the prisoner made no
+movement whatever in response. Then the banker cautiously broke
+the seals off the door and put the key in the keyhole. The rusty
+lock gave a grating sound and the door creaked. The banker
+expected to hear at once footsteps and a cry of astonishment, but
+three minutes passed and it was as quiet as ever in the room. He
+made up his mind to go in.
+
+At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless.
+He was a skeleton with the skin drawn tight over his bones, with
+long curls like a woman's and a shaggy beard. His face was yellow
+with an earthy tint in it, his cheeks were hollow, his back long
+and narrow, and the hand on which his shaggy head was propped was
+so thin and delicate that it was dreadful to look at it. His hair
+was already streaked with silver, and seeing his emaciated,
+aged-looking face, no one would have believed that he was only
+forty. He was asleep. . . . In front of his bowed head there lay
+on the table a sheet of paper on which there was something
+written in fine handwriting.
+
+"Poor creature!" thought the banker, "he is asleep and most
+likely dreaming of the millions. And I have only to take this
+half-dead man, throw him on the bed, stifle him a little with the
+pillow, and the most conscientious expert would find no sign
+ of a violent death. But let us first read what he has written
+here. . . ."
+
+The banker took the page from the table and read as follows:
+
+"To-morrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom and the right to
+associate with other men, but before I leave this room and see
+the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you.
+With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds
+me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in
+your books is called the good things of the world.
+
+"For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life. It
+is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in your books I
+have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags
+and wild boars in the forests, have loved women. . . .
+Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your
+poets and geniuses, have visited me at night, and have whispered
+in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a whirl. In
+your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont
+Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and have watched
+it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops
+with gold and crimson. I have watched from there the lightning
+flashing over my head and cleaving the storm-clouds. I have
+seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard
+the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds'
+pipes; I have touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to
+converse with me of God. . . . In your books I have flung myself
+into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns,
+preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms. . . .
+
+"Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought
+of man has created in the ages is compressed into a small compass
+in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all of you.
+
+"And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of
+this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and
+deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but
+death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were
+no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity,
+your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together
+with the earthly globe.
+
+"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have
+taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would
+marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and
+lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit,
+or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at
+you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand
+you.
+
+"To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I
+renounce the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise
+and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the
+money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed,
+and so break the compact. . . ."
+
+When the banker had read this he laid the page on the table,
+kissed the strange man on the head, and went out of the lodge,
+weeping. At no other time, even when he had lost heavily on the
+Stock Exchange, had he felt so great a contempt for himself.
+When he got home he lay on his bed, but his tears and emotion
+kept him for hours from sleeping.
+
+Next morning the watchmen ran in with pale faces, and told him
+they had seen the man who lived in the lodge climb out of the
+window into the garden, go to the gate, and disappear. The banker
+went at once with the servants to the lodge and made sure
+of the flight of his prisoner. To avoid arousing unnecessary
+talk, he took from the table the writing in which the millions
+were renounced, and when he got home locked it up in the
+fireproof safe.
+
+THE HEAD-GARDENER'S STORY
+
+A SALE of flowers was taking place in Count N.'s greenhouses. The
+purchasers were few in number -- a landowner who was a neighbor
+of mine, a young timber-merchant, and myself. While the workmen
+were carrying out our magnificent purchases and packing them
+into the carts, we sat at the entry of the greenhouse and chatted
+about one thing and another. It is extremely pleasant to sit in a
+garden on a still April morning, listening to the birds, and
+watching the flowers brought out into the open air and basking
+in the sunshine.
+
+The head-gardener, Mihail Karlovitch, a venerable old man with a
+full shaven face, wearing a fur waistcoat and no coat,
+superintended the packing of the plants himself, but at the same
+time he listened to our conversation in the hope of hearing
+something new. He was an intelligent, very good-hearted man,
+respected by everyone. He was for some reason looked upon by
+everyone as a German, though he was in reality on his father's
+side Swedish, on his mother's side Russian, and attended the
+Orthodox church. He knew Russian, Swedish, and German. He had
+read a good deal in those languages, and nothing one could do
+gave him greater pleasure than lending him some new book or
+talking to him, for instance, about Ibsen.
+
+He had his weaknesses, but they were innocent ones: he called
+himself the head gardener, though there were no under-gardeners;
+the expression of his face was unusually dignified and haughty;
+he could not endure to be contradicted, and liked to be listened
+to with respect and attention.
+
+"That young fellow there I can recommend to you as an awful
+rascal," said my neighbor, pointing to a laborer with a swarthy,
+gipsy face, who drove by with the water-barrel. "Last week he was
+tried in the town for burglary and was acquitted; they
+pronounced him mentally deranged, and yet look at him, he is the
+picture of health. Scoundrels are very often acquitted nowadays
+in Russia on grounds of abnormality and aberration, yet these
+acquittals, these unmistakable proofs of an indulgent attitude
+to crime, lead to no good. They demoralize the masses, the sense
+of justice is blunted in all as they become accustomed to seeing
+vice unpunished, and you know in our age one may boldly say in
+the words of Shakespeare that in our evil and corrupt age virtue
+must ask forgiveness of vice."
+
+"That's very true," the merchant assented. "Owing to these
+frequent acquittals, murder and arson have become much more
+common. Ask the peasants."
