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+Project Gutenberg's Rudin, by Ivan Turgenev
+Translated by Constance Garnett
+#3 in our series by Ivan Turgenev
+Translated by Constance Garnett
+
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+Title: Rudin
+
+Author: Ivan Turgenev
+Translated by Constance Garnett
+
+Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6900]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 9, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUDIN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RUDIN
+
+a novel
+
+BY
+
+IVAN TURGENEV
+
+Translated from the Russian By CONSTANCE GARNETT
+
+[With an introduction by S. Stepniak]
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1894
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+I
+
+
+Turgenev is an author who no longer belongs to Russia only. During the
+last fifteen years of his life he won for himself the reading public,
+first in France, then in Germany and America, and finally in England.
+
+In his funeral oration the spokesman of the most artistic and critical
+of European nations, Ernest Renan, hailed him as one of the greatest
+writers of our times: 'The Master, whose exquisite works have charmed
+our century, stands more than any other man as the incarnation of a
+whole race,' because 'a whole world lived in him and spoke through his
+mouth.' Not the Russian world only, we may add, but the whole Slavonic
+world, to which it was 'an honour to have been expressed by so great a
+Master.'
+
+This recognition was, however, of slow growth. It had nothing in it of
+the sudden wave of curiosity and gushing enthusiasm which in a few
+years lifted Count Tolstoi to world-wide fame. Neither in the
+personality of Turgenev, nor in his talent, was there anything to
+strike and carry away popular imagination.
+
+By the fecundity of his creative talent Turgenev stands with the
+greatest authors of all times. The gallery of living people, men, and
+especially women, each different and perfectly individualised, yet all
+the creatures of actual life, whom Turgenev introduces to us; the vast
+body of psychological truths he discovers, the subtle shades of men's
+feelings he reveals to us, is such as only the greatest among the
+great have succeeded in leaving as their artistic inheritance to their
+country and to the world.
+
+As regards his method of dealing with his material and shaping it into
+mould, he stands even higher than as a pure creator. Tolstoi is more
+plastical, and certainly as deep and original and rich in creative
+power as Turgenev, and Dostoevsky is more intense, fervid, and
+dramatic. But as an _artist_, as master of the combination of details
+into a harmonious whole, as an architect of imaginative work, he
+surpasses all the prose writers of his country, and has but few equals
+among the great novelists of other lands. Twenty-five years ago, on
+reading the translation of one of his short stories (_Assya_), George
+Sand, who was then at the apogee of her fame, wrote to him: 'Master,
+all of us have to go to study at your school.' This was, indeed, a
+generous compliment, coming from the representative of French
+literature which is so eminently artistic. But it was not flattery.
+As an artist, Turgenev in reality stands with the classics who may be
+studied and admired for their perfect form long after the interest of
+their subject has disappeared. But it seems that in his very devotion
+to art and beauty he has purposely restricted the range of his
+creations.
+
+To one familiar with all Turgenev's works it is evident that he
+possessed the keys of all human emotions, all human feelings, the
+highest and the lowest, the noble as well as the base. From the height
+of his superiority he saw all, understood all: Nature and men had no
+secrets hidden from his calm, penetrating eyes. In his latter days,
+sketches such as _Clara Militch_, _The Song of Triumphant Love_, _The
+Dream_, and the incomparable _Phantoms_, he showed that he could equal
+Edgar Poe, Hofmann, and Dostoevsky in the mastery of the fantastical,
+the horrible, the mysterious, and the incomprehensible, which live
+somewhere in human nerves, though not to be defined by reason.
+
+But there was in him such a love of light, sunshine, and living human
+poetry, such an organic aversion for all that is ugly, or coarse and
+discordant, that he made himself almost exclusively the poet of the
+gentler side of human nature. On the fringe of his pictures or in
+their background, just for the sake of contrast, he will show us the
+vices, the cruelties, even the mire of life. But he cannot stay in
+these gloomy regions, and he hastens back to the realms of the sun and
+flowers, or to the poetical moonlight of melancholy, which he loves
+best because in it he can find expression for his own great sorrowing
+heart.
+
+Even jealousy, which is the black shadow of the most poetical of human
+feelings, is avoided by the gentle artist. He hardly ever describes
+it, only alluding to it cursorily. But there is no novelist who gives
+so much room to the pure, crystalline, eternally youthful feeling of
+love. We may say that the description of love is Turgenev's
+speciality. What Francesco Petrarca did for one kind of love--the
+romantic, artificial, hot-house love of the times of
+chivalry--Turgenev did for the natural, spontaneous, modern love in
+all its variety of forms, kinds, and manifestations: the slow and
+gradual as well as the sudden and instantaneous; the spiritual, the
+admiring and inspiring, as well as the life-poisoning, terrible kind
+of love, which infects a man as a prolonged disease. There is
+something prodigious in Turgenev's insight into, and his inexhaustible
+richness, truthfulness, and freshness in the rendering of those
+emotions which have been the theme of all poets and novelists for two
+thousand years.
+
+In the well-known memoirs of Caroline Bauer one comes across a curious
+legend about Paganini. She tells that the great enchanter owed his
+unique command over the emotions of his audiences to a peculiar use of
+one single string, G, which he made sing and whisper, cry and thunder,
+at the touch of his marvellous bow.
+
+There is something of this in Turgenev's description of love. He has
+many other strings at his harp, but his greatest effect he obtains in
+touching this one. His stories are not love poems. He only prefers to
+present his people in the light of that feeling in which a man's soul
+gathers up all its highest energies, and melts as in a crucible,
+showing its dross and its pure metal.
+
+
+
+Turgenev began his literary career and won an enormous popularity in
+Russia by his sketches from peasant life. His _Diary of a Sportsman_
+contains some of the best of his short stories, and his _Country Inn,_
+written a few years later, in the maturity of his talent, is as good
+as Tolstoi's little masterpiece, _Polikushka_.
+
+He was certainly able to paint all classes and conditions of Russian
+people. But in his greater works Turgenev lays the action exclusively
+with one class of Russian people. There is nothing of the enormous
+canvas of Count Tolstoi, in which the whole of Russia seems to pass in
+review before the readers. In Turgenev's novels we see only educated
+Russia, or rather the more advanced thinking part of it, which he knew
+best, because he was a part of it himself.
+
+We are far from regretting this specialisation. Quality can sometimes
+hold its own against quantity. Although small numerically, the section
+of Russian society which Turgenev represents is enormously
+interesting, because it is the brain of the nation, the living ferment
+which alone can leaven the huge unformed masses. It is upon them that
+depend the destinies of their country. Besides, the artistic value of
+his works could only be enhanced by his concentrating his genius upon
+a field so familiar to him, and engrossing so completely his mind and
+his sympathies. What he loses in dimensions he gains in correctness,
+depth, wonderful subtlety and effectiveness of every minute detail,
+and the surpassing beauty of the whole. The jewels of art he left us
+are like those which nations store in the sanctuaries of their museums
+and galleries to be admired, the longer they are studied. But we must
+look to Tolstoi for the huge and towering monuments, hewn in massive
+granite, to be put upon some cross way of nations as an object of
+wonder and admiration for all who come from the four winds of heaven.
+
+Turgenev did not write for the masses but for the _elite_ among men. The
+fact that .he has won such a fame among foreigners, and that the
+number of his readers is widening every year, proves that great art is
+international, and also, I may say, that artistic taste and
+understanding is growing everywhere.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It is written that no man is a prophet in his own country, and from
+time immemorial all the unsuccessful aspirants to the profession have
+found their consolation in this proverbial truth. But for aught we
+know this hard limitation has never been applied to artists. Indeed it
+seems absurd on the face of it that the artist's countrymen, for whom
+and about whom he writes, should be less fit to recognise him than
+strangers. Yet in certain special and peculiar conditions, the most
+unlikely things will sometimes occur, as is proved in the case of
+Turgenev.
+
+The fact is that _as an artist_ he was appreciated to his full value
+first by foreigners. The Russians have begun to understand him, and
+to assign to him his right place in this respect only now, after his
+death, whilst in his lifetime his _artistic genius_ was comparatively
+little cared for, save by a handful of his personal friends.
+
+This supreme art told upon the Russian public unconsciously, as it was
+bound to tell upon a nation so richly endowed with natural artistic
+instinct. Turgenev was always the most widely read of Russian authors,
+not excepting Tolstoi, who came to the front only after his death. But
+full recognition he had not, because he happened to produce his works
+in a troubled epoch of political and social strife, when the best men
+were absorbed in other interests and pursuits, and could not and would
+not appreciate and enjoy pure art. This was the painful, almost
+tragic, position of an artist, who lived in a most inartistic epoch,
+and whose highest aspirations and noblest efforts wounded and
+irritated those among his countrymen whom he was most devoted to, and
+whom he desired most ardently to serve.
+
+This strife embittered Turgenev's life.
+
+At one crucial epoch of his literary career the conflict became so
+vehement, and the outcry against him, set in motion by his very
+artistic truthfulness and objectiveness, became so loud and unanimous,
+that he contemplated giving up literature altogether. He could not
+possibly have held to this resolution. But it is surely an open
+question whether, sensitive and modest as he was, and prone to
+despondency and diffidence, he would have done so much for the
+literature of his country without the enthusiastic encouragement of
+various great foreign novelists, who were his friends and admirers:
+George Sand, Gustave Flaubert, in France; Auerbach, in Germany; W. D.
+Howells, in America; George Eliot, in England.
+
+We will tell the story of his troubled life piece by piece as far as
+space will allow, as his works appear in succession. Here we will only
+give a few biographical traits which bear particularly upon the novel
+before us, and account for his peculiar hold over the minds of his
+countrymen.
+
+Turgenev, who was born in 1818, belonged to a set of Russians very
+small in his time, who had received a thoroughly European education in
+no way inferior to that of the best favoured young German or
+Englishman. It happened, moreover, that his paternal uncle, Nicholas
+Turgenev, the famous 'Decembrist,' after the failure of that first
+attempt (December 14, 1825) to gain by force of arms a constitutional
+government for Russia, succeeded in escaping the vengeance of the Tsar
+Nicholas I., and settled in France, where he published in French the
+first vindication of Russian revolution.
+
+Whilst studying philosophy in the Berlin University, Turgenev paid
+short visits to his uncle, who initiated him in the ideas of liberty,
+from which he never swerved throughout his long life.
+
+In the sixties, when Alexander Hertzen, one of the most gifted writers
+of our land, a sparkling, witty, pathetic, and powerful journalist and
+brilliant essayist, started in London his _Kolokol_, a revolutionary,
+or rather radical paper, which had a great influence in Russia,
+Turgenev became one of his most active contributors and
+advisers,--almost a member of the editorial staff.
+
+This fact has been revealed a few years ago by the publication, which
+we owe to Professor Dragomanov, of the private correspondence between
+Turgenev and Hertzen. This most interesting little volume throws quite
+a new light upon Turgenev, showing that our great novelist was at the
+same time one of the strongest--perhaps the strongest--and most
+clear-sighted political thinkers of his time. However surprising such
+a versatility may appear, it is proved to demonstration by a
+comparison of his views, his attitude, and his forecasts, some of
+which have been verified only lately, with those of the acknowledged
+leaders and spokesmen of the various political parties of his day,
+including Alexander Hertzen himself. Turgenev's are always the
+soundest, the most correct and far-sighted judgments, as latter-day
+history has proved.
+
+A man with so ardent a love of liberty, and such radical views, could
+not possibly banish them from his literary works, no matter how great
+his devotion to pure art. He would have been a poor artist had he
+inflicted upon himself such a mutilation, because freedom from all
+restraints, the frank, sincere expression of the artist's
+individuality, is the life and soul of all true art.
+
+Turgenev gave to his country the whole of himself, the best of his
+mind and of his creative fancy. He appeared at the same time as a
+teacher, a prophet of new ideas, and as a poet and artist. But his own
+countrymen hailed him in the first capacity, remaining for a long time
+obtuse to the latter and greater.
+
+Thus, during one of the most important and interesting periods of our
+national history, Turgenev was the standard-bearer and inspirer of
+the Liberal, the thinking Russia. Although the two men stand at
+diametrically opposite poles, Turgenev's position can be compared to
+that of Count Tolstoi nowadays, with a difference, this time in favour
+of the author of _Dmitri Rudin_. With Turgenev the thinker and the
+artist are not at war, spoiling and sometimes contradicting each
+other's efforts. They go hand in hand, because he never preaches any
+doctrine whatever, but gives us, with an unimpeachable, artistic
+objectiveness, the living men and women in whom certain ideas,
+doctrines, and aspirations were embodied. And he never evolves these
+ideas and doctrines from his inner consciousness, but takes them from
+real life, catching with his unfailing artistic instinct an incipient
+movement just at the moment when it was to become a historic feature
+of the time. Thus his novels are a sort of artistic epitome of the
+intellectual history of modern Russia, and also a powerful instrument
+of her intellectual progress.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+_Rudin_ is the first of Turgenev's social novels, and is a sort of
+artistic introduction to those that follow, because it refers to the
+epoch anterior to that when the present social and political movements
+began. This epoch is being fast forgotten, and without his novel it
+would be difficult for us to fully realise it, but it is well worth
+studying, because we find in it the germ of future growths.
+
+It was a gloomy time. The ferocious despotism of Nicholas
+I.--overweighing the country like the stone lid of a coffin, crushed
+every word, every thought, which did not fit with its narrow
+conceptions. But this was not the worst. The worst was that
+progressive Russia was represented by a mere handful of men, who were
+so immensely in advance of their surroundings, that in their own
+country they felt more isolated, helpless, and out of touch with the
+realities of life than if they had lived among strangers.
