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+Project Gutenberg's Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian, by Various
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+Title: Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5741]
+[This file was first posted on August 20, 2002]
+[Date last updated: June 1, 2005]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUSSIAN STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nicole Apostola, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+STORIES BY FOREIGN AUTHORS
+
+RUSSIAN
+
+MUMU.................BY IVAN TURGENEV
+
+THE SHOT.............BY ALEXANDER POUSHKIN
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE.......BY NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
+
+AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE..BY LYOF N. TOLSTOI
+
+
+NEW YORK
+1898
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+MUMU...................Ivan Turgenev
+THE SHOT...............Alexander Poushkin
+ST. JOHN'S EVE.........Nikolai Vasilievitch Gogol
+AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE... Lyof N. Tolstoi
+
+
+
+
+MUMU
+
+BY
+
+IVAN TURGENEV
+
+From "Torrents of Spring."  Translated by Constance Garnett.
+
+
+In one of the outlying streets of Moscow, in a gray house with white
+columns and a balcony, warped all askew, there was once living a lady, a
+widow, surrounded by a numerous household of serfs.  Her sons were in the
+government service at Petersburg; her daughters were married; she went
+out very little, and in solitude lived through the last years of her
+miserly and dreary old age.  Her day, a joyless and gloomy day, had long
+been over; but the evening of her life was blacker than night.
+
+Of all her servants, the most remarkable personage was the porter,
+Gerasim, a man full twelve inches over the normal height, of heroic
+build, and deaf and dumb from his birth.  The lady, his owner, had
+brought him up from the village where he lived alone in a little hut,
+apart from his brothers, and was reckoned about the most punctual of her
+peasants in the payment of the seignorial dues.  Endowed with
+extraordinary strength, he did the work of four men; work flew apace
+under his hands, and it was a pleasant sight to see him when he was
+ploughing, while, with his huge palms pressing hard upon the plough, he
+seemed alone, unaided by his poor horse, to cleave the yielding bosom of
+the earth, or when, about St. Peter's Day, he plied his scythe with a
+furious energy that might have mown a young birch copse up by the roots,
+or swiftly and untiringly wielded a flail over two yards long; while the
+hard oblong muscles of his shoulders rose and fell like a lever.  His
+perpetual silence lent a solemn dignity to his unwearying labor.  He was
+a splendid peasant, and, except for his affliction, any girl would have
+been glad to marry him. . . But now they had taken Gerasim to Moscow,
+bought him boots, had him made a full-skirted coat for summer, a
+sheepskin for winter, put into his hand a broom and a spade, and
+appointed him porter.
+
+At first he intensely disliked his new mode of life.  From his childhood
+he had been used to field labor, to village life.  Shut off by his
+affliction from the society of men, he had grown up, dumb and mighty, as
+a tree grows on a fruitful soil.  When he was transported to the town, he
+could not understand what was being done with him; he was miserable and
+stupefied, with the stupefaction of some strong young bull, taken
+straight from the meadow, where the rich grass stood up to his belly,
+taken and put in the truck of a railway train, and there, while smoke
+and sparks and gusts of steam puff out upon the sturdy beast, he is
+whirled onwards, whirled along with loud roar and whistle, whither--God
+knows!  What Gerasim had to do in his new duties seemed a mere trifle to
+him after his hard toil as a peasant; in half an hour all his work was
+done, and he would once more stand stock-still in the middle of the
+courtyard, staring open-mouthed at all the passers-by, as though trying
+to wrest from them the explanation of his perplexing position; or he
+would suddenly go off into some corner, and flinging a long way off the
+broom or the spade, throw himself on his face on the ground, and lie for
+hours together without stirring, like a caged beast.  But man gets used
+to anything, and Gerasim got used at last to living in town.  He had
+little work to do; his whole duty consisted in keeping the courtyard
+clean, bringing in a barrel of water twice a day, splitting and dragging
+in wood for the kitchen and the house, keeping out strangers, and
+watching at night.  And it must be said he did his duty zealously.  In his
+courtyard there was never a shaving lying about, never a speck of dust;
+if sometimes, in the muddy season, the wretched nag, put under his
+charge for fetching water, got stuck in the road, he would simply give
+it a shove with his shoulder, and set not only the cart but the horse
+itself moving.  If he set to chopping wood, the axe fairly rang like
+glass, and chips and chunks flew in all directions.  And as for
+strangers, after he had one night caught two thieves and knocked their
+heads together--knocked them so that there was not the slightest need to
+take them to the police-station afterwards--every one in the
+neighborhood began to feel a great respect for him; even those who came
+in the daytime, by no means robbers, but simply unknown persons, at the
+sight of the terrible porter, waved and shouted to him as though he
+could hear their shouts.  With all the rest of the servants, Gerasim was
+on terms hardly friendly--they were afraid of him--but familiar; he
+regarded them as his fellows.  They explained themselves to him by signs,
+and he understood them, and exactly carried out all orders, but knew his
+own rights too, and soon no one dared to take his seat at the table.
+Gerasim was altogether of a strict and serious temper, he liked order in
+everything; even the cocks did not dare to fight in his presence, or woe
+betide them!  Directly he caught sight of them, he would seize them by
+the legs, swing them ten times round in the air like a wheel, and throw
+them in different directions.  There were geese, too, kept in the yard;
+but the goose, as is well known, is a dignified and reasonable bird:
+Gerasim felt a respect for them, looked after them, and fed them; he was
+himself not unlike a gander of the steppes.  He was assigned a little
+garret over the kitchen; he arranged it himself to his own liking, made
+a bedstead in it of oak boards on four stumps of wood for legs--a truly
+Titanic bedstead; one might have put a ton or two on it--it would not
+have bent under the load; under the bed was a solid chest; in a corner
+stood a little table of the same strong kind, and near the table a
+three-legged stool, so solid and squat that Gerasim himself would
+sometimes pick it up and drop it again with a smile of delight.  The
+garret was locked up by means of a padlock that looked like a kalatch or
+basket-shaped loaf, only black; the key of this padlock Gerasim always
+carried about him in his girdle.  He did not like people to come to his
+garret.
+
+So passed a year, at the end of which a little incident befell Gerasim.
+
+The old lady, in whose service he lived as porter, adhered in everything
+to the ancient ways, and kept a large number of servants.  In her house
+were not only laundresses, sempstresses, carpenters, tailors and
+tailoresses, there was even a harness-maker--he was reckoned as a
+veterinary surgeon, too,--and a doctor for the servants; there was a
+household doctor for the mistress; there was, lastly, a shoemaker, by
+name Kapiton Klimov, a sad drunkard.  Klimov regarded himself as an
+injured creature, whose merits were unappreciated, a cultivated man from
+Petersburg, who ought not to be living in Moscow without occupation--in
+the wilds, so to speak; and if he drank, as he himself expressed it
+emphatically, with a blow on his chest, it was sorrow drove him to it.
+So one day his mistress had a conversation about him with her head
+steward, Gavrila, a man whom, judging solely from his little yellow eyes
+and nose like a duck's beak, fate itself, it seemed, had marked out as a
+person in authority.  The lady expressed her regret at the corruption of
+the morals of Kapiton, who had, only the evening before, been picked up
+somewhere in the street.
+
+"Now, Gavrila," she observed, all of a sudden, "now, if we were to marry
+him, what do you think, perhaps he would be steadier?"
+
+"Why not marry him, indeed, 'm?  He could be married, 'm," answered
+Gavrila, "and it would be a very good thing, to be sure, 'm."
+
+"Yes; only who is to marry him?"
+
+"Ay, 'm.  But that's at your pleasure, 'm.  He may, any way, so to say, be
+wanted for something; he can't be turned adrift altogether."
+
+"I fancy he likes Tatiana."
+
+Gavrila was on the point of making some reply, but he shut his lips
+tightly.
+
+"Yes! . . . let him marry Tatiana," the lady decided, taking a pinch of
+snuff complacently, "Do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, 'm," Gavrila articulated, and he withdrew.
+
+Returning to his own room (it was in a little lodge, and was almost
+filled up with metal-bound trunks), Gavrila first sent his wife away,
+and then sat down at the window and pondered.  His mistress's unexpected
+arrangement had clearly put him in a difficulty.  At last he got up and
+sent to call Kapiton.  Kapiton made his appearance. . . But before
+reporting their conversation to the reader, we consider it not out of
+place to relate in few words who was this Tatiana, whom it was to be
+Kapiton's lot to marry, and why the great lady's order had disturbed the
+steward.
+
+Tatiana, one of the laundresses referred to above (as a trained and
+skilful laundress she was in charge of the fine linen only), was a woman
+of twenty-eight, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her left cheek.  Moles
+on the left cheek are regarded as of evil omen in Russia--a token of
+unhappy life. . . Tatiana could not boast of her good luck.  From her
+earliest youth she had been badly treated; she had done the work of two,
+and had never known affection; she had been poorly clothed and had
+received the smallest wages.  Relations she had practically none; an
+uncle she had once had, a butler, left behind in the country as useless,
+and other uncles of hers were peasants--that was all.  At one time she
+had passed for a beauty, but her good looks were very soon over.  In
+disposition, she was very meek, or, rather, scared; towards herself, she
+felt perfect indifference; of others, she stood in mortal dread; she
+thought of nothing but how to get her work done in good time, never
+talked to any one, and trembled at the very name of her mistress, though
+the latter scarcely knew her by sight.  When Gerasim was brought from the
+country, she was ready to die with fear on seeing his huge figure, tried
+all she could to avoid meeting him, even dropped her eyelids when
+sometimes she chanced to run past him, hurrying from the house to the
+laundry.  Gerasim at first paid no special attention to her, then he used
+to smile when she came his way, then he began even to stare admiringly
+at her, and at last he never took his eyes off her.  She took his fancy,
+whether by the mild expression of her face or the timidity of her
+movements, who can tell?  So one day she was stealing across the yard,
+with a starched dressing-jacket of her mistress's carefully poised on her
+outspread fingers . . . some one suddenly grasped her vigorously by the
+elbow; she turned round and fairly screamed; behind her stood Gerasim.
+With a foolish smile, making inarticulate caressing grunts, he held out
+to her a gingerbread cock with gold tinsel on his tail and wings.  She
+was about to refuse it, but he thrust it forcibly into her hand, shook
+his head, walked away, and turning round, once more grunted something
+very affectionately to her.
+
+From that day forward he gave her no peace; wherever she went, he was on
+the spot at once, coming to meet her, smiling, grunting, waving his
+hands; all at once he would pull a ribbon out of the bosom of his smock
+and put it in her hand, or would sweep the dust out of her way.  The poor
+girl simply did not know how to behave or what to do.  Soon the whole
+household knew of the dumb porter's wiles; jeers, jokes, sly hints, were
+showered upon Tatiana.  At Gerasim, however, it was not every one who
+would dare to scoff; he did not like jokes; indeed, in his presence,
+she, too, was left in peace.  Whether she liked it or not, the girl found
+herself to be under his protection.  Like all deaf-mutes, he was very
+suspicious, and very readily perceived when they were laughing at him or
+at her.  One day, at dinner, the wardrobe-keeper, Tatiana's superior,
+fell to nagging, as it is called, at her, and brought the poor thing to
+such a state that she did not know where to look, and was almost crying
+with vexation.  Gerasim got up all of a sudden, stretched out his
+gigantic hand, laid it on the wardrobe-maid's head, and looked into her
+face with such grim ferocity that her head positively flopped upon the
+table.  Every one was still.  Gerasim took up his spoon again and went on
+with his cabbage-soup.  "Look at him, the dumb devil, the wood-demon!"
+they all muttered in undertones, while the wardrobe-maid got up and went
+out into the maid's room.  Another time, noticing that Kapiton--the same
+Kapiton who was the subject of the conversation reported above--was
+gossiping somewhat too attentively with Tatiana, Gerasim beckoned him to
+him, led him into the cartshed, and taking up a shaft that was standing
+in a corner by one end, lightly, but most significantly, menaced him
+with it.  Since then no one addressed a word to Tatiana.  And all this
+cost him nothing.  It is true the wardrobe-maid, as soon as she reached
+the maids' room, promptly fell into a fainting fit, and behaved
+altogether so skilfully that Gerasim's rough action reached his
+mistress's knowledge the same day.  But the capricious old lady only
+laughed, and several times, to the great offence of the wardrobe-maid,
+forced her to repeat "how he bent your head down with his heavy hand,"
+and next day she sent Gerasim a rouble.  She looked on him with favor as
+a strong and faithful watchman.  Gerasim stood in considerable awe of
+her, but, all the same, he had hopes of her favor, and was preparing to
+go to her with a petition for leave to marry Tatiana.  He was only
+waiting for a new coat, promised him by the steward, to present a proper
+appearance before his mistress, when this same mistress suddenly took it
+into her head to marry Tatiana to Kapiton.
+
+The reader will now readily understand the perturbation of mind that
+overtook the steward Gavrila after his conversation with his mistress.
+"My lady," he thought, as he sat at the window, "favors Gerasim, to be
+sure"--(Gavrila was well aware of this, and that was why he himself
+looked on him with an indulgent eye)--"still he is a speechless
+creature.  I could not, indeed, put it before the mistress that Gerasim's
+courting Tatiana.  But, after all, it's true enough; he's a queer sort of
+husband.  But on the other hand, that devil, God forgive me, has only got
+to find out they're marrying Tatiana to Kapiton, he'll smash up
+everything in the house, 'pon my soul!  There's no reasoning with him;
+why, he's such a devil, God forgive my sins, there's no getting over him
+nohow . . . 'pon my soul!"
+
+Kapiton's entrance broke the thread of Gavrila's reflections.  The
+dissipated shoemaker came in, his hands behind him, and lounging
+carelessly against a projecting angle of the wall, near the door,
+crossed his right foot in front of his left, and tossed his head, as
+much as to say, "What do you want?"
+
+Gavrila looked at Kapiton, and drummed with his fingers on the window-
+frame.  Kapiton merely screwed up his leaden eyes a little, but he did
+not look down; he even grinned slightly, and passed his hand over his
+whitish locks which were sticking up in all directions.  "Well, here I
+am.  What is it?"
+
+"You're a pretty fellow," said Gavrila, and paused.  "A pretty fellow you
+are, there's no denying!"
+
+Kapiton only twitched his little shoulders.  "Are you any better, pray?"
+he thought to himself.
+
+"Just look at yourself, now, look at yourself," Gavrila went on
+reproachfully; "now, whatever do you look like?"
+
+Kapiton serenely surveyed his shabby, tattered coat and his patched
+trousers, and with special attention stared at his burst boots,
+especially the one on the tiptoe of which his right foot so gracefully
+poised, and he fixed his eyes again on the steward.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well?" repeated Gavrila.  "Well?  And then you say well?  You look like
+Old Nick himself, God forgive my saying so, that's what you look like."
+
+Kapiton blinked rapidly.
+
+"Go on abusing me, go on, if you like, Gavrila Andreitch," he thought to
+himself again.
+
+"Here you've been drunk again," Gavrila began, "drunk again, haven't
+you?  Eh?  Come, answer me!"
+
+"Owing to the weakness of my health, I have exposed myself to spirituous
+beverages, certainly," replied Kapiton.
+
+"Owing to the weakness of your health! . . . They let you off too easy,
+that's what it is; and you've been apprenticed in Petersburg. . . Much you
+learned in your apprenticeship!  You simply eat your bread in idleness."
+
+"In that matter, Gavrila Andreitch, there is One to judge me, the Lord
+God Himself, and no one else.  He also knows what manner of man I be in
+this world, and whether I eat my bread in idleness.  And as concerning
+your contention regarding drunkenness, in that matter, too, I am not to
+blame, but rather a friend; he led me into temptation, but was
+diplomatic and got away, while I . . ."
+
+"While you were left like a goose, in the street.  Ah, you're a dissolute
+fellow!  But that's not the point," the steward went on, "I've something
+to tell you.  Our lady . . ." here he paused a minute, "it's our lady's
+pleasure that you should be married.  Do you hear?  She imagines you may
+be steadier when you're married.  Do you understand?"
+
+"To be sure I do."
+
+"Well, then.  For my part I think it would be better to give you a good
+hiding.  But there--it's her business.  Well? are you agreeable?"
+
+Kapiton grinned.
+
+"Matrimony is an excellent thing for any one, Gavrila Andreitch; and, as
+far as I am concerned, I shall be quite agreeable."
+
+"Very well, then," replied Gavrila, while he reflected to himself:
+"There's no denying the man expresses himself very properly.  Only
+there's one thing," he pursued aloud: "the wife our lady's picked out
+for you is an unlucky choice."
+
+"Why, who is she, permit me to inquire?"
+
+"Tatiana."
+
+"Tatiana?"
+
+And Kapiton opened his eyes, and moved a little away from the wall.
+
+"Well, what are you in such a taking for? . . . Isn't she to your taste,
+hey?"
+
+"Not to my taste, do you say, Gavrila Andreitch?  She's right enough, a
+hard-working steady girl. . . But you know very well yourself, Gavrila
+Andreitch, why that fellow, that wild man of the woods, that monster of
+the steppes, he's after her, you know. . ."
+
+"I know, mate, I know all about it," the butler cut him short in a tone
+of annoyance: "but there, you see . . ."
+
+"But upon my soul, Gavrila Andreitch! why, he'll kill me, by God, he
+will, he'll crush me like some fly; why, he's got a fist--why, you
+kindly look yourself what a fist he's got; why, he's simply got a fist
+like Minin Pozharsky's.  You see he's deaf, he beats and does not hear
+how he's beating!  He swings his great fists, as if he's asleep.  And
+there's no possibility of pacifying him; and for why?  Why, because, as
+you know yourself, Gavrila Andreitch, he's deaf, and what's more, has no
+more wit than the heel of my foot.  Why, he's a sort of beast, a heathen
+idol, Gavrila Andreitch, and worse . . . a block of wood; what have I done
+that I should have to suffer from him now?  Sure it is, it's all over me
+now; I've knocked about, I've had enough to put up with, I've been
+battered like an earthenware pot, but still I'm a man, after all, and
+not a worthless pot."
+
+"I know, I know, don't go talking away. . ."
+
+"Lord, my God!" the shoemaker continued warmly, "when is the end? when,
+O Lord!  A poor wretch I am, a poor wretch whose sufferings are endless!
+What a life, what a life mine's been come to think of it!  In my young
+days, I was beaten by a German I was 'prentice to; in the prime of life
+beaten by my own countrymen, and last of all, in ripe years, see what I
+have been brought to. . ."
+
+"Ugh, you flabby soul!" said Gavrila Andreitch.  "Why do you make so many
+words about it?"
+
+"Why, do you say, Gavrila Andreitch?  It's not a beating I'm afraid of,
+Gavrila Andreitch.  A gentleman may chastise me in private, but give me a
+civil word before folks, and I'm a man still; but see now, whom I've to
+do with . . ."
+
+"Come, get along," Gavrila interposed impatiently.  Kapiton turned away
+and staggered off.
+
+"But, if it were not for him," the steward shouted after him, "you would
+consent for your part?"
+
+"I signify my acquiescence," retorted Kapiton as he disappeared.
+
+His fine language did not desert him, even in the most trying positions.
+
+The steward walked several times up and down the room.
+
+"Well, call Tatiana now," he said at last.
+
+A few instants later, Tatiana had come up almost noiselessly, and was
+standing in the doorway.
+
+"What are your orders, Gavrila Andreitch?" she said in a soft voice.
+
+The steward looked at her intently.
+
+"Well, Taniusha," he said, "would you like to be married?  Our lady has
+chosen a husband for you?"
+
+"Yes, Gavrila Andreitch.  And whom has she deigned to name as a husband
+for me?" she added falteringly.
+
+"Kapiton, the shoemaker."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"He's a feather-brained fellow, that's certain.  But it's just for that
+the mistress reckons upon you."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"There's one difficulty . . . you know the deaf man, Gerasim, he's courting
+you, you see.  How did you come to bewitch such a bear?  But you see,
+he'll kill you, very like, he's such a bear . . ."
+
+"He'll kill me, Gavrila Andreitch, he'll kill me, and no mistake."
+
+"Kill you . . . Well we shall see about that.  What do you mean by saying
+he'll kill you?  Has he any right to kill you? tell me yourself."
+
+"I don't know, Gavrila Andreitch, about his having any right or not."
+
+"What a woman! why, you've made him no promise, I suppose . . ."
+
+"What are you pleased to ask of me?"
+
+The steward was silent for a little, thinking, "You're a meek soul!
+Well, that's right," he said aloud; "we'll have another talk with you
+later, now you can go, Taniusha; I see you're not unruly, certainly."
+
+Tatiana turned, steadied herself a little against the doorpost, and went
+away.
+
+"And, perhaps, our lady will forget all about this wedding by to-
+morrow," thought the steward; "and here am I worrying myself for
+nothing!  As for that insolent fellow, we must tie him down if it comes
+to that, we must let the police know . . . Ustinya Fyedorovna!" he shouted
+in a loud voice to his wife, "heat the samovar, my good soul . . ."  All
+that day Tatiana hardly went out of the laundry.  At first she had
+started crying, then she wiped away her tears, and set to work as
+before.  Kapiton stayed till late at night at the gin-shop with a friend
+of his, a man of gloomy appearance, to whom he related in detail how he
+used to live in Petersburg with a gentleman, who would have been all
+right, except he was a bit too strict, and he had a slight weakness
+besides, he was too fond of drink; and, as to the fair sex, he didn't
+stick at anything.  His gloomy companion merely said yes; but when
+Kapiton announced at last that, in a certain event, he would have to lay
+hands on himself to-morrow, his gloomy companion remarked that it was
+bedtime.  And they parted in surly silence.