+
+Mihail Karlovitch turned towards us and said:
+
+"As far as I am concerned, gentlemen, I am always delighted to
+meet with these verdicts of not guilty. I am not afraid for
+morality and justice when they say 'Not guilty,' but on the
+contrary I feel pleased. Even when my conscience tells me the
+jury have made a mistake in acquitting the criminal, even then I
+am triumphant. Judge for yourselves, gentlemen; if the judges and
+the jury have more faith in _man_ than in evidence, material
+proofs, and speeches for the prosecution, is not that faith _in
+man_ in itself higher than any ordinary considerations? Such
+faith is only attainable by those few who understand and feel
+Christ."
+
+"A fine thought," I said.
+
+"But it's not a new one. I remember a very long time ago I heard
+a legend on that subject. A very charming legend," said the
+gardener, and he smiled. "I was told it by my grandmother, my
+father's mother, an excellent old lady. She told me it in
+Swedish, and it does not sound so fine, so classical, in
+Russian."
+
+But we begged him to tell it and not to be put off by the
+coarseness of the Russian language. Much gratified, he
+deliberately lighted his pipe, looked angrily at the laborers,
+and began:
+
+"There settled in a certain little town a solitary, plain,
+elderly gentleman called Thomson or Wilson -- but that does not
+matter; the surname is not the point. He followed an honorable
+profession: he was a doctor. He was always morose and unsociable,
+and only spoke when required by his profession. He never visited
+anyone, never extended his acquaintance beyond a silent bow, and
+lived as humbly as a hermit. The fact was, he was a learned man,
+and in those days learned men were not like other people. They
+spent their days and nights in contemplation, in reading and in
+healing disease, looked upon everything else as trivial, and had
+no time to waste a word. The inhabitants of the town understood
+this, and tried not to worry him with their visits and empty
+chatter. They were very glad that God had sent them at last a
+man who could heal diseases, and were proud that such a
+remarkable man was living in their town. 'He knows everything,'
+they said about him.
+
+"But that was not enough. They ought to have also said, 'He loves
+everyone.' In the breast of that learned man there beat a
+wonderful angelic heart. Though the people of that town were
+strangers and not his own people, yet he loved them like
+children, and did not spare himself for them. He was himself ill
+with consumption, he had a cough, but when he was summoned to the
+sick he forgot his own illness he did not spare himself and,
+gasping for breath, climbed up the hills however high they might
+be. He disregarded the sultry heat and the cold, despised thirst
+and hunger. He would accept no money and strange to say, when one
+of his patients died, he would follow the coffin with the
+relations, weeping.
+
+"And soon he became so necessary to the town that the inhabitants
+wondered how they could have got on before without the man. Their
+gratitude knew no bounds. Grown-up people and children, good and
+bad alike, honest men and cheats -- all in fact, respected him
+and knew his value. In the little town and all the surrounding
+neighborhood there was no man who would allow himself to do
+anything disagreeable to him; indeed, they would never have
+dreamed of it. When he came out of his lodging, he never
+fastened the doors or windows, in complete confidence that there
+was no thief who could bring himself to do him wrong. He often
+had in the course of his medical duties to walk along the
+highroads, through the forests and mountains haunted by numbers
+of hungry vagrants; but he felt that he was in perfect security.
+
+"One night he was returning from a patient when robbers fell upon
+him in the forest, but when they recognized him, they took off
+their hats respectfully and offered him something to eat. When he
+answered that he was not hungry, they gave him a warm
+ wrap and accompanied him as far as the town, happy that fate had
+given them the chance in some small way to show their gratitude
+to the benevolent man. Well, to be sure, my grandmother told me
+that even the horses and the cows and the dogs knew him
+and expressed their joy when they met him.
+
+"And this man who seemed by his sanctity to have guarded himself
+from every evil, to whom even brigands and frenzied men wished
+nothing but good, was one fine morning found murdered. Covered
+with blood, with his skull broken, he was lying in a ravine, and
+his pale face wore an expression of amazement. Yes, not horror
+but amazement was the emotion that had been fixed upon his face
+when he saw the murderer before him. You can imagine the grief
+that overwhelmed the inhabitants of the town and the surrounding
+districts. All were in despair, unable to believe their eyes,
+wondering who could have killed the man. The judges who conducted
+the inquiry and examined the doctor's body said: 'Here we have
+all the signs of a murder, but as there is not a man in the
+world capable of murdering our doctor, obviously it was not a
+case of murder, and the combination of evidence is due to simple
+chance. We must suppose that in the darkness he fell into the
+ravine of himself and was mortally injured.'
+
+"The whole town agreed with this opinion. The doctor was buried,
+and nothing more was said about a violent death. The existence of
+a man who could have the baseness and wickedness to kill the
+doctor seemed incredible. There is a limit even to wickedness,
+isn't there?
+
+"All at once, would you believe it, chance led them to
+discovering the murderer. A vagrant who had been many times
+convicted, notorious for his vicious life, was seen selling for
+drink a snuff-box and watch that had belonged to the doctor. When
+he was questioned he was confused, and answered with an obvious
+lie. A search was made, and in his bed was found a shirt with
+stains of blood on the sleeves, and a doctor's lancet set in
+gold. What more evidence was wanted? They put the criminal in
+prison. The inhabitants were indignant, and at the same time
+said:
+
+" 'It's incredible! It can't be so! Take care that a mistake is
+not made; it does happen, you know, that evidence tells a false
+tale.'
+
+"At his trial the murderer obstinately denied his guilt.