+
+But men must have some outlet for their spiritual energies, and these
+men, unable to take part in the sordid or petty pursuits of those
+around them, created for themselves artificial life, artificial
+pursuits and interests.
+
+The isolation in which they lived drew them naturally together. The
+'circle,' something between an informal club and a debating society,
+became the form in which these cravings of mind or heart could be
+satisfied. These people met and talked; that was all they were able to
+do.
+
+The passage in which one of the heroes, Lezhnyov, tells the woman he
+loves about the circle of which Dmitri Rudin and himself were members,
+is historically one of the most suggestive. It refers to a circle of
+young students. But it has a wider application. All prominent men of
+the epoch--Stankevitch, who served as model to the poetic and touching
+figure of Pokorsky; Alexander Hertzen, and the great critic,
+Belinsky--all had their 'circles,' or their small chapels, in which
+these enthusiasts met to offer worship to the 'goddess of truth, art,
+and morality.'
+
+They were the best men of their time, full of high aspirations and
+knowledge, and their disinterested search after truth was certainly a
+noble pursuit. They had full right to look down upon their neighbours
+wallowing in the mire of sordid and selfish materialism. But by living
+in that spiritual hothouse of dreams, philosophical speculations, and
+abstractions, these men unfitted themselves only the more completely
+for participation in real life; the absorption in interests having
+nothing to do with the life of their own country, estranged them still
+more from it. The overwhelming stream of words drained them of the
+natural sources of spontaneous emotion, and these men almost grew out
+of feeling by dint of constantly analysing their feelings.
+
+Dmitri Rudin is the typical man of that generation, both the victim
+and the hero of his time--a man who is almost a Titan in word and a
+pigmy in deed. He is eloquent as a young Demosthenes. An irresistible
+debater, he carries everything before him the moment he appears. But
+he fails ignominiously when put to the hard test of action. Yet he is
+not an impostor. His enthusiasm is contagious because it is sincere,
+and his eloquence is convincing because devotion to his ideals is an
+absorbing passion with him. He would die for them, and, what is more
+rare, he would not swerve a hair's-breadth from them for any worldly
+advantage, or for fear of any hardship. Only this passion and this
+enthusiasm spring with him entirely from the head. The heart, the deep
+emotional power of human love and pity, lay dormant in him. Humanity,
+which he would serve to the last drop of his blood, is for him a body
+of foreigners--French, English, Germans--whom he has studied from
+books, and whom he has met only in hotels and watering-places during
+his foreign travels as a student or as a tourist.
+
+Towards such an abstract, alien humanity, a man cannot feel any real
+attachment. With all his outward ardour, Rudin is cold as ice at the
+bottom of his heart. His is an enthusiasm which glows without warmth,
+like the aurora borealis of the Polar regions. A poor substitute for
+the bountiful sun. But what would have become of a God-forsaken land
+if the Arctic nights were deprived of that substitute? With all their
+weaknesses, Rudin and the men of his stamp--in other words, the men of
+the generation of 1840--have rendered an heroic service to their
+country. They inculcated in it the religion of the ideal; they brought
+in the seeds, which had only to be thrown into the warm furrow of
+their native soil to bring forth the rich crops of the future.
+
+The shortcomings and the impotence of these men were due to their
+having no organic ties with their own country, no roots in the Russian
+soil. They hardly knew the Russian people, who appeared to them as
+nothing more than an historic abstraction. They were really
+cosmopolitan, as a poor makeshift for something better, and Turgenev,
+in making his hero die on a French barricade, was true to life as well
+as to art.
+
+The inward growth of the country has remedied this defect in the
+course of the three generations which have followed. But has the
+remedy been complete? No; far from it, unfortunately. There are still
+thousands of barriers preventing the Russians from doing something
+useful for their countrymen and mixing freely with them. The
+spiritual energies of the most ardent are still compelled--partially
+at least--to run into the artificial channels described in Turgenev's
+novel.
+
+Hence the perpetuation of Rudin's type, which acquires more than an
+historical interest.
+
+In discussing the character of Hlestakov, the hero of his great
+comedy, Gogol declared that this type is pretty nigh universal,
+because 'every Russian,' he says, 'has a bit of Hlestakov in him.'
+This not very flattering opinion has been humbly indorsed and repeated
+since, out of reverence to Gogol's great authority, although it is
+untrue on the face of it. Hlestakov is a sort of Tartarin in Russian
+dress, whilst simplicity and sincerity are the fundamental traits of
+all that is Russian in character, manner, art, literature. But it may
+be truly said that every educated Russian of our time has a bit of
+Dmitri Rudin in him.
+
+This figure is undoubtedly one of the finest in Turgenev's gallery,
+and it is at the same time one of the most brilliant examples of his
+artistic method.
+
+Turgenev does not give us at one stroke sculptured figures made from
+one block, such as rise before us from Tolstoi's pages. His art is
+rather that of a painter or musical composer than of a sculptor. He
+has more colour, a deeper perspective, a greater variety of lights and
+shadows--a more complete portraiture of the spiritual man. Tolstoi's
+people stand so living and concrete that one feels one can recognise
+them in the street. Turgenev's are like people whose intimate
+confessions and private correspondence, unveiling all the secrets of
+their spiritual life, have been submitted to one.
+
+Every scene, almost every line, opens up new deep horizons, throwing
+upon his people some new unexpected light.
+
+The extremely complex and difficult character of the hero of this
+story, shows at its highest this subtle psychological many-sidedness.
+Dmitri Rudin is built up of contradictions, yet not for a moment does
+he cease to be perfectly real, living, and concrete.
+
+Hardly less remarkable is the character of the heroine, Natalya, the
+quiet, sober, matter-of-fact girl, who at the bottom is an
+enthusiastic and heroic nature. She is but a child fresh to all
+impressions of life, and as yet undeveloped. To have used the
+searching, analytical method in painting her would have spoiled this
+beautiful creation. Turgenev describes her synthetically by a few
+masterly lines, which show us, however, the secrets of her spirit;
+revealing what she is and also what she might have become under other
+circumstances.
+
+This character deserves more attention than we can give it here.
+Turgenev, like George Meredith, is a master in painting women, and his
+Natalya is the first poetical revelation of a very striking fact in
+modern Russian history; the appearance of women possessing a strength
+of mind more finely masculine than that of the men of their time. By
+the side of weak, irresolute, though highly intellectual men we see in
+his first three novels energetic, earnest, impassioned women, who take
+the lead in action, whilst they are but the man's modest pupils in the
+domain of ideas. Only later on, in _Fathers and Children_, does
+Turgenev show us in Bazarov a man essentially masculine. But of this
+interesting peculiarity of Russian intellectual life, in the years
+1840 to 1860, I will speak more fully when analysing another of
+Turgenev's novels in which this contrast is most conspicuous.
+
+I will say nothing of the minor characters of the story before us:
+Lezhnyov, Pigasov, Madame Lasunsky, Pandalevsky, who are all excellent
+examples of what may be called miniature-painting.
+
+As to the novel as a whole, I will make here only one observation, not
+to forestall the reader's own impressions.
+
+Turgenev is a realist in the sense that he keeps close to reality,
+truth, and nature. But in the pursuit of photographic faithfulness to
+life, he never allows himself to be tedious and dull, as some of the
+best representatives of the school think it incumbent upon them to be.
+His descriptions are never overburdened with wearisome details; his
+action is rapid; the events are never to be foreseen a hundred pages
+beforehand; he keeps his readers in constant suspense. And it seems to
+me in so doing he shows himself a better realist than the gifted
+representatives of the orthodox realism in France, England, and
+America. Life is not dull; life is full of the unforeseen, full of
+suspense. A novelist, however natural and logical, must contrive to
+have it in his novels if he is not to sacrifice the soul of art for
+the merest show of fidelity.
+
+The plot of Dmitri Rudin is so exceedingly simple that an English
+novel-reader would say that there is hardly any plot at all. Turgenev
+disdained the tricks of the sensational novelists. Yet, for a Russian
+at least, it is easier to lay down before the end a novel by Victor
+Hugo or Alexander Dumas than Dmitri Rudin, or, indeed, any of
+Turgenev's great novels. What the novelists of the romantic school
+obtain by the charm of unexpected adventures and thrilling situations,
+Turgenev succeeds in obtaining by the brisk admirably concentrated
+action, and, above all, by the simplest and most precious of a
+novelist's gifts: his unique command over the sympathies and emotions
+of his readers. In this he can be compared to a musician who works
+upon the nerves and the souls of his audience without the intermediary
+of the mind; or, better still, to a poet who combines the power of the
+word with the magic spell of harmony. One does not read his novels;
+one lives in them.
+
+Much of this peculiar gift of fascination is certainly due to
+Turgenev's mastery over all the resources of our rich, flexible, and
+musical language. The poet Lermontov alone wrote as splendid a prose
+as Turgenev. A good deal of its charm is unavoidably lost in
+translation. But I am happy to say that the present one is as near an
+approach to the elegance and poetry of the original as I have ever
+come across.
+
+
+  S. STEPNIAK.
+
+  BEDFORD PARK, April 20, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+THE NAMES OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK
+
+DMITRI NIKOLA'ITCH RU'DIN.
+
+DAR-YA MIHA'ILOVNA LASU'NSKY.
+
+NATA'L-YA ALEX-YE'VNA.
+
+MIHA'ILO MIHA'ILITCH LE'ZH-NYOV (MISHA).
+
+ALEXANDRA PA'VLOVNA LI'PIN (SASHA).
+
+SERGEI (pron, Sergay) PA'VLITCH VOLI'NT-SEV (SEREZHA).
+
+KONSTANTIN DIOMIDITCH PANDALE'VSKY.
+
+AFRICAN SEME'NITCH PIGA'SOV.
+
+BASSI'STOFF.
+
+MLLE. BONCOURT.
+
+
+
+
+In transcribing the Russian names into English--
+
+a has the sound of a in father.
+er , , air.
+i , , ee.
+u , , oo.
+y is always consonantal except when it is the last letter of the word.
+g is always hard.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+IT was a quiet summer morning. The sun stood already pretty high in
+the clear sky but the fields were still sparkling with dew; a fresh
+breeze blew fragrantly from the scarce awakened valleys and in the
+forest, still damp and hushed, the birds were merrily carolling their
+morning song. On the ridge of a swelling upland, which was covered
+from base to summit with blossoming rye, a little village was to be
+seen. Along a narrow by-road to this little village a young woman was
+walking in a white muslin gown, and a round straw hat, with a parasol
+in her hand. A page boy followed her some distance behind.
+
+She moved without haste and as though she were enjoying the walk. The
+high nodding rye all round her moved in long softly rustling waves,
+taking here a shade of silvery green and there a ripple of red; the
+larks were trilling overhead. The young woman had come from her own
+estate, which was not more than a mile from the village to which she
+was turning her steps. Her name was Alexandra Pavlovna Lipin. She was
+a widow, childless, and fairly well off, and lived with her brother, a
+retired cavalry officer, Sergei Pavlitch Volintsev. He was unmarried
+and looked after her property.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna reached the village and, stopping at the last hut,
+a very old and low one, she called up the boy and told him to go in
+and ask after the health of its mistress. He quickly came back
+accompanied by a decrepit old peasant with a white beard.
+
+'Well, how is she?' asked Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Well, she is still alive,' began the old man.
+
+'Can I go in?'
+
+'Of course; yes.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna went into the hut. It was narrow, stifling, and
+smoky inside. Some one stirred and began to moan on the stove which
+formed the bed. Alexandra Pavlovna looked round and discerned in the
+half darkness the yellow wrinkled face of the old woman tied up in a
+checked handkerchief. Covered to the very throat with a heavy overcoat
+she was breathing with difficulty, and her wasted hands were
+twitching.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna went close up to the old woman and laid her fingers
+on her forehead; it was burning hot.
+
+'How do you feel, Matrona?' she inquired, bending over the bed.
+
+'Oh, oh!' groaned the old woman, trying to make her out, 'bad, very
+bad, my dear! My last hour has come, my darling!'
+
+'God is merciful, Matrona; perhaps you will be better soon. Did you
+take the medicine I sent you?'
+
+The old woman groaned painfully, and did not answer. She had hardly
+heard the question.
+
+'She has taken it,' said the old man who was standing at the door.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna turned to him.
+
+'Is there no one with her but you?' she inquired.
+
+'There is the girl--her granddaughter, but she always keeps away. She
+won't sit with her; she's such a gad-about. To give the old woman a
+drink of water is too much trouble for her. And I am old; what use can
+I be?'
+
+'Shouldn't she be taken to me--to the hospital?'
+
+'No. Why take her to the hospital? She would die just the same. She
+has lived her life; it's God's will now seemingly. She will never get
+up again. How could she go to the hospital? If they tried to lift her
+up, she would die.'
+
+'Oh!' moaned the sick woman, 'my pretty lady, don't abandon my
+little orphan; our master is far away, but you----'
+
+She could not go on, she had spent all her strength in saying so much.
+
+'Do not worry yourself,' replied Alexandra Pavlovna, 'everything shall
+be done. Here is some tea and sugar I have brought you. If you can
+fancy it you must drink some. Have you a samovar, I wonder?' she
+added, looking at the old man.
+
+'A samovar? We haven't a samovar, but we could get one.'
+
+'Then get one, or I will send you one. And tell your granddaughter not
+to leave her like this. Tell her it's shameful.'