+
+Meanwhile, the steward's anticipations were not fulfilled.  The old lady
+was so much taken up with the idea of Kapiton's wedding, that even in
+the night she talked of nothing else to one of her companions, who was
+kept in her house solely to entertain her in case of sleeplessness, and,
+like a night cabman, slept in the day.  When Gavrila came to her after
+morning tea with his report, her first question was: "And how about our
+wedding--is it getting on all right?"  He replied, of course, that it was
+getting on first-rate, and that Kapiton would appear before her to pay
+his reverence to her that day.  The old lady was not quite well; she did
+not give much time to business.  The steward went back to his own room,
+and called a council.  The matter certainly called for serious
+consideration.  Tatiana would make no difficulty, of course; but Kapiton
+had declared in the hearing of all that he had but one head to lose, not
+two or three. . . Gerasim turned rapid sullen looks on every one, would
+not budge from the steps of the maids' quarters, and seemed to guess
+that some mischief was being hatched against him.  They met together.
+Among them was an old sideboard waiter, nicknamed Uncle Tail, to whom
+every one looked respectfully for counsel, though all they got out of
+him was, "Here's a pretty pass! to be sure, to be sure, to be sure!"  As
+a preliminary measure of security, to provide against contingencies,
+they locked Kapiton up in the lumber-room where the filter was kept;
+then considered the question with the gravest deliberation.  It would, to
+be sure, be easy to have recourse to force.  But Heaven save us!  There
+would be an uproar, the mistress would be put out--it would be awful!
+What should they do?  They thought and thought, and at last thought out a
+solution.  It had many a time been observed that Gerasim could not bear
+drunkards. . . .  As he sat at the gates, he would always turn away with
+disgust when some one passed by intoxicated, with unsteady steps and his
+cap on one side of his ear.  They resolved that Tatiana should be
+instructed to pretend to be tipsy, and should pass by Gerasim staggering
+and reeling about.  The poor girl refused for a long while to agree to
+this, but they persuaded her at last; she saw, too, that it was the only
+possible way of getting rid of her adorer.  She went out.  Kapiton was
+released from the lumber-room; for, after all, he had an interest in the
+affair.  Gerasim was sitting on the curbstone at the gates, scraping the
+ground with a spade. . . .  From behind every corner, from behind every
+window-blind, the others were watching him. . . .  The trick succeeded
+beyond all expectations.  On seeing Tatiana, at first, he nodded as usual,
+making caressing, inarticulate sounds; then he looked carefully at her,
+dropped his spade, jumped up, went up to her, brought his face close to
+her face. . . .  In her fright she staggered more than ever, and shut her
+eyes. . . .  He took her by the arm, whirled her right across the yard, and
+going into the room where the council had been sitting, pushed her
+straight at Kapiton.  Tatiana fairly swooned away. . . .  Gerasim stood,
+looked at her, waved his hand, laughed, and went off, stepping heavily,
+to his garret. . . .  For the next twenty-four hours he did not come out of
+it.  The postilion Antipka said afterwards that he saw Gerasim through a
+crack in the wall, sitting on his bedstead, his face in his hand.  From
+time to time he uttered soft regular sounds; he was wailing a dirge,
+that is, swaying backwards and forwards with his eyes shut, and shaking
+his head as drivers or bargemen do when they chant their melancholy
+songs.  Antipka could not bear it, and he came away from the crack.  When
+Gerasim came out of the garret next day, no particular change could be
+observed in him.  He only seemed, as it were, more morose, and took not
+the slightest notice of Tatiana or Kapiton.  The same evening, they both
+had to appear before their mistress with geese under their arms, and in
+a week's time they were married.  Even on the day of the wedding Gerasim
+showed no change of any sort in his behavior.  Only, he came back from
+the river without water, he had somehow broken the barrel on the road;
+and at night, in the stable, he washed and rubbed down his horse so
+vigorously, it swayed like a blade of grass in the wind, and staggered
+from one leg to the other under his fists of iron.
+
+All this had taken place in the spring.  Another year passed by, during
+which Kapiton became a hopeless drunkard, and as being absolutely of no
+use for anything, was sent away with the store wagons to a distant
+village with his wife.  On the day of his departure, he put a very good
+face on it at first, and declared that he would always be at home, send
+him where they would, even to the other end of the world; but later on
+he lost heart, began grumbling that he was being taken to uneducated
+people, and collapsed so completely at last that he could not even put
+his own hat on.  Some charitable soul stuck it on his forehead, set the
+peak straight in front, and thrust it on with a slap from above.  When
+everything was quite ready, and the peasants already held the reins in
+their hands, and were only waiting for the words "With God's blessing!"
+to start, Gerasim came out of his garret, went up to Tatiana, and gave
+her as a parting present a red cotton handkerchief he had bought for her
+a year ago.  Tatiana, who had up to that instant borne all the revolting
+details of her life with great indifference, could not control herself
+upon that; she burst into tears, and as she took her seat in the cart,
+she kissed Gerasim three times like a good Christian.  He meant to
+accompany her as far as the town-barrier, and did walk beside her cart
+for a while, but he stopped suddenly at the Crimean ford, waved his
+hand, and walked away along the riverside.
+
+It was getting towards evening.  He walked slowly, watching the water.
+All of a sudden he fancied something was floundering in the mud close to
+the bank.  He stooped over, and saw a little white-and-black puppy, who,
+in spite of all its efforts, could not get out of the water; it was
+struggling, slipping back, and trembling all over its thin wet little
+body.  Gerasim looked at the unlucky little dog, picked it up with one
+hand, put it into the bosom of his coat, and hurried with long steps
+homewards.  He went into his garret, put the rescued puppy on his bed,
+covered it with his thick overcoat, ran first to the stable for straw,
+and then to the kitchen for a cup of milk.  Carefully folding back the
+overcoat, and spreading out the straw, he set the milk on the bedstead.
+The poor little puppy was not more than three weeks old, its eyes were
+just open--one eye still seemed rather larger than the other; it did not
+know how to lap out of a cup, and did nothing but shiver and blink.
+Gerasim took hold of its head softly with two fingers, and dipped its
+little nose into the milk.  The pup suddenly began lapping greedily,
+sniffing, shaking itself, and choking.  Gerasim watched and watched it,
+and all at once he laughed outright. . . .  All night long he was waiting
+on it, keeping it covered, and rubbing it dry.  He fell asleep himself at
+last, and slept quietly and happily by its side.
+
+No mother could have looked after her baby as Gerasim looked after his
+little nursling.  At first she--for the pup turned out to be a bitch--was
+very weak, feeble, and ugly, but by degrees she grew stronger and
+improved in looks, and, thanks to the unflagging care of her preserver,
+in eight months' time she was transformed into a very pretty dog of the
+spaniel breed, with long ears, a bushy spiral tail, and large,
+expressive eyes.  She was devotedly attached to Gerasim, and was never a
+yard from his side; she always followed him about wagging her tail.  He
+had even given her a name--the dumb know that their inarticulate noises
+call the attention of others.  He called her Mumu.  All the servants in
+the house liked her, and called her Mumu, too.  She was very intelligent,
+she was friendly with every one, but was only fond of Gerasim.  Gerasim,
+on his side, loved her passionately, and he did not like it when other
+people stroked her; whether he was afraid for her, or jealous--God
+knows!  She used to wake him in the morning, pulling at his coat; she
+used to take the reins in her mouth, and bring him up the old horse that
+carried the water, with whom she was on very friendly terms.  With a face
+of great importance, she used to go with him to the river; she used to
+watch his brooms and spades, and never allowed any one to go into his
+garret.  He cut a little hole in his door on purpose for her, and she
+seemed to feel that only in Gerasim's garret she was completely mistress
+and at home; and directly she went in, she used to jump with a satisfied
+air upon the bed.  At night she did not sleep at all, but she never
+barked without sufficient cause, like some stupid house-dog, who,
+sitting on its hind-legs, blinking, with its nose in the air, barks
+simply from dullness, at the stars, usually three times in succession.
+No!  Mumu's delicate little voice was never raised without good reason;
+either some stranger was passing close to the fence, or there was some
+suspicious sound or rustle somewhere. . . .  In fact, she was an excellent
+watch-dog.  It is true that there was another dog in the yard, a tawny
+old dog with brown spots, called Wolf, but he was never, even at night,
+let off the chain; and, indeed, he was so decrepit that he did not even
+wish for freedom.  He used to lie curled up in his kennel, and only
+rarely uttered a sleepy, almost noiseless bark, which broke off at once,
+as though he were himself aware of its uselessness.  Mumu never went into
+the mistress's house; and when Gerasim carried wood into the rooms, she
+always stayed behind, impatiently waiting for him at the steps, pricking
+up her ears and turning her head to right and to left at the slightest
+creak of the door . . .
+
+So passed another year.  Gerasim went on performing his duties as house-
+porter, and was very well content with his lot, when suddenly an
+unexpected incident occurred. . . .  One fine summer day the old lady was
+walking up and down the drawing-room with her dependants.  She was in
+high spirits; she laughed and made jokes.  Her servile companions laughed
+and joked too, but they did not feel particularly mirthful; the
+household did not much like it, when their mistress was in a lively
+mood, for, to begin with, she expected from every one prompt and
+complete participation in her merriment, and was furious if any one
+showed a face that did not beam with delight; and secondly, these
+outbursts never lasted long with her, and were usually followed by a
+sour and gloomy mood.  That day she had got up in a lucky hour; at cards
+she took the four knaves, which means the fulfilment of one's wishes
+(she used to try her fortune on the cards every morning), and her tea
+struck her as particularly delicious, for which her maid was rewarded by
+words of praise, and by twopence in money.  With a sweet smile on her
+wrinkled lips, the lady walked about the drawing-room and went up to the
+window.  A flower-garden had been laid out before the window, and in the
+very middle bed, under a rosebush, lay Mumu busily gnawing a bone.  The
+lady caught sight of her.
+
+"Mercy on us!" she cried suddenly; "what dog is that?"
+
+The companion, addressed by the old lady, hesitated, poor thing, in that
+wretched state of uneasiness which is common in any person in a
+dependent position who doesn't know very well what significance to give
+to the exclamation of a superior.
+
+"I d . . . d . . . don't know," she faltered; "I fancy it's the dumb man's
+dog."
+
+"Mercy!" the lady cut her short; "but it's a charming little dog! order
+it to be brought in.  Has he had it long?  How is it I've never seen it
+before? . . . Order it to be brought in."
+
+The companion flew at once into the hall.
+
+"Boy, boy!" she shouted; "bring Mumu in at once!  She's in the flower-
+garden."
+
+"Her name's Mumu then," observed the lady; "a very nice name."
+
+"Oh, very, indeed!" chimed in the companion.  "Make haste, Stepan!"
+
+Stepan, a sturdy-built young fellow, whose duties were those of a
+footman, rushed headlong into the flower-garden, and tried to capture
+Mumu, but she cleverly slipped from his fingers, and with her tail in
+the air, fled full speed to Gerasim, who was at that instant in the
+kitchen, knocking out and cleaning a barrel, turning it upside down in
+his hands like a child's drum.  Stepan ran after her, and tried to catch
+her just at her master's feet; but the sensible dog would not let a
+stranger touch her, and with a bound, she got away.  Gerasim looked on
+with a smile at all this ado; at last, Stepan got up, much amazed, and
+hurriedly explained to him by signs that the mistress wanted the dog
+brought in to her.  Gerasim was a little astonished; he called Mumu,
+however, picked her up, and handed her over to Stepan.  Stepan carried
+her into the drawing-room, and put her down on the parquette floor.  The
+old lady began calling the dog to her in a coaxing voice.  Mumu, who had
+never in her life been in such magnificent apartments, was very much
+frightened, and made a rush for the door, but, being driven back by the
+obsequious Stepan, she began trembling, and huddled close up against the
+wall.
+
+"Mumu, Mumu, come to me, come to your mistress," said the lady; "come,
+silly thing . . . don't be afraid."
+
+"Come, Mumu, come to the mistress," repeated the companions.  "Come
+along!"
+
+But Mumu looked round her uneasily, and did not stir.
+
+"Bring her something to eat," said the old lady.  "How stupid she is! she
+won't come to her mistress.  What's she afraid of?"
+
+"She's not used to your honor yet," ventured one of the companions in a
+timid and conciliatory voice.
+
+Stepan brought in a saucer of milk, and set it down before Mumu, but
+Mumu would not even sniff at the milk, and still shivered, and looked
+round as before.
+
+"Ah, what a silly you are!" said the lady, and going up to her, she
+stooped down, and was about to stroke her, but Mumu turned her head
+abruptly, and showed her teeth.  The lady hurriedly drew back her
+hand. . . .
+
+A momentary silence followed.  Mumu gave a faint whine, as though she
+would complain and apologize. . . .  The old lady moved back, scowling.
+The dog's sudden movement had frightened her.
+
+"Ah!" shrieked all the companions at once, "she's not bitten you, has
+she?  Heaven forbid!  (Mumu had never bitten any one in her life.)  Ah!
+ah!"
+
+"Take her away," said the old lady in a changed voice.  "Wretched little
+dog!  What a spiteful creature!"
+
+And, turning round deliberately, she went towards her boudoir.  Her
+companions looked timidly at one another, and were about to follow her,
+but she stopped, stared coldly at them, and said, "What's that for,
+pray?  I've not called you," and went out.
+
+The companions waved their hands to Stepan in despair.  He picked up
+Mumu, and flung her promptly outside the door, just at Gerasim's feet,
+and half an hour later a profound stillness led in the house, and the
+old lady sat on her sofa looking blacker than a thundercloud.
+
+What trifles, if you think of it, will sometimes disturb any one!
+
+Till evening the lady was out of humor; she did not talk to any one, did
+not play cards, and passed a bad night.  She fancied the eau-de-Cologne
+they gave her was not the same as she usually had, and that her pillow
+smelt of soap, and she made the wardrobe-maid smell all the bed linen--
+in fact she was very upset and cross altogether.  Next morning she
+ordered Gavrila to be summoned an hour earlier than usual.
+
+"Tell me, please," she began, directly the latter, not without some
+inward trepidation, crossed the threshold of her boudoir, "what dog was
+that barking all night in our yard?  It wouldn't let me sleep!"
+
+"A dog, 'm . . . what dog, 'm . . . may be, the dumb man's dog, 'm," he
+brought out in a rather unsteady voice.
+
+"I don't know whether it was the dumb man's or whose, but it wouldn't
+let me sleep.  And I wonder what we have such a lot of dogs for!  I wish
+to know.  We have a yard dog, haven't we?"
+
+"Oh yes, 'm, we have, 'm.  Wolf, 'm."
+
+"Well, why more? what do we want more dogs for?  It's simply introducing
+disorder.  There's no one in control in the house--that's what it is.  And
+what does the dumb man want with a dog?  Who gave him leave to keep dogs
+in my yard?  Yesterday I went to the window, and there it was lying in
+the flower-garden; it had dragged in nastiness it was gnawing, and my
+roses are planted there . . ."
+
+The lady ceased.
+
+"Let her be gone from to-day . . . do you hear?"
+
+"Yes, 'm."
+
+"To-day.  Now go.  I will send for you later for the report."
+
+Gavrila went away.
+
+As he went through the drawing-room, the steward, by way of maintaining
+order, moved a bell from one table to another; he stealthily blew his
+duck-like nose in the hall, and went into the outer-hall.  In the outer-
+hall, on a locker, was Stepan asleep in the attitude of a slain warrior
+in a battalion picture, his bare legs thrust out below the coat which
+served him for a blanket.  The steward gave him a shove, and whispered
+some instructions to him, to which Stepan responded with something
+between a yawn and a laugh.  The steward went away, and Stepan got up,
+put on his coat and his boots, went out and stood on the steps.  Five
+minutes had not passed before Gerasim made his appearance with a huge
+bundle of hewn logs on his back, accompanied by the inseparable Mumu.
+(The lady had given orders that her bedroom and boudoir should be heated
+at times even in the summer.)  Gerasim turned sideways before the door,
+shoved it open with his shoulder, and staggered into the house with his
+load.  Mumu, as usual, stayed behind to wait for him.  Then Stepan,
+seizing his chance, suddenly pounced on her, like a kite on a chicken,
+held her down to the ground, gathered her up in his arms, and without
+even putting on his cap, ran out of the yard with her, got into the
+first fly he met, and galloped off to a market-place.  There he soon
+found a purchaser, to whom he sold her for a shilling, on condition that
+he would keep her for at least a week tied up; then he returned at once.
+But before he got home, he got off the fly, and going right round the
+yard, jumped over the fence into the yard from a back street.  He was
+afraid to go in at the gate for fear of meeting Gerasim.
+
+His anxiety was unnecessary, however; Gerasim was no longer in the yard.
+On coming out of the house he had at once missed Mumu.  He never
+remembered her failing to wait for his return, and began running up and
+down, looking for her, and calling her in his own way. . . .  He rushed up
+to his garret, up to the hay-loft, ran out into the street, this way and
+that. . . .  She was lost!  He turned to the other serfs, with the most
+despairing signs, questioned them about her, pointing to her height from
+the ground, describing her with his hands. . . .  Some of them really did
+not know what had become of Mumu, and merely shook their heads; others did
+know, and smiled to him for all response; while the steward assumed an
+important air, and began scolding the coachmen.  Then Gerasim ran right
+away out of the yard.
+
+It was dark by the time he came back.  From his worn-out look, his
+unsteady walk, and his dusty clothes, it might be surmised that he had
+been running over half Moscow.  He stood still opposite the windows of
+the mistress's house, took a searching look at the steps where a group
+of house-serfs were crowded together, turned away, and uttered once more
+his inarticulate "Mumu."  Mumu did not answer.  He went away.  Every one
+looked after him, but no one smiled or said a word, and the inquisitive
+postilion Antipka reported next morning in the kitchen that the dumb man
+had been groaning all night.
+
+All the next day Gerasim did not show himself, so that they were obliged
+to send the coachman Potap for water instead of him, at which the
+coachman Potap was anything but pleased.  The lady asked Gavrila if her
+orders had been carried out.  Gavrila replied that they had.  The next
+morning Gerasim came out of his garret, and went about his work.  He came
+in to his dinner, ate it, and went out again, without a greeting to any
+one.  His face, which had always been lifeless, as with all deaf-mutes,
+seemed now to be turned to stone.  After dinner he went out of the yard
+again, but not for long; he came back, and went straight up to the hay-
+loft.  Night came on, a clear moonlight night.  Gerasim lay breathing
+heavily, and incessantly turning from side to side.  Suddenly he felt
+something pull at the skirt of his coat.  He started, but did not raise
+his head, and even shut his eyes tighter.  But again there was a pull,
+stronger than before; he jumped up before him, with an end of string
+round her neck, was Mumu, twisting and turning.  A prolonged cry of
+delight broke from his speechless breast; he caught up Mumu, and hugged
+her tight in his arms, she licked his nose and eyes, and beard and
+moustache, all in one instant. . . .  He stood a little, thought a minute,
+crept cautiously down from the hay-loft, looked round, and having
+satisfied himself that no one could see him, made his way successfully
+to his garret.  Gerasim had guessed before that his dog had not got lost
+by her own doing, that she must have been taken away by the mistress's
+orders; the servants had explained to him by signs that his Mumu had
+snapped at her, and he determined to take his own measures.  First he fed
+Mumu with a bit of bread, fondled her, and put her to bed, then he fell
+to meditating, and spent the whole night long in meditating how he could
+best conceal her.  At last he decided to leave her all day in the garret,
+and only to come in now and then to see her, and to take her out at
+night.  The hole in the door he stopped up effectually with his old
+overcoat, and almost before it was light he was already in the yard, as
+though nothing had happened, even--innocent guile!--the same expression
+of melancholy on his face.  It did not even occur to the poor deaf man
+that Mumu would betray herself by her whining; in reality, everyone in
+the house was soon aware that the dumb man's dog had come back, and was
+locked up in his garret, but from sympathy with him and with her, and
+partly, perhaps, from dread of him, they did not let him know that they
+had found out his secret.  The steward scratched his head, and gave a
+despairing wave of his head, as much as to say, "Well, well, God have
+mercy on him!  If only it doesn't come to the mistress's ears!"
+
+But the dumb man had never shown such energy as on that day; he cleaned
+and scraped the whole courtyard, pulled up every single weed with his
+own hand, tugged up every stake in the fence of the flower-garden, to
+satisfy himself that they were strong enough, and unaided drove them in
+again; in fact, he toiled and labored so that even the old lady noticed
+his zeal.  Twice in the course of the day Gerasim went stealthily in to
+see his prisoner; when night came on, he lay down to sleep with her in
+the garret, not in the hay-loft, and only at two o'clock in the night he
+went out to take her a turn in the fresh air.