+Everything was against him, and to be convinced of his guilt was
+as easy as to believe that this earth is black; but the judges
+seem to have gone mad: they weighed every proof ten times, looked
+distrustfully at the witnesses, flushed crimson and sipped water.
+. . . The trial began early in the morning and was only finished
+in the evening.
+
+"'Accused!' the chief judge said, addressing the murderer, 'the
+court has found you guilty of murdering Dr. So-and-so, and has
+sentenced you to. . . .'
+
+"The chief judge meant to say 'to the death penalty,' but he
+dropped from his hands the paper on which the sentence was
+written, wiped the cold sweat from his face, and cried out:
+
+"'No! May God punish me if I judge wrongly, but I swear he is
+not guilty. I cannot admit the thought that there exists a man
+who would dare to murder our friend the doctor! A man could not
+sink so low!'
+
+"'There cannot be such a man!' the other judges assented.
+
+"'No,' the crowd cried. 'Let him go!'
+
+"The murderer was set free to go where he chose, and not one soul
+blamed the court for an unjust verdict. And my grandmother used
+to say that for such faith in humanity God forgave the sins of
+all the inhabitants of that town. He rejoices when people
+believe that man is His image and semblance, and grieves if,
+forgetful of human dignity, they judge worse of men than of dogs.
+The sentence of acquittal may bring harm to the inhabitants of
+the town, but on the other hand, think of the beneficial
+influence upon them of that faith in man -- a faith which does
+not remain dead, you know; it raises up generous feelings in us,
+and always impels us to love and respect every man. Every man!
+And that is important."
+
+Mihail Karlovitch had finished. My neighbor would have urged some
+objection, but the head-gardener made a gesture that signified
+that he did not like objections; then he walked away to the
+carts, and, with an expression of dignity, went on looking after
+the packing.
+
+THE BEAUTIES
+
+I
+
+I REMEMBER, when I was a high school boy in the fifth or sixth
+class, I was driving with my grandfather from the village of
+Bolshoe Kryepkoe in the Don region to Rostov-on-the-Don. It was a
+sultry, languidly dreary day of August. Our eyes were glued
+together, and our mouths were parched from the heat and the dry
+burning wind which drove clouds of dust to meet us; one did not
+want to look or speak or think, and when our drowsy driver, a
+Little Russian called Karpo, swung his whip at the horses and
+lashed me on my cap, I did not protest or utter a sound, but
+only, rousing myself from half-slumber, gazed mildly and
+dejectedly into the distance to see whether there was a village
+visible through the dust. We stopped to feed the horses in a big
+Armenian village at a rich Armenian's whom my grandfather knew.
+Never in my life have I seen a greater caricature than that
+Armenian. Imagine a little shaven head with thick overhanging
+eyebrows, a beak of a nose, long gray mustaches, and a wide
+mouth with a long cherry-wood chibouk sticking out of it. This
+little head was clumsily attached to a lean hunch-back carcass
+attired in a fantastic garb, a short red jacket, and full bright
+blue trousers. This figure walked straddling its legs and
+shuffling with its slippers, spoke without taking the chibouk out
+of its mouth, and behaved with truly Armenian dignity, not
+smiling, but staring with wide-open eyes and trying to take as
+little notice as possible of its guests.
+
+There was neither wind nor dust in the Armenian's rooms, but it
+was just as unpleasant, stifling, and dreary as in the steppe and
+on the road. I remember, dusty and exhausted by the heat, I sat
+in the corner on a green box. The unpainted wooden walls, the
+furniture, and the floors colored with yellow ocher smelt of dry
+wood baked by the sun. Wherever I looked there were flies and
+flies and flies. . . . Grandfather and the Armenian were talking
+about grazing, about manure, and about oats. .
+ . . I knew that they would be a good hour getting the samovar;
+that grandfather would be not less than an hour drinking his tea,
+and then would lie down to sleep for two or three hours; that I
+should waste a quarter of the day waiting, after which there
+would be again the heat, the dust, the jolting cart. I heard the
+muttering of the two voices, and it began to seem to me that I
+had been seeing the Armenian, the cupboard with the crockery, the
+flies, the windows with the burning sun beating on them, for
+ages and ages, and should only cease to see them in the far-off
+future, and I was seized with hatred for the steppe, the sun, the
+flies.. . .
+
+A Little Russian peasant woman in a kerchief brought in a tray of
+tea-things, then the samovar. The Armenian went slowly out into
+the passage and shouted: "Mashya, come and pour out tea! Where
+are you, Mashya?"
+
+Hurried footsteps were heard, and there came into the room a girl
+of sixteen in a simple cotton dress and a white kerchief. As she
+washed the crockery and poured out the tea, she was standing with
+her back to me, and all I could see was that she was of a
+slender figure, barefooted, and that her little bare heels were
+covered by long trousers.
+
+The Armenian invited me to have tea. Sitting down to the table, I
+glanced at the girl, who was handing me a glass of tea, and felt
+all at once as though a wind were blowing over my soul and
+blowing away all the impressions of the day with their dust and
+dreariness. I saw the bewitching features of the most beautiful
+face I have ever met in real life or in my dreams. Before me
+stood a beauty, and I recognized that at the first glance as I
+should have recognized lightning.