+
+The old man made no answer but took the parcel of tea and sugar with
+both hands.
+
+'Well, good-bye, Matrona!' said Alexandra Pavlovna, 'I will come and
+see you again; and you must not lose heart but take your medicine
+regularly.'
+
+The old woman raised her head and drew herself a little towards
+Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Give me your little hand, dear lady,' she muttered.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna did not give her hand; she bent over her and kissed
+her on the forehead.
+
+'Take care, now,' she said to the old man as she went out, 'and give
+her the medicine without fail, as it is written down, and give her
+some tea to drink.'
+
+Again the old man made no reply, but only bowed.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna breathed more freely when she came out into the
+fresh air. She put up her parasol and was about to start homewards,
+when suddenly there appeared round the corner of a little hut a man
+about thirty, driving a low racing droshky and wearing an old overcoat
+of grey linen, and a foraging cap of the same. Catching sight of
+Alexandra Pavlovna he at once stopped his horse and turned round
+towards her. His broad and colourless face with its small light grey
+eyes and almost white moustache seemed all in the same tone of colour
+as his clothes.
+
+'Good-morning!' he began, with a lazy smile; 'what are you doing
+here, if I may ask?'
+
+'I have been visiting a sick woman . . . And where have you come from,
+Mihailo Mihailitch?'
+
+The man addressed as Mihailo Mihailitch looked into her eyes and
+smiled again.
+
+'You do well,' he said, 'to visit the sick, but wouldn't it be better
+for you to take her into the hospital?'
+
+'She is too weak; impossible to move her.'
+
+'But don't you intend to give up your hospital?'
+
+'Give it up? Why?'
+
+'Oh, I thought so.'
+
+'What a strange notion! What put such an idea into your head?'
+
+'Oh, you are always with Madame Lasunsky now, you know, and seem to be
+under her influence. And in her words--hospitals, schools, and all
+that sort of things, are mere waste of time--useless fads.
+Philanthropy ought to be entirely personal, and education too, all
+that is the soul's work . . . that's how she expresses herself, I
+believe. From whom did she pick up that opinion I should like to
+know?'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna laughed.
+
+'Darya Mihailovna is a clever woman, I like and esteem her very much;
+but she may make mistakes, and I don't put faith in everything she
+says.'
+
+'And it's a very good thing you don't,' rejoined Mihailo Mihailitch,
+who all the while remained sitting in his droshky, 'for she doesn't
+put much faith in what she says herself. I'm very glad I met you.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'That's a nice question! As though it wasn't always delightful to meet
+you? To-day you look as bright and fresh as this morning.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna laughed again.
+
+'What are you laughing at?'
+
+'What, indeed! If you could see with what a cold and indifferent face
+you brought out your compliment! I wonder you didn't yawn over the
+last word!'
+
+'A cold face. . . . You always want fire; but fire is of no use at
+all. It flares and smokes and goes out.'
+
+'And warms,' . . . put in Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Yes . . . and burns.'
+
+'Well, what if it does burn! That's no great harm either! It's
+better anyway than----'
+
+'Well, we shall see what you will say when you do get nicely burnt one
+day,' Mihailo Mihailitch interrupted her in a tone of vexation and
+made a cut at the horse with the reins, 'Good-bye.'
+
+'Mihailo Mihailitch, stop a minute!' cried Alexandra Pavlovna, 'when
+are you coming to see us?'
+
+'To-morrow; my greetings to your brother.'
+
+And the droshky rolled away.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna looked after Mihailo Mihailitch.
+
+'What a sack!' she thought. Sitting huddled up and covered with dust,
+his cap on the back of his head and tufts of flaxen hair straggling
+from beneath it, he looked strikingly like a huge sack of flour.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna turned tranquilly back along the path homewards.
+She was walking with downcast eyes. The tramp of a horse near made her
+stop and raise her head. . . . Her brother had come on horseback to
+meet her; beside him was walking a young man of medium height, wearing
+a light open coat, a light tie, and a light grey hat, and carrying a
+cane in his hand. He had been smiling for a long time at Alexandra
+Pavlovna, even though he saw that she was absorbed in thought and
+noticing nothing, and when she stopped he went up to her and in a tone
+of delight, almost of emotion, cried:
+
+'Good-morning, Alexandra Pavlovna, good-morning!'
+
+'Ah! Konstantin Diomiditch! good-morning!' she replied. 'You have
+come from Darya Mihailovna?'
+
+'Precisely so, precisely so,' rejoined the young man with a radiant
+face, 'from Darya Mihailovna. Darya Mihailovna sent me to you; I
+preferred to walk. . . . It's such a glorious morning, and the distance
+is only three miles. When I arrived, you were not at home. Your
+brother told me you had gone to Semenovka; and he was just going out
+to the fields; so you see I walked with him to meet you. Yes, yes.
+How very delightful!'
+
+The young man spoke Russian accurately and grammatically but with a
+foreign accent, though it was difficult to determine exactly what
+accent it was. In his features there was something Asiatic. His long
+hook nose, his large expressionless prominent eyes, his thick red
+lips, and retreating forehead, and his jet black hair,--everything
+about him suggested an Oriental extraction; but the young man gave his
+surname as Pandalevsky and spoke of Odessa as his birthplace, though
+he was brought up somewhere in White Russia at the expense of a rich
+and benevolent widow.
+
+Another widow had obtained a government post for him. Middle-aged
+ladies were generally ready to befriend Konstantin Diomiditch; he knew
+well how to court them and was successful in coming across them. He
+was at this very time living with a rich lady, a landowner, Darya
+Mihailovna Lasunsky, in a position between that of a guest and of a
+dependant. He was very polite and obliging, full of sensibility and
+secretly given to sensuality, he had a pleasant voice, played well on
+the piano, and had the habit of gazing intently into the eyes of any
+one he was speaking to. He dressed very neatly, and wore his clothes a
+very long time, shaved his broad chin carefully, and arranged his hair
+curl by curl.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna heard his speech to the end and turned to her
+brother.
+
+'I keep meeting people to-day; I have just been talking to Lezhnyov.'
+
+'Oh, Lezhnyov! was he driving somewhere?'
+
+'Yes, and fancy; he was in a racing droshky, and dressed in a kind of
+linen sack, all covered with dust. . . . What a queer creature he is!'
+
+'Perhaps so; but he's a capital fellow.'
+
+'Who? Mr. Lezhnyov?' inquired Pandalevsky, as though he were surprised.
+
+'Yes, Mihailo Mihailitch Lezhnyov,' replied Volintsev. 'Well,
+good-bye; it's time I was off to the field; they are sowing your
+buckwheat. Mr. Pandalevsky will escort you home.' And Volintsev rode
+off at a trot.
+
+'With the greatest of pleasure!' cried Konstantin Diomiditch,
+offering Alexandra Pavlovna his arm.
+
+She took it and they both turned along the path to her house.
+
+Walking with Alexandra Pavlovna on his arm seemed to afford Konstantin
+Diomiditch great delight; he moved with little steps, smiling, and his
+Oriental eyes were even be-dimmed by a slight moisture, though this
+indeed was no rare occurrence with them; it did not mean much for
+Konstantin Diomiditch to be moved and dissolve into tears. And who
+would not have been pleased to have on his arm a pretty, young and
+graceful woman? Of Alexandra Pavlovna the whole of her district was
+unanimous in declaring that she was charming, and the district was not
+wrong. Her straight, ever so slightly tilted nose would have been
+enough alone to drive any man out of his senses, to say nothing of her
+velvety dark eyes, her golden brown hair, the dimples in her smoothly
+curved cheeks, and her other beauties. But best of all was the sweet
+expression of her face; confiding, good and gentle, it touched and
+attracted at the same time. Alexandra Pavlovna had the glance and the
+smile of a child; other ladies found her a little simple. . . . Could
+one wish for anything more?
+
+'Darya Mihailovna sent you to me, did you say?' she asked Pandalevsky.
+
+'Yes; she sent me,' he answered, pronouncing the letter _s_ like the
+English _th_. 'She particularly wishes and told me to beg you very
+urgently to be so good as to dine with her to-day. She is expecting a
+new guest whom she particularly wishes you to meet'
+
+'Who is it?'
+
+'A certain Muffel, a baron, a gentleman of the bed-chamber from
+Petersburg. Darya Mihailovna made his acquaintance lately at the
+Prince Garin's, and speaks of him in high terms as an agreeable and
+cultivated young man. His Excellency the baron is interested, too, in
+literature, or more strictly speaking----ah! what an exquisite
+butterfly! pray look at it!----more strictly speaking, in political
+economy. He has written an essay on some very interesting question,
+and wants to submit it to Darya Mihailovna's criticism.'
+
+'An article on political economy?'
+
+'From the literary point of view, Alexandra Pavlovna, from the
+literary point of view. You are well aware, I suppose, that in that
+line Darya Mihailovna is an authority. Zhukovsky used to ask her
+advice, and my benefactor, who lives at Odessa, that benevolent old
+man, Roxolan Mediarovitch Ksandrika----No doubt you know the name of
+that eminent man?'
+
+'No; I have never heard of him.'
+
+'You never heard of such a man? surprising! I was going to say that
+Roxolan Mediarovitch always had the very highest opinion of Darya
+Mihailovna's knowledge of Russian!
+
+'Is this baron a pedant then?' asked Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Not in the very least. Darya Mihailovna says, on the contrary, that
+you see that he belongs to the best society at once. He spoke of
+Beethoven with such eloquence that even the old prince was quite
+delighted by it. That, I own, I should like to have heard; you know
+that is in my line. Allow me to offer you this lovely wild-flower.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna took the flower, and when she had walked a few
+steps farther, let it drop on the path. They were not more than two
+hundred paces from her house. It had been recently built and
+whitewashed, and looked out hospitably with its wide light windows
+from the thick foliage of the old limes and maples.
+
+'So what message do you give me for Darya Mihailovna?' began
+Pandalevsky, slightly hurt at the fate of the flower he had given her.
+'Will you come to dinner? She invites your brother too.'
+
+'Yes; we will come, most certainly. And how is Natasha?'
+
+'Natalya Alexyevna is well, I am glad to say. But we have already
+passed the road that turns off to Darya Mihailovna's. Allow me to bid
+you good-bye.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna stopped. 'But won't you come in?' she said in a
+hesitating voice.
+
+'I should like to, indeed, but I am afraid it is late. Darya
+Mihailovna wishes to hear a new etude of Thalberg's, so I must
+practise and have it ready. Besides, I am doubtful, I must confess,
+whether my visit could afford you any pleasure.'
+
+'Oh, no! why?'
+
+Pandalevsky sighed and dropped his eyes expressively.
+
+'Good-bye, Alexandra Pavlovna!' he said after a slight pause; then he
+bowed and turned back.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna turned round and went home.
+
+Konstantin Diomiditch, too, walked homewards. All softness had
+vanished at once from his face; a self-confident, almost hard
+expression came into it. Even his walk was changed; his steps were
+longer and he trod more heavily. He had walked about two miles,
+carelessly swinging his cane, when all at once he began to smile
+again: he saw by the roadside a young, rather pretty peasant girl, who
+was driving some calves out of an oat-field. Konstantin Diomiditch
+approached the girl as warily as a cat, and began to speak to her. She
+said nothing at first, only blushed and laughed, but at last she hid
+her face in her sleeve, turned away, and muttered:
+
+'Go away, sir; upon my word . . .'
+
+Konstantin Diomiditch shook his finger at her and told her to bring
+him some cornflowers.
+
+'What do you want with cornflowers?--to make a wreath?' replied the
+girl; 'come now, go along then.'
+
+'Stop a minute, my pretty little dear,' Konstantin Diomiditch was
+beginning.
+
+'There now, go along,' the girl interrupted him, 'there are the young
+gentlemen coming.'
+
+Konstantin Diomiditch looked round. There really were Vanya and Petya,
+Darya Mihailovna's sons, running along the road; after them walked
+their tutor, Bassistoff, a young man of two-and-twenty, who had only
+just left college. Bassistoff was a well-grown youth, with a simple
+face, a large nose, thick lips, and small pig's eyes, plain and
+awkward, but kind, good, and upright. He dressed untidily and wore his
+hair long--not from affectation, but from laziness; he liked eating
+and he liked sleeping, but he also liked a good book, and an earnest
+conversation, and he hated Pandalevsky from the depths of his soul.
+
+Darya Mihailovna's children worshipped Bassistoff, and yet were not in
+the least afraid of him; he was on a friendly footing with all the
+rest of the household, a fact which was not altogether pleasing to its
+mistress, though she was fond of declaring that for her social
+prejudices did not exist.
+
+'Good-morning, my dears,' began Konstantin Diomiditch, 'how early you
+have come for your walk to-day! But I,' he added, turning to
+Bassistoff, 'have been out a long while already; it's my passion--to
+enjoy nature.'
+
+'We saw how you were enjoying nature,' muttered Bassistoff.
+
+'You are a materialist, God knows what you are imagining! I know you.'
+When Pandalevsky spoke to Bassistoff or people like him, he grew
+slightly irritated, and pronounced the letter _s_ quite clearly, even
+with a slight hiss.
+
+'Why, were you asking your way of that girl, am I to suppose?' said
+Bassistoff, shifting his eyes to right and to left.
+
+He felt that Pandalevsky was looking him straight in the face, and
+this fact was exceedingly unpleasant to him. 'I repeat, a materialist
+and nothing more.'
+
+'You certainly prefer to see only the prosaic side in everything.'
+
+'Boys!' cried Bassistoff suddenly, 'do you see that willow at the
+corner? let's see who can get to it first. One! two! three! and away!'