+
+After walking about the courtyard a good while with her, he was just
+turning back, when suddenly a rustle was heard behind the fence on the
+side of the back street.  Mumu pricked up her ears, growled--went up to
+the fence, sniffed, and gave vent to a loud shrill bark.  Some drunkard
+had thought fit to take refuge under the fence for the night.  At that
+very time the old lady had just fallen asleep after a prolonged fit of
+"nervous agitation"; these fits of agitation always overtook her after
+too hearty a supper.  The sudden bark waked her up: her heart palpitated,
+and she felt faint.  "Girls, girls!" she moaned.  "Girls!"  The terrified
+maids ran into her bedroom.  "Oh, oh, I am dying!" she said, flinging her
+arms about in her agitation.  "Again, that dog, again! . . .  Oh, send for
+the doctor.  They mean to be the death of me. . . .  The dog, the dog
+again!  Oh!"  And she let her head fall back, which always signified a
+swoon.  They rushed for the doctor, that is, for the household physician,
+Hariton.  This doctor, whose whole qualification consisted in wearing
+soft-soled boots, knew how to feel the pulse delicately.  He used to
+sleep fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, but the rest of the time he
+was always sighing, and continually dosing the old lady with cherrybay
+drops.  This doctor ran up at once, fumigated the room with burnt
+feathers, and when the old lady opened her eyes, promptly offered her a
+wineglass of the hallowed drops on a silver tray.  The old lady took
+them, but began again at once in a tearful voice complaining of the dog,
+of Gavrila, and of her fate, declaring that she was a poor old woman,
+and that every one had forsaken her, no one pitied her, every one wished
+her dead.  Meanwhile the luckless Mumu had gone on barking, while Gerasim
+tried in vain to call her away, from the fence.  "There . . . there . . .
+again," groaned the old lady, and once more she turned up the whites of
+her eyes.  The doctor whispered to a maid, she rushed into the outer
+hall, and shook Stepan, he ran to wake Gavrila, Gavrila in a fury
+ordered the whole household to get up.
+
+Gerasim turned round, saw lights and shadows moving in the windows, and
+with an instinct of coming trouble in his heart, put Mumu under his arm,
+ran into his garret, and locked himself in.  A few minutes later five men
+were banging at his door, but feeling the resistance of the bolt, they
+stopped.  Gavrila ran up in a fearful state of mind, and ordered them all
+to wait there and watch till morning.  Then he flew off himself to the
+maids' quarter, and through an old companion, Liubov Liubimovna, with
+whose assistance he used to steal tea, sugar, and other groceries and to
+falsify the accounts, sent word to the mistress that the dog had
+unhappily run back from somewhere, but that to-morrow she should be
+killed, and would the mistress be so gracious as not to be angry and to
+overlook it.  The old lady would probably not have been so soon appeased,
+but the doctor had in his haste given her fully forty drops instead of
+twelve.  The strong dose of narcotic acted; in a quarter of an hour the
+old lady was in a sound and peaceful sleep; while Gerasim was lying with
+a white face on his bed, holding Mumu's mouth tightly shut.
+
+Next morning the lady woke up rather late.  Gavrila was waiting till she
+should be awake, to give the order for a final assault on Gerasim's
+stronghold, while he prepared himself to face a fearful storm.  But the
+storm did not come off.  The old lady lay in bed and sent for the eldest
+of her dependent companions.
+
+"Liubov Liubimovna," she began in a subdued weak voice--she was fond of
+playing the part of an oppressed and forsaken victim; needless to say,
+every one in the house was made extremely uncomfortable at such times--
+"Liubov Liubimovna, you see my position; go, my love, to Gavrila
+Andreitch, and talk to him a little.  Can he really prize some wretched
+cur above the repose--the very life--of his mistress?  I could not bear
+to think so," she added, with an expression of deep feeling.  "Go, my
+love; be so good as to go to Gavrila Andreitch for me."
+
+Liubov Liubimovna went to Gavrila's room.  What conversation passed
+between them is not known, but a short time after, a whole crowd of
+people was moving across the yard in the direction of Gerasim's garret.
+Gavrila walked in front, holding his cap on with his hand, though there
+was no wind.  The footmen and cooks were close behind him; Uncle Tail was
+looking out of a window, giving instructions, that is to say, simply
+waving his hands.  At the rear there was a crowd of small boys skipping
+and hopping along; half of them were outsiders who had run up.  On the
+narrow staircase leading to the garret sat one guard; at the door were
+standing two more with sticks.  They began to mount the stairs, which
+they entirely blocked up.  Gavrila went up to the door, knocked with his
+fist, shouting, "Open the door!"
+
+A stifled bark was audible, but there was no answer.
+
+"Open the door, I tell you," he repeated.
+
+"But, Gavrila Andreitch," Stepan observed from below, "he's deaf, you
+know--he doesn't hear."
+
+They all laughed.
+
+"What are we to do?" Gavrila rejoined from above.
+
+"Why, there's a hole there in the door," answered Stepan, "so you shake
+the stick in there."
+
+Gavrila bent down.
+
+"He's stuffed it up with a coat or something."
+
+"Well, you just push the coat in."
+
+At this moment a smothered bark was heard again.
+
+"See, see--she speaks for herself," was remarked in the crowd, and again
+they laughed.
+
+Gavrila scratched his ear.
+
+"No, mate," he responded at last, "you can poke the coat in yourself, if
+you like."
+
+"All right, let me."
+
+And Stepan scrambled up, took the stick, pushed in the coat, and began
+waving the stick about in the opening, saying, "Come out, come out!" as
+he did so.  He was still waving the stick, when suddenly the door of the
+garret was flung open; all the crowd flew pell-mell down the stairs
+instantly, Gavrila first of all.  Uncle Tail locked the window.
+
+"Come, come, come," shouted Gavrila from the yard, "mind what you're
+about."
+
+Gerasim stood without stirring in his doorway.  The crowd gathered at the
+foot of the stairs.  Gerasim, with his arms akimbo, looked down at all
+these poor creatures in German coats; in his red peasant's shirt he
+looked like a giant before them.  Gavrila took a step forward.
+
+"Mind, mate," said he, "don't be insolent."
+
+And he began to explain to him by signs that the mistress insists on
+having his dog; that he must hand it over at once, or it would be the
+worse for him.
+
+Gerasim looked at him, pointed to the dog, made a motion with his hand
+round his neck, as though he were pulling a noose tight, and glanced
+with a face of inquiry at the steward.
+
+"Yes, yes," the latter assented, nodding; "yes, just so."
+
+Gerasim dropped his eyes, then all of a sudden roused himself and
+pointed to Mumu, who was all the while standing beside him, innocently
+wagging her tail and pricking up her ears inquisitively.  Then he
+repeated the strangling action round his neck and significantly struck
+himself on the breast, as though announcing he would take upon himself
+the task of killing Mumu.
+
+"But you'll deceive us," Gavrila waved back in response.
+
+Gerasim looked at him, smiled scornfully, struck himself again on the
+breast, and slammed to the door.
+
+They all looked at one another in silence.
+
+"What does that mean?" Gavrila began.  "He's locked himself in."
+
+"Let him be, Gavrila Andreitch," Stepan advised; "he'll do it if he's
+promised.  He's like that, you know. . . .  If he makes a promise, it's a
+certain thing.  He's not like us others in that.  The truth's the truth
+with him.  Yes, indeed."
+
+"Yes," they all repeated, nodding their heads, "yes--that's so--yes."
+
+Uncle Tail opened his window, and he too said, "Yes."
+
+"Well, may be, we shall see," responded Gavrila; "any way, we won't take
+off the guard.  Here you, Eroshka!" he added, addressing a poor fellow in
+a yellow nankeen coat, who considered himself to be a gardener, "what
+have you to do?  Take a stick and sit here, and if anything happens, run
+to me at once!"
+
+Eroshka took a stick, and sat down on the bottom stair.  The crowd
+dispersed, all except a few inquisitive small boys, while Gavrila went
+home and sent word through Liubov Liubimovna to the mistress that
+everything had been done, while he sent a postilion for a policeman in
+case of need.  The old lady tied a knot in her handkerchief, sprinkled
+some eau-de-Cologne on it, sniffed at it, and rubbed her temples with
+it, drank some tea, and, being still under the influence of the
+cherrybay drops, fell asleep again.
+
+An hour after all this hubbub the garret door opened, and Gerasim showed
+himself.  He had on his best coat; he was leading Mumu by a string.
+Eroshka moved aside and let him pass.  Gerasim went to the gates.  All the
+small boys in the yard stared at him in silence.  He did not even turn
+round; he only put his cap on in the street.  Gavrila sent the same
+Eroshka to follow him and keep watch on him as a spy.  Eroshka, seeing
+from a distance that he had gone into a cookshop with his dog, waited
+for him to come out again.
+
+Gerasim was well known at the cookshop, and his signs were understood.
+He asked for cabbage soup with meat in it, and sat down with his arms on
+the table.  Mumu stood beside his chair, looking calmly at him with her
+intelligent eyes.  Her coat was glossy; one could see she had just been
+combed down.  They brought Gerasim the soup.  He crumbled some bread into
+it, cut the meat up small, and put the plate on the ground.  Mumu began
+eating in her usual refined way, her little muzzle daintily held so as
+scarcely to touch her food.  Gerasim gazed a long while at her; two big
+tears suddenly rolled from his eyes; one fell on the dog's brow, the
+other into the soup.  He shaded his face with his hand.  Mumu ate up half
+the plateful, and came away from it, licking her lips.  Gerasim got up,
+paid for the soup, and went out, followed by the rather perplexed
+glances of the waiter.  Eroshka, seeing Gerasim, hid round a corner, and
+letting him get in front, followed him again.
+
+Gerasim walked without haste, still holding Mumu by a string.  When he
+got to the corner of the street, he stood still as though reflecting,
+and suddenly set off with rapid steps to the Crimean Ford.  On the way he
+went into the yard of a house, where a lodge was being built, and
+carried away two bricks under his arm.  At the Crimean Ford, he turned
+along the bank, went to a place where there were two little rowing-boats
+fastened to stakes (he had noticed them there before), and jumped into
+one of them with Mumu.  A lame old man came out of a shed in the corner
+of a kitchen-garden and shouted after him; but Gerasim only nodded, and
+began rowing so vigorously, though against stream, that in an instant he
+had darted two hundred yards way.  The old man stood for a while,
+scratched his back first with the left and then with the right hand, and
+went back hobbling to the shed.
+
+Gerasim rowed on and on.  Moscow was soon left behind.  Meadows stretched
+each side of the bank, market gardens, fields, and copses; peasants'
+huts began to make their appearance.  There was the fragrance of the
+country.  He threw down his oars, bent his head down to Mumu, who was
+sitting facing him on a dry cross seat--the bottom of the boat was full
+of water--and stayed motionless, his mighty hands clasped upon her back,
+while the boat was gradually carried back by the current towards the
+town.  At last Gerasim drew himself up hurriedly, with a sort of sick
+anger in his face, he tied up the bricks he had taken with string, made
+a running noose, put it round Mumu's neck, lifted her up over the river,
+and for the last time looked at her. . . .  She watched him confidingly and
+without any fear, faintly wagging her tail.  He turned away, frowned, and
+wrung his hands. . . .  Gerasim heard nothing, neither the quick shrill
+whine of Mumu as she fell, nor the heavy splash of the water; for him
+the noisiest day was soundless and silent as even the stillest night is
+not silent to us.  When he opened his eyes again, little wavelets were
+hurrying over the river, chasing one another; as before they broke
+against the boat's side, and only far away behind wide circles moved
+widening to the bank.
+
+Directly Gerasim had vanished from Eroshka's sight, the latter returned
+home and reported what he had seen.
+
+"Well, then," observed Stepan, "he'll drown her.  Now we can feel easy
+about it.  If he once promises a thing . . ."
+
+No one saw Gerasim during the day.  He did not have dinner at home.
+Evening came on; they were all gathered together to supper, except him.
+
+"What a strange creature that Gerasim is!" piped a fat laundrymaid;
+"fancy, upsetting himself like that over a dog. . . .  Upon my word!"
+
+"But Gerasim has been here," Stepan cried all at once, scraping up his
+porridge with a spoon.
+
+"How? when?"
+
+"Why, a couple of hours ago.  Yes, indeed!  I ran against him at the gate;
+he was going out again from here; he was coming out of the yard.  I tried
+to ask him about his dog, but he wasn't in the best of humors, I could
+see.  Well, he gave me a shove; I suppose he only meant to put me out of
+his way, as if he'd say, 'Let me go, do!' but he fetched me such a crack
+on my neck, so seriously, that--oh! oh!"  And Stepan, who could not help
+laughing, shrugged up and rubbed the back of his head.  "Yes," he added;
+"he has got a fist; it's something like a fist, there's no denying
+that!"
+
+They all laughed at Stepan, and after supper they separated to go to
+bed.
+
+Meanwhile, at that very time, a gigantic figure with a bag on his
+shoulders and a stick in his hand, was eagerly and persistently stepping
+out along the T--- high-road.  It was Gerasim.  He was hurrying on without
+looking round; hurrying homewards, to his own village, to his own country.
+After drowning poor Mumu, he had run back to his garret, hurriedly packed
+a few things together in an old horsecloth, tied it up in a bundle,
+tossed it on his shoulder, and so was ready.  He had noticed the road
+carefully when he was brought to Moscow; the village his mistress had
+taken him from lay only about twenty miles off the high-road.  He walked
+along it with a sort of invincible purpose, a desperate and at the same
+time joyous determination.  He walked, his shoulders thrown back and his
+chest expanded; his eyes were fixed greedily straight before him.  He
+hastened as though his old mother were waiting for him at home, as though
+she were calling him to her after long wanderings in strange parts,
+among strangers.  The summer night, that was just drawing in, was still
+and warm; on one side, where the sun had set, the horizon was still light
+and faintly flushed with the last glow of the vanished day; on the other
+side a blue-gray twilight had already risen up.  The night was coming up
+from that quarter.  Quails were in hundreds around; corncrakes were
+calling to one another in the thickets. . . .  Gerasim could not hear them;
+he could not hear the delicate night-whispering of the trees, by which his
+strong legs carried him, but he smelt the familiar scent of the ripening
+rye, which was wafted from the dark fields; he felt the wind, flying to
+meet him--the wind from home--beat caressingly upon his face, and play
+with his hair and his beard.  He saw before him the whitening road
+homewards, straight as an arrow.  He saw in the sky stars innumerable,
+lighting up his way, and stepped out, strong and bold as a lion, so that
+when the rising sun shed its moist rosy light upon the still fresh and
+unwearied traveller, already thirty miles lay between him and Moscow.
+
+In a couple of days he was at home, in his little hut, to the great
+astonishment of the soldier's wife who had been put in there.  After
+praying before the holy pictures, he set off at once to the village
+elder.  The village elder was at first surprised; but the hay-cutting had
+just begun; Gerasim was a first-rate mower, and they put a scythe into
+his hand on the spot, and he went to mow in his old way, mowing so that
+the peasants were fairly astounded as they watched his wide sweeping
+strokes and the heaps he raked together. . . .
+
+In Moscow the day after Gerasim's flight they missed him.  They went to
+his garret, rummaged about in it, and spoke to Gavrila.  He came, looked,
+shrugged his shoulders, and decided that the dumb man had either run
+away or had drowned himself with his stupid dog.  They gave information
+to the police, and informed the lady.  The old lady was furious, burst
+into tears, gave orders that he was to be found whatever happened,
+declared she had never ordered the dog to be destroyed, and, in fact,
+gave Gavrila such a rating that he could do nothing all day but shake
+his head and murmur, "Well!" until Uncle Tail checked him at last,
+sympathetically echoing "We-ell!"  At last the news came from the country
+of Gerasim's being there.  The old lady was somewhat pacified; at first
+she issued a mandate for him to be brought back without delay to Moscow;
+afterwards, however, she declared that such an ungrateful creature was
+absolutely of no use to her.  Soon after this she died herself; and her
+heirs had no thought to spare for Gerasim; they let their mother's other
+servants redeem their freedom on payment of an annual rent.
+
+And Gerasim is living still, a lonely man in his lonely hut; he is
+strong and healthy as before, and does the work of four men as before,
+and as before is serious and steady.  But his neighbors have observed
+that ever since his return from Moscow he has quite given up the society
+of women; he will not even look at them, and does not keep even a single
+dog.
+
+"It's his good luck, though," the peasants reason, "that he can get on
+without female folk; and as for a dog--what need has he of a dog? you
+wouldn't get a thief to go into his yard for any money!"  Such is the
+fame of the dumb man's Titanic strength.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SHOT
+
+BY
+
+ALEXANDER POUSHKIN
+
+From "Poushkin's Prose Tales."  Translated by T. Keane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+We were stationed in the little town of N--.  The life of an officer in
+the army is well known.  In the morning, drill and the riding-school;
+dinner with the Colonel or at a Jewish restaurant; in the evening, punch
+and cards.  In N--- there was not one open house, not a single
+marriageable girl.  We used to meet in each other's rooms, where, except
+our uniforms, we never saw anything.
+
+One civilian only was admitted into our society.  He was about thirty-
+five years of age, and therefore we looked upon him as an old fellow.
+His experience gave him great advantage over us, and his habitual
+taciturnity, stern disposition, and caustic tongue produced a deep
+impression upon our young minds.  Some mystery surrounded his existence;
+he had the appearance of a Russian, although his name was a foreign one.
+He had formerly served in the Hussars, and with distinction.  Nobody knew
+the cause that had induced him to retire from the service and settle in
+a wretched little village, where he lived poorly and, at the same time,
+extravagantly.  He always went on foot, and constantly wore a shabby
+black overcoat, but the officers of our regiment were ever welcome at
+his table.  His dinners, it is true, never consisted of more than two or
+three dishes, prepared by a retired soldier, but the champagne flowed
+like water.  Nobody knew what his circumstances were, or what his income
+was, and nobody dared to question him about them.  He had a collection of
+books, consisting chiefly of works on military matters and a few novels.
+He willingly lent them to us to read, and never asked for them back; on
+the other hand, he never returned to the owner the books that were lent
+to him.  His principal amusement was shooting with a pistol.  The walls of
+his room were riddled with bullets, and were as full of holes as a
+honeycomb.  A rich collection of pistols was the only luxury in the
+humble cottage where he lived.  The skill which he had acquired with his
+favorite weapon was simply incredible: and if he had offered to shoot a
+pear off somebody's forage-cap, not a man in our regiment would have
+hesitated to place the object upon his head.
+
+Our conversation often turned upon duels.  Silvio--so I will call him--
+never joined in it.  When asked if he had ever fought, he dryly replied
+that he had; but he entered into no particulars, and it was evident that
+such questions were not to his liking.  We came to the conclusion that he
+had upon his conscience the memory of some unhappy victim of his
+terrible skill.  Moreover, it never entered into the head of any of us to
+suspect him of anything like cowardice.  There are persons whose mere
+look is sufficient to repel such a suspicion.  But an unexpected incident
+occurred which astounded us all.
+
+One day, about ten of our officers dined with Silvio.  They drank as
+usual, that is to say, a great deal.  After dinner we asked our host to
+hold the bank for a game at faro.  For a long time he refused, for he
+hardly ever played, but at last he ordered cards to be brought, placed
+half a hundred ducats upon the table, and sat down to deal.  We took our
+places round him, and the play began.  It was Silvio's custom to preserve
+a complete silence when playing.  He never disputed, and never entered
+into explanations.  If the punter made a mistake in calculating, he
+immediately paid him the difference or noted down the surplus.  We were
+acquainted with this habit of his, and we always allowed him to have his
+own way; but among us on this occasion was an officer who had only
+recently been transferred to our regiment.  During the course of the
+game, this officer absently scored one point too many.  Silvio took the
+chalk and noted down the correct account according to his usual custom.
+The officer, thinking that he had made a mistake, began to enter into
+explanations.  Silvio continued dealing in silence.  The officer, losing
+patience, took the brush and rubbed out what he considered was wrong.
+Silvio took the chalk and corrected the score again.  The officer, heated
+with wine, play, and the laughter of his comrades, considered himself
+grossly insulted, and in his rage he seized a brass candlestick from the
+table, and hurled it at Silvio, who barely succeeded in avoiding the
+missile.  We were filled with consternation.  Silvio rose, white with
+rage, and with gleaming eyes, said:
+
+"My dear sir, have the goodness to withdraw, and thank God that this has
+happened in my house."
+
+None of us entertained the slightest doubt as to what the result would
+be, and we already looked upon our new comrade as a dead man.  The
+officer withdrew, saying that he was ready to answer for his offence in
+whatever way the banker liked.  The play went on for a few minutes
+longer, but feeling that our host was no longer interested in the game,
+we withdrew one after the other, and repaired to our respective
+quarters, after having exchanged a few words upon the probability of
+there soon being a vacancy in the regiment.
+
+The next day, at the riding-school, we were already asking each other if
+the poor lieutenant was still alive, when he himself appeared among us.
+We put the same question to him, and he replied that he had not yet
+heard from Silvio.  This astonished us.  We went to Silvio's house and
+found him in the courtyard shooting bullet after bullet into an ace
+pasted upon the gate.  He received us as usual, but did not utter a word
+about the event of the previous evening.  Three days passed, and the
+lieutenant was still alive.  We asked each other in astonishment: "Can it
+be possible that Silvio is not going to fight?"
+
+Silvio did not fight.  He was satisfied with a very lame explanation, and
+became reconciled to his assailant.