+
+I am ready to swear that Masha -- or, as her father called her,
+Mashya -- was a real beauty, but I don't know how to prove it. It
+sometimes happens that clouds are huddled together in disorder on
+the horizon, and the sun hiding behind them colors them and the
+sky with tints of every possible shade--crimson, orange, gold,
+lilac, muddy pink; one cloud is like a monk, another like a fish,
+a third like a Turk in a turban. The glow of sunset enveloping a
+third of the sky gleams on the cross on the church, flashes on
+the windows of the manor house, is reflected in the river and the
+puddles, quivers on the trees; far, far away against the
+background of the sunset, a flock of wild ducks is flying
+homewards. . . . And the boy herding the cows, and the surveyor
+driving in his chaise over the dam, and the gentleman out for a
+walk, all gaze at the sunset, and every one of them thinks it
+terribly beautiful, but no one knows or can say in what its
+beauty lies.
+
+I was not the only one to think the Armenian girl beautiful. My
+grandfather, an old man of seventy, gruff and indifferent to
+women and the beauties of nature, looked caressingly at Masha for
+a full minute, and asked:
+
+"Is that your daughter, Avert Nazaritch?"
+
+"Yes, she is my daughter," answered the Armenian.
+
+"A fine young lady," said my grandfather approvingly.
+
+An artist would have called the Armenian girl's beauty classical
+and severe, it was just that beauty, the contemplation of which
+-- God knows why!-- inspires in one the conviction that one is
+seeing correct features; that hair, eyes, nose, mouth, neck,
+bosom, and every movement of the young body all go together in
+one complete harmonious accord in which nature has not blundered
+over the smallest line. You fancy for some reason that the
+ideally beautiful woman must have such a nose as Masha's,
+straight and slightly aquiline, just such great dark eyes, such
+long lashes, such a languid glance; you fancy that her black
+curly hair and eyebrows go with the soft white tint of her brow
+and cheeks as the green reeds go with the quiet stream. Masha's
+white neck and her youthful bosom were not fully developed, but
+you fancy the sculptor would need a great creative genius to mold
+them. You gaze, and little by little the desire comes over you to
+say to Masha something extraordinarily pleasant, sincere,
+beautiful, as beautiful as she herself was.
+
+At first I felt hurt and abashed that Masha took no notice of me,
+but was all the time looking down; it seemed to me as though a
+peculiar atmosphere, proud and happy, separated her from me and
+jealously screened her from my eyes.
+
+"That's because I am covered with dust," I thought, "am sunburnt,
+and am still a boy."
+
+But little by little I forgot myself, and gave myself up entirely
+to the consciousness of beauty. I thought no more now of the
+dreary steppe, of the dust, no longer heard the buzzing of the
+flies, no longer tasted the tea, and felt nothing except that a
+beautiful girl was standing only the other side of the table.
+
+I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor
+ecstacy, nor enjoyment that Masha excited in me, but a painful
+though pleasant sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined as
+a dream. For some reason I felt sorry for myself, for my
+grandfather and for the Armenian, even for the girl herself, and
+I had a feeling as though we all four had lost something
+important and essential to life which we should never find again.
+My grandfather, too, grew melancholy; he talked no more about
+manure or about oats, but sat silent, looking pensively at
+Masha.
+
+After tea my grandfather lay down for a nap while I went out of
+the house into the porch. The house, like all the houses in the
+Armenian village stood in the full sun; there was not a tree, not
+an awning, no shade. The Armenian's great courtyard, overgrown
+with goosefoot and wild mallows, was lively and full of gaiety in
+spite of the great heat. Threshing was going on behind one of the
+low hurdles which intersected the big yard here and there. Round
+a post stuck into the middle of the threshing-floor ran a dozen
+horses harnessed side by side, so that they formed one long
+radius. A Little Russian in a long waistcoat and full trousers
+was walking beside them, cracking a whip and shouting in a tone
+that sounded as though he were jeering at the horses and showing
+off his power over them.
+
+"A--a--a, you damned brutes! . . . A--a--a, plague take you! Are
+you frightened?"
+
+The horses, sorrel, white, and piebald, not understanding why
+they were made to run round in one place and to crush the wheat
+straw, ran unwillingly as though with effort, swinging their
+tails with an offended air. The wind raised up perfect clouds
+of golden chaff from under their hoofs and carried it away far
+beyond the hurdle. Near the tall fresh stacks peasant women were
+swarming with rakes, and carts were moving, and beyond the stacks
+in another yard another dozen similar horses were running round
+a post, and a similar Little Russian was cracking his whip and
+jeering at the horses.
+
+The steps on which I was sitting were hot; on the thin rails and
+here and there on the window-frames sap was oozing out of the
+wood from the heat; red ladybirds were huddling together in the
+streaks of shadow under the steps and under the shutters.
+The sun was baking me on my head, on my chest, and on my back,
+but I did not notice it, and was conscious only of the thud of
+bare feet on the uneven floor in the passage and in the rooms
+behind me. After clearing away the tea-things, Masha ran down
+the steps, fluttering the air as she passed, and like a bird flew
+into a little grimy outhouse--I suppose the kitchen--from which
+came the smell of roast mutton and the sound of angry talk in
+Armenian. She vanished into the dark doorway, and in her place
+there appeared on the threshold an old bent, red-faced Armenian
+woman wearing green trousers. The old woman was angry and was
+scolding someone. Soon afterwards Masha appeared in the doorway,
+flushed with the heat of the kitchen and carrying a big black
+loaf on her shoulder; swaying gracefully under the weight of the
+bread, she ran across the yard to the threshing-floor, darted
+over the hurdle, and, wrapt in a cloud of golden chaff, vanished
+behind the carts. The Little Russian who was driving the horses
+lowered his whip, sank into silence, and gazed for a minute in
+the direction of the carts. Then when the Armenian girl darted
+again by the horses and leaped over the hurdle, he followed her
+with his eyes, and shouted to the horses in a tone as though he
+were greatly disappointed:
+
+"Plague take you, unclean devils!"