+
+The boys set off at full speed to the willow. Bassistoff rushed after
+them.
+
+'What a lout!' thought Pandalevsky, 'he is spoiling those boys. A
+perfect peasant!'
+
+And looking with satisfaction at his own neat and elegant figure,
+Konstantin Diomiditch struck his coat-sleeve twice with his open hand,
+pulled up his collar, and went on his way. When he had reached his own
+room, he put on an old dressing-gown and sat down with an anxious face
+to the piano.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Darya Mihailovna's house was regarded as almost the first in the whole
+province. It was a huge stone mansion, built after designs of
+Rastrelli in the taste of last century, and in a commanding position
+on the summit of a hill, at whose base flowed one of the principal
+rivers of central Russia. Darya Mihailovna herself was a wealthy and
+distinguished lady, the widow of a privy councillor. Pandalevsky said
+of her, that she knew all Europe and all Europe knew her! However,
+Europe knew her very little; even at Petersburg she had not played a
+very prominent part; but on the other hand at Moscow every one knew
+her and visited her. She belonged to the highest society, and was
+spoken of as a rather eccentric woman, not wholly good-natured, but
+excessively clever. In her youth she had been very pretty. Poets
+had written verses to her, young men had been in love with her,
+distinguished men had paid her homage. But twenty-five or thirty years
+had passed since those days and not a trace of her former charms
+remained. Every one who saw her now for the first time was impelled to
+ask himself, if this woman--skinny, sharp-nosed, and yellow-faced,
+though still not old in years--could once have been a beauty, if she
+was really the same woman who had been the inspiration of poets . . . .
+And every one marvelled inwardly at the mutability of earthly things.
+It is true that Pandalevsky discovered that Darya Mihailovna had
+preserved her magnificent eyes in a marvellous way; but we have seen
+that Pandalevsky also maintained that all Europe knew her.
+
+Darya Mihailovna went every summer to her country place with her
+children (she had three: a daughter of seventeen, Natalya, and two
+sons of nine and ten years old). She kept open house in the country,
+that is, she received men, especially unmarried ones; provincial
+ladies she could not endure. But what of the treatment she received
+from those ladies in return?
+
+Darya Mihailovna, according to them, was a haughty, immoral, and
+insufferable tyrant, and above all--she permitted herself such
+liberties in conversation, it was shocking! Darya Mihailovna certainly
+did not care to stand on ceremony in the country, and in the
+unconstrained frankness of her manners there was perceptible a slight
+shade of the contempt of the lioness of the capital for the petty and
+obscure creatures who surrounded her. She had a careless, and even a
+sarcastic manner with her own set; but the shade of contempt was not
+there.
+
+By the way, reader, have you observed that a person who is
+exceptionally nonchalant with his inferiors, is never nonchalant with
+persons of a higher rank? Why is that? But such questions lead to
+nothing.
+
+When Konstantin Diomiditch, having at last learnt by heart the _etude_
+of Thalberg, went down from his bright and cheerful room to the
+drawing-room, he already found the whole household assembled. The
+salon was already beginning. The lady of the house was reposing on a
+wide couch, her feet gathered up under her, and a new French pamphlet
+in her hand; at the window behind a tambour frame, sat on one side the
+daughter of Darya Mihailovna, on the other, Mlle. Boncourt, the
+governess, a dry old maiden lady of sixty, with a false front of black
+curls under a parti-coloured cap and cotton wool in her ears; in the
+corner near the door was huddled Bassistoff reading a paper, near him
+were Petya and Vanya playing draughts, and leaning by the stove, his
+hands clasped behind his back, was a gentleman of low stature, with a
+swarthy face covered with bristling grey hair, and fiery black eyes--a
+certain African Semenitch Pigasov.
+
+This Pigasov was a strange person. Full of acerbity against everything
+and every one--especially against women--he was railing from morning
+to night, sometimes very aptly, sometimes rather stupidly, but always
+with gusto. His ill-humour almost approached puerility; his laugh, the
+sound of his voice, his whole being seemed steeped in venom. Darya
+Mihailovna gave Pigasov a cordial reception; he amused her with his
+sallies. They were certainly absurd enough. He took delight in
+perpetual exaggeration. For example, if he were told of any
+disaster, that a village had been struck by lightning, or that a mill
+had been carried away by floods, or that a peasant had cut his hand
+with an axe, he invariably asked with concentrated bitterness, 'And
+what's her name?' meaning, what is the name of the woman responsible
+for this calamity, for according to his convictions, a woman was the
+cause of every misfortune, if you only looked deep enough into the
+matter. He once threw himself on his knees before a lady he hardly
+knew at all, who had been effusive in her hospitality to him and began
+tearfully, but with wrath written on his face, to entreat her to have
+compassion on him, saying that he had done her no harm and never would
+come to see her for the future. Once a horse had bolted with one of
+Darya Mihailovna's maids, thrown her into a ditch and almost killed
+her. From that time Pigasov never spoke of that horse except as the
+'good, good horse,' and he even came to regard the hill and the ditch
+as specially picturesque spots. Pigasov had failed in life and had
+adopted this whimsical craze. He came of poor parents. His father had
+filled various petty posts, and could scarcely read and write, and did
+not trouble himself about his son's education; he fed and clothed him
+and nothing more. His mother spoiled him, but she died early. Pigasov
+educated himself, sent himself to the district school and then to the
+gymnasium, taught himself French, German, and even Latin, and, leaving
+the gymnasiums with an excellent certificate, went to Dorpat, where he
+maintained a perpetual struggle with poverty, but succeeded in
+completing his three years' course. Pigasov's abilities did not rise
+above the level of mediocrity; patience and perseverance were his
+strong points, but the most powerful sentiment in him was ambition,
+the desire to get into good society, not to be inferior to others in
+spite of fortune. He had studied diligently and gone to the Dorpat
+University from ambition. Poverty exasperated him, and made him
+watchful and cunning. He expressed himself with originality; from his
+youth he had adopted a special kind of stinging and exasperated
+eloquence. His ideas did not rise above the common level; but his way
+of speaking made him seem not only a clever, but even a very clever,
+man. Having taken his degree as candidate, Pigasov decided to devote
+himself to the scholastic profession; he understood that in any other
+career he could not possibly be the equal of his associates. He tried
+to select them from a higher rank and knew how to gain their good
+graces; even by flattery, though he was always abusing them. But to do
+this he had not, to speak plainly, enough raw material. Having
+educated himself through no love for study, Pigasov knew very little
+thoroughly. He broke down miserably in the public disputation, while
+another student who had shared the same room with him, and who was
+constantly the subject of his ridicule, a man of very limited ability
+who had received a careful and solid education, gained a complete
+triumph. Pigasov was infuriated by this failure, he threw all his
+books and manuscripts into the fire and went into a government office.
+At first he did not get on badly, he made a fair official, not very
+active, extremely self-confident and bold, however; but he wanted to
+make his way more quickly, he made a false step, got into trouble, and
+was obliged to retire from the service. He spent three years on the
+property he had bought himself and suddenly married a wealthy
+half-educated woman who was captivated by his unceremonious and
+sarcastic manners. But Pigasov's character had become so soured and
+irritable that family life was unendurable to him. After living with
+him a few years, his wife went off secretly to Moscow and sold her
+estate to an enterprising speculator; Pigasov had only just finished
+building a house on it. Utterly crushed by this last blow, Pigasov
+began a lawsuit with his wife, but gained nothing by it. After this he
+lived in solitude, and went to see his neighbours, whom he abused
+behind their backs and even to their faces, and who welcomed him with
+a kind of constrained half-laugh, though he did not inspire them with
+any serious dread. He never took a book in his hand. He had about a
+hundred serfs; his peasants were not badly off.
+
+'Ah! _Constantin_,' said Darya Mihailovna, when Pandalevsky came into
+the drawing-room, 'is _Alexandrine_ coming?'
+
+'Alexandra Pavlovna asked me to thank you, and they will be extremely
+delighted,' replied Konstantin Diomiditch, bowing affably in all
+directions, and running his plump white hand with its triangular cut
+nails through his faultlessly arranged hair.
+
+'And is Volintsev coming too?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'So, according to you, African Semenitch,' continued Darya Mihailovna,
+turning to Pigasov, 'all young ladies are affected?'
+
+Pigasov's mouth twitched, and he plucked nervously at his elbow.
+
+'I say,' he began in a measured voice--in his most violent moods of
+exasperation he always spoke slowly and precisely. 'I say that young
+ladies, in general--of present company, of course, I say nothing.'
+
+'But that does not prevent your thinking of them,' put in Darya
+Mihailovna.
+
+'I say nothing of them,' repeated Pigasov. 'All young ladies, in
+general, are affected to the most extreme point--affected in the
+expression of their feelings. If a young lady is frightened, for
+instance, or pleased with anything, or distressed, she is certain
+first to throw her person into some such elegant attitude (and
+Pigasov threw his figure into an unbecoming pose and spread out his
+hands) and then she shrieks--ah! or she laughs or cries. I did once
+though (and here Pigasov smiled complacently) succeed in eliciting a
+genuine, unaffected expression of emotion from a remarkably affected
+young lady!'
+
+'How did you do that?'
+
+Pigasov's eyes sparkled.
+
+'I poked her in the side with an aspen stake, from behind. She did
+shriek, and I said to her, "Bravo, bravo! that's the voice of nature,
+that was a genuine shriek! Always do like that for the future!"'
+
+Every one in the room laughed.
+
+'What nonsense you talk, African Semenitch,' cried Darya Mihailovna.
+'Am I to believe that you would poke a girl in the side with a stake!'
+
+'Yes, indeed, with a stake, a very big stake, like those that are used
+in the defence of a fort.'
+
+'_Mais c'est un horreur ce que vous dites la, Monsieur_,' cried Mlle.
+Boncourt, looking angrily at the boys, who were in fits of laughter.
+
+'Oh, you mustn't believe him,' said Darya Mihailovna. 'Don't you know
+him?'
+
+But the offended French lady could not be pacified for a long while,
+and kept muttering something to herself.
+
+'You need not believe me,' continued Pigasov coolly, 'but I assure you
+I told the simple truth. Who should know if not I? After that perhaps
+you won't believe that our neighbour, Madame Tchepuz, Elena Antonovna,
+told me herself, mind _herself_, that she had murdered her nephew?'
+
+'What an invention!'
+
+'Wait a minute, wait a minute! Listen and judge for yourselves. Mind,
+I don't want to slander her, I even like her as far as one can like a
+woman. She hasn't a single book in her house except a calendar, and
+she can't read except aloud, and that exercise throws her into a
+violent perspiration, and she complains then that her eyes feel
+bursting out of her head. . . . In short, she's a capital woman, and
+her servant girls grow fat. Why should I slander her?'
+
+'You see,' observed Darya Mihailovna, 'African Semenitch has got on
+his hobbyhorse, now he will not be off it to-night.'
+
+'My hobby! But women have three at least, which they are never off,
+except, perhaps, when they're asleep.'
+
+'What three hobbies are those?'
+
+'Reproof, reproach, recrimination.'
+
+'Do you know, African Semenitch,' began Darya Mihailovna, 'you cannot
+be so bitter against women for nothing. Some woman or other must
+have----'
+
+'Done me an injury, you mean?' Pigasov interrupted.
+
+Darya Mihailovna was rather embarrassed; she remembered Pigasov's
+unlucky marriage, and only nodded.
+
+'One woman certainly did me an injury,' said Pigasov, 'though she was
+a good, very good one.'
+
+'Who was that?'
+
+'My mother,' said Pigasov, dropping his voice.
+
+'Your mother? What injury could she have done you?'
+
+'She brought me into the world.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna frowned.
+
+'Our conversation,' she said, 'seems to have taken a gloomy turn.
+_Constantin_, play us Thalberg's new _etude_. I daresay the music will
+soothe African Semenitch. Orpheus soothed savage beasts.'
+
+Konstantin Diomiditch took his seat at the piano, and played the etude
+very fairly well. Natalya Alexyevna at first listened attentively,
+then she bent over her work again.
+
+'_Merci, c'est charmant_,' observed Darya Mihailovna, 'I love Thalberg.
+_Il est si distingue_. What are you thinking of, African Semenitch?'
+
+'I thought,' began African Semenitch slowly, 'that there are three
+kinds of egoists; the egoists who live themselves and let others live;
+the egoists who live themselves and don't let others live; and the
+egoists who don't live themselves and don't let others live. Women,
+for the most part, belong to the third class.'
+
+'That's polite! I am very much astonished at one thing, African
+Semenitch; your confidence in your convictions; of course you can
+never be mistaken.'
+
+'Who says so? I make mistakes; a man, too, may be mistaken. But do you
+know the difference between a man's mistakes and a woman's? Don't you
+know? Well, here it is; a man may say, for example, that twice two
+makes not four, but five, or three and a half; but a woman will say
+that twice two makes a wax candle.'
+
+'I fancy I've heard you say that before. But allow me to ask what
+connection had your idea of the three kinds of egoists with the music
+you have just been hearing?'
+
+'None at all, but I did not listen to the music.'
+
+'Well, "incurable I see you are, and that is all about it,"' answered
+Darya Mihailovna, slightly altering Griboyedov's line. 'What do you
+like, since you don't care for music? Literature?'
+
+'I like literature, only not our contemporary literature.'
+
+'Why?'
+
+'I'll tell you why. I crossed the Oka lately in a ferry boat with a
+gentleman. The ferry got fixed in a narrow place; they had to drag the
+carriages ashore by hand. This gentleman had a very heavy coach.