+
+This lowered him very much in the opinion of all our young fellows.  Want
+of courage is the last thing to be pardoned by young men, who usually
+look upon bravery as the chief of all human virtues, and the excuse for
+every possible fault.  But, by degrees, everything became forgotten, and
+Silvio regained his former influence.
+
+I alone could not approach him on the old footing.  Being endowed by
+nature with a romantic imagination, I had become attached more than all
+the others to the man whose life was an enigma, and who seemed to me the
+hero of some mysterious drama.  He was fond of me; at least, with me
+alone did he drop his customary sarcastic tone, and converse on
+different subjects in a simple and unusually agreeable manner.  But after
+this unlucky evening, the thought that his honor had been tarnished, and
+that the stain had been allowed to remain upon it in accordance with his
+own wish, was ever present in my mind, and prevented me treating him as
+before.  I was ashamed to look at him.  Silvio was too intelligent and
+experienced not to observe this and guess the cause of it.  This seemed
+to vex him; at least I observed once or twice a desire on his part to
+enter into an explanation with me, but I avoided such opportunities, and
+Silvio gave up the attempt.  From that time forward I saw him only in the
+presence of my comrades, and our confidential conversations came to an
+end.
+
+The inhabitants of the capital, with minds occupied by so many matters
+of business and pleasure, have no idea of the many sensations so
+familiar to the inhabitants of villages and small towns, as, for
+instance, the awaiting the arrival of the post.  On Tuesdays and Fridays
+our regimental bureau used to be filled with officers: some expecting
+money, some letters, and others newspapers.  The packets were usually
+opened on the spot, items of news were communicated from one to another,
+and the bureau used to present a very animated picture.  Silvio used to
+have his letters addressed to our regiment, and he was generally there
+to receive them.
+
+One day he received a letter, the seal of which he broke with a look of
+great impatience.  As he read the contents, his eyes sparkled.  The
+officers, each occupied with his own letters, did not observe anything.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Silvio, "circumstances demand my immediate departure;
+I leave to-night.  I hope that you will not refuse to dine with me for
+the last time.  I shall expect you, too," he added, turning towards me.
+"I shall expect you without fail."
+
+With these words he hastily departed, and we, after agreeing to meet at
+Silvio's, dispersed to our various quarters.
+
+I arrived at Silvio's house at the appointed time, and found nearly the
+whole regiment there.  All his things were already packed; nothing
+remained but the bare, bullet-riddled walls.  We sat down to table.  Our
+host was in an excellent humor, and his gayety was quickly communicated
+to the rest.  Corks popped every moment, glasses foamed incessantly, and,
+with the utmost warmth, we wished our departing friend a pleasant
+journey and every happiness.  When we rose from the table it was already
+late in the evening.  After having wished everybody good-bye, Silvio took
+me by the hand and detained me just at the moment when I was preparing
+to depart.
+
+"I want to speak to you," he said in a low voice.
+
+I stopped behind.
+
+The guests had departed, and we two were left alone.  Sitting down
+opposite each other, we silently lit our pipes.  Silvio seemed greatly
+troubled; not a trace remained of his former convulsive gayety.  The
+intense pallor of his face, his sparkling eyes, and the thick smoke
+issuing from his mouth, gave him a truly diabolical appearance.  Several
+minutes elapsed, and then Silvio broke the silence.
+
+"Perhaps we shall never see each other again," said he; "before we part,
+I should like to have an explanation with you.  You may have observed
+that I care very little for the opinion of other people, but I like you,
+and I feel that it would be painful to me to leave you with a wrong
+impression upon your mind."
+
+He paused, and began to knock the ashes out of his pipe.  I sat gazing
+silently at the ground.
+
+"You thought it strange," he continued, "that I did not demand
+satisfaction from that drunken idiot R---.  You will admit, however, that
+having the choice of weapons, his life was in my hands, while my own was
+in no great danger.  I could ascribe my forbearance to generosity alone,
+but I will not tell a lie.  If I could have chastised R--- without the
+least risk to my own life, I should never have pardoned him."
+
+I looked at Silvio with astonishment.  Such a confession completely
+astounded me.  Silvio continued:
+
+"Exactly so: I have no right to expose myself to death.  Six years ago I
+received a slap in the face, and my enemy still lives."
+
+My curiosity was greatly excited.
+
+"Did you not fight with him?" I asked.  "Circumstances probably separated
+you."
+
+"I did fight with him," replied Silvio; "and here is a souvenir of our
+duel."
+
+Silvio rose and took from a cardboard box a red cap with a gold tassel
+and embroidery (what the French call a bonnet de police); he put it on--
+a bullet had passed through it about an inch above the forehead.
+
+"You know," continued Silvio, "that I served in one of the Hussar
+regiments.  My character is well known to you: I am accustomed to taking
+the lead.  From my youth this has been my passion.  In our time
+dissoluteness was the fashion, and I was the most outrageous man in the
+army.  We used to boast of our drunkenness; I beat in a drinking bout the
+famous Bourtsoff [Footnote: A cavalry officer, notorious for his drunken
+escapades], of whom Denis Davidoff [Footnote: A military poet who
+flourished in the reign of Alexander I] has sung.  Duels in our regiment
+were constantly taking place, and in all of them I was either second or
+principal.  My comrades adored me, while the regimental commanders, who
+were constantly being changed, looked upon me as a necessary evil.
+
+"I was calmly enjoying my reputation, when a young man belonging to a
+wealthy and distinguished family--I will not mention his name--joined
+our regiment.  Never in my life have I met with such a fortunate fellow!
+Imagine to yourself youth, wit, beauty, unbounded gayety, the most
+reckless bravery, a famous name, untold wealth--imagine all these, and
+you can form some idea of the effect that he would be sure to produce
+among us.  My supremacy was shaken.  Dazzled by my reputation, he began to
+seek my friendship, but I received him coldly, and without the least
+regret he held aloof from me.  I took a hatred to him.  His success in the
+regiment and in the society of ladies brought me to the verge of
+despair.  I began to seek a quarrel with him; to my epigrams he replied
+with epigrams which always seemed to me more spontaneous and more
+cutting than mine, and which were decidedly more amusing, for he joked
+while I fumed.  At last, at a ball given by a Polish landed proprietor,
+seeing him the object of the attention of all the ladies, and especially
+of the mistress of the house, with whom I was upon very good terms, I
+whispered some grossly insulting remark in his ear.  He flamed up and
+gave me a slap in the face.  We grasped our swords; the ladies fainted;
+we were separated; and that same night we set out to fight.
+
+"The dawn was just breaking.  I was standing at the appointed place with
+my three seconds.  With inexplicable impatience I awaited my opponent.
+The spring sun rose, and it was already growing hot.  I saw him coming in
+the distance.  He was walking on foot, accompanied by one second.  We
+advanced to meet him.  He approached, holding his cap filled with black
+cherries.  The seconds measured twelve paces for us.  I had to fire first,
+but my agitation was so great, that I could not depend upon the
+steadiness of my hand; and in order to give myself time to become calm,
+I ceded to him the first shot.  My adversary would not agree to this.  It
+was decided that we should cast lots.  The first number fell to him, the
+constant favorite of fortune.  He took aim, and his bullet went through
+my cap.  It was now my turn.  His life at last was in my hands; I looked
+at him eagerly, endeavoring to detect if only the faintest shadow of
+uneasiness.  But he stood in front of my pistol, picking out the ripest
+cherries from his cap and spitting out the stones, which flew almost as
+far as my feet.  His indifference annoyed me beyond measure.  'What is the
+use,' thought I, 'of depriving him of life, when he attaches no value
+whatever to it?'  A malicious thought flashed through my mind.  I lowered
+my pistol.
+
+"'You don't seem to be ready for death just at present,' I said to him:
+'you wish to have your breakfast; I do not wish to hinder you.'
+
+"'You are not hindering me in the least,' replied he.  'Have the goodness
+to fire, or just as you please--the shot remains yours; I shall always
+be ready at your service.'
+
+"I turned to the seconds, informing them that I had no intention of
+firing that day, and with that the duel came to an end.
+
+"I resigned my commission and retired to this little place.  Since then
+not a day has passed that I have not thought of revenge.  And now my hour
+has arrived."
+
+Silvio took from his pocket the letter that he had received that
+morning, and gave it to me to read.  Some one (it seemed to be his
+business agent) wrote to him from Moscow, that a CERTAIN PERSON was
+going to be married to a young and beautiful girl.
+
+"You can guess," said Silvio, "who the certain person is.  I am going to
+Moscow.  We shall see if he will look death in the face with as much
+indifference now, when he is on the eve of being married, as he did once
+with his cherries!"
+
+With these words, Silvio rose, threw his cap upon the floor, and began
+pacing up and down the room like a tiger in his cage.  I had listened to
+him in silence; strange conflicting feelings agitated me.
+
+The servant entered and announced that the horses were ready.  Silvio
+grasped my hand tightly, and we embraced each other.  He seated himself
+in his telega, in which lay two trunks, one containing his pistols, the
+other his effects.  We said good-bye once more, and the horses galloped
+off.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Several years passed, and family circumstances compelled me to settle in
+the poor little village of M---.  Occupied with agricultural pursuits, I
+ceased not to sigh in secret for my former noisy and careless life.  The
+most difficult thing of all was having to accustom myself to passing the
+spring and winter evenings in perfect solitude.  Until the hour for
+dinner I managed to pass away the time somehow or other, talking with
+the bailiff, riding about to inspect the work, or going round to look at
+the new buildings; but as soon as it began to get dark, I positively did
+not know what to do with myself.  The few books that I had found in the
+cupboards and storerooms I already knew by heart.  All the stories that
+my housekeeper Kirilovna could remember I had heard over and over again.
+The songs of the peasant women made me feel depressed.  I tried drinking
+spirits, but it made my head ache; and moreover, I confess I was afraid
+of becoming a drunkard from mere chagrin, that is to say, the saddest
+kind of drunkard, of which I had seen many examples in our district.
+
+I had no near neighbors, except two or three topers, whose conversation
+consisted for the most part of hiccups and sighs.  Solitude was
+preferable to their society.  At last I decided to go to bed as early as
+possible, and to dine as late as possible; in this way I shortened the
+evening and lengthened out the day, and I found that the plan answered
+very well.
+
+Four versts from my house was a rich estate belonging to the Countess
+B---; but nobody lived there except the steward.  The Countess had only
+visited her estate once, in the first year of her married life, and then
+she had remained there no longer than a month.  But in the second spring
+of my hermitical life a report was circulated that the Countess, with
+her husband, was coming to spend the summer on her estate.  The report
+turned out to be true, for they arrived at the beginning of June.
+
+The arrival of a rich neighbor is an important event in the lives of
+country people.  The landed proprietors and the people of their
+households talk about it for two months beforehand and for three years
+afterwards.  As for me, I must confess that the news of the arrival of a
+young and beautiful neighbor affected me strongly.  I burned with
+impatience to see her, and the first Sunday after her arrival I set out
+after dinner for the village of A---, to pay my respects to the Countess
+and her husband, as their nearest neighbor and most humble servant.  A
+lackey conducted me into the Count's study, and then went to announce
+me.  The spacious apartment was furnished with every possible luxury.
+Around the walls were cases filled with books and surmounted by bronze
+busts; over the marble mantelpiece was a large mirror; on the floor was
+a green cloth covered with carpets.  Unaccustomed to luxury in my own
+poor corner, and not having seen the wealth of other people for a long
+time, I awaited the appearance of the Count with some little
+trepidation, as a suppliant from the provinces awaits the arrival of the
+minister.  The door opened, and a handsome-looking man, of about thirty-
+two years of age, entered the room.  The Count approached me with a frank
+and friendly air; I endeavored to be self-possessed and began to
+introduce myself, but he anticipated me.  We sat down.  His conversation,
+which was easy and agreeable, soon dissipated my awkward bashfulness;
+and I was already beginning to recover my usual composure, when the
+Countess suddenly entered, and I became more confused than ever.  She was
+indeed beautiful.  The Count presented me.  I wished to appear at ease,
+but the more I tried to assume an air of unconstraint, the more awkward
+I felt.  They, in order to give me time to recover myself and to become
+accustomed to my new acquaintances, began to talk to each other,
+treating me as a good neighbor, and without ceremony.  Meanwhile, I
+walked about the room, examining the books and pictures.  I am no judge
+of pictures, but one of them attracted my attention.  It represented some
+view in Switzerland, but it was not the painting that struck me, but the
+circumstance that the canvas was shot through by two bullets, one
+planted just above the other.
+
+"A good shot that!" said I, turning to the Count.
+
+"Yes," replied he, "a very remarkable shot. . . .  Do you shoot well?" he
+continued.
+
+"Tolerably," replied I, rejoicing that the conversation had turned at
+last upon a subject that was familiar to me.  "At thirty paces I can
+manage to hit a card without fail,--I mean, of course, with a pistol
+that I am used to."
+
+"Really?" said the Countess, with a look of the greatest interest.  "And
+you, my dear, could you hit a card at thirty paces?"
+
+"Some day," replied the Count, "we will try.  In my time I did not shoot
+badly, but it is now four years since I touched a pistol."
+
+"Oh!" I observed, "in that case, I don't mind laying a wager that Your
+Excellency will not hit the card at twenty paces; the pistol demands
+practice every day.  I know that from experience.  In our regiment I was
+reckoned one of the best shots.  It once happened that I did not touch a
+pistol for a whole month, as I had sent mine to be mended; and would you
+believe it, Your Excellency, the first time I began to shoot again, I
+missed a bottle four times in succession at twenty paces.  Our captain, a
+witty and amusing fellow, happened to be standing by, and he said to me:
+'It is evident, my friend, that your hand will not lift itself against
+the bottle.'  No, Your Excellency, you must not neglect to practise, or
+your hand will soon lose its cunning.  The best shot that I ever met used
+to shoot at least three times every day before dinner.  It was as much
+his custom to do this as it was to drink his daily glass of brandy."
+
+The Count and Countess seemed pleased that I had begun to talk.
+
+"And what sort of a shot was he?" asked the Count.
+
+"Well, it was this way with him, Your Excellency: if he saw a fly settle
+on the wall--you smile, Countess, but, before Heaven, it is the truth--
+if he saw a fly, he would call out: 'Kouzka, my pistol!'  Kouzka would
+bring him a loaded pistol--bang! and the fly would be crushed against
+the wall."
+
+"Wonderful!" said the Count.  "And what was his name?"
+
+"Silvio, Your Excellency."
+
+"Silvio!" exclaimed the Count, starting up.  "Did you know Silvio?"
+
+"How could I help knowing him, Your Excellency: we were intimate
+friends; he was received in our regiment like a brother officer, but it
+is now five years since I had any tidings of him.  Then Your Excellency
+also knew him?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I knew him very well.  Did he ever tell you of one very strange
+incident in his life?"
+
+"Does Your Excellency refer to the slap in the face that he received
+from some blackguard at a ball?"
+
+"Did he tell you the name of this blackguard?"
+
+"No, Your Excellency, he never mentioned his name, . . .  Ah!  Your
+Excellency!" I continued, guessing the truth: "pardon me . . . I did not
+know . . . could it really have been you?"
+
+"Yes, I myself," replied the Count, with a look of extraordinary
+agitation; "and that bullet-pierced picture is a memento of our last
+meeting."
+
+"Ah, my dear," said the Countess, "for Heaven's sake, do not speak about
+that; it would be too terrible for me to listen to."
+
+"No," replied the Count: "I will relate everything.  He knows how I
+insulted his friend, and it is only right that he should know how Silvio
+revenged himself."
+
+The Count pushed a chair towards me, and with the liveliest interest I
+listened to the following story:
+
+"Five years ago I got married.  The first month--the honeymoon--I spent
+here, in this village.  To this house I am indebted for the happiest
+moments of my life, as well as for one of its most painful recollections.
+
+"One evening we went out together for a ride on horseback.  My wife's
+horse became restive; she grew frightened, gave the reins to me, and
+returned home on foot.  I rode on before.  In the courtyard I saw a
+travelling carriage, and I was told that in my study sat waiting for me
+a man, who would not give his name, but who merely said that he had
+business with me.  I entered the room and saw in the darkness a man,
+covered with dust and wearing a beard of several days' growth.  He was
+standing there, near the fireplace.  I approached him, trying to remember
+his features.
+
+"'You do not recognize me, Count?' said he, in a quivering voice.
+
+"'Silvio!' I cried, and I confess that I felt as if my hair had suddenly
+stood on end.
+
+"'Exactly,' continued he.  'There is a shot due to me, and I have come to
+discharge my pistol.  Are you ready?'
+
+"His pistol protruded from a side pocket.  I measured twelve paces and
+took my stand there in that corner, begging him to fire quickly, before
+my wife arrived.  He hesitated, and asked for a light.  Candles were
+brought in.  I closed the doors, gave orders that nobody was to enter,
+and again begged him to fire.  He drew out his pistol and took aim. . . .
+I counted the seconds. . . .  I thought of her. . . .  A terrible minute
+passed!  Silvio lowered his hand.
+
+"'I regret,' said he, 'that the pistol is not loaded with cherry-
+stones . . . the bullet is heavy.  It seems to me that this is not a duel,
+but a murder.  I am not accustomed to taking aim at unarmed men.  Let us
+begin all over again; we will cast lots as to who shall fire first.'
+
+"My head went round. . . .  I think I raised some objection. . . .  At last
+we loaded another pistol, and rolled up two pieces of paper.  He placed
+these latter in his cap--the same through which I had once sent a
+bullet--and again I drew the first number.
+
+"'You are devilish lucky, Count,' said he, with a smile that I shall
+never forget.
+
+"I don't know what was the matter with me, or how it was that he managed
+to make me do it . . . but I fired and hit that picture."
+
+The Count pointed with his finger to the perforated picture; his face
+glowed like fire; the Countess was whiter than her own handkerchief; and
+I could not restrain an exclamation.
+
+"I fired," continued the Count, "and, thank Heaven, missed my aim.  Then
+Silvio . . . at that moment he was really terrible . . . Silvio raised his
+hand to take aim at me.  Suddenly the door opens, Masha rushes into the
+room, and with a loud shriek throws herself upon my neck.  Her presence
+restored to me all my courage.
+
+"'My dear,' said I to her, 'don't you see that we are joking?  How
+frightened you are!  Go and drink a glass of water and then come back to
+us; I will introduce you to an old friend and comrade.'
+
+"Masha still doubted.
+
+"'Tell me, is my husband speaking the truth?' said she, turning to the
+terrible Silvio: 'is it true that you are only joking?'
+
+"'He is always joking, Countess,' replied Silvio: 'once he gave me a
+slap in the face in a joke; on another occasion he sent a bullet through
+my cap in a joke; and just now, when he fired at me and missed me, it
+was all in a joke.  And now I feel inclined for a joke.'
+
+"With these words he raised his pistol to take aim at me--right before
+her!  Masha threw herself at his feet.
+
+"'Rise, Masha; are you not ashamed!' I cried in a rage: 'and you, sir,
+will you cease to make fun of a poor woman?  Will you fire or not?'
+
+"'I will not,' replied Silvio: 'I am satisfied.  I have seen your
+confusion, your alarm.  I forced you to fire at me.  That is sufficient.
+You will remember me.  I leave you to your conscience.'
+
+"Then he turned to go, but pausing in the doorway, and looking at the
+picture that my shot had passed through, he fired at it almost without
+taking aim, and disappeared.  My wife had fainted away; the servants did
+not venture to stop him, the mere look of him filled them with terror.
+He went out upon the steps, called his coachman, and drove off before I
+could recover myself."
+
+The Count was silent.  In this way I learned the end of the story, whose
+beginning had once made such a deep impression upon me.  The hero of it I
+never saw again.  It is said that Silvio commanded a detachment of
+Hetairists during the revolt under Alexander Ipsilanti, and that he was
+killed in the battle of Skoulana.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE
+
+BY
+
+NIKOLAI VASILIEVITCH GOGOL
+
+
+From "St. John's Eve."  Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood.
+
+1886
+
+[Footnote: This is one of the stories from the celebrated volume
+entitled "Tales at a Farmhouse near Dikanka."]
+
+
+(RELATED BY THE SACRISTAN OF THE DIKANKA CHURCH)
+
+
+
+
+Thoma Grigorovitch had a very strange sort of eccentricity: to the day
+of his death he never liked to tell the same thing twice.  There were
+times when, if you asked him to relate a thing afresh, behold, he would
+interpolate new matter, or alter it so that it was impossible to
+recognize it.  Once on a time, one of those gentlemen (it is hard for us
+simple people to put a name to them, to say whether they are scribblers
+or not scribblers: but it is just the same thing as the usurers at our
+yearly fairs; they clutch and beg and steal every sort of frippery, and
+issue mean little volumes, no thicker than an ABC book, every month, or
+even every week),--one of these gentlemen wormed this same story out of
+Thoma Grigorovitch, and he completely forgot about it.  But that same
+young gentleman in the pea-green caftan, whom I have mentioned, and one
+of whose Tales you have already read, I think, came from Poltava,
+bringing with him a little book, and, opening it in the middle, shows it
+to us.  Thoma Grigorovitch was on the point of setting his spectacles
+astride of his nose, but recollected that he had forgotten to wind
+thread about them, and stick them together with wax, so he passed it
+over to me.  As I understand something about reading and writing, and do
+not wear spectacles, I undertook to read it.  I had not turned two
+leaves, when all at once he caught me by the hand, and stopped me.