+
+And all the while I was unceasingly hearing her bare feet, and
+seeing how she walked across the yard with a grave, preoccupied
+face. She ran now down the steps, swishing the air about me, now
+into the kitchen, now to the threshing-floor, now through the
+gate, and I could hardly turn my head quickly enough to watch
+her.
+
+And the oftener she fluttered by me with her beauty, the more
+acute became my sadness. I felt sorry both for her and for myself
+and for the Little Russian, who mournfully watched her every time
+she ran through the cloud of chaff to the carts. Whether it was
+envy of her beauty, or that I was regretting that the girl was
+not mine, and never would be, or that I was a stranger to her; or
+whether I vaguely felt that her rare beauty was accidental,
+unnecessary, and, like everything on earth, of short duration;
+or whether, perhaps, my sadness was that peculiar feeling which
+is excited in man by the contemplation of real beauty, God only
+knows.
+
+The three hours of waiting passed unnoticed. It seemed to me that
+I had not had time to look properly at Masha when Karpo drove up
+to the river, bathed the horse, and began to put it in the
+shafts. The wet horse snorted with pleasure and kicked his
+hoofs against the shafts. Karpo shouted to it: "Ba--ack!" My
+grandfather woke up. Masha opened the creaking gates for us, we
+got into the chaise and drove out of the yard. We drove in
+silence as though we were angry with one another.
+
+When, two or three hours later, Rostov and Nahitchevan appeared
+in the distance, Karpo, who had been silent the whole time,
+looked round quickly, and said:
+
+"A fine wench, that at the Armenian's."
+
+And he lashed his horses.
+
+II
+
+Another time, after I had become a student, I was traveling by
+rail to the south. It was May. At one of the stations, I believe
+it was between Byelgorod and Harkov, I got out of the tram to
+walk about the platform.
+
+The shades of evening were already lying on the station garden,
+on the platform, and on the fields; the station screened off the
+sunset, but on the topmost clouds of smoke from the engine, which
+were tinged with rosy light, one could see the sun had not yet
+quite vanished.
+
+As I walked up and down the platform I noticed that the greater
+number of the passengers were standing or walking near a
+second-class compartment, and that they looked as though some
+celebrated person were in that compartment. Among the curious
+whom I met near this compartment I saw, however, an artillery
+officer who had been my fellow-traveler, an intelligent, cordial,
+and sympathetic fellow--as people mostly are whom we meet on our
+travels by chance and with whom we are not long acquainted.
+
+"What are you looking at there?" I asked.
+
+He made no answer, but only indicated with his eyes a feminine
+figure. It was a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, wearing a
+Russian dress, with her head bare and a little shawl flung
+carelessly on one shoulder; not a passenger, but I suppose a
+sister or daughter of the station-master. She was standing near
+the carriage window, talking to an elderly woman who was in the
+train. Before I had time to realize what I was seeing, I was
+suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling I had once experienced in
+the Armenian village.
+
+The girl was remarkably beautiful, and that was unmistakable to
+me and to those who were looking at her as I was.
+
+If one is to describe her appearance feature by feature, as the
+practice is, the only really lovely thing was her thick wavy fair
+hair, which hung loose with a black ribbon tied round her head;
+all the other features were either irregular or very ordinary.
+Either from a peculiar form of coquettishness, or from
+short-sightedness, her eyes were screwed up, her nose had an
+undecided tilt, her mouth was small, her profile was feebly and
+insipidly drawn, her shoulders were narrow and undeveloped for
+her age -- and yet the girl made the impression of being really
+beautiful, and looking at her, I was able to feel convinced that
+the Russian face does not need strict regularity in order to be
+lovely; what is more, that if instead of her turn-up nose the
+girl had been given a different one, correct and plastically
+irreproachable like the Armenian girl's, I fancy her face would
+have lost all its charm from the change.
+
+Standing at the window talking, the girl, shrugging at the
+evening damp, continually looking round at us, at one moment put
+her arms akimbo, at the next raised her hands to her head to
+straighten her hair, talked, laughed, while her face at one
+moment wore an expression of wonder, the next of horror, and I
+don't remember a moment when her face and body were at rest. The
+whole secret and magic of her beauty lay just in these tiny,
+infinitely elegant movements, in her smile, in the play of her
+face, in her rapid glances at us, in the combination of the
+subtle grace of her movements with her youth, her freshness, the
+purity of her soul that sounded in her laugh and voice, and with
+the weakness we love so much in children, in birds, in fawns,
+and in young trees.
+
+It was that butterfly's beauty so in keeping with waltzing,
+darting about the garden, laughter and gaiety, and incongruous
+with serious thought, grief, and repose; and it seemed as though
+a gust of wind blowing over the platform, or a fall of rain,
+would be enough to wither the fragile body and scatter the
+capricious beauty like the pollen of a flower.
+
+"So--o! . . ." the officer muttered with a sigh when, after the
+second bell, we went back to our compartment.