+While the ferrymen were straining themselves to drag the coach on to
+the bank, the gentleman groaned so, standing in the ferry, that one
+felt quite sorry for him. . . . Well, I thought, here's a fresh
+illustration of the system of division of labour! That's just like
+our modern literature; other people do the work, and it does the
+groaning.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna smiled.
+
+'And that is called expressing contemporary life,' continued Pigasov
+indefatigably, 'profound sympathy with the social question and so on.
+. . . Oh, how I hate those grand words!'
+
+'Well, the women you attack so--they at least don't use grand words.'
+
+Pigasov shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'They don't use them because they don't understand them.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna flushed slightly.
+
+'You are beginning to be impertinent, African Semenitch!' she remarked
+with a forced smile.
+
+There was complete stillness in the room.
+
+'Where is Zolotonosha?' asked one of the boys suddenly of Bassistoff.
+
+'In the province of Poltava, my dear boy,' replied Pigasov, 'in the
+centre of Little Russia.' (He was glad of an opportunity of changing
+the conversation.) 'We were talking of literature,' he continued, 'if
+I had money to spare, I would at once become a Little Russian poet'
+
+'What next? a fine poet you would make!' retorted Darya Mihailovna.
+'Do you know Little Russian?'
+
+'Not a bit; but it isn't necessary.'
+
+'Not necessary?'
+
+'Oh no, it's not necessary. You need only take a sheet of paper and
+write at the top "A Ballad," then begin like this, "Heigho, alack,
+my destiny!" or "the Cossack Nalivaiko was sitting on a hill and then
+on the mountain, under the green tree the birds are singing, grae,
+voropae, gop, gop!" or something of that kind. And the thing's done.
+Print it and publish it. The Little Russian will read it, drop his
+head into his hands and infallibly burst into tears--he is such a
+sensitive soul!'
+
+'Good heavens!' cried Bassistoff. 'What are you saying? It's too
+absurd for anything. I have lived in Little Russia, I love it and know
+the language . . . "grae, grae, voropae" is absolute nonsense.'
+
+'It may be, but the Little Russian will weep all the same. You speak
+of the "language." . . . But is there a Little Russian language? Is it
+a language, in your opinion? an independent language? I would pound my
+best friend in a mortar before I'd agree to that.'
+
+Bassistoff was about to retort.
+
+'Leave him alone!' said Darya Mihailovna, 'you know that you will hear
+nothing but paradoxes from him.'
+
+Pigasov smiled ironically. A footman came in and announced the arrival
+of Alexandra Pavlovna and her brother.
+
+Darya Mihailovna rose to meet her guests.
+
+'How do you do, Alexandrine?' she began, going up to her, 'how good
+of you to come! . . . How are you, Sergei Pavlitch?'
+
+Volintsev shook hands with Darya Mihailovna and went up to Natalya
+Alexyevna.
+
+'But how about that baron, your new acquaintance, is he coming
+to-day?' asked Pigasov.
+
+'Yes, he is coming.'
+
+'He is a great philosopher, they say; he is just brimming over with
+Hegel, I suppose?'
+
+Darya Mihailovna made no reply, and making Alexandra Pavlovna sit down
+on the sofa, established herself near her.
+
+'Philosophies,' continued Pigasov, 'are elevated points of view!
+That's another abomination of mine; these elevated points of view.
+And what can one see from above? Upon my soul, if you want to buy a
+horse, you don't look at it from a steeple!'
+
+'This baron was going to bring you an essay?' said Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Yes, an essay,' replied Darya Mihailovna, with exaggerated
+carelessness, 'on the relation of commerce to manufactures in Russia.
+. . . But don't be afraid; we will not read it here. . . . I did not
+invite you for that. _Le baron est aussi aimable que savant_. And he
+speaks Russian beautifully! _C'est un vrai torrent . . . il vous
+entraine_!
+
+'He speaks Russian so beautifully,' grumbled Pigasov, 'that he
+deserves a eulogy in French.'
+
+'You may grumble as you please, African Semenitch. . . . It's in keeping
+with your ruffled locks. . . . I wonder, though, why he does not come.
+Do you know what, _messieurs et mesdames_' added Darya Mihailovna,
+looking round, 'we will go into the garden. There is still nearly an
+hour to dinner-time and the weather is glorious.'
+
+All the company rose and went into the garden.
+
+Darya Mihailovna's garden stretched right down to the river. There
+were many alleys of old lime-trees in it, full of sunlight and shade
+and fragrance and glimpses of emerald green at the ends of the walks,
+and many arbours of acacias and lilacs.
+
+Volintsev turned into the thickest part of the garden with Natalya and
+Mlle. Boncourt. He walked beside Natalya in silence. Mlle. Boncourt
+followed a little behind.
+
+'What have you been doing to-day?' asked Volintsev at last, pulling
+the ends of his handsome dark brown moustache.
+
+In features he resembled his sister strikingly; but there was less
+movement and life in his expression, and his soft beautiful eyes had a
+melancholy look.
+
+'Oh! nothing,' answered Natalya, 'I have been listening to Pigasov's
+sarcasms, I have done some embroidery on canvas, and I've been
+reading.'
+
+'And what have you been reading?'
+
+'Oh! I read--a history of the Crusades,' said Natalya, with some
+hesitation,
+
+Volintsev looked at her.
+
+'Ah!' he ejaculated at last, 'that must be interesting.'
+
+He picked a twig and began to twirl it in the air. They walked another
+twenty paces.
+
+'What is this baron whom your mother has made acquaintance with?'
+began Volintsev again.
+
+'A Gentleman of the Bedchamber, a new arrival; _maman_ speaks very
+highly of him.'
+
+'Your mother is quick to take fancies to people.'
+
+'That shows that her heart is still young,' observed Natalya.
+
+'Yes. I shall soon bring you your mare. She is almost quite broken in
+now. I want to teach her to gallop, and I shall manage it soon.'
+
+'_Merci_! . . . But I'm quite ashamed. You are breaking her in yourself
+. . . and they say it's so hard!'
+
+'To give you the least pleasure, you know, Natalya Alexyevna, I am
+ready . . . I . . . not in such trifles----'
+
+Volintsev grew confused.
+
+Natalya looked at him with friendly encouragement, and again said
+'_merci_!'
+
+'You know,' continued Sergei Pavlitch after a long pause, 'that not
+such things. . . . But why am I saying this? you know everything, of
+course.'
+
+At that instant a bell rang in the house.
+
+'Ah! _la cloche du diner_!' cried Mlle. Boncourt, '_rentrons_.'
+
+'_Quel dommage_,' thought the old French lady to herself as she mounted
+the balcony steps behind Volintsev and Natalya, '_quel dommage que ce
+charmant garcon ait si peu de ressources dans la conversation_,' which
+may be translated, 'you are a good fellow, my dear boy, but rather a
+fool.'
+
+The baron did not arrive to dinner. They waited half-an-hour for him.
+Conversation flagged at the table. Sergei Pavlitch did nothing but
+gaze at Natalya, near whom he was sitting, and zealously filled up her
+glass with water. Pandalevsky tried in vain to entertain his
+neighbour, Alexandra Pavlovna; he was bubbling over with sweetness,
+but she hardly refrained from yawning.
+
+Bassistoff was rolling up pellets of bread and thinking of nothing at
+all; even Pigasov was silent, and when Darya Mihailovna remarked to
+him that he had not been very polite to-day, he replied crossly, 'When
+am I polite? that's not in my line;' and smiling grimly he added,
+'have a little patience; I am only kvas, you know, _du simple_ Russian
+kvas; but your Gentleman of the Bedchamber----'
+
+'Bravo!' cried Darya Mihailovna, 'Pigasov is jealous, he is jealous
+already!'
+
+But Pigasov made her no rejoinder, and only gave her a rather cross
+look.
+
+Seven o'clock struck, and they were all assembled again in the
+drawing-room.
+
+'He is not coming, clearly,' said Darya Mihailovna.
+
+But, behold, the rumble of a carriage was heard: a small tarantass
+drove into the court, and a few instants later a footman entered the
+drawing-room and gave Darya Mihailovna a note on a silver salver. She
+glanced through it, and turning to the footman asked:
+
+'But where is the gentleman who brought this letter?'
+
+'He is sitting in the carriage. Shall I ask him to come up?'
+
+'Ask him to do so.'
+
+The man went out.
+
+'Fancy, how vexatious!' continued Darya Mihailovna, 'the baron has
+received a summons to return at once to Petersburg. He has sent me his
+essay by a certain Mr. Rudin, a friend of his. The baron wanted to
+introduce him to me--he speaks very highly of him. But how vexatious
+it is! I had hoped the baron would stay here for some time.'
+
+'Dmitri Nikolaitch Rudin,' announced the servant
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+A man of about thirty-five entered, of a tall, somewhat stooping
+figure, with crisp curly hair and swarthy complexion, an irregular but
+expressive and intelligent face, a liquid brilliance in his quick,
+dark blue eyes, a straight, broad nose, and well-curved lips. His
+clothes were not new, and were somewhat small, as though he had
+outgrown them.
+
+He walked quickly up to Darya Mihailovna, and with a slight bow told
+her that he had long wished to have the honour of an introduction to
+her, and that his friend the baron greatly regretted that he could not
+take leave of her in person.
+
+The thin sound of Rudin's voice seemed out of keeping with his tall
+figure and broad chest.
+
+'Pray be seated . . . very delighted,' murmured Darya Mihailovna, and,
+after introducing him to the rest of the company, she asked him
+whether he belonged to those parts or was a visitor.
+
+'My estate is in the T---- province,' replied Rudin, holding his hat
+on his knees. 'I have not been here long. I came on business and
+stayed for a while in your district town.'
+
+'With whom?'
+
+'With the doctor. He was an old chum of mine at the university.'
+
+'Ah! the doctor. He is highly spoken of. He is skilful in his work,
+they say. But have you known the baron long?'
+
+'I met him last winter in Moscow, and I have just been spending about
+a week with him.'
+
+'He is a very clever man, the baron.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna sniffed at her little crushed-up handkerchief steeped
+in _eau de cologne_.
+
+'Are you in the government service?' she asked.
+
+'Who? I?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'No. I have retired.'
+
+There followed a brief pause. The general conversation was resumed.
+
+'If you will allow me to be inquisitive,' began Pigasov, turning to
+Rudin, 'do you know the contents of the essay which his excellency
+the baron has sent?'
+
+'Yes, I do.'
+
+'This essay deals with the relations to commerce--or no, of
+manufactures to commerce in our country. . . . That was your
+expression, I think, Darya Mihailovna?'
+
+'Yes, it deals with'. . . began Darya Mihailovna, pressing her hand to
+her forehead.
+
+'I am, of course, a poor judge of such matters,' continued Pigasov,
+'but I must confess that to me even the title of the essay seems
+excessively (how could I put it delicately?) excessively obscure and
+complicated.'
+
+'Why does it seem so to you?'
+
+Pigasov smiled and looked across at Darya Mihailovna.
+
+'Why, is it clear to you?' he said, turning his foxy face again
+towards Rudin.
+
+'To me? Yes.'
+
+'H'm. No doubt you must know better.'
+
+'Does your head ache?' Alexandra Pavlovna inquired of Darya
+Mihailovna.
+
+'No. It is only my--_c'est nerveux_.'
+
+'Allow me to inquire,' Pigasov was beginning again in his nasal tones,
+'your friend, his excellency Baron Muffel--I think that's his name?'
+
+'Precisely.'
+
+'Does his excellency Baron Muffel make a special study of political
+economy, or does he only devote to that interesting subject the hours
+of leisure left over from his social amusements and his official
+duties?'
+
+Rudin looked steadily at Pigasov.
+
+'The baron is an amateur on this subject,' he replied, growing rather
+red, 'but in his essay there is much that is interesting and just.'
+
+'I am not able to dispute it with you; I have not read the essay. But
+I venture to ask--the work of your friend Baron Muffel is no doubt
+founded more upon general propositions than upon facts?'
+
+'It contains both facts and propositions founded upon the facts.'
+
+'Yes, yes. I must tell you that, in my opinion--and I've a right to
+give my opinion, on occasion; I spent three years at Dorpat . . . all
+these, so-called general propositions, hypotheses, these
+systems--excuse me, I am a provincial, I speak the truth bluntly--are
+absolutely worthless. All that's only theorising--only good for
+misleading people. Give us facts, sir, and that's enough!'
+
+'Really!' retorted Rudin, 'why, but ought not one to give the
+significance of the facts?'
+
+'General propositions,' continued Pigasov, 'they're my abomination,
+these general propositions, theories, conclusions. All that's based on
+so-called convictions; every one is talking about his convictions, and
+attaches importance to them, prides himself on them. Ah!'
+
+And Pigasov shook his fist in the air. Pandalevsky laughed.
+
+'Capital!' put in Rudin, 'it follows that there is no such thing as
+conviction according to you?'
+
+'No, it doesn't exist.'
+
+'Is that your conviction?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'How do you say that there are none then? Here you have one at the
+very first turn.'
+
+All in the room smiled and looked at one another.
+
+'One minute, one minute, but----,' Pigasov was beginning.
+
+But Darya Mihailovna clapped her hands crying, 'Bravo, bravo, Pigasov's
+beaten!' and she gently took Rudin's hat from his hand.
+
+'Defer your delight a little, madam; there's plenty of time!'
+Pigasov began with annoyance. 'It's not sufficient to say a witty
+word, with a show of superiority; you must prove, refute. We had
+wandered from the subject of our discussion.'