+
+"Stop! tell me first what you are reading."
+
+I confess that I was a trifle stunned by such a question.
+
+"What! what am I reading, Thoma Grigorovitch?  These were your very
+words."
+
+"Who told you that they were my words?"
+
+"Why, what more would you have?  Here it is printed: RELATED BY SUCH AND
+SUCH A SACRISTAN."
+
+"Spit on the head of the man who printed that! he lies, the dog of a
+Moscow pedler!  Did I say that?  'TWAS JUST THE SAME AS THOUGH ONE HADN'T
+HIS WITS ABOUT HIM.  Listen.  I'll tell it to you on the spot."
+
+We moved up to the table, and he began.
+
+          *          *          *          *
+
+My grandfather (the kingdom of heaven be his! may he eat only wheaten
+rolls and makovniki [FOOTNOTE: Poppy-seeds cooked in honey, and dried in
+square cakes.] with honey in the other world!) could tell a story
+wonderfully well.  When he used to begin on a tale, you wouldn't stir
+from the spot all day, but keep on listening.  He was no match for the
+story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue as
+though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you snatch your
+cap and flee from the house.  As I now recall it,--my old mother was
+alive then,--in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling
+out of doors, and had so sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our
+cottage, she used to sit before the hackling-comb, drawing out a long
+thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a
+song, which I seem to hear even now.
+
+The fat-lamp, quivering and flaring up as though in fear of something,
+lighted us within our cottage; the spindle hummed; and all of us
+children, collected in a cluster, listened to grandfather, who had not
+crawled off the oven for more than five years, owing to his great age.
+But the wondrous tales of the incursions of the Zaporozhian Cossacks,
+the Poles, the bold deeds of Podkova, of Poltor-Kozhukh, and
+Sagaidatchnii, did not interest us so much as the stories about some
+deed of old which always sent a shiver through our frames, and made our
+hair rise upright on our heads.  Sometimes such terror took possession of
+us in consequence of them, that, from that evening on, Heaven knows what
+a marvel everything seemed to us.  If you chance to go out of the cottage
+after nightfall for anything, you imagine that a visitor from the other
+world has lain down to sleep in your bed; and I should not be able to
+tell this a second time were it not that I had often taken my own smock,
+at a distance, as it lay at the head of the bed, for the Evil One rolled
+up in a ball!  But the chief thing about grandfather's stories was, that
+he never had lied in all his life; and whatever he said was so, was so.
+
+I will now relate to you one of his marvellous tales.  I know that there
+are a great many wise people who copy in the courts, and can even read
+civil documents, who, if you were to put into their hand a simple
+prayer-book, could not make out the first letter in it, and would show
+all their teeth in derision--which is wisdom.  These people laugh at
+everything you tell them.  Such incredulity has spread abroad in the
+world!  What then?  (Why, may God and the Holy Virgin cease to love me if
+it is not possible that even you will not believe me!)  Once he said
+something about witches; . . .  What then?  Along comes one of these head-
+breakers,--and doesn't believe in witches!  Yes, glory to God that I have
+lived so long in the world!  I have seen heretics, to whom it would be
+easier to lie in confession than it would to our brothers and equals to
+take snuff, and those people would deny the existence of witches!  But
+let them just dream about something, and they won't even tell what it
+was!  There's no use in talking about them!
+
+          *          *          *          *
+
+ST. JOHN'S EVE.
+
+No one could have recognized this village of ours a little over a
+hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the poorest kind of a hamlet.  Half a
+score of miserable izbas, unplastered, badly thatched, were scattered
+here and there about the fields.  There was not an inclosure or decent
+shed to shelter animals or wagons.  That was the way the wealthy lived;
+and if you had looked for our brothers, the poor,--why, a hole in the
+ground,--that was a cabin for you!  Only by the smoke could you tell that
+a God-created man lived there.  You ask why they lived so?  It was not
+entirely through poverty: almost every one led a wandering, Cossack
+life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign lands; it was rather
+because there was no reason for setting up a well-ordered khata (wooden
+house).  How many people were wandering all over the country,--Crimeans,
+Poles, Lithuanians!  It was quite possible that their own countrymen
+might make a descent, and plunder everything.  Anything was possible.
+
+In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human form, often made his
+appearance.  Why he came, and whence, no one knew.  He prowled about, got
+drunk, and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, and there was not a
+hint of his existence.  Then, again, behold, he seemed to have dropped
+from the sky, and went flying about the streets of the village, of which
+no trace now remains, and which was not more than a hundred paces from
+Dikanka.  He would collect together all the Cossacks he met; then there
+were songs, laughter, money in abundance, and vodka flowed like
+water. . . .  He would address the pretty girls, and give them ribbons,
+earrings, strings of beads,--more than they knew what to do with.  It is
+true that the pretty girls rather hesitated about accepting his
+presents: God knows, perhaps they had passed through unclean hands.  My
+grandfather's aunt, who kept a tavern at that time, in which Basavriuk
+(as they called that devil-man) often had his carouses, said that no
+consideration on the face of the earth would have induced her to accept
+a gift from him.  And then, again, how avoid accepting?  Fear seized on
+every one when he knit his bristly brows, and gave a sidelong glance
+which might send your feet, God knows whither; but if you accept, then
+the next night some fiend from the swamp, with horns on his head, comes
+to call, and begins to squeeze your neck, when there is a string of
+beads upon it; or bite your finger, if there is a ring upon it; or drag
+you by the hair, if ribbons are braided in it.  God have mercy, then, on
+those who owned such gifts!  But here was the difficulty: it was
+impossible to get rid of them; if you threw them into the water, the
+diabolical ring or necklace would skim along the surface, and into your
+hand.
+
+There was a church in the village,--St. Pantelei, if I remember rightly.
+There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed memory.
+Observing that Basavriuk did not come to church, even on Easter, he
+determined to reprove him, and impose penance upon him.  Well, he hardly
+escaped with his life.  "Hark ye, pannotche!" [Footnote: Sir] he
+thundered in reply, "learn to mind your own business instead of meddling
+in other people's, if you don't want that goat's throat of yours stuck
+together with boiling kutya."  [Footnote: A dish of rice or wheat flour,
+with honey and raisins, which is brought to the church on the
+celebration of memorial masses]  What was to be done with this
+unrepentant man?  Father Athanasii contented himself with announcing that
+any one who should make the acquaintance of Basavriuk would be counted a
+Catholic, an enemy of Christ's church, not a member of the human race.
+
+In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a laborer whom
+people called Peter the Orphan--perhaps because no one remembered either
+his father or mother.  The church starost, it is true, said that they had
+died of the pest in his second year; but my grandfather's aunt would not
+hear to that, and tried with all her might to furnish him with parents,
+although poor Peter needed them about as much as we need last year's
+snow.  She said that his father had been in Zaporozhe, taken prisoner by
+the Turks, underwent God only knows what tortures, and having, by some
+miracle, disguised himself as a eunuch, had made his escape.  Little
+cared the black-browed youths and maidens about his parents.  They merely
+remarked, that if he only had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin
+cap, with dandified blue crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging by
+his side, a whip in one hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the
+other, he would surpass all the young men.  But the pity was, that the
+only thing poor Peter had was a gray svitka with more holes in it than
+there are gold-pieces in a Jew's pocket.  And that was not the worst of
+it, but this: that Korzh had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you
+can hardly have chanced to see.  My deceased grandfather's aunt used to
+say--and you know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One
+than to call anybody a beauty, without malice be it said--that this
+Cossack maiden's cheeks were as plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy
+when just bathed in God's dew, and, glowing, it unfolds its petals, and
+coquets with the rising sun; that her brows were like black cords, such
+as our maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, of the Moscow
+pedlers who visit the villages with their baskets, and evenly arched as
+though peeping into her clear eyes; that her little mouth, at sight of
+which the youths smacked their lips, seemed made to emit the songs of
+nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven's wing, and soft as
+young flax (our maidens did not then plait their hair in clubs
+interwoven with pretty, bright-hued ribbons) fell in curls over her
+kuntush.  [Footnote: Upper garment in Little Russia.] Eh! may I never
+intone another alleluia in the choir, if I would not have kissed her, in
+spite of the gray which is making its way all through the old wool which
+covers my pate, and my old woman beside me, like a thorn in my side!
+Well, you know what happens when young men and maids live side by side.
+In the twilight the heels of red boots were always visible in the place
+where Pidorka chatted with her Petrus.  But Korzh would never have
+suspected anything out of the way, only one day--it is evident that none
+but the Evil One could have inspired him--Petrus took it into his head
+to kiss the Cossack maiden's rosy lips with all his heart in the
+passage, without first looking well about him; and that same Evil One--
+may the son of a dog dream of the holy cross!--caused the old graybeard,
+like a fool, to open the cottage-door at that same moment.  Korzh was
+petrified, dropped his jaw, and clutched at the door for support.  Those
+unlucky kisses had completely stunned him.  It surprised him more than
+the blow of a pestle on the wall, with which, in our days, the muzhik
+generally drives out his intoxication for lack of fuses and powder.
+
+Recovering himself, he took his grandfather's hunting-whip from the
+wall, and was about to belabor Peter's back with it, when Pidorka's
+little six-year-old brother Ivas rushed up from somewhere or other, and,
+grasping his father's legs with his little hands, screamed out, "Daddy,
+daddy! don't beat Petrus!"  What was to be done?  A father's heart is not
+made of stone.  Hanging the whip again upon the wall, he led him quietly
+from the house.  "If you ever show yourself in my cottage again, or even
+under the windows, look out, Petro! by Heaven, your black moustache will
+disappear; and your black locks, though wound twice about your ears,
+will take leave of your pate, or my name is not Terentiy Korzh."  So
+saying, he gave him a little taste of his fist in the nape of his neck,
+so that all grew dark before Petrus, and he flew headlong.  So there was
+an end of their kissing.  Sorrow seized upon our doves; and a rumor was
+rife in the village, that a certain Pole, all embroidered with gold,
+with moustaches, sabres, spurs, and pockets jingling like the bells of
+the bag with which our sacristan Taras goes through the church every
+day, had begun to frequent Korzh's house.  Now, it is well known why the
+father is visited when there is a black-browed daughter about.  So, one
+day, Pidorka burst into tears, and clutched the hand of her Ivas.  "Ivas,
+my dear!  Ivas, my love! fly to Petrus, my child of gold, like an arrow
+from a bow.  Tell him all: I would have loved his brown eyes, I would
+have kissed his white face, but my fate decrees not so.  More than one
+towel have I wet with burning tears.  I am sad, I am heavy at heart.  And
+my own father is my enemy.  I will not marry that Pole, whom I do not
+love.  Tell him they are preparing a wedding, but there will be no music
+at our wedding: ecclesiastics will sing instead of pipes and kobzas.
+[Footnote: Eight-stringed musical instrument.] I shall not dance with my
+bridegroom: they will carry me out.  Dark, dark will be my dwelling,--of
+maple wood; and, instead of chimneys, a cross will stand upon the roof."
+
+Petro stood petrified, without moving from the spot, when the innocent
+child lisped out Pidorka's words to him.  "And I, unhappy man, thought to
+go to the Crimea and Turkey, win gold and return to thee, my beauty!  But
+it may not be.  The evil eye has seen us.  I will have a wedding, too,
+dear little fish, I too; but no ecclesiastics will be at that wedding.
+The black crow will caw, instead of the pope, over me; the smooth field
+will be my dwelling; the dark blue clouds my roof-tree.  The eagle will
+claw out my brown eyes: the rain will wash the Cossack's bones, and the
+whirlwinds will dry them.  But what am I?  Of whom, to whom, am I
+complaining?  'T is plain, God willed it so.  If I am to be lost, then so
+be it!" and he went straight to the tavern.
+
+My late grandfather's aunt was somewhat surprised on seeing Petrus in
+the tavern, and at an hour when good men go to morning mass; and she
+stared at him as though in a dream, when he demanded a jug of brandy,
+about half a pailful.  But the poor fellow tried in vain to drown his
+woe.  The vodka stung his tongue like nettles, and tasted more bitter
+than wormwood.  He flung the jug from him upon the ground.  "You have
+sorrowed enough, Cossack," growled a bass voice behind him.  He looked
+round--Basavriuk!  Ugh, what a face!  His hair was like a brush, his eyes
+like those of a bull.  "I know what you lack: here it is."  Then he
+jingled a leather purse which hung from his girdle, and smiled
+diabolically.  Petro shuddered.  "He, he, he! yes, how it shines!" he
+roared, shaking out ducats into his hand: "he, he, he! and how it
+jingles!  And I only ask one thing for a whole pile of such shiners."--
+"It is the Evil One!" exclaimed Petro: "Give them here!  I'm ready for
+anything!"  They struck hands upon it.  "See here, Petro, you are ripe
+just in time: to-morrow is St. John the Baptist's day.  Only on this one
+night in the year does the fern blossom.  Delay not.  I will await thee at
+midnight in the Bear's ravine."
+
+I do not believe that chickens await the hour when the woman brings
+their corn with as much anxiety as Petrus awaited the evening.  And, in
+fact, he looked to see whether the shadows of the trees were not
+lengthening, if the sun were not turning red towards setting; and the
+longer he watched, the more impatient he grew.  How long it was!
+Evidently, God's day had lost its end somewhere.  And now the sun is
+gone.  The sky is red only on one side, and it is already growing dark.
+It grows colder in the fields.  It gets dusky and more dusky, and at last
+quite dark.  At last!  With heart almost bursting from his bosom, he set
+out on his way, and cautiously descended through the dense woods into
+the deep hollow called the Bear's ravine.  Basavriuk was already waiting
+there.  It was so dark, that you could not see a yard before you.  Hand in
+hand they penetrated the thin marsh, clinging to the luxuriant thorn
+bushes, and stumbling at almost every step.  At last they reached an open
+spot.  Petro looked about him: he had never chanced to come there before.
+Here Basavriuk halted.
+
+"Do you see, before you stand three hillocks?  There are a great many
+sorts of flowers upon them.  But may some power keep you from plucking
+even one of them.  But as soon as the fern blossoms, seize it, and look
+not round, no matter what may seem to be going on behind thee."
+
+Petro wanted to ask--and behold he was no longer there.  He approached
+the three hillocks--where were the flowers?  He saw nothing.  The wild
+steppe-grass darkled around, and stifled everything in its luxuriance.
+But the lightning flashed; and before him stood a whole bed of flowers,
+all wonderful, all strange: and there were also the simple fronds of
+fern.  Petro doubted his senses, and stood thoughtfully before them, with
+both hands upon his sides.
+
+"What prodigy is this? one can see these weeds ten times in a day: what
+marvel is there about them? was not devil's-face laughing at me?"
+
+Behold! the tiny flower-bud crimsons, and moves as though alive.  It is a
+marvel, in truth.  It moves, and grows larger and larger, and flushes
+like a burning coal.  The tiny star flashes up, something bursts softly,
+and the flower opens before his eyes like a flame, lighting the others
+about it.  "Now is the time," thought Petro, and extended his hand.  He
+sees hundreds of shaggy hands reach from behind him, also for the
+flower; and there is a running about from place to place, in the rear.
+He half shut his eyes, plucked sharply at the stalk, and the flower
+remained in his hand.  All became still.  Upon a stump sat Basavriuk, all
+blue like a corpse.  He moved not so much as a finger.  His eyes were
+immovably fixed on something visible to him alone: his mouth was half
+open and speechless.  All about, nothing stirred.  Ugh! it was horrible!--
+But then a whistle was heard, which made Petro's heart grow cold within
+him; and it seemed to him that the grass whispered, and the flowers
+began to talk among themselves in delicate voices, like little silver
+bells; the trees rustled in waving contention;--Basavriuk's face
+suddenly became full of life, and his eyes sparkled.  "The witch has just
+returned," he muttered between his teeth.  "See here, Petro: a beauty
+will stand before you in a moment; do whatever she commands; if not--you
+are lost for ever."  Then he parted the thorn-bush with a knotty stick,
+and before him stood a tiny izba, on chicken's legs, as they say.
+Basavriuk smote it with his fist, and the wall trembled.  A large black
+dog ran out to meet them, and with a whine, transforming itself into a
+cat, flew straight at his eyes.  "Don't be angry, don't be angry, you old
+Satan!" said Basavriuk, employing such words as would have made a good
+man stop his ears.  Behold, instead of a cat, an old woman with a face
+wrinkled like a baked apple, and all bent into a bow: her nose and chin
+were like a pair of nut-crackers.  "A stunning beauty!" thought Petro;
+and cold chills ran down his back.  The witch tore the flower from his
+hand, bent over, and muttered over it for a long time, sprinkling it
+with some kind of water.  Sparks flew from her mouth, froth appeared on
+her lips.
+
+"Throw it away," she said, giving it back to Petro.
+
+Petro threw it, and what wonder was this? the flower did not fall
+straight to the earth, but for a long while twinkled like a fiery ball
+through the darkness, and swam through the air like a boat: at last it
+began to sink lower and lower, and fell so far away, that the little
+star, hardly larger than a poppy-seed, was barely visible.  "Here!"
+croaked the old woman, in a dull voice: and Basavriuk, giving him a
+spade, said: "Dig here, Petro: here you will see more gold than you or
+Korzh ever dreamed of."
+
+Petro spat on his hands, seized the spade, applied his foot, and turned
+up the earth, a second, a third, a fourth time. . . .  There was something
+hard: the spade clinked, and would go no farther.  Then his eyes began to
+distinguish a small, iron-bound coffer.  He tried to seize it; but the
+chest began to sink into the earth, deeper, farther, and deeper still:
+and behind him he heard a laugh, more like a serpent's hiss.  "No, you
+shall not see the gold until you procure human blood," said the witch,
+and led up to him a child of six, covered with a white sheet, indicating
+by a sign that he was to cut off his head.  Petro was stunned.  A trifle,
+indeed, to cut off a man's, or even an innocent child's, head for no
+reason whatever!  In wrath he tore off the sheet enveloping his head, and
+behold! before him stood Ivas.  And the poor child crossed his little
+hands, and hung his head. . . .  Petro flew upon the witch with the knife
+like a madman, and was on the point of laying hands on her. . . .
+
+"What did you promise for the girl?" . . . thundered Basavriuk; and like a
+shot he was on his back.  The witch stamped her foot: a blue flame
+flashed from the earth; it illumined it all inside, and it was as if
+moulded of crystal; and all that was within the earth became visible, as
+if in the palm of the hand.  Ducats, precious stones in chests and
+kettles, were piled in heaps beneath the very spot they stood on.  His
+eyes burned, . . . his mind grew troubled. . . .  He grasped the knife like
+a madman, and the innocent blood spurted into his eyes.  Diabolical
+laughter resounded on all sides.  Misshaped monsters flew past him in
+herds.  The witch, fastening her hands in the headless trunk, like a wolf
+drank its blood. . . .  All went round in his head.  Collecting all his
+strength, he set out to run.  Everything turned red before him.  The trees
+seemed steeped in blood, and burned and groaned.  The sky glowed and
+glowered. . . .  Burning points, like lightning, flickered before his eyes.
+Utterly exhausted, he rushed into his miserable hovel, and fell to the
+ground like a log.  A death-like sleep overpowered him.
+
+Two days and two nights did Petro sleep, without once awakening.  When he
+came to himself, on the third day, he looked long at all the corners of
+his hut; but in vain did he endeavor to recollect; his memory was like a
+miser's pocket, from which you cannot entice a quarter of a kopek.
+Stretching himself, he heard something clash at his feet.  He looked, . . .
+two bags of gold.  Then only, as if in a dream, he recollected that he
+had been seeking some treasure, that something had frightened him in the
+woods. . . .  But at what price he had obtained it, and how, he could by no
+means understand.
+
+Korzh saw the sacks,--and was mollified.  "Such a Petrus, quite unheard
+of! yes, and did I not love him?  Was he not to me as my own son?"  And
+the old fellow carried on his fiction until it reduced him to tears.
+Pidorka began to tell him how some passing gypsies had stolen Ivas; but
+Petro could not even recall him--to such a degree had the Devil's
+influence darkened his mind!  There was no reason for delay.  The Pole was
+dismissed, and the wedding-feast prepared; rolls were baked, towels and
+handkerchiefs embroidered; the young people were seated at table; the
+wedding-loaf was cut; banduras, cymbals, pipes, kobzi, sounded, and
+pleasure was rife . . .
+
+A wedding in the olden times was not like one of the present day.  My
+grandfather's aunt used to tell--what doings!--how the maidens--in
+festive head-dresses of yellow, blue, and pink ribbons, above which they
+bound gold braid; in thin chemisettes embroidered on all the seams with
+red silk, and strewn with tiny silver flowers; in morocco shoes, with
+high iron heels--danced the gorlitza as swimmingly as peacocks, and as
+wildly as the whirlwind; how the youths--with their ship-shaped caps
+upon their heads, the crowns of gold brocade, with a little slit at the
+nape where the hair-net peeped through, and two horns projecting, one in
+front and another behind, of the very finest black lambskin; in
+kuntushas of the finest blue silk with red borders--stepped forward one
+by one, their arms akimbo in stately form, and executed the gopak; how
+the lads--in tall Cossack caps, and light cloth svitkas, girt with
+silver embroidered belts, their short pipes in their teeth--skipped
+before them, and talked nonsense.  Even Korzh could not contain himself,
+as he gazed at the young people, from getting gay in his old age.