+
+And what that "So--o" meant I will not undertake to decide.
+
+Perhaps he was sad, and did not want to go away from the beauty
+and the spring evening into the stuffy train; or perhaps he, like
+me, was unaccountably sorry for the beauty, for himself, and for
+me, and for all the passengers, who were listlessly and
+reluctantly sauntering back to their compartments. As we passed
+the station window, at which a pale, red-haired telegraphist with
+upstanding curls and a faded, broad-cheeked face was sitting
+beside his apparatus, the officer heaved a sigh and said:
+
+"I bet that telegraphist is in love with that pretty girl. To
+live out in the wilds under one roof with that ethereal creature
+and not fall in love is beyond the power of man. And what a
+calamity, my friend! what an ironical fate, to be stooping,
+unkempt, gray, a decent fellow and not a fool, and to be in love
+with that pretty, stupid little girl who would never take a scrap
+of notice of you! Or worse still: imagine that telegraphist is in
+love, and at the same time married, and that his wife is as
+stooping, as unkempt, and as decent a person as himself."
+
+On the platform between our carriage and the next the guard was
+standing with his elbows on the railing, looking in the direction
+of the beautiful girl, and his battered, wrinkled, unpleasantly
+beefy face, exhausted by sleepless nights and the jolting of the
+train, wore a look of tenderness and of the deepest sadness, as
+though in that girl he saw happiness, his own youth, soberness,
+purity, wife, children; as though he were repenting and feeling
+in his whole being that that girl was not his, and that for him,
+with his premature old age, his uncouthness, and his beefy face,
+the ordinary happiness of a man and a passenger was as far away
+as heaven. . . .
+
+The third bell rang, the whistles sounded, and the train slowly
+moved off. First the guard, the station-master, then the garden,
+the beautiful girl with her exquisitely sly smile, passed before
+our windows. . . .
+
+Putting my head out and looking back, I saw how, looking after
+the train, she walked along the platform by the window where the
+telegraph clerk was sitting, smoothed her hair, and ran into the
+garden. The station no longer screened off the sunset, the plain
+lay open before us, but the sun had already set and the smoke lay
+in black clouds over the green, velvety young corn. It was
+melancholy in the spring air, and in the darkening sky, and in
+the railway carriage.
+
+The familiar figure of the guard came into the carriage, and he
+began lighting the candles.
+
+THE SHOEMAKER AND THE DEVIL
+
+IT was Christmas Eve. Marya had long been snoring on the stove;
+all the paraffin in the little lamp had burnt out, but Fyodor
+Nilov still sat at work. He would long ago have flung aside his
+work and gone out into the street, but a customer from Kolokolny
+Lane, who had a fortnight before ordered some boots, had been in
+the previous day, had abused him roundly, and had ordered him to
+finish the boots at once before the morning service.
+
+"It's a convict's life!" Fyodor grumbled as he worked. "Some
+people have been asleep long ago, others are enjoying themselves,
+while you sit here like some Cain and sew for the devil knows
+whom. . . ."
+
+To save himself from accidentally falling asleep, he kept taking
+a bottle from under the table and drinking out of it, and after
+every pull at it he twisted his head and said aloud:
+
+"What is the reason, kindly tell me, that customers enjoy
+themselves while I am forced to sit and work for them? Because
+they have money and I am a beggar?"
+
+He hated all his customers, especially the one who lived in
+Kolokolny Lane. He was a gentleman of gloomy appearance, with
+long hair, a yellow face, blue spectacles, and a husky voice. He
+had a German name which one could not pronounce. It was
+impossible to tell what was his calling and what he did. When, a
+fortnight before, Fyodor had gone to take his measure, he, the
+customer, was sitting on the floor pounding something in a
+mortar. Before Fyodor had time to say good-morning the contents
+of the mortar suddenly flared up and burned with a bright red
+flame; there was a stink of sulphur and burnt feathers, and the
+room was filled with a thick pink smoke, so that Fyodor sneezed
+five times; and as he returned home afterwards, he
+thought: "Anyone who feared God would not have anything to do
+with things like that."
+
+When there was nothing left in the bottle Fyodor put the boots on
+the table and sank into thought. He leaned his heavy head on his
+fist and began thinking of his poverty, of his hard life with no
+glimmer of light in it. Then he thought of the rich,
+of their big houses and their carriages, of their hundred-rouble
+notes. . . . How nice it would be if the houses of these rich men
+-- the devil flay them! -- were smashed, if their horses died, if
+their fur coats and sable caps got shabby! How splendid it would
+be if the rich, little by little, changed into beggars having
+nothing, and he, a poor shoemaker, were to become rich, and were
+to lord it over some other poor shoemaker on Christmas Eve.
+
+Dreaming like this, Fyodor suddenly thought of his work, and
+opened his eyes.
+
+"Here's a go," he thought, looking at the boots. "The job has
+been finished ever so long ago, and I go on sitting here. I must
+take the boots to the gentleman."
+
+He wrapped up the work in a red handkerchief, put on his things,
+and went out into the street. A fine hard snow was falling,
+pricking the face as though with needles. It was cold, slippery,
+dark, the gas-lamps burned dimly, and for some reason there was
+a smell of paraffin in the street, so that Fyodor coughed and
+cleared his throat. Rich men were driving to and fro on the road,
+and every rich man had a ham and a bottle of vodka in his hands.