+
+'With your permission,' remarked Rudin, coolly, 'the matter is very
+simple. You do not believe in the value of general propositions--you
+do not believe in convictions?'
+
+'I don't believe in them, I don't believe in anything!'
+
+'Very good. You are a sceptic.'
+
+'I see no necessity for using such a learned word. However----'
+
+'Don't interrupt!' interposed Darya Mihailovna.
+
+'At him, good dog!' Pandalevsky said to himself at the same instant,
+and smiled all over.
+
+'That word expresses my meaning,' pursued Rudin. 'You understand it;
+why not make use of it? You don't believe in anything. Why do you
+believe in facts?'
+
+'Why? That's good! Facts are matters of experience, every one knows
+what facts are. I judge of them by experience, by my own senses.'
+
+'But may not your senses deceive you? Your senses tell you that the
+sun goes round the earth, . . . but perhaps you don't agree with
+Copernicus? You don't even believe in him?'
+
+Again a smile passed over every one's face, and all eyes were fastened
+on Rudin. 'He's by no means a fool,' every one was thinking.
+
+'You are pleased to keep on joking,' said Pigasov. 'Of course that's
+very original, but it's not to the point.'
+
+'In what I have said hitherto,' rejoined Rudin, 'there is,
+unfortunately, too little that's original. All that has been well
+known a very long time, and has been said a thousand times. That is
+not the pith of the matter.'
+
+'What is then?' asked Pigasov, not without insolence.
+
+In discussions he always first bantered his opponent, then grew cross,
+and finally sulked and was silent.
+
+'Here it is,' continued Rudin. 'I cannot help, I own, feeling sincere
+regret when I hear sensible people attack----'
+
+'Systems?' interposed Pigasov.
+
+'Yes, with your leave, even systems. What frightens you so much in
+that word? Every system is founded on a knowledge of fundamental laws,
+the principles of life----'
+
+'But there is no knowing them, no discovering them.'
+
+'One minute. Doubtless they are not easy for every one to get at, and
+to make mistakes is natural to man. However, you will certainly agree
+with me that Newton, for example, discovered some at least of these
+fundamental laws? He was a genius, we grant you; but the grandeur of
+the discoveries of genius is that they become the heritage of all. The
+effort to discover universal principles in the multiplicity of
+phenomena is one of the radical characteristics of human thought, and
+all our civilisation----'
+
+'That's what you're driving at!' Pigasov broke in in a drawling tone.
+'I am a practical man and all these metaphysical subtleties I don't
+enter into and don't want to enter into.'
+
+'Very good! That's as you prefer. But take note that your very desire
+to be exclusively a practical man is itself your sort of system--your
+theory.'
+
+'Civilisation you talk about!' blurted in Pigasov; 'that's another
+admirable notion of yours! Much use in it, this vaunted civilisation!
+I would not give a brass farthing for your civilisation!'
+
+'But what a poor sort of argument, African Semenitch!' observed Darya
+Mihailovna, inwardly much pleased by the calmness and perfect
+good-breeding of her new acquaintance. '_Cest un homme comme il faut_,'
+she thought, looking with well-disposed scrutiny at Rudin; 'we must
+be nice to him!' Those last words she mentally pronounced in Russian.
+
+'I will not champion civilisation,' continued Rudin after a short
+pause, 'it does not need my championship. You don't like it, every one
+to his own taste. Besides, that would take us too far. Allow me only
+to remind you of the old saying, "Jupiter, you are angry; therefore
+you are in the wrong." I meant to say that all those onslaughts upon
+systems--general propositions--are especially distressing, because
+together with these systems men repudiate knowledge in general, and
+all science and faith in it, and consequently also faith in
+themselves, in their own powers. But this faith is essential to men;
+they cannot exist by their sensations alone they are wrong to fear
+ideas and not to trust in them. Scepticism is always characterised by
+barrenness and impotence.'
+
+'That's all words!' muttered Pigasov.
+
+'Perhaps so. But allow me to point out to you that when we say "that's
+all words!" we often wish ourselves to avoid the necessity of
+saying anything more substantial than mere words.'
+
+'What?' said Pigasov, winking his eyes.
+
+'You understood what I meant,' retorted Rudin, with involuntary, but
+instantly repressed impatience. 'I repeat, if man has no steady
+principle in which he trusts, no ground on which he can take a firm
+stand, how can he form a just estimate of the needs, the tendencies
+and the future of his country? How can he know what he ought to do,
+if----'
+
+'I leave you the field,' ejaculated Pigasov abruptly, and with a bow
+he turned away without looking at any one.
+
+Rudin stared at him, and smiled slightly, saying nothing.
+
+'Aha! he has taken to flight!' said Darya Mihailovna. 'Never mind,
+Dmitri. . .! I beg your pardon,' she added with a cordial smile,
+'what is your paternal name?'
+
+'Nikolaitch.'
+
+'Never mind, my dear Dmitri Nikolaitch, he did not deceive any of us.
+He wants to make a show of not wishing to argue any more. He is
+conscious that he cannot argue with you. But you had better sit nearer
+to us and let us have a little talk.'
+
+Rudin moved his chair up.
+
+'How is it we have not met till now?' was Darya Mihailovna's question.
+'That is what surprises me. Have you read this book? _C'est de
+Tocqueville, vous savez_?'
+
+And Darya Mihailovna held out the French pamphlet to Rudin.
+
+Rudin took the thin volume in his hand, turned over a few pages of it,
+and laying it down on the table, replied that he had not read that
+particular work of M. de Tocqueville, but that he had often reflected
+on the question treated by him. A conversation began to spring up.
+Rudin seemed uncertain at first, and not disposed to speak out freely;
+his words did not come readily, but at last he grew warm and began to
+speak. In a quarter of an hour his voice was the only sound in the
+room, All were crowding in a circle round him.
+
+Only Pigasov remained aloof, in a corner by the fireplace. Rudin spoke
+with intelligence, with fire and with judgment; he showed much
+learning, wide reading. No one had expected to find in him a
+remarkable man. His clothes were so shabby, so little was known of
+him. Every one felt it strange and incomprehensible that such a clever
+man should have suddenly made his appearance in the country. He seemed
+all the more wonderful and, one may even say, fascinating to all of
+them, beginning with Darya Mihailovna. She was pluming herself on
+having discovered him, and already at this early date was dreaming of
+how she would introduce Rudin into the world. In her quickness to
+receive impressions there was much that was almost childish, in spite
+of her years. Alexandra Pavlovna, to tell the truth, understood little
+of all that Rudin said, but was full of wonder and delight; her
+brother too was admiring him. Pandalevsky was watching Darya
+Mihailovna and was filled with envy. Pigasov thought, 'If I have to
+give five hundred roubles I will get a nightingale to sing better than
+that!' But the most impressed of all the party were Bassistoff and
+Natalya. Scarcely a breath escaped Bassistoff; he sat the whole time
+with open mouth and round eyes and listened--listened as he had never
+listened to any one in his life--while Natalya's face was suffused by
+a crimson flush, and her eyes, fastened unwaveringly on Rudin, were
+both dimmed and shining.
+
+'What splendid eyes he has!' Volintsev whispered to her.
+
+'Yes, they are.'
+
+'It's only a pity his hands are so big and red.'
+
+Natalya made no reply.
+
+Tea was brought in. The conversation became more general, but still by
+the sudden unanimity with which every one was silent, directly Rudin
+opened his mouth, one could judge of the strength of the impression he
+had produced. Darya Mihailovna suddenly felt inclined to tease
+Pigasov. She went up to him and said in an undertone, 'Why don't you
+speak instead of doing nothing but smile sarcastically? Make an
+effort, challenge him again,' and without waiting for him to answer,
+she beckoned to Rudin.
+
+'There's one thing more you don't know about him,' she said to him,
+with a gesture towards Pigasov,--'he is a terrible hater of women, he
+is always attacking them; pray, show him the true path.'
+
+Rudin involuntarily looked down upon Pigasov; he was a head and
+shoulders taller. Pigasov almost withered up with fury, and his sour
+face grew pale.
+
+'Darya Mihailovna is mistaken,' he said in an unsteady voice, 'I do
+not only attack women; I am not a great admirer of the whole human
+species.'
+
+'What can have given you such a poor opinion of them?' inquired
+Rudin.
+
+Pigasov looked him straight in the face.
+
+'The study of my own heart, no doubt, in which I find every day more
+and more that is base. I judge of others by myself. Possibly this too
+is erroneous, and I am far worse than others, but what am I to do?
+it's a habit!'
+
+'I understand you and sympathise with you!' was Rudin's rejoinder.
+'What generous soul has not experienced a yearning for
+self-humiliation? But one ought not to remain in that condition from
+which there is no outlet beyond.'
+
+'I am deeply indebted for the certificate of generosity you confer on
+my soul,' retorted Pigasov. 'As for my condition, there's not much
+amiss with it, so that even if there were an outlet from it, it might
+go to the deuce, I shouldn't look for it!'
+
+'But that means--pardon the expression--to prefer the gratification
+of your own pride to the desire to be and live in the truth.'
+
+'Undoubtedly,' cried Pigasov, 'pride--that I understand, and you, I
+expect, understand, and every one understands; but truth, what is
+truth? Where is it, this truth?'
+
+'You are repeating yourself, let me warn you,' remarked Darya
+Mihailovna.
+
+Pigasov shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'Well, where's the harm if I do? I ask: where is truth? Even the
+philosophers don't know what it is. Kant says it is one thing; but
+Hegel--no, you're wrong, it's something else.'
+
+'And do you know what Hegel says of it?' asked Rudin, without raising
+his voice.
+
+'I repeat,' continued Pigasov, flying into a passion, 'that I cannot
+understand what truth means. According to my idea, it doesn't exist at
+all in the world, that is to say, the word exists but not the thing
+itself.'
+
+'Fie, fie!' cried Darya Mihailovna, 'I wonder you're not ashamed to
+say so, you old sinner! No truth? What is there to live for in the
+world after that?'
+
+'Well, I go so far as to think, Darya Mihailovna,' retorted Pigasov,
+in a tone of annoyance, 'that it would be much easier for you, in any
+case, to live without truth than without your cook, Stepan, who is
+such a master hand at soups! And what do you want with truth, kindly
+tell me? you can't trim a bonnet with it!'
+
+'A joke is not an argument,' observed Darya Mihailovna, 'especially
+when you descend to personal insult.'
+
+'I don't know about truth, but I see speaking it does not answer,'
+muttered Pigasov, and he turned angrily away.
+
+And Rudin began to speak of pride, and he spoke well. He showed that
+man without pride is worthless, that pride is the lever by which the
+earth can be moved from its foundations, but that at the same time he
+alone deserves the name of man who knows how to control his pride, as
+the rider does his horse, who offers up his own personality as a
+sacrifice to the general good.
+
+'Egoism,' so he ended, 'is suicide. The egoist withers like a solitary
+barren tree; but pride, ambition, as the active effort after
+perfection, is the source of all that is great. . . . Yes! a man must
+prune away the stubborn egoism of his personality to give it the right
+of self-expression.'
+
+'Can you lend me a pencil?' Pigasov asked Bassistoff.
+
+Bassistoff did not at once understand what Pigasov had asked him.
+
+'What do you want a pencil for?' he said at last
+
+'I want to write down Mr. Rudin's last sentence. If one doesn't write
+it down, one might forget it, I'm afraid! But you will own, a
+sentence like that is such a handful of trumps.'
+
+'There are things which it is a shame to laugh at and make fun of,
+African Semenitch!' said Bassistoff warmly, turning away from Pigasov.
+
+Meanwhile Rudin had approached Natalya. She got up; her face expressed
+her confusion. Volintsev, who was sitting near her, got up too.
+
+'I see a piano,' began Rudin, with the gentle courtesy of a travelling
+prince; 'don't you play on it?'
+
+'Yes, I play,' replied Natalya, 'but not very well. Here is
+Konstantin Diomiditch plays much better than I do.'
+
+Pandalevsky put himself forward with a simper. 'You should not say
+that, Natalya Alexyevna; your playing is not at all inferior to mine.'
+
+'Do you know Schubert's "Erlkonig"?' asked Rudin.
+
+'He knows it, he knows it!' interposed Darya Mihailovna. 'Sit down,
+Konstantin. You are fond of music, Dmitri Nikolaitch?'
+
+Rudin only made a slight motion of the head and ran his hand through
+his hair, as though disposing himself to listen. Pandalevsky began to
+play.
+
+Natalya was standing near the piano, directly facing Rudin. At the
+first sound his face was transfigured. His dark blue eyes moved slowly
+about, from time to time resting upon Natalya. Pandalevsky finished
+playing.
+
+Rudin said nothing and walked up to the open window. A fragrant mist
+lay like a soft shroud over the garden; a drowsy scent breathed from
+the trees near. The stars shed a mild radiance. The summer night was
+soft--and softened all. Rudin gazed into the dark garden, and looked
+round.
+
+'That music and this night,' he began, 'reminded me of my student days
+in Germany; our meetings, our serenades.'
+
+'You have been in Germany then?' said Darya Mihailovna.
+
+'I spent a year at Heidelberg, and nearly a year at Berlin.'
+
+'And did you dress as a student? They say they wear a special dress
+there.'
+
+'At Heidelberg I wore high boots with spurs, and a hussar's jacket
+with braid on it, and I let my hair grow to my shoulders. In Berlin
+the students dress like everybody else.'