+Bandura in hand, alternately puffing at his pipe and singing, a brandy-
+glass upon his head, the gray-beard began the national dance amid loud
+shouts from the merry-makers.  What will not people devise in merry mood!
+They even began to disguise their faces.  They did not look like human
+beings.  They are not to be compared with the disguises which we have at
+our weddings nowadays.  What do they do now?  Why, imitate gypsies and
+Moscow pedlers.  No! then one used to dress himself as a Jew, another as
+the Devil: they would begin by kissing each other, and ended by seizing
+each other by the hair. . . .  God be with them! you laughed till you held
+your sides.  They dressed themselves in Turkish and Tartar garments.  All
+upon them glowed like a conflagration, . . . and then they began to joke
+and play pranks. . . .  Well, then away with the saints!  An amusing thing
+happened to my grandfather's aunt, who was at this wedding.  She was
+dressed in a voluminous Tartar robe, and, wine-glass in hand, was
+entertaining the company.  The Evil One instigated one man to pour vodka
+over her from behind.  Another, at the same moment, evidently not by
+accident, struck a light, and touched it to her; . . . the flame flashed
+up; poor aunt, in terror, flung her robe from her, before them all. . . .
+Screams, laughter, jest, arose, as if at a fair.  In a word, the old
+folks could not recall so merry a wedding.
+
+Pidorka and Petrus began to live like a gentleman and lady.  There was
+plenty of everything, and everything was handsome. . . .  But honest people
+shook their heads when they looked at their way of living.  "From the
+Devil no good can come," they unanimously agreed.  "Whence, except from
+the tempter of orthodox people, came this wealth?  Where else could he
+get such a lot of gold?  Why, on the very day that he got rich, did
+Basavriuk vanish as if into thin air?"  Say, if you can, that people
+imagine things!  In fact, a month had not passed, and no one would have
+recognized Petrus.  Why, what had happened to him?  God knows.  He sits in
+one spot, and says no word to any one: he thinks continually, and seems
+to be trying to recall something.  When Pidorka succeeds in getting him to
+speak, he seems to forget himself, carries on a conversation, and even
+grows cheerful; but if he inadvertently glances at the sacks, "Stop,
+stop!  I have forgotten," he cries, and again plunges into reverie, and
+again strives to recall something.  Sometimes when he has sat long in a
+place, it seems to him as though it were coming, just coming back to
+mind, . . . and again all fades away.  It seems as if he is sitting in the
+tavern: they bring him vodka; vodka stings him; vodka is repulsive to
+him.  Some one comes along, and strikes him on the shoulder; . . . but
+beyond that everything is veiled in darkness before him.  The
+perspiration streams down his face, and he sits exhausted in the same
+place.
+
+What did not Pidorka do?  She consulted the sorceress; and they poured
+out fear, and brewed stomach ache,[Footnote: "To pour out fear," is done
+with us in case of fear; when it is desired to know what caused it,
+melted lead or wax is poured into water, and the object whose form it
+assumes is the one which frightened the sick person; after this, the
+fear departs.  Sonyashnitza is brewed for giddiness, and pain in the
+bowels.  To this end, a bit of stump is burned, thrown into a jug, and
+turned upside down into a bowl filled with water, which is placed on the
+patient's stomach: after an incantation, he is given a spoonful of this
+water to drink.]--but all to no avail.  And so the summer passed.  Many a
+Cossack had mowed and reaped: many a Cossack, more enterprising than the
+rest, had set off upon an expedition.  Flocks of ducks were already
+crowding our marshes, but there was not even a hint of improvement.
+
+It was red upon the steppes.  Ricks of grain, like Cossacks' caps, dotted
+the fields here and there.  On the highway were to be encountered wagons
+loaded with brushwood and logs.  The ground had become more solid, and in
+places was touched with frost.  Already had the snow begun to besprinkle
+the sky, and the branches of the trees were covered with rime like
+rabbit-skin.  Already on frosty days the red-breasted finch hopped about
+on the snow-heaps like a foppish Polish nobleman, and picked out grains
+of corn; and children, with huge sticks, chased wooden tops upon the
+ice; while their fathers lay quietly on the stove, issuing forth at
+intervals with lighted pipes in their lips, to growl, in regular
+fashion, at the orthodox frost, or to take the air, and thresh the grain
+spread out in the barn.  At last the snow began to melt, and the ice rind
+slipped away: but Petro remained the same; and, the longer it went on,
+the more morose he grew.  He sat in the middle of the cottage as though
+nailed to the spot, with the sacks of gold at his feet.  He grew shy, his
+hair grew long, he became terrible; and still he thought of but one
+thing, still he tried to recall something, and got angry and ill-
+tempered because he could not recall it.  Often, rising wildly from his
+seat, he gesticulates violently, fixes his eyes on something as though
+desirous of catching it: his lips move as though desirous of uttering
+some long-forgotten word--and remain speechless.  Fury takes possession
+of him: he gnaws and bites his hands like a man half crazy, and in his
+vexation tears out his hair by the handful, until, calming down, he
+falls into forgetfulness, as it were, and again begins to recall, and is
+again seized with fury and fresh tortures. . . .  What visitation of God is
+this?
+
+Pidorka was neither dead nor alive.  At first it was horrible to her to
+remain alone in the cottage; but, in course of time, the poor woman grew
+accustomed to her sorrow.  But it was impossible to recognize the Pidorka
+of former days.  No blush, no smile: she was thin and worn with grief,
+and had wept her bright eyes away.  Once, some one who evidently took
+pity on her advised her to go to the witch who dwelt in the Bear's
+ravine, and enjoyed the reputation of being able to cure every disease
+in the world.  She determined to try this last remedy: word by word she
+persuaded the old woman to come to her.  This was St. John's Eve, as it
+chanced.  Petro lay insensible on the bench, and did not observe the new-
+comer.  Little by little he rose, and looked about him.  Suddenly he
+trembled in every limb, as though he were on the scaffold: his hair rose
+upon his head, . . . and he laughed such a laugh as pierced Pidorka's heart
+with fear.  "I have remembered, remembered!" he cried in terrible joy;
+and, swinging a hatchet round his head, he flung it at the old woman
+with all his might.  The hatchet penetrated the oaken door two vershok
+(three inches and a half).  The old woman disappeared; and a child of
+seven in a white blouse, with covered head, stood in the middle of the
+cottage. . . .  The sheet flew off.  "Ivas!" cried Pidorka, and ran to him;
+but the apparition became covered from head to foot with blood, and
+illumined the whole room with red light. . . .  She ran into the passage in
+her terror, but, on recovering herself a little, wished to help him; in
+vain! the door had slammed to behind her so securely that she could not
+open it.  People ran up, and began to knock: they broke in the door, as
+though there was but one mind among them.  The whole cottage was full of
+smoke; and just in the middle, where Petrus had stood, was a heap of
+ashes, from which smoke was still rising.  They flung themselves upon the
+sacks: only broken potsherds lay there instead of ducats.  The Cossacks
+stood with staring eyes and open mouths, not daring to move a hair, as
+if rooted to the earth, such terror did this wonder inspire in them.
+
+I do not remember what happened next.  Pidorka took a vow to go upon a
+pilgrimage, collected the property left her by her father, and in a few
+days it was as if she had never been in the village.  Whither she had
+gone, no one could tell.  Officious old women would have despatched her
+to the same place whither Petro had gone; but a Cossack from Kief
+reported that he had seen in a cloister, a nun withered to a mere
+skeleton, who prayed unceasingly; and her fellow villagers recognized
+her as Pidorka, by all the signs,--that no one had ever heard her utter
+a word; that she had come on foot, and had brought a frame for the ikon
+of God's mother, set with such brilliant stones that all were dazzled at
+the sight.
+
+But this was not the end, if you please.  On the same day that the Evil
+One made way with Petrus, Basavriuk appeared again; but all fled from
+him.  They knew what sort of a bird he was,--none else than Satan, who
+had assumed human form in order to unearth treasures; and, since
+treasures do not yield to unclean hands, he seduced the young.  That same
+year, all deserted their earth huts, and collected in a village; but,
+even there, there was no peace, on account of that accursed Basavriuk.
+My late grandfather's aunt said that he was particularly angry with her,
+because she had abandoned her former tavern, and tried with all his
+might to revenge himself upon her.  Once the village elders were
+assembled in the tavern, and, as the saying goes, were arranging the
+precedence at the table, in the middle of which was placed a small
+roasted lamb, shame to say.  They chattered about this, that, and the
+other,--among the rest about various marvels and strange things.  Well,
+they saw something; it would have been nothing if only one had seen it,
+but all saw it; and it was this: the sheep raised his head; his goggling
+eyes became alive and sparkled; and the black, bristling moustache,
+which appeared for one instant, made a significant gesture at those
+present.  All, at once, recognized Basavriuk's countenance in the sheep's
+head: my grandfather's aunt thought it was on the point of asking for
+vodka. . . .  The worthy elders seized their hats, and hastened home.
+
+Another time, the church starost [Footnote: Elder] himself, who was
+fond of an occasional private interview with my grandfather's brandy-
+glass, had not succeeded in getting to the bottom twice, when he beheld
+the glass bowing very low to him.  "Satan take you, let us make the sign
+of the cross over you!" . . .  And the same marvel happened to his better-
+half.  She had just begun to mix the dough in a huge kneading-trough,
+when suddenly the trough sprang up.  "Stop, stop! where are you going?"
+Putting its arms akimbo, with dignity, it went skipping all about the
+cottage. . . .  You may laugh, but it was no laughing-matter to our
+grandfathers.  And in vain did Father Athanasii go through all the
+village with holy water, and chase the Devil through all the streets
+with his brush; and my late grandfather's aunt long complained that, as
+soon as it was dark, some one came knocking at her door, and scratching
+at the wall.
+
+Well!  All appears to be quiet now, in the place where our village
+stands; but it was not so very long ago--my father was still alive--that
+I remember how a good man could not pass the ruined tavern, which a
+dishonest race had long managed for their own interest.  From the smoke-
+blackened chimneys, smoke poured out in a pillar, and rising high in the
+air, as if to take an observation, rolled off like a cap, scattering
+burning coals over the steppe; and Satan (the son of a dog should not be
+mentioned) sobbed so pitifully in his lair, that the startled ravens
+rose in flocks from the neighboring oak-wood, and flew through the air
+with wild cries.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE
+
+BY
+
+COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOI
+
+From "The Invaders."  Translated by N. H. Dole.
+
+1887
+
+(Prince Nekhiludof Relates how, during an Expedition in the Caucasus,
+he met an Acquaintance from Moscow)
+
+
+
+
+Our division had been out in the field.  The work in hand was
+accomplished: we had cut a way through the forest, and each day we were
+expecting from headquarters orders for our return to the fort.  Our
+division of fieldpieces was stationed at the top of a steep mountain-
+crest which was terminated by the swift mountain-river Mechik, and had
+to command the plain that stretched before us.  Here and there on this
+picturesque plain, out of the reach of gunshot, now and then, especially
+at evening, groups of mounted mountaineers showed themselves, attracted
+by curiosity to ride up and view the Russian camp.
+
+The evening was clear, mild, and fresh, as it is apt to be in December
+in the Caucasus; the sun was setting behind the steep chain of the
+mountains at the left, and threw rosy rays upon the tents scattered over
+the slope, upon the soldiers moving about, and upon our two guns, which
+seemed to crane their necks as they rested motionless on the earthwork
+two paces from us.  The infantry picket, stationed on the knoll at the
+left, stood in perfect silhouette against the light of the sunset; no
+less distinct were the stacks of muskets, the form of the sentry, the
+groups of soldiers, and the smoke of the smouldering camp-fire.
+
+At the right and left of the slope, on the black, sodden earth, the
+tents gleamed white; and behind the tents, black, stood the bare trunks
+of the platane forest, which rang with the incessant sound of axes, the
+crackling of the bonfires, and the crashing of the trees as they fell
+under the axes.  The bluish smoke arose from tobacco-pipes on all sides,
+and vanished in the transparent blue of the frosty sky.  By the tents and
+on the lower ground around the arms rushed the Cossacks, dragoons, and
+artillerists, with great galloping and snorting of horses as they
+returned from getting water.  It began to freeze; all sounds were heard
+with extraordinary distinctness, and one could see an immense distance
+across the plain through the clear, rare atmosphere.  The groups of the
+enemy, their curiosity at seeing the soldiers satisfied, quietly
+galloped off across the fields, still yellow with the golden corn-
+stubble, toward their auls, or villages, which were visible beyond the
+forest, with the tall posts of the cemeteries and the smoke rising in
+the air.
+
+Our tent was pitched not far from the guns on a place high and dry, from
+which we had a remarkably extended view.  Near the tent, on a cleared
+space, around the battery itself, we had our games of skittles, or
+chushki.  The obliging soldiers had made for us rustic benches and
+tables.  On account of all these amusements, the artillery officers, our
+comrades, and a few infantry men liked to gather of an evening around
+our battery, and the place came to be called the club.
+
+As the evening was fine, the best players had come, and we were amusing
+ourselves with skittles [Footnote: Gorodki].  Ensign D., Lieutenant O.,
+and myself had played two games in succession; and to the common
+satisfaction and amusement of all the spectators, officers, soldiers,
+and servants [Footnote: Denshchiki ] who were watching us from their
+tents, we had twice carried the winning party on our backs from one end
+of the ground to the other.  Especially droll was the situation of the
+huge fat Captain S., who, puffing and smiling good-naturedly, with legs
+dragging on the ground, rode pickaback on the feeble little Lieutenant
+O.
+
+When it grew somewhat later, the servants brought three glasses of tea
+for the six men of us, and not a spoon; and we who had finished our game
+came to the plaited settees.
+
+There was standing near them a small bow-legged man, a stranger to us,
+in a sheepskin jacket, and a papakha, or Circassian cap, with a long
+overhanging white crown.  As soon as we came near where he stood, he took
+a few irresolute steps, and put on his cap; and several times he seemed
+to make up his mind to come to meet us, and then stopped again.  But
+after deciding, probably, that it was impossible to remain irresolute,
+the stranger took off his cap, and, going in a circuit around us,
+approached Captain S.
+
+"Ah, Guskantinli, how is it, old man?" [Footnote: Nu chto, batenka,]
+said S., still smiling good-naturedly, under the influence of his ride.
+
+Guskantni, as S. called him, instantly replaced his cap, and made a
+motion as though to thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket;
+[Footnote: Polushubok, little half shuba, or fur cloak.] but on the side
+toward me there was no pocket in the jacket, and his small red hand fell
+into an awkward position.  I felt a strong desire to make out who this
+man was (was he a yunker, or a degraded officer?), and, not realizing
+that my gaze (that is, the gaze of a strange officer) disconcerted him,
+I continued to stare at his dress and appearance.
+
+I judged that he was about thirty.  His small, round, gray eyes had a
+sleepy expression, and at the same time gazed calmly out from under the
+dirty white lambskin of his cap, which hung down over his face.  His
+thick, irregular nose, standing out between his sunken cheeks, gave
+evidence of emaciation that was the result of illness, and not natural.
+His restless lips, barely covered by a sparse, soft, whitish moustache,
+were constantly changing their shape as though they were trying to
+assume now one expression, now another.  But all these expressions seemed
+to be endless, and his face retained one predominating expression of
+timidity and fright.  Around his thin neck, where the veins stood out,
+was tied a green woollen scarf tucked into his jacket, his fur jacket,
+or polushubok, was worn bare, short, and had dog-fur sewed on the collar
+and on the false pockets.  The trousers were checkered, of ash-gray
+color, and his sapogi had short, unblacked military bootlegs.
+
+"I beg of you, do not disturb yourself," said I when he for the second
+time, timidly glancing at me, had taken off his cap.
+
+He bowed to me with an expression of gratitude, replaced his hat, and,
+drawing from his pocket a dirty chintz tobacco-pouch with lacings, began
+to roll a cigarette.
+
+I myself had not been long a yunker, an elderly yunker; and as I was
+incapable, as yet, of being good-naturedly serviceable to my younger
+comrades, and without means, I well knew all the moral difficulties of
+this situation for a proud man no longer young, and I sympathized with
+all men who found themselves in such a situation, and I endeavored to
+make clear to myself their character and rank, and the tendencies of
+their intellectual peculiarities, in order to judge of the degree of
+their moral sufferings.  This yunker or degraded officer, judging by his
+restless eyes and that intentionally constant variation of expression
+which I noticed in him, was a man very far from stupid, and extremely
+egotistical, and therefore much to be pitied.
+
+Captain S. invited us to play another game of skittles, with the stakes
+to consist, not only of the usual pickaback ride of the winning party,
+but also of a few bottles of red wine, rum, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves
+for the mulled wine which that winter, on account of the cold, was
+greatly popular in our division.
+
+Guskantini, as S. again called him, was also invited to take part; but
+before the game began, the man, struggling between gratification because
+he had been invited and a certain timidity, drew Captain S. aside, and
+began to say something in a whisper.  The good-natured captain punched
+him in the ribs with his big, fat hand, and replied, loud enough to be
+heard:
+
+"Not at all, old fellow [Footnote: Batenka, Malo-Russian diminutive,
+little father], I assure you."
+
+When the game was over, and that side in which the stranger whose rank
+was so low had taken part, had come out winners, and it fell to his lot
+to ride on one of our officers, Ensign D., the ensign grew red in the
+face: he went to the little divan and offered the stranger a cigarette
+by way of a compromise.
+
+While they were ordering the mulled wine, and in the steward's tent were
+heard assiduous preparations on the part of Nikita, who had sent an
+orderly for cinnamon and cloves, and the shadow of his back was
+alternately lengthening and shortening on the dingy sides of the tent,
+we men, seven in all, sat around on the benches; and while we took turns
+in drinking tea from the three glasses, and gazed out over the plain,
+which was now beginning to glow in the twilight, we talked and laughed
+over the various incidents of the game.
+
+The stranger in the fur jacket took no share in the conversation,
+obstinately refused to drink the tea which I several times offered him,
+and as he sat there on the ground in Tartar fashion, occupied himself in
+making cigarettes of fine-cut tobacco, and smoking them one after
+another, evidently not so much for his own satisfaction as to give
+himself the appearance of a man with something to do.  When it was
+remarked that the summons to return was expected on the morrow, and that
+there might be an engagement, he lifted himself on his knees, and,
+addressing Captain B. only, said that he had been at the adjutant's, and
+had himself written the order for the return on the next day.  We all
+said nothing while he was speaking; and notwithstanding the fact that he
+was so bashful, we begged him to repeat this most interesting piece of
+news.  He repeated what he had said, adding only that he had been
+staying at the adjutant's (since he made it his home there) when the
+order came.
+
+"Look here, old fellow, if you are not telling us false, I shall have to
+go to my company and give some orders for to-morrow," said Captain S.
+
+"No . . . why . . . it may be, I am sure," . . . stammered the stranger,
+but suddenly stopped, and, apparently feeling himself affronted, contracted
+his brows, and, muttering something between his teeth, again began to
+roll a cigarette.  But the fine-cut tobacco in his chintz pouch began to
+show signs of giving out, and he asked S. to lend him a little
+cigarette.  [Footnote: PAPIROSTCHKA, diminished diminutive of PAPIROSKA,
+from PAPIROS.]
+
+We kept on for a considerable time with that monotonous military chatter
+which every one who has ever been on an expedition will appreciate; all
+of us, with one and the same expression, complaining of the dullness and
+length of the expedition, in one and the same fashion sitting in
+judgment on our superiors, and all of us likewise, as we had done many
+times before, praising one comrade, pitying another, wondering how much
+this one had gained, how much that one had lost, and so on, and so on.
+
+"Here, fellows, this adjutant of ours is completely broken up," said
+Captain S.  "At headquarters he was everlastingly on the winning side; no
+matter whom he sat down with, he'd rake in everything: but now for two
+months past he has been losing all the time.  The present expedition
+hasn't been lucky for him.  I think he has got away with two thousand
+silver rubles and five hundred rubles' worth of articles,--the carpet
+that he won at Mukhin's, Nikitin's pistols, Sada's gold watch which
+Vorontsof gave him.  He has lost it all."
+
+"The truth of the matter in his case," said Lieutenant O., "was that he
+used to cheat everybody; it was impossible to play with him."
+
+"He cheated every one, but now it's all gone up in his pipe;" and here
+Captain S. laughed good-naturedly.  "Our friend Guskof here lives with
+him.  He hasn't quite lost HIM yet: that's so, isn't it, old fellow?"
+[Footnote: Batenka] he asked, addressing Guskof.
+
+Guskof tried to laugh.  It was a melancholy, sickly laugh, which
+completely changed the expression of his countenance.  Till this moment
+it had seemed to me that I had seen and known this man before; and,
+besides the name Guskof, by which Captain S. called him, was familiar to
+me; but how and when I had seen and known him, I actually could not
+remember.