+Rich young ladies peeped at Fyodor out of the carriages and
+sledges, put out their tongues and shouted, laughing:
+
+"Beggar! Beggar!"
+
+Students, officers, and merchants walked behind Fyodor, jeering
+at him and crying:
+
+"Drunkard! Drunkard! Infidel cobbler! Soul of a boot-leg!
+Beggar!"
+
+All this was insulting, but Fyodor held his tongue and only spat
+in disgust. But when Kuzma Lebyodkin from Warsaw, a
+master-bootmaker, met him and said: "I've married a rich woman
+and I have men working under me, while you are a beggar and have
+nothing to eat," Fyodor could not refrain from running after him.
+He pursued him till he found himself in Kolokolny Lane. His
+customer lived in the fourth house from the corner on the very
+top floor. To reach him one had to go through a long, dark
+courtyard, and then to climb up a very high slipp ery stair-case
+which tottered under one's feet. When Fyodor went in to him he
+was sitting on the floor pounding something in a mortar, just as
+he had been the fortnight before.
+
+"Your honor, I have brought your boots," said Fyodor sullenly.
+
+The customer got up and began trying on the boots in silence.
+Desiring to help him, Fyodor went down on one knee and pulled off
+his old, boot, but at once jumped up and staggered towards the
+door in horror. The customer had not a foot, but a hoof like a
+horse's.
+
+"Aha!" thought Fyodor; "here's a go!"
+
+The first thing should have been to cross himself, then to leave
+everything and run downstairs; but he immediately reflected that
+he was meeting a devil for the first and probably the last time,
+and not to take advantage of his services would be foolish. He
+controlled himself and determined to try his luck. Clasping his
+hands behind him to avoid making the sign of the cross, he
+coughed respectfully and began:
+
+"They say that there is nothing on earth more evil and impure
+than the devil, but I am of the opinion, your honor, that the
+devil is highly educated. He has -- excuse my saying it -- hoofs
+and a tail behind, but he has more brains than many a student."
+
+"I like you for what you say," said the devil, flattered. "Thank
+you, shoemaker! What do you want?"
+
+And without loss of time the shoemaker began complaining of his
+lot. He began by saying that from his childhood up he had envied
+the rich. He had always resented it that all people did not live
+alike in big houses and drive with good horses. Why, he asked,
+was he poor? How was he worse than Kuzma Lebyodkin from Warsaw,
+who had his own house, and whose wife wore a hat? He had the same
+sort of nose, the same hands, feet, head, and back, as the rich,
+and so why was he forced to work when others were enjoying
+themselves? Why was he married to Marya and not to a lady
+smelling of scent? He had often seen beautiful young ladies in
+the houses of rich customers, but they either took no notice of
+him whatever, or else sometimes laughed and whispered to each
+other: "What a red nose that shoemaker has!" It was true that
+Marya was a good, kind, hard-working woman, but she was not
+educated; her hand was heavy and hit hard, and if one had
+occasion to speak of politics or anything intellectual before
+her, she would put her spoke in and talk the most awful nonsense.
+
+"What do you want, then?" his customer interrupted him.
+
+"I beg you, your honor Satan Ivanitch, to be graciously pleased
+to make me a rich man."
+
+"Certainly. Only for that you must give me up your soul! Before
+the cocks crow, go and sign on this paper here that you give me
+up your soul."
+
+"Your honor," said Fyodor politely, "when you ordered a pair of
+boots from me I did not ask for the money in advance. One has
+first to carry out the order and then ask for payment."
+
+"Oh, very well!" the customer assented.
+
+A bright flame suddenly flared up in the mortar, a pink thick
+smoke came puffing out, and there was a smell of burnt feathers
+and sulphur. When the smoke had subsided, Fyodor rubbed his eyes
+and saw that he was no longer Fyodor, no longer a shoemaker, but
+quite a different man, wearing a waistcoat and a watch-chain, in
+a new pair of trousers, and that he was sitting in an armchair at
+a big table. Two foot men were handing him dishes, bowing low and
+saying:
+
+"Kindly eat, your honor, and may it do you good!"
+
+What wealth! The footmen handed him a big piece of roast mutton
+and a dish of cucumbers, and then brought in a frying-pan a roast
+goose, and a little afterwards boiled pork with horse-radish
+cream. And how dignified, how genteel it all was! Fyodor ate,
+and before each dish drank a big glass of excellent vodka, like
+some general or some count. After the pork he was handed some
+boiled grain moistened with goose fat, then an omelette with
+bacon fat, then fried liver, and he went on eating and was
+delighted. What more? They served, too, a pie with onion and
+steamed turnip with kvass.
+
+"How is it the gentry don't burst with such meals?" he thought.
+
+In conclusion they handed him a big pot of honey. After dinner
+the devil appeared in blue spectacles and asked with a low bow:
+
+"Are you satisfied with your dinner, Fyodor Pantelyeitch?"
+
+But Fyodor could not answer one word, he was so stuffed after his
+dinner. The feeling of repletion was unpleasant, oppressive, and
+to distract his thoughts he looked at the boot on his left foot.
+
+"For a boot like that I used not to take less than seven and a
+half roubles. What shoemaker made it?" he asked.
+
+"Kuzma Lebyodkin," answered the footman.
+
+"Send for him, the fool!"
+
+Kuzma Lebyodkin from Warsaw soon made his appearance. He stopped
+in a respectful attitude at the door and asked:
+
+"What are your orders, your honor?"