+
+'Tell us something of your student life,' said Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+Rudin complied. He was not altogether successful in narrative. There
+was a lack of colour in his descriptions. He did not know how to be
+humorous. However, from relating his own adventures abroad, Rudin soon
+passed to general themes, the special value of education and science,
+universities, and university life generally. He sketched in a large
+and comprehensive picture in broad and striking lines. All listened to
+him with profound attention. His eloquence was masterly and
+attractive, not altogether clear, but even this want of clearness
+added a special charm to his words.
+
+The exuberance of his thought hindered Rudin from expressing himself
+definitely and exactly. Images followed upon images; comparisons
+started up one after another--now startlingly bold, now strikingly
+true. It was not the complacent effort of the practised speaker, but
+the very breath of inspiration that was felt in his impatient
+improvising. He did not seek out his words; they came obediently and
+spontaneously to his lips, and each word seemed to flow straight from
+his soul, and was burning with all the fire of conviction. Rudin was
+the master of almost the greatest secret--the music of eloquence. He
+knew how in striking one chord of the heart to set all the others
+vaguely quivering and resounding. Many of his listeners, perhaps, did
+not understand very precisely what his eloquence was about; but their
+bosoms heaved, it seemed as though veils were lifted before their
+eyes, something radiant, glorious, seemed shimmering in the distance.
+
+All Rudin's thoughts seemed centred on the future; this lent him
+something of the impetuous dash of youth . . . Standing at the window,
+not looking at any one in special, he spoke, and inspired by the
+general sympathy and attention, the presence of young women, the
+beauty of the night, carried along by the tide of his own emotions, he
+rose to the height of eloquence, of poetry. . . . The very sound of
+his voice, intense and soft, increased the fascination; it seemed as
+though some higher power were speaking through his lips, startling
+even to himself. . . . Rudin spoke of what lends eternal significance
+to the fleeting life of man.
+
+'I remember a Scandinavian legend,' thus he concluded, 'a king is
+sitting with his warriors round the fire in a long dark barn. It was
+night and winter. Suddenly a little bird flew in at the open door and
+flew out again at the other. The king spoke and said that this bird is
+like man in the world; it flew in from darkness and out again into
+darkness, and was not long in the warmth and light. . . . "King,"
+replies the oldest of the warriors, "even in the dark the bird is not
+lost, but finds her nest." Even so our life is short and worthless;
+but all that is great is accomplished through men. The consciousness
+of being the instrument of these higher powers ought to outweigh all
+other joys for man; even in death he finds his life, his nest.'
+
+Rudin stopped and dropped his eyes with a smile of involuntary
+embarrassment.
+
+'_Vous etes un poete_,' was Darya Mihailovna's comment in an undertone.
+And all were inwardly agreeing with her--all except Pigasov. Without
+waiting for the end of Rudin's long speech, he quietly took his hat
+and as he went out whispered viciously to Pandalevsky who was standing
+near the door:
+
+'No! Fools are more to my taste.'
+
+No one, however, tried to detain him or even noticed his absence.
+
+The servants brought in supper, and half an hour later, all had taken
+leave and separated. Darya Mihailovna begged Rudin to remain the
+night. Alexandra Pavlovna, as she went home in the carriage with her
+brother, several times fell to exclaiming and marvelling at the
+extraordinary cleverness of Rudin. Volintsev agreed with her, though
+he observed that he sometimes expressed himself somewhat
+obscurely--that is to say, not altogether intelligibly, he
+added,--wishing, no doubt, to make his own thought clear, but his face
+was gloomy, and his eyes, fixed on a corner of the carriage, seemed
+even more melancholy than usual.
+
+Pandalevsky went to bed, and as he took off his daintily embroidered
+braces, he said aloud 'A very smart fellow!' and suddenly, looking
+harshly at his page, ordered him out of the room. Bassistoff did not
+sleep the whole night and did not undress--he was writing till
+morning a letter to a comrade of his in Moscow; and Natalya, too,
+though she undressed and lay down in her bed, had not an instant's
+sleep and never closed her eyes. With her head propped on her arm, she
+gazed fixedly into the darkness; her veins were throbbing feverishly
+and her bosom often heaved with a deep sigh.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The next morning Rudin had only just finished dressing when a servant
+came to him with an invitation from Darya Mihailovna to come to her
+boudoir and drink tea with her. Rudin found her alone. She greeted him
+very cordially, inquired whether he had passed a good night, poured
+him out a cup of tea with her own hands, asked him whether there was
+sugar enough in it, offered him a cigarette, and twice again repeated
+that she was surprised that she had not met him long before. Rudin was
+about to take a seat some distance away; but Darya Mihailovna motioned
+him to an easy chair, which stood near her lounge, and bending a
+little towards him began to question him about his family, his plans
+and intentions. Darya Mihailovna spoke carelessly and listened with an
+air of indifference; but it was perfectly evident to Rudin that she
+was laying herself out to please him, even to flatter him. It was not
+for nothing that she had arranged this morning interview, and had
+dressed so simply yet elegantly _a la Madame Recamier_! But Darya
+Mihailovna soon left off questioning him. She began to tell him about
+herself, her youth, and the people she had known. Rudin gave a
+sympathetic attention to her lucubrations, though--a curious
+fact--whatever personage Darya Mihailovna might be talking about, she
+always stood in the foreground, she alone, and the personage seemed to
+be effaced, to slink away in the background, and to disappear. But to
+make up for that, Rudin learnt in full detail precisely what Darya
+Mihailovna had said to a certain distinguished statesman, and what
+influence she had had on such and such a celebrated poet. To judge
+from Darya Mihailovna's accounts, one might fancy that all the
+distinguished men of the last five-and-twenty years had dreamt of
+nothing but how they could make her acquaintance, and gain her good
+opinion. She spoke of them simply, without particular enthusiasm or
+admiration, as though they were her daily associates, calling some of
+them queer fellows. As she talked of them, like a rich setting round a
+worthless stone, their names ranged themselves in a brilliant circlet
+round the principal name--around Darya Mihailovna.
+
+Rudin listened, smoking a cigarette, and said little. He could speak
+well and liked speaking; carrying on a conversation was not in his
+line, though he was also a good listener. All men--if only they had
+not been intimidated by him to begin with--opened their hearts with
+confidence in his presence; he followed the thread of another man's
+narrative so readily and sympathetically. He had a great deal of
+good-nature--that special good-nature of which men are full, who are
+accustomed to feel themselves superior to others. In arguments he
+seldom allowed his antagonist to express himself fully, he crushed him
+by his eager, vehement and passionate dialectic.
+
+Darya Mihailovna expressed herself in Russian. She prided herself on
+her knowledge of her own language, though French words and expressions
+often escaped her. She intentionally made use of simple popular terms
+of speech; but not always successfully. Rudin's ear was not outraged
+by the strange medley of language on Darya Mihailovna's lips, indeed
+he hardly had an ear for it.
+
+Darya Mihailovna was exhausted at last and letting her head fall on
+the cushions of her easy-chair she fixed her eyes on Rudin and was
+silent.
+
+'I understand now,' began Rudin, speaking slowly, 'I understand why
+you come every summer into the country. This period of rest is
+essential for you; the peace of the country after your life in the
+capital refreshes and strengthens you. I am convinced that you must be
+profoundly sensitive to the beauties of nature.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna gave Rudin a sidelong look.
+
+'Nature--yes--yes--of course. . . . I am passionately fond of it;
+but do you know, Dmitri Nikolaitch, even in the country one cannot do
+without society. And here there is practically none. Pigasov is the
+most intelligent person here.'
+
+'The cross old gentleman who was here last night?' inquired Rudin.
+
+'Yes. . . . In the country though, even he is of use--he sometimes makes
+one laugh.'
+
+'He is by no means stupid,' returned Rudin, 'but he is on the wrong
+path. I don't know whether you will agree with me, Darya Mihailovna,
+but in negation--in complete and universal negation--there is no
+salvation to be found? Deny everything and you will easily pass for a
+man of ability; it's a well-known trick. Simple-hearted people are
+quite ready to conclude that you are worth more than what you deny.
+And that's often an error. In the first place, you can pick holes in
+anything; and secondly, even if you are right in what you say, it's
+the worse for you; your intellect, directed by simple negation, grows
+colourless and withers up. While you gratify your vanity, you are
+deprived of the true consolations of thought; life--the essence of
+life--evades your petty and jaundiced criticism, and you end by
+scolding and becoming ridiculous. Only one who loves has the right to
+censure and find fault.'
+
+'Voila, Monsieur Pigasov enterre,' observed Darya Mihailovna. 'What a
+genius you have for defining a man! But Pigasov certainly would not
+have even understood you. He loves nothing but his own individuality.'
+
+'And he finds fault with that so as to have the right to find fault
+with others,' Rudin put in.
+
+Darya Mihailovna laughed.
+
+'"He judges the sound," as the saying is, "the sound by the sick." By
+the way, what do you think of the baron?'
+
+'The baron? He is an excellent man, with a good heart and a knowledge
+. . . but he has no character . . . and he will remain all his life
+half a savant, half a man of the world, that is to say, a dilettante,
+that is to say, to speak plainly,--neither one thing nor the other.
+. . . But it's a pity!'
+
+'That was my own idea,' observed Darya Mihailovna. 'I read his
+article. . . . _Entre nous . . . cela a assez peu de fond!_'
+
+'Who else have you here?' asked Rudin, after a pause.
+
+Darya Mihailovna knocked off the ash of her cigarette with her little
+finger.
+
+'Oh, there is hardly any one else. Madame Lipin, Alexandra Pavlovna,
+whom you saw yesterday; she is very sweet--but that is all. Her
+brother is also a capital fellow--_un parfait honnete homme_. The
+Prince Garin you know. Those are all. There are two or three
+neighbours besides, but they are really good for nothing. They either
+give themselves airs or are unsociable, or else quite unsuitably free
+and easy. The ladies, as you know, I see nothing of. There is one
+other of our neighbours said to be a very cultivated, even a learned,
+man, but a dreadfully queer creature, a whimsical character.
+_Alexandrine_, knows him, and I fancy is not indifferent to him. . . .
+Come, you ought to talk to her, Dmitri Nikolaitch; she's a sweet
+creature. She only wants developing.'
+
+'I liked her very much,' remarked Rudin.
+
+'A perfect child, Dmitri Nikolaitch, an absolute baby. She has been
+married, _mais c'est tout comme_. . . . If I were a man, I should only
+fall in love with women like that.'
+
+'Really?'
+
+'Certainly. Such women are at least fresh, and freshness cannot be
+put on.'
+
+'And can everything else?' Rudin asked, and he laughed--a thing which
+rarely happened with him. When he laughed his face assumed a strange,
+almost aged appearance, his eyes disappeared, his nose was wrinkled
+up.
+
+'And who is this queer creature, as you call him, to whom Madame Lipin
+is not indifferent?' he asked.
+
+'A certain Lezhnyov, Mihailo Mihailitch, a landowner here.'
+
+Rudin seemed astonished; he raised his head.
+
+'Lezhnyov--Mihailo Mihailitch?' he questioned. 'Is he a neighbour
+of yours?'
+
+'Yes. Do you know him?'
+
+Rudin did not speak for a minute.
+
+'I used to know him long ago. He is a rich man, I suppose?' he added,
+pulling the fringe on his chair.
+
+'Yes, he is rich, though he dresses shockingly, and drives in a racing
+droshky like a bailiff. I have been anxious to get him to come here;
+he is spoken of as clever; I have some business with him. . . . You
+know I manage my property myself.'
+
+Rudin bowed assent.
+
+'Yes; I manage it myself,' Darya Mihailovna continued. 'I don't
+introduce any foreign crazes, but prefer what is our own, what is
+Russian, and, as you see, things don't seem to do badly,' she added,
+with a wave of her hand.
+
+'I have always been persuaded,' observed Rudin urbanely, 'of the
+absolutely mistaken position of those people who refuse to admit the
+practical intelligence of women.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna smiled affably.
+
+'You are very good to us,' was her comment 'But what was I going to
+say? What were we speaking of? Oh, yes; Lezhnyov: I have some business
+with him about a boundary. I have several times invited him here, and
+even to-day I am expecting him; but there's no knowing whether he'll
+come . . . he's such a strange creature.'
+
+The curtain before the door was softly moved aside and the steward
+came in, a tall man, grey and bald, in a black coat, a white cravat,
+and a white waistcoat.
+
+'What is it?' inquired Darya Mihailovna, and, turning a little
+towards Rudin, she added in a low voice, '_n'est ce pas, comme il
+ressemble a Canning?_'
+
+'Mihailo Mihailitch Lezhnyov is here,' announced the steward. 'Will
+you see him?'
+
+'Good Heavens!' exclaimed Darya Mihailovna, 'speak of the
+devil----ask him up.'
+
+The steward went away.
+
+'He's such an awkward creature. Now he has come, it's at the wrong
+moment; he has interrupted our talk.'
+
+Rudin got up from his seat, but Darya Mihailovna stopped him.
+
+'Where are you going? We can discuss the matter as well before you.
+And I want you to analyse him too, as you did Pigasov. When you talk,
+_vous gravez comme avec un burin_. Please stay.' Rudin was going to
+protest, but after a moment's thought he sat down.
+
+Mihailo Mihailitch, whom the reader already knows, came into the room.
+He wore the same grey overcoat, and in his sunburnt hands he carried
+the same old foraging cap. He bowed tranquilly to Darya Mihailovna,
+and came up to the tea-table.
+
+'At last you have favoured me with a visit, Monsieur Lezhnyov!' began
+Darya Mihailovna. 'Pray sit down. You are already acquainted,
+I hear,' she continued, with a gesture in Rudin's direction.
+
+Lezhnyov looked at Rudin and smiled rather queerly.
+
+'I know Mr. Rudin,' he assented, with a slight bow.
+
+'We were together at the university,' observed Rudin in a low voice,
+dropping his eyes.
+
+'And we met afterwards also,' remarked Lezhnyov coldly.
+
+Darya Mihailovna looked at both in some perplexity and asked Lezhnyov
+to sit down He sat down.
+
+'You wanted to see me,' he began, 'on the subject of the boundary?'
+
+'Yes; about the boundary. But I also wished to see you in any case. We
+are near neighbours, you know, and all but relations.'
+
+'I am much obliged to you,' returned Lezhnyov. 'As regards the
+boundary, we have perfectly arranged that matter with your manager; I
+have agreed to all his proposals.'
+
+'I knew that. But he told me that the contract could not be signed
+without a personal interview with you.'
+
+'Yes; that is my rule. By the way, allow me to ask: all your peasants,
+I believe, pay rent?'
+
+'Just so.'
+
+'And you trouble yourself about boundaries! That's very praiseworthy.'
+
+Lezhnyov did not speak for a minute.
+
+'Well, I have come for a personal interview,' he said at last.
+
+Darya Mihailovna smiled.
+
+'I see you have come. You say that in such a tone. . . . You could not
+have been very anxious to come to see me.'
+
+'I never go anywhere,' rejoined Lezhnyov phlegmatically.
+
+'Not anywhere? But you go to see Alexandra Pavlovna.'
+
+'I am an old friend of her brother's.'
+
+'Her brother's! However, I never wish to force any one. . . . But
+pardon me, Mihailo Mihailitch, I am older than you, and I may be
+allowed to give you advice; what charm do you find in such an
+unsociable way of living? Or is my house in particular displeasing to
+you? You dislike me?'
+
+'I don't know you, Darya Mihailovna, and so I can't dislike you. You
+have a splendid house; but I will confess to you frankly I don't like
+to have to stand on ceremony. And I haven't a respectable suit, I
+haven't any gloves, and I don't belong to your set.'
+
+'By birth, by education, you belong to it, Mihailo Mihailitch! _vous
+etes des notres_.'
+
+'Birth and education are all very well, Darya Mihailovna; that's not
+the question.'
+
+'A man ought to live with his fellows, Mihailo Mihailitch! What
+pleasure is there in sitting like Diogenes in his tub?'
+
+'Well, to begin with, he was very well off there, and besides, how do
+you know I don't live with my fellows?'
+
+Darya Mihailovna bit her lip.
+
+'That's a different matter! It only remains for me to express my
+regret that I have not the honour of being included in the number of
+your friends.'
+
+'Monsieur Lezhnyov,' put in Rudin, 'seems to carry to excess a
+laudable sentiment--the love of independence.'
+
+Lezhnyov made no reply, he only looked at Rudin. A short silence
+followed.
+
+'And so,' began Lezhnyov, getting up, 'I may consider our business as
+concluded, and tell your manager to send me the papers.'
+
+'You may, . . . though I confess you are so uncivil I ought really to
+refuse you.'
+
+'But you know this rearrangement of the boundary is far more in your
+interest than in mine.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna shrugged her shoulders.
+
+'You will not even have luncheon here?' she asked.
+
+'Thank you; I never take luncheon, and I am in a hurry to get home.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna got up.
+
+'I will not detain you,' she said, going to the window. 'I will not
+venture to detain you.'
+
+Lezhnyov began to take leave.
+
+'Good-bye, Monsieur Lezhnyov! Pardon me for having troubled you.'
+
+'Oh, not at all!' said Lezhnyov, and he went away.
+
+'Well, what do you say to that?' Darya Mihailovna asked of Rudin. 'I
+had heard he was eccentric, but really that was beyond everything!'
+
+'His is the same disease as Pigasov's,' observed Rudin, 'the desire of
+being original. One affects to be a Mephistopheles--the other a
+cynic. In all that, there is much egoism, much vanity, but little
+truth, little love. Indeed, there is even calculation of a sort in it.
+A man puts on a mask of indifference and indolence so that some one
+will be sure to think. "Look at that man; what talents he has thrown
+away!" But if you come to look at him more attentively, there is no
+talent in him whatever.'
+
+'_Et de deux!_' was Darya Mihailovna's comment. 'You are a terrible man
+at hitting people off. One can hide nothing from you.'
+
+'Do you think so?' said Rudin. . . . 'However,' he continued, 'I
+ought not really to speak about Lezhnyov; I loved him, loved him as a
+friend . . . but afterwards, through various misunderstandings . . .'
+
+'You quarrelled?'
+
+'No. But we parted, and parted, it seems, for ever.'
+
+'Ah, I noticed that the whole time of his visit you were not quite
+yourself. . . . But I am much indebted to you for this morning. I have
+spent my time extremely pleasantly. But one must know where to stop. I
+will let you go till lunch time and I will go and look after my
+business. My secretary, you saw him--Constantin, _c'est lui qui est
+mon secretaire_--must be waiting for me by now. I commend him to you;
+he is an excellent, obliging young man, and quite enthusiastic about
+you. _Au revoir, cher_ Dmitri Nikolaitch! How grateful I am to the
+baron for having made me acquainted with you!'
+
+And Darya Mihailovna held out her hand to Rudin. He first pressed it,
+then raised it to his lips and went away to the drawing-room and from
+there to the terrace. On the terrace he met Natalya.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Darya Mihailovna's daughter, Natalya Alexyevna, at a first glance
+might fail to please. She had not yet had time to develop; she was
+thin, and dark, and stooped slightly. But her features were fine and
+regular, though too large for a girl of seventeen. Specially beautiful
+was her pure, smooth forehead above fine eyebrows, which seemed broken
+in the middle. She spoke little, but listened to others, and fixed her
+eyes on them as though she were forming her own conclusions. She would
+often stand with listless hands, motionless and deep in thought; her
+face at such moments showed that her mind was at work within. . . . A
+scarcely perceptible smile would suddenly appear on her lips and
+vanish again; then she would slowly raise her large dark eyes.
+'_Qu'a-vez-vous?_' Mlle, Boncourt would ask her, and then she would
+begin to scold her, saying that it was improper for a young girl to be
+absorbed and to appear absent-minded. But Natalya was not
+absent-minded; on the contrary, she studied diligently; she read and
+worked eagerly. Her feelings were strong and deep, but reserved; even
+as a child she seldom cried, and now she seldom even sighed and only
+grew slightly pale when anything distressed her. Her mother considered
+her a sensible, good sort of girl, calling her in a joke '_mon honnete
+homme de fille_' but had not a very high opinion of her intellectual
+abilities. 'My Natalya happily is cold,' she used to say, 'not like
+me--and it is better so. She will be happy.' Darya Mihailovna was
+mistaken. But few mothers understand their daughters.
+
+Natalya loved Darya Mihailovna, but did not fully confide in her.
+
+'You have nothing to hide from me,' Darya Mihailovna said to her once,
+'or else you would be very reserved about it; you are rather a close
+little thing.'
+
+Natalya looked her mother in the face and thought, 'Why shouldn't I
+be reserved?'
+
+When Rudin met her on the terrace she was just going indoors with
+Mlle, Boncourt to put on her hat and go out into the garden. Her
+morning occupations were over. Natalya was not treated as a
+school-girl now. Mlle, Boncourt had not given her lessons in mythology
+and geography for a long while; but Natalya had every morning to read
+historical books, travels, or other instructive works with her. Darya
+Mihailovna selected them, ostensibly on a special system of her own.
+In reality she simply gave Natalya everything which the French
+bookseller forwarded her from Petersburg, except, of course, the
+novels of Dumas Fils and Co. These novels Darya Mihailovna read
+herself. Mlle, Boncourt looked specially severely and sourly through
+her spectacles when Natalya was reading historical books; according to
+the old French lady's ideas all history was filled with _impermissible_
+things, though for some reason or other of all the great men of
+antiquity she herself knew only one--Cambyses, and of modern
+times--Louis XIV. and Napoleon, whom she could not endure. But Natalya
+read books too, the existence of which Mlle, Boncourt did not suspect;
+she knew all Pushkin by heart.
+
+Natalya flushed slightly at meeting Rudin.
+
+'Are you going for a walk?' he asked her,
+
+'Yes. We are going into the garden.'
+
+'May I come with you?'
+
+Natalya looked at Mlle, Boncourt
+
+'_Mais certainement, monsieur; avec plaisir_,' said the old lady
+promptly.
+
+Rudin took his hat and walked with them.
+
+Natalya at first felt some awkwardness in walking side by side with
+Rudin on the same little path; afterwards she felt more at ease. He
+began to question her about her occupations and how she liked the
+country. She replied not without timidity, but without that hasty
+bashfulness which is so often taken for modesty. Her heart was
+beating.
+
+'You are not bored in the country?' asked Rudin, taking her in with a
+sidelong glance.
+
+'How can one be bored in the country? I am very glad we are here. I am
+very happy here.'
+
+'You are happy--that is a great word. However, one can understood
+it; you are young.'
+
+Rudin pronounced this last phrase rather strangely; either he envied
+Natalya or he was sorry for her.
+
+'Yes! youth!' he continued, 'the whole aim of science is to reach
+consciously what is bestowed on youth for nothing.'
+
+Natalya looked attentively at Rudin; she did not understand him.
+
+'I have been talking all this morning with your mother,' he went on;
+'she is an extraordinary woman. I understand why all our poets sought
+her friendship. Are you fond of poetry?' he added, after a pause.
+
+'He is putting me through an examination,' thought Natalya, and aloud:
+'Yes, I am very fond of it'
+
+'Poetry is the language of the gods. I love poems myself. But poetry
+is not only in poems; it is diffused everywhere, it is around us. Look
+at those trees, that sky on all sides there is the breath of beauty,
+and of life, and where there is life and beauty, there is poetry
+also.'
+
+'Let us sit down here on this bench,' he added. 'Here--so. I somehow
+fancy that when you are more used to me (and he looked her in the face
+with a smile) 'we shall be friends, you and I. What do you think?'
+
+'He treats me like a school-girl,' Natalya reflected again, and, not
+knowing what to say, she asked him whether he intended to remain long
+in the country.
+
+'All the summer and autumn, and perhaps the winter too. I am a very
+poor man, you know; my affairs are in confusion, and, besides, I am
+tired now of wandering from place to place. The time has come to
+rest.'
+
+Natalya was surprised.
+
+'Is it possible you feel that it is time for you to rest?' she asked
+him timidly.
+
+Rudin turned so as to face Natalya.
+
+'What do you mean by that?'
+
+'I mean,' she replied in some embarrassment, 'that others may rest;
+but you . . . you ought to work, to try to be useful. Who, if not
+you----'
+
+'I thank you for your flattering opinion,' Rudin interrupted her. 'To
+be useful . . . it is easy to say!' (He passed his hand over his face.)
+'To be useful!' he repeated. 'Even if I had any firm conviction, how
+could I be useful?--even if I had faith in my own powers, where is one
+to find true, sympathetic souls?'
+
+And Rudin waved his hand so hopelessly, and let his head sink so
+gloomily, that Natalya involuntarily asked herself, were those really
+his--those enthusiastic words full of the breath of hope, she had
+heard the evening before.
+
+'But no,' he said, suddenly tossing back his lion-like mane, 'that is
+all folly, and you are right. I thank you, Natalya Alexyevna, I thank
+you truly.' (Natalya absolutely did not know what he was thanking her
+for.) 'Your single phrase has recalled to me my duty, has pointed out
+to me my path. . . . Yes, I must act. I must not bury my talent, if I
+have any; I must not squander my powers on talk alone--empty,
+profitless talk--on mere words,' and his words flowed in a stream. He
+spoke nobly, ardently, convincingly, of the sin of cowardice and
+indolence, of the necessity of action. He lavished reproaches on
+himself, maintained that to discuss beforehand what you mean to do is
+as unwise as to prick with a pin the swelling fruit, that it is only a
+vain waste of strength and sap. He declared that there was no noble
+idea which would not gain sympathy, that the only people who remained
+misunderstood were those who either did not know themselves what they
+wanted, or were not worthy to be understood. He spoke at length, and
+ended by once more thanking Natalya Alexyevna, and utterly
+unexpectedly pressed her hand, exclaiming. 'You are a noble, generous
+creature!'
+
+This outburst horrified Mlle, Boncourt, who in spite of her forty
+years' residence in Russia understood Russian with difficulty, and was
+only moved to admiration by the splendid rapidity and flow of words on
+Rudin's lips. In her eyes, however, he was something of the nature of
+a virtuoso or artist; and from people of that kind, according to her
+notions, it was impossible to demand a strict adherence to propriety.
+
+She got up and drew her skirts with a jerk around her, observed to
+Natalya that it was time to go in, especially as M. Volinsoff (so she
+spoke of Volintsev) was to be there to lunch.
+
+'And here he is,' she added, looking up one of the avenues which led
+to the house, and in fact Volintsev appeared not far off.
+
+He came up with a hesitating step, greeted all of them from a
+distance, and with an expression of pain on his face he turned to
+Natalya and said:
+
+'Oh, you are having a walk?'
+
+'Yes,' answered Natalya, 'we were just going home.'
+
+'Ah!' was Volintsev's reply. 'Well, let us go,' and they all walked
+towards the house.
+
+'How is your sister?' Rudin inquired, in a specially cordial tone, of
+Volintsev