+
+"Yes," said Guskof, incessantly putting his hand to his moustaches, but
+instantly dropping it again without touching them.  "Pavel Dmitrievitch's
+luck has been against him in this expedition, such a veine de malheur"
+he added in a careful but pure French pronunciation, again giving me to
+think that I had seen him, and seen him often, somewhere.  "I know Pavel
+Dmitrievitch very well.  He has great confidence in me," he proceeded to
+say; "he and I are old friends; that is, he is fond of me," he
+explained, evidently fearing that it might be taken as presumption for
+him to claim old friendship with the adjutant.  "Pavel Dmitrievitch plays
+admirably; but now, strange as it may seem, it's all up with him, he is
+just about perfectly ruined; la chance a tourne," he added, addressing
+himself particularly to me.
+
+At first we had listened to Guskof with condescending attention; but as
+soon as he made use of that second French phrase, we all involuntarily
+turned from him.
+
+"I have played with him a thousand times, and we agreed then that it was
+strange," said Lieutenant O., with peculiar emphasis on the word STRANGE
+[Footnote: Stranno].  "I never once won a ruble from him.  Why was it,
+when I used to win of others?"
+
+"Pavel Dmitrievitch plays admirably: I have known him for a long time,"
+said I.  In fact, I had known the adjutant for several years; more than
+once I had seen him in the full swing of a game, surrounded by officers,
+and I had remarked his handsome, rather gloomy and always passionless
+calm face, his deliberate Malo-Russian pronunciation, his handsome
+belongings and horses, his bold, manly figure, and above all his skill
+and self-restraint in carrying on the game accurately and agreeably.
+More than once, I am sorry to say, as I looked at his plump white hands
+with a diamond ring on the index-finger, passing out one card after
+another, I grew angry with that ring, with his white hands, with the
+whole of the adjutant's person, and evil thoughts on his account arose
+in my mind.  But as I afterwards reconsidered the matter coolly, I
+persuaded myself that he played more skilfully than all with whom he
+happened to play: the more so, because as I heard his general
+observations concerning the game,--how one ought not to back out when
+one had laid the smallest stake, how one ought not to leave off in
+certain cases as the first rule for honest men, and so forth, and so
+forth,--it was evident that he was always on the winning side merely
+from the fact that he played more sagaciously and coolly than the rest
+of us.  And now it seemed that this self-reliant, careful player had been
+stripped not only of his money but of his effects, which marks the
+lowest depths of loss for an officer.
+
+"He always had devilish good luck with me," said Lieutenant O.  "I made a
+vow never to play with him again."
+
+"What a marvel you are, old fellow!" said S., nodding at me, and
+addressing O.  "You lost three hundred silver rubles, that's what you
+lost to him."
+
+"More than that," said the lieutenant savagely.
+
+"And now you have come to your senses; it is rather late in the day, old
+man, for the rest of us have known for a long time that he was the cheat
+of the regiment," said S., with difficulty restraining his laughter, and
+feeling very well satisfied with his fabrication.  "Here is Guskof right
+here,--he FIXES his cards for him.  That's the reason of the friendship
+between them, old man" [Footnote: BATENKA MOI] . . . and Captain S.,
+shaking all over, burst out into such a hearty "ha, ha, ha!" that he
+spilt the glass of mulled wine which he was holding in his hand.  On
+Guskof's pale emaciated face there showed something like a color; he
+opened his mouth several times, raised his hands to his moustaches, and
+once more dropped them to his side where the pockets should have been,
+stood up, and then sat down again, and finally in an unnatural voice
+said to S.:
+
+"It's no joke, Nikolai Ivanovitch, for you to say such things before
+people who don't know me and who see me in this unlined jacket . . .
+because--" His voice failed him, and again his small red hands with
+their dirty nails went from his jacket to his face, touching his
+moustache, his hair, his nose, rubbing his eyes, or needlessly
+scratching his cheek.
+
+"As to saying that, everybody knows it, old fellow," continued S.,
+thoroughly satisfied with his jest, and not heeding Guskof's complaint.
+Guskof was still trying to say something; and placing the palm of his
+right hand on his left knee in a most unnatural position, and gazing at
+S., he had an appearance of smiling contemptuously.
+
+"No," said I to myself, as I noticed that smile of his, "I have not only
+seen him, but have spoken with him somewhere."
+
+"You and I have met somewhere," said I to him when, under the influence
+of the common silence, S.'s laughter began to calm down.  Guskof's mobile
+face suddenly lighted up, and his eyes, for the first time with a truly
+joyous expression, rested upon me.
+
+"Why, I recognized you immediately," he replied in French.  "In '48 I had
+the pleasure of meeting you quite frequently in Moscow at my sister's."
+
+I had to apologize for not recognizing him at first in that costume and
+in that new garb.  He arose, came to me, and with his moist hand
+irresolutely and weakly seized my hand, and sat down by me.  Instead of
+looking at me, though he apparently seemed so glad to see me, he gazed
+with an expression of unfriendly bravado at the officers.
+
+Either because I recognized in him a man whom I had met a few years
+before in a dresscoat in a parlor, or because he was suddenly raised in
+his own opinion by the fact of being recognized,--at all events it
+seemed to me that his face and even his motions completely changed: they
+now expressed lively intelligence, a childish self-satisfaction in the
+consciousness of such intelligence, and a certain contemptuous
+indifference; so that I confess, notwithstanding the pitiable position
+in which he found himself, my old acquaintance did not so much excite
+sympathy in me as it did a sort of unfavorable sentiment.
+
+I now vividly remembered our first meeting.  In 1848, while I was staying
+at Moscow, I frequently went to the house of Ivashin, who from childhood
+had been an old friend of mine.  His wife was an agreeable hostess, a
+charming woman, as everybody said; but she never pleased me. . . .  The
+winter that I knew her, she often spoke with hardly concealed pride of
+her brother, who had shortly before completed his course, and promised
+to be one of the most fashionable and popular young men in the best
+society of Petersburg.  As I knew by reputation the father of the
+Guskofs, who was very rich and had a distinguished position, and as I
+knew also the sister's ways, I felt some prejudice against meeting the
+young man.  One evening when I was at Ivashin's, I saw a short,
+thoroughly pleasant-looking young man, in a black coat, white vest and
+necktie.  My host hastened to make me acquainted with him.  The young man,
+evidently dressed for a ball, with his cap in his hand, was standing
+before Ivashin, and was eagerly but politely arguing with him about a
+common friend of ours, who had distinguished himself at the time of the
+Hungarian campaign.  He said that this acquaintance was not at all a hero
+or a man born for war, as was said of him, but was simply a clever and
+cultivated man.  I recollect, I took part in the argument against Guskof,
+and went to the extreme of declaring also that intellect and cultivation
+always bore an inverse relation to bravery; and I recollect how Guskof
+pleasantly and cleverly pointed out to me that bravery was necessarily
+the result of intellect and a decided degree of development,--a
+statement which I, who considered myself an intellectual and cultivated
+man, could not in my heart of hearts agree with.
+
+I recollect that towards the close of our conversation Madame Ivashina
+introduced me to her brother; and he, with a condescending smile,
+offered me his little hand on which he had not yet had time to draw his
+kid gloves, and weakly and irresolutely pressed my hand as he did now.
+Though I had been prejudiced against Guskof, I could not help granting
+that he was in the right, and agreeing with his sister that he was
+really a clever and agreeable young man, who ought to have great success
+in society.  He was extraordinarily neat, beautifully dressed, and fresh,
+and had affectedly modest manners, and a thoroughly youthful, almost
+childish appearance, on account of which you could not help excusing his
+expression of self-sufficiency, though it modified the impression of his
+high-mightiness caused by his intellectual face and especially his
+smile.  It is said that he had great success that winter with the high-
+born ladies of Moscow.  As I saw him at his sister's I could only infer
+how far this was true by the feeling of pleasure and contentment
+constantly excited in me by his youthful appearance and by his sometimes
+indiscreet anecdotes.  He and I met half a dozen times, and talked a good
+deal; or, rather, he talked a good deal, and I listened.  He spoke for
+the most part in French, always with a good accent, very fluently and
+ornately; and he had the skill of drawing others gently and politely
+into the conversation.  As a general thing, he behaved toward all, and
+toward me, in a somewhat supercilious manner, and I felt that he was
+perfectly right in this way of treating people.  I always feel that way
+in regard to men who are firmly convinced that they ought to treat me
+superciliously, and who are comparative strangers to me.
+
+Now, as he sat with me, and gave me his hand, I keenly recalled in him
+that same old haughtiness of expression; and it seemed to me that he did
+not properly appreciate his position of official inferiority, as, in the
+presence of the officers, he asked me what I had been doing in all that
+time, and how I happened to be there.  In spite of the fact that I
+invariably made my replies in Russian, he kept putting his questions in
+French, expressing himself as before in remarkably correct language.
+About himself he said fluently that after his unhappy, wretched story
+(what the story was, I did not know, and he had not yet told me), he had
+been three months under arrest, and then had been sent to the Caucasus
+to the N. regiment, and now had been serving three years as a soldier in
+that regiment.
+
+"You would not believe," said he to me in French, "how much I have to
+suffer in these regiments from the society of the officers.  Still it is
+a pleasure to me, that I used to know the adjutant of whom we were just
+speaking: he is a good man--it's a fact," he remarked condescendingly.
+"I live with him, and that's something of a relief for me.  Yes, my dear,
+the days fly by, but they aren't all alike," [Footnote: OUI, MON CHER,
+LES JOURS SE SUIVENT, MAIS NE SE RESSEMBLENT PAS: in French in the
+original.] he added; and suddenly hesitated, reddened, and stood up, as
+he caught sight of the adjutant himself coming toward us.
+
+"It is such a pleasure to meet such a man as you," said Guskof to me in
+a whisper as he turned from me.  "I should like very, very much, to have
+a long talk with you."
+
+I said that I should be very happy to talk with him, but in reality I
+confess that Guskof excited in me a sort of dull pity that was not akin
+to sympathy.
+
+I had a presentiment that I should feel a constraint in a private
+conversation with him; but still I was anxious to learn from him several
+things, and, above all, why it was, when his father had been so rich,
+that he was in poverty, as was evident by his dress and appearance.
+
+The adjutant greeted us all, including Guskof, and sat down by me in the
+seat which the cashiered officer had just vacated.  Pavel Dmitrievitch,
+who had always been calm and leisurely, a genuine gambler, and a man of
+means, was now very different from what he had been in the flowery days
+of his success; he seemed to be in haste to go somewhere, kept
+constantly glancing at everybody, and it was not five minutes before he
+proposed to Lieutenant O., who had sworn off from playing, to set up a
+small faro-bank.  Lieutenant O. refused, under the pretext of having to
+attend to his duties, but in reality because, as he knew that the
+adjutant had few possessions and little money left, he did not feel
+himself justified in risking his three hundred rubles against a hundred
+or even less which the adjutant might stake.
+
+"Well, Pavel Dmitrievitch," said the lieutenant, anxious to avoid a
+repetition of the invitation, "is it true, what they tell us, that we
+return to-morrow?"
+
+"I don't know," replied the adjutant.  "Orders came to be in readiness;
+but if it's true, then you'd better play a game.  I would wager my
+Kabarda cloak."
+
+"No, to-day already" . . .
+
+"It's a gray one, never been worn; but if you prefer, play for money.
+How is that?"
+
+"Yes, but . . . I should be willing--pray don't think that" . . . said
+Lieutenant O., answering the implied suspicion; "but as there may be a
+raid or some movement, I must go to bed early."
+
+The adjutant stood up, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets,
+started to go across the grounds.  His face assumed its ordinary
+expression of coldness and pride, which I admired in him.
+
+"Won't you have a glass of mulled wine?" I asked him.
+
+"That might be acceptable," and he came back to me; but Guskof politely
+took the glass from me, and handed it to the adjutant, striving at the
+same time not to look at him.  But as he did not notice the tent-rope, he
+stumbled over it, and fell on his hand, dropping the glass.
+
+"What a bungler!" exclaimed the adjutant, still holding out his hand for
+the glass.  Everybody burst out laughing, not excepting Guskof, who was
+rubbing his hand on his sore knee, which he had somehow struck as he
+fell.  "That's the way the bear waited on the hermit," continued the
+adjutant.  "It's the way he waits on me every day.  He has pulled up all
+the tent-pins; he's always tripping up."
+
+Guskof, not hearing him, apologized to us, and glanced toward me with a
+smile of almost noticeable melancholy, as though saying that I alone
+could understand him.  He was pitiable to see; but the adjutant, his
+protector, seemed, on that very account, to be severe on his messmate,
+and did not try to put him at his ease.
+
+"Well, you're a graceful lad!  Where did you think you were going?"
+
+"Well, who can help tripping over these pins, Pavel Dmitrievitch?" said
+Guskof.  "You tripped over them yourself the other day."
+
+"I, old man, [Footnote: batiushka]--I am not of the rank and file, and
+such gracefulness is not expected of me."
+
+"He can be lazy," said Captain S., keeping the ball rolling, "but low-
+rank men have to make their legs fly."
+
+"Ill-timed jest," said Guskof, almost in a whisper, and casting down his
+eyes.  The adjutant was evidently vexed with his messmate; he listened
+with inquisitive attention to every word that he said.
+
+"He'll have to be sent out into ambuscade again," said he, addressing
+S., and pointing to the cashiered officer.
+
+"Well, there'll be some more tears," said S., laughing.  Guskof no longer
+looked at me, but acted as though he were going to take some tobacco
+from his pouch, though there had been none there for some time.
+
+"Get ready for the ambuscade, old man," said S., addressing him with
+shouts of laughter.  "To-day the scouts have brought the news, there'll
+be an attack on the camp to-night, so it's necessary to designate the
+trusty lads."  Guskof's face showed a fleeting smile as though he were
+preparing to make some reply, but several times he cast a supplicating
+look at S.
+
+"Well, you know I have been, and I'm ready to go again if I am sent," he
+said hastily.
+
+"Then you'll be sent."
+
+"Well, I'll go.  Isn't that all right?"
+
+"Yes, as at Arguna, you deserted the ambuscade and threw away your gun,"
+said the adjutant; and turning from him he began to tell us the orders
+for the next day.
+
+As a matter of fact, we expected from the enemy a cannonade of the camp
+that night, and the next day some sort of diversion.  While we were still
+chatting about various subjects of general interest, the adjutant, as
+though from a sudden and unexpected impulse, proposed to Lieutenant O.
+to have a little game.  The lieutenant most unexpectedly consented; and,
+together with S. and the ensign, they went off to the adjutant's tent,
+where there was a folding green table with cards on it.  The captain, the
+commander of our division, went to our tent to sleep; the other
+gentlemen also separated, and Guskof and I were left alone.  I was not
+mistaken, it was really very uncomfortable for me to have a tete-a-tete
+with him; I arose involuntarily, and began to promenade up and down on
+the battery.  Guskof walked in silence by my side, hastily and awkwardly
+wheeling around so as not to delay or incommode me.
+
+"I do not annoy you?" he asked in a soft, mournful voice.  So far as I
+could see his face in the dim light, it seemed to me deeply thoughtful
+and melancholy.
+
+"Not at all," I replied; but as he did not immediately begin to speak,
+and as I did not know what to say to him, we walked in silence a
+considerably long time.
+
+The twilight had now absolutely changed into dark night; over the black
+profile of the mountains gleamed the bright evening heat-lightning; over
+our heads in the light-blue frosty sky twinkled the little stars; on all
+sides gleamed the ruddy flames of the smoking watch-fires; near us, the
+white tents stood out in contrast to the frowning blackness of our
+earth-works.  The light from the nearest watch-fire, around which our
+servants, engaged in quiet conversation, were warming themselves,
+occasionally flashed on the brass of our heavy guns, and fell on the
+form of the sentry, who, wrapped in his cloak, paced with measured tread
+along the battery.
+
+"You cannot imagine what a delight it is for me to talk with such a man
+as you are," said Guskof, although as yet he had not spoken a word to
+me.  "Only one who had been in my position could appreciate it."
+
+I did not know how to reply to him, and we again relapsed into silence,
+although it was evident that he was anxious to talk and have me listen
+to him.
+
+"Why were you . . . why did you suffer this?" I inquired at last, not being
+able to invent any better way of breaking the ice.
+
+"Why, didn't you hear about this wretched business from Metenin?"
+
+"Yes, a duel, I believe; I did not hear much about it," I replied.  "You
+see, I have been for some time in the Caucasus."
+
+"No, it wasn't a duel, but it was a stupid and horrid story.  I will tell
+you all about it, if you don't know.  It happened that the same year that
+I met you at my sister's I was living at Petersburg.  I must tell you I
+had then what they call une position dans le monde,--a position good
+enough if it was not brilliant.  Mon pere me donnait ten thousand par an.
+In '49 I was promised a place in the embassy at Turin; my uncle on my
+mother's side had influence, and was always ready to do a great deal for
+me.  That sort of thing is all past now.  J'etais recu dans la meilleure
+societe de Petersburg; I might have aspired to any girl in the city.  I
+was well educated, as we all are who come from the school, but was not
+especially cultivated; to be sure, I read a good deal afterwards, mais
+j'avais surtout, you know, ce jargon du monde, and, however it came
+about, I was looked upon as a leading light among the young men of
+Petersburg.  What raised me more than all in common estimation, c'est
+cette liaison avec Madame D., about which a great deal was said in
+Petersburg; but I was frightfully young at that time, and did not prize
+these advantages very highly.  I was simply young and stupid.  What more
+did I need?  Just then that Metenin had some notoriety--"
+
+And Guskof went on in the same fashion to relate to me the history of
+his misfortunes, which I will omit, as it would not be at all
+interesting.
+
+"Two months I remained under arrest," he continued, "absolutely alone;
+and what thoughts did I not have during that time?  But, you know, when
+it was all over, as though every tie had been broken with the past, then
+it became easier for me.  Mon pere,--you have heard tell of him, of
+course, a man of iron will and strong convictions,--il m'a desherite,
+and broken off all intercourse with me.  According to his convictions he
+had to do as he did, and I don't blame him at all.  He was consistent.
+Consequently, I have not taken a step to induce him to change his mind.
+My sister was abroad.  Madame D. is the only one who wrote to me when I
+was released, and she sent me assistance; but you understand that I
+could not accept it, so that I had none of those little things which
+make one's position a little easier, you know,--books, linen, food,
+nothing at all.  At this time I thought things over and over, and began
+to look at life with different eyes.  For instance, this noise, this
+society gossip about me in Petersburg, did not interest me, did not
+flatter me; it all seemed to me ridiculous.  I felt that I myself had
+been to blame; I was young and indiscreet; I had spoiled my career, and
+I only thought how I might get into the right track again.  And I felt
+that I had strength and energy enough for it.  After my arrest, as I told
+you, I was sent here to the Caucasus to the N. regiment.
+
+"I thought," he went on to say, all the time becoming more and more
+animated,--"I thought that here in the Caucasus, la vie de camp, the
+simple, honest men with whom I should associate, and war and danger,
+would all admirably agree with my mental state, so that I might begin a
+new life.  They will see me under fire.  [Footnote: On me verra au feu.] I
+shall make myself liked; I shall be respected for my real self,--the
+cross--non-commissioned officer; they will relieve me of my fine; and I
+shall get up again, et vous savez avec ce prestige du malheur!  But, quel
+desenchantement!  You can't imagine how I have been deceived!  You know
+what sort of men the officers of our regiment are."
+
+He did not speak for some little time, waiting, as it appeared, for me
+to tell him that I knew the society of our officers here was bad; but I
+made him no reply.  It went against my grain that he should expect me,
+because I knew French, forsooth, to be obliged to take issue with the
+society of the officers, which, during my long residence in the
+Caucasus, I had had time enough to appreciate fully, and for which I had
+far higher respect than for the society from which Mr. Guskof had
+sprung.  I wanted to tell him so, but his position constrained me.
+
+"In the N. regiment the society of the officers is a thousand times
+worse than it is here," he continued.  "I hope that it is saying a good
+deal; J'ESPERE QUE C'EST BEAUCOUP DIRE; that is, you cannot imagine what
+it is.  I am not speaking of the yunkers and the soldiers.  That is
+horrible, it is so bad.  At first they received me very kindly, that is
+absolutely the truth; but when they saw that I could not help despising
+them, you know, in these inconceivably small circumstances, they saw
+that I was a man absolutely different, standing far above them, they got
+angry with me, and began to put various little humiliations on me.  You
+haven't an idea what I had to suffer.  [Footnote: CE QUE J'AI EUA
+SOUFFRIR VOUS NE FAITES PAS UNE IDEE.] Then this forced relationship
+with the yunkers, and especially with the small means that I had--I
+lacked everything; [Footnote: AVEC LES PETITS MOYENS QUE J'AVAIS, JE
+MANQUAIS DE TOUT] I had only what my sister used to send me.  And here's
+a proof for you!  As much as it made me suffer, I with my character, AVEC
+MA FIERTE J'AI ECRIS A MON PERE, begged him to send me something.  I
+understand how living four years of such a life may make a man like our
+cashiered Dromof who drinks with soldiers, and writes notes to all the
+officers asking them to loan him three rubles, and signing it, TOUT A
+VOUS, DROMOF.  One must have such a character as I have, not to be mired
+in the least by such a horrible position."
+
+For some time he walked in silence by my side.
+
+"Have you a cigarette?" [Footnote: "Avez-vous un papiros?"] he asked me.