+
+"Hold your tongue!" cried Fyodor, and stamped his foot. "Don't
+dare to argue; remember your place as a cobbler! Blockhead! You
+don't know how to make boots! I'll beat your ugly phiz to a
+jelly! Why have you come?"
+
+"For money."
+
+"What money? Be off! Come on Saturday! Boy, give him a cuff!"
+
+But he at once recalled what a life the customers used to lead
+him, too, and he felt heavy at heart, and to distract his
+attention he took a fat pocketbook out of his pocket and began
+counting his money. There was a great deal of money, but Fyodor
+wanted more still. The devil in the blue spectacles brought him
+another notebook fatter still, but he wanted even more; and the
+more he counted it, the more discontented he became.
+
+In the evening the evil one brought him a full-bosomed lady in a
+red dress, and said that this was his new wife. He spent the
+whole evening kissing her and eating gingerbreads, and at night
+he went to bed on a soft, downy feather-bed, turned from side to
+side, and could not go to sleep. He felt uncanny.
+
+"We have a great deal of money," he said to his wife; "we must
+look out or thieves will be breaking in. You had better go and
+look with a candle."
+
+He did not sleep all night, and kept getting up to see if his box
+was all right. In the morning he had to go to church to matins.
+In church the same honor is done to rich and poor alike. When
+Fyodor was poor he used to pray in church like this: "God,
+forgive me, a sinner!" He said the same thing now though he had
+become rich. What difference was there? And after death Fyodor
+rich would not be buried in gold, not in diamonds, but in the
+same black earth as the poorest beggar. Fyodor would burn in the
+same fire as cobblers. Fyodor resented all this, and, too, he
+felt weighed down all over by his dinner, and instead of prayer
+he had all sorts of thoughts in his head about his box of money,
+about thieves, about his bartered, ruined soul.
+
+He came out of church in a bad temper. To drive away his
+unpleasant thoughts as he had often done before, he struck up a
+song at the top of his voice. But as soon as he began a policeman
+ran up and said, with his fingers to the peak of his cap:
+
+"Your honor, gentlefolk must not sing in the street! You are not
+a shoemaker!"
+
+Fyodor leaned his back against a fence and fell to thinking: what
+could he do to amuse himself?
+
+"Your honor," a porter shouted to him, "don't lean against the
+fence, you will spoil your fur coat!"
+
+Fyodor went into a shop and bought himself the very best
+concertina, then went out into the street playing it. Everybody
+pointed at him and laughed.
+
+"And a gentleman, too," the cabmen jeered at him; "like some
+cobbler. . . ."
+
+"Is it the proper thing for gentlefolk to be disorderly in the
+street?" a policeman said to him. "You had better go into a
+tavern!"
+
+"Your honor, give us a trifle, for Christ's sake," the beggars
+wailed, surrounding Fyodor on all sides.
+
+In earlier days when he was a shoemaker the beggars took no
+notice of him, now they wouldn't let him pass.
+
+And at home his new wife, the lady, was waiting for him, dressed
+in a green blouse and a red skirt. He meant to be attentive to
+her, and had just lifted his arm to give her a good clout on the
+back, but she said angrily:
+
+"Peasant! Ignorant lout! You don't know how to behave with
+ladies! If you love me you will kiss my hand; I don't allow you
+to beat me."
+
+"This is a blasted existence!" thought Fyodor. "People do lead a
+life! You mustn't sing, you mustn't play the concertina, you
+mustn't have a lark with a lady. . . . Pfoo!"
+
+He had no sooner sat down to tea with the lady when the evil
+spirit in the blue spectacles appeared and said:
+
+"Come, Fyodor Pantelyeitch, I have performed my part of the
+bargain. Now sign your paper and come along with me!"
+
+And he dragged Fyodor to hell, straight to the furnace, and
+devils flew up from all directions and shouted:
+
+"Fool! Blockhead! Ass!"
+
+There was a fearful smell of paraffin in hell, enough to
+suffocate one. And suddenly it all vanished. Fyodor opened his
+eyes and saw his table, the boots, and the tin lamp. The
+lamp-glass was black, and from the faint light on the wick came
+clouds of stinking smoke as from a chimney. Near the table stood
+the customer in the blue spectacles, shouting angrily:
+
+"Fool! Blockhead! Ass! I'll give you a lesson, you scoundrel! You
+took the order a fortnight ago and the boots aren't ready yet! Do
+you suppose I want to come trapesing round here half a dozen
+times a day for my boots? You wretch! you brute!"
+
+Fyodor shook his head and set to work on the boots. The customer
+went on swearing and threatening him for a long time. At last
+when he subsided, Fyodor asked sullenly:
+
+"And what is your occupation, sir?"
+
+"I make Bengal lights and fireworks. I am a pyrotechnician."
+
+They began ringing for matins. Fyodor gave the customer the
+boots, took the money for them, and went to church.
+
+Carriages and sledges with bearskin rugs were dashing to and fro
+in the street; merchants, ladies, officers were walking along the
+pavement together with the humbler folk. . . . But Fyodor did not
+envy them nor repine at his lot. It seemed to him now that rich
+and poor were equally badly off. Some were able to drive in a
+carriage, and others to sing songs at the top of their voice and
+to play the concertina, but one and the same thing, the same
+grave, was awaiting all alike, and there was  nothing in life for
+which one would give the devil even a tiny scrap of one's soul.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Schoolmistress and other Stories by
+Chekhov
+