+
+"And so I stayed right where I was?  Yes.  I could not endure it
+physically, because, though we were wretched, cold, and ill-fed, I lived
+like a common soldier, but still the officers had some sort of
+consideration for me.  I had still some prestige that they regarded.  I
+wasn't sent out on guard nor for drill.  I could not have stood that.  But
+morally my sufferings were frightful; and especially because I didn't
+see any escape from my position.  I wrote my uncle, begged him to get me
+transferred to my present regiment, which, at least, sees some service;
+and I thought that here Pavel Dmitrievitch, qui est le fils de
+l'intendant de mon pere, might be of some use to me.  My uncle did this
+for me; I was transferred.  After that regiment this one seemed to me a
+collection of chamberlains.  Then Pavel Dmitrievitch was here; he knew
+who I was, and I was splendidly received.  At my uncle's request--a
+Guskof, vous savez; but I forgot that with these men without cultivation
+and undeveloped,--they can't appreciate a man, and show him marks of
+esteem, unless he has that aureole of wealth, of friends; and I noticed
+how, little by little, when they saw that I was poor, their behavior to
+me showed more and more indifference until they have come almost to
+despise me.  It is horrible, but it is absolutely the truth.
+
+"Here I have been in action, I have fought, they have seen me under
+fire," [Footnote: On m'a vu au feu.] he continued; "but when will it all
+end?  I think, never.  And my strength and energy have already begun to
+flag.  Then I had imagined la guerre, la vie de camp; but it isn't at all
+what I see, in a sheepskin jacket, dirty linen, soldier's boots, and you
+go out in ambuscade, and the whole night long lie in the ditch with some
+Antonof reduced to the ranks for drunkenness, and any minute from behind
+the bush may come a rifle-shot and hit you or Antonof,--it's all the
+same which.  That is not bravery; it's horrible, c'est affreux, it's
+killing!"  [Footnote: Ca tue]
+
+"Well, you can be promoted a non-commissioned officer for this campaign,
+and next year an ensign," said I.
+
+"Yes, it may be: they promised me that in two years, and it's not up
+yet.  What would those two years amount to, if I knew any one!  You can
+imagine this life with Pavel Dmitrievitch; cards, low jokes, drinking
+all the time; if you wish to tell anything that is weighing on your
+mind, you would not be understood, or you would be laughed at: they talk
+with you, not for the sake of sharing a thought, but to get something
+funny out of you.  Yes, and so it has gone--in a brutal, beastly way, and
+you are always conscious that you belong to the rank and file; they
+always make you feel that.  Hence you can't realize what an enjoyment it
+is to talk a coeur ouvert to such a man as you are."
+
+I had never imagined what kind of a man I was, and consequently I did
+not know what answer to make him.
+
+"Will you have your lunch now?" asked Nikita at this juncture,
+approaching me unseen in the darkness, and, as I could perceive, vexed
+at the presence of a guest.  "Nothing but curd dumplings, there's none of
+the roast beef left."
+
+"Has the captain had his lunch yet?"
+
+"He went to bed long ago," replied Nikita, gruffly, "According to my
+directions, I was to bring you lunch here and your brandy."  He muttered
+something else discontentedly, and sauntered off to his tent.  After
+loitering a while longer, he brought us, nevertheless, a lunch-case; he
+placed a candle on the lunch-case, and shielded it from the wind with a
+sheet of paper.  He brought a saucepan, some mustard in a jar, a tin
+dipper with a handle, and a bottle of absinthe.  After arranging these
+things, Nikita lingered around us for some moments, and looked on as
+Guskof and I were drinking the liquor, and it was evidently very
+distasteful to him.  By the feeble light shed by the candle through the
+paper, amid the encircling darkness, could be seen the seal-skin cover
+of the lunch-case, the supper arranged upon it, Guskof's sheepskin
+jacket, his face, and his small red hands which he used in lifting the
+patties from the pan.  Everything around us was black; and only by
+straining the sight could be seen the dark battery, the dark form of the
+sentry moving along the breastwork, on all sides the watch-fires, and on
+high the ruddy stars.
+
+Guskof wore a melancholy, almost guilty smile as though it were awkward
+for him to look into my face after his confession.  He drank still
+another glass of liquor, and ate ravenously, emptying the saucepan.
+
+"Yes; for you it must be a relief all the same," said I, for the sake of
+saying something,--"your acquaintance with the adjutant.  He is a very
+good man, I have heard."
+
+"Yes," replied the cashiered officer, "he is a kind man; but he can't
+help being what he is, with his education, and it is useless to expect
+it."
+
+A flush seemed suddenly to cross his face.  "You remarked his coarse jest
+this evening about the ambuscade;" and Guskof, though I tried several
+times to interrupt him, began to justify himself before me, and to show
+that he had not run away from the ambuscade, and that he was not a
+coward as the adjutant and Capt. S. tried to make him out.
+
+"As I was telling you," he went on to say, wiping his hands on his
+jacket, "such people can't show any delicacy toward a man, a common
+soldier, who hasn't much money either.  That's beyond their strength.  And
+here recently, while I haven't received anything at all from my sister,
+I have been conscious that they have changed toward me.  This sheepskin
+jacket, which I bought of a soldier, and which hasn't any warmth in it,
+because it's all worn off" (and here he showed me where the wool was
+gone from the inside), "it doesn't arouse in him any sympathy or
+consideration for my unhappiness, but scorn, which he does not take
+pains to hide.  Whatever my necessities may be, as now when I have
+nothing to eat except soldiers' gruel, and nothing to wear," he
+continued, casting down his eyes, and pouring out for himself still
+another glass of liquor, "he does not even offer to lend me some money,
+though he knows perfectly well that I would give it back to him; but he
+waits till I am obliged to ask him for it.  But you appreciate how it is
+for me to go to him.  In your case I should say, square and fair, vous
+etes audessus de cela, mon cher, je n'ai pas le sou.  And you know," said
+he, looking straight into my eyes with an expression of desperation, "I
+am going to tell you, square and fair, I am in a terrible situation:
+pouvez-vous me preter dix rubles argent?  My sister ought to send me some
+by the mail, et mon pere--"
+
+"Why, most willingly," said I, although, on the contrary, it was trying
+and unpleasant, especially because the evening before, having lost at
+cards, I had left only about five rubles in Nikita's care.  "In a
+moment," said I, arising, "I will go and get it at the tent."
+
+"No, by and by: ne vous derangez pas."
+
+Nevertheless, not heeding him, I hastened to the closed tent, where
+stood my bed, and where the captain was sleeping.
+
+"Aleksei Ivanuitch, let me have ten rubles, please, for rations," said I
+to the captain, shaking him.
+
+"What! have you been losing again?  But this very evening, you were not
+going to play any more," murmured the captain, still half asleep.
+
+"No, I have not been playing; but I want the money; let me have it,
+please."
+
+"Makatiuk!" shouted the captain to his servant, [Footnote: Denshchik.]
+"hand me my bag with the money."
+
+"Hush, hush!" said I, hearing Guskof's measured steps near the tent.
+
+"What?  Why hush?"
+
+"Because that cashiered fellow has asked to borrow it of me.  He's right
+there."
+
+"Well, if you knew him, you wouldn't let him have it," remarked the
+captain.  "I have heard about him.  He's a dirty, low-lived fellow."
+
+Nevertheless, the captain gave me the money, ordered his man to put away
+the bag, pulled the flap of the tent neatly to, and, again saying, "If
+you only knew him, you wouldn't let him have it," drew his head down
+under the coverlet.  "Now you owe me thirty-two, remember," he shouted
+after me.
+
+When I came out of the tent, Guskof was walking near the settees; and
+his slight figure, with his crooked legs, his shapeless cap, his long
+white hair, kept appearing and disappearing in the darkness, as he
+passed in and out of the light of the candles.  He made believe not to
+see me.
+
+I handed him the money.  He said "Merci," and, crumpling the bank-bill,
+thrust it into his trousers pocket.
+
+"Now I suppose the game is in full swing at the adjutant's," he began
+immediately after this.
+
+"Yes, I suppose so."
+
+"He's a wonderful player, always bold, and never backs out.  When he's in
+luck, it's fine; but when it does not go well with him, he can lose
+frightfully.  He has given proof of that.  During this expedition, if you
+reckon his valuables, he has lost more than fifteen hundred rubles.  But,
+as he played discreetly before, that officer of yours seemed to have
+some doubts about his honor."
+
+"Well, that's because he . . . Nikita, haven't we any of that red Kavkas
+wine [Footnote: Chikir] left?" I asked, very much enlivened by Guskof's
+conversational talent.  Nikita still kept muttering; but he brought us
+the red wine, and again looked on angrily as Guskof drained his glass.
+In Guskof's behavior was noticeable his old freedom from constraint.  I
+wished that he would go as soon as possible; it seemed as if his only
+reason for not going was because he did not wish to go immediately after
+receiving the money.  I said nothing.
+
+"How could you, who have means, and were under no necessity, simply de
+gaiete de coeur, make up your mind to come and serve in the Caucasus?
+That's what I don't understand," said he to me.
+
+I endeavored to explain this act of renunciation, which seemed so
+strange to him.
+
+"I can imagine how disagreeable the society of those officers--men
+without any comprehension of culture--must be for you.  You could not
+understand each other.  You see, you might live ten years, and not see
+anything, and not hear about anything, except cards, wine, and gossip
+about rewards and campaigns."
+
+It was unpleasant for me, that he wished me to put myself on a par with
+him in his position; and, with absolute honesty, I assured him that I
+was very fond of cards and wine, and gossip about campaigns, and that I
+did not care to have any better comrades than those with whom I was
+associated.  But he would not believe me.
+
+"Well, you may say so," he continued; "but the lack of women's society,--
+I mean, of course, FEMMES COMME IL FAUT,--is that not a terrible
+deprivation?  I don't know what I would give now to go into a parlor, if
+only for a moment, and to have a look at a pretty woman, even though it
+were through a crack."
+
+He said nothing for a little, and drank still another glass of the red
+wine.
+
+"Oh, my God, my God!  [Footnote: AKH, BOZHE MOI, BOZHE MOI.] If it only
+might be our fate to meet again, somewhere in Petersburg, to live and
+move among men, among ladies!"
+
+He drank up the dregs of the wine still left in the bottle, and when he
+had finished it he said: "AKH!  PARDON, maybe you wanted some more.  It
+was horribly careless of me.  However, I suppose I must have taken too
+much, and my head isn't very strong.  [Footnote: ET JE N'AI PAS LA TETE
+FORTE.] There was a time when I lived on Morskaia Street, AU REZ-DE-
+CHAUSSEE, and had marvellous apartments, furniture, you know, and I was
+able to arrange it all beautifully, not so very expensively though; my
+father, to be sure, gave me porcelains, flowers, and silver--a wonderful
+lot.  Le matin je sortais, visits, 5 heures regulierement.  I used to go
+and dine with her; often she was alone.  Il faut avouer que c'etait une
+femme ravissante!  You didn't know her at all, did you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You see, there was such high degree of womanliness in her, and such
+tenderness, and what love!  Lord!  I did not know how to appreciate my
+happiness then.  We would return after the theatre, and have a little
+supper together.  It was never dull where she was, toujours gaie,
+toujours aimante.  Yes, and I had never imagined what rare happiness it
+was.  Et j'ai beaucoup a me reprocher in regard to her.  Je l'ai fait
+souffrir et souvent.  I was outrageous.  AKH!  What a marvellous time that
+was!  Do I bore you?"
+
+"No, not at all."
+
+"Then I will tell you about our evenings.  I used to go--that stairway,
+every flower-pot I knew,--the door-handle, all was so lovely, so familiar;
+then the vestibule, her room. . . .  No, it will never, never come
+back to me again!  Even now she writes to me: if you will let me, I will
+show you her letters.  But I am not what I was; I am ruined; I am no
+longer worthy of her. . . .  Yes, I am ruined for ever.  Je suis casse.
+There's no energy in me, no pride, nothing--nor even any rank. . . .
+[Footnote: Blagorodstva, noble birth, nobility.]  Yes, I am ruined;
+and no one will ever appreciate my sufferings.  Every one is indifferent.
+I am a lost man.  Never any chance for me to rise, because I have fallen
+morally . . . into the mire--I have fallen. . . ."
+
+At this moment there was evident in his words a genuine, deep despair:
+he did not look at me, but sat motionless.
+
+"Why are you in such despair?" I asked.
+
+"Because I am abominable.  This life has degraded me, all that was in me,
+all is crushed out.  It is not by pride that I hold out, but by
+abjectness: there's no dignite dans le malheur.  I am humiliated every
+moment; I endure it all; I got myself into this abasement.  This mire has
+soiled me.  I myself have become coarse; I have forgotten what I used to
+know; I can't speak French any more; I am conscious that I am base and
+low.  I cannot tear myself away from these surroundings, indeed I cannot.
+I might have been a hero: give me a regiment, gold epaulets, a
+trumpeter, but to march in the ranks with some wild Anton Bondarenko or
+the like, and feel that between me and him there was no difference at
+all--that he might be killed or I might be killed--all the same, that
+thought is maddening.  You understand how horrible it is to think that
+some ragamuffin may kill me, a man who has thoughts and feelings, and
+that it would make no difference if alongside of me some Antonof were
+killed,--a being not different from an animal--and that it might easily
+happen that I and not this Antonof were killed, which is always UNE
+FATALITE for every lofty and good man.  I know that they call me a
+coward: grant that I am a coward, I certainly am a coward, and can't be
+anything else.  Not only am I a coward, but I am in my way a low and
+despicable man.  Here I have just been borrowing money of you, and you
+have the right to despise me.  No, take back your money."  And he held out
+to me the crumpled bank-bill.  "I want you to have a good opinion of me."
+He covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears.  I really did
+not know what to say or do.
+
+"Calm yourself," I said to him.  "You are too sensitive; don't take
+everything so to heart; don't indulge in self-analysis, look at things
+more simply.  You yourself say that you have character.  Keep up good
+heart, you won't have long to wait," I said to him, but not very
+consistently, because I was much stirred both by a feeling of sympathy
+and a feeling of repentance, because I had allowed myself mentally to
+sin in my judgment of a man truly and deeply unhappy.
+
+"Yes," he began, "if I had heard even once, at the time when I was in
+that hell, one single word of sympathy, of advice, of friendship--one
+humane word such as you have just spoken, perhaps I might have calmly
+endured all; perhaps I might have struggled, and been a soldier.  But now
+this is horrible. . . .  When I think soberly, I long for death.  Why
+should I love my despicable life and my own self, now that I am ruined for
+all that is worth while in the world?  And at the least danger, I suddenly,
+in spite of myself, begin to pray for my miserable life, and to watch
+over it as though it were precious, and I cannot, je ne puis pas,
+control myself.  That is, I could," he continued again after a minute's
+silence, "but this is too hard work for me, a monstrous work, when I am
+alone.  With others, under special circumstances, when you are going into
+action, I am brave, j'ai fait mes epreuves, because I am vain and proud:
+that is my failing, and in presence of others. . . .  Do you know, let me
+spend the night with you: with us, they will play all night long; it
+makes no difference, anywhere, on the ground."
+
+While Nikita was making the bed, we got up, and once more began to walk
+up and down in the darkness on the battery.  Certainly Guskof's head must
+have been very weak, because two glasses of liquor and two of wine made
+him dizzy.  As we got up and moved away from the candles, I noticed that
+he again thrust the ten-ruble bill into his pocket, trying to do so
+without my seeing it.  During all the foregoing conversation, he had held
+it in his hand.  He continued to reiterate how he felt that he might
+regain his old station if he had a man such as I were to take some
+interest in him.
+
+We were just going into the tent to go to bed when suddenly a cannon-
+ball whistled over us, and buried itself in the ground not far from us.
+So strange it was,--that peacefully sleeping camp, our conversation, and
+suddenly the hostile cannon-ball which flew from God knows where, the
+midst of our tents,--so strange that it was some time before I could
+realize what it was.  Our sentinel, Andreief, walking up and down on the
+battery, moved toward me.
+
+"Ha! he's crept up to us.  It was the fire here that he aimed at," said
+he.
+
+"We must rouse the captain," said I, and gazed at Guskof.
+
+He stood cowering close to the ground, and stammered, trying to say,
+"Th-that's th-the ene-my's . . . f-f-fire--th-that's--hidi--."  Further he
+could not say a word, and I did not see how and where he disappeared so
+instantaneously.
+
+In the captain's tent a candle gleamed; his cough, which always troubled
+him when he was awake, was heard; and he himself soon appeared, asking
+for a linstock to light his little pipe.
+
+"What does this mean, old man?" [Footnote: Batiushka] he asked with a
+smile.  "Aren't they willing to give me a little sleep to-night?  First
+it's you with your cashiered friend, and then it's Shamyl.  What shall we
+do, answer him or not?  There was nothing about this in the instructions,
+was there?"
+
+"Nothing at all.  There he goes again," said I.  "Two of them!"
+
+Indeed, in the darkness, directly in front of us, flashed two fires,
+like two eyes; and quickly over our heads flew one cannon-ball and one
+heavy shell.  It must have been meant for us, coming with a loud and
+penetrating hum.  From the neighboring tents the soldiers hastened.  You
+could hear them hawking and talking and stretching themselves.
+
+"Hist! the fuse sings like a nightingale," was the remark of the
+artillerist.
+
+"Send for Nikita," said the captain with his perpetually benevolent
+smile.  "Nikita, don't hide yourself, but listen to the mountain
+nightingales."
+
+"Well, your honor," [Footnote: VASHE VUISOKOBLAGORODIE.  German,
+HOCHWOHLGEBORENER, high, well-born; regulation title of officers from
+major to general] said Nikita, who was standing near the captain, "I
+have seen them--these nightingales.  I am not afraid of 'em; but here was
+that stranger who was here, he was drinking up your red wine.  When he
+heard how that shot dashed by our tents, and the shell rolled by, he
+cowered down like some wild beast."
+
+"However, we must send to the commander of the artillery," said the
+captain to me, in a serious tone of authority, "and ask whether we shall
+reply to the fire or not.  It will probably be nothing at all, but still
+it may.  Have the goodness to go and ask him.  Have a horse saddled.  Do it
+as quickly as possible, even if you take my Polkan."
+
+In five minutes they brought me a horse, and I galloped off to the
+commander of the artillery.  "Look you, return on foot," whispered the
+punctilious captain, "else they won't let you through the lines."
+
+It was half a verst to the artillery commander's, the whole road ran
+between the tents.  As soon as I rode away from our fire, it became so
+black that I could not see even the horse's ears, but only the watch-
+fires, now seeming very near, now very far off, as they gleamed into my
+eyes.  After I had ridden some distance, trusting to the intelligence of
+the horse whom I allowed free rein, I began to distinguish the white
+four-cornered tents and then the black tracks of the road.  After a half-
+hour, having asked my way three times, and twice stumbled over the tent-
+stakes, causing each time a volley of curses from the tents, and twice
+been detained by the sentinels, I reached the artillery commander's.
+While I was on the way, I heard two more cannon shot in the direction of
+our camp; but the projectiles did not reach to the place where the
+headquarters were.  The artillery commander ordered not to reply to the
+firing, the more as the enemy did not remain in the same place; and I
+went back, leading the horse by the bridle, making my way on foot
+between the infantry tents.  More than once I delayed my steps, as I went
+by some soldier's tent where a light was shining, and some merry-andrew
+was telling a story; or I listened to some educated soldier reading from
+some book while the whole division overflowed the tent, or hung around
+it, sometimes interrupting the reading with various remarks; or I simply
+listened to the talk about the expedition, about the fatherland, or
+about their chiefs.
+
+As I came around one of the tents of the third battalion, I heard
+Guskof's rough voice: he was speaking hilariously and rapidly.  Young
+voices replied to him, not those of soldiers, but of gay gentlemen.  It
+was evidently the tent of some yunker or sergeant-major.  I stopped
+short.
+
+"I've known him a long time," Guskof was saying.  "When I lived in
+Petersburg, he used to come to my house often; and I went to his.  He
+moved in the best society."
+
+"Whom are you talking about?" asked the drunken voice.
+
+"About the prince," said Guskof.  "We were relatives, you see, but, more
+than all, we were old friends.  It's a mighty good thing, you know,
+gentlemen, to have such an acquaintance.  You see he's fearfully rich.  To
+him a hundred silver rubles is a mere bagatelle.  Here, I just got a
+little money out of him, enough to last me till my sister sends."
+
+"Let's have some."
+
+"Right away.--Savelitch, my dear," said Guskof, coming to the door of
+the tent, "here's ten rubles for you: go to the sutler, get two bottles
+of Kakhetinski.  Anything else, gentlemen?  What do you say?" and Guskof,
+with unsteady gait, with dishevelled hair, without his hat, came out of
+the tent.  Throwing open his jacket, and thrusting his hands into the
+pockets of his trousers, he stood at the door of the tent.  Though he was
+in the light, and I in darkness; I trembled with fear lest he should see
+me, and I went on, trying to make no noise.
+
+"Who goes there?" shouted Guskof after me in a thoroughly drunken voice.
+Apparently, the cold took hold of him.  "Who the devil is going off with
+that horse?"
+
+I made no answer, and silently went on my way.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian, by Various
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUSSIAN STORIES ***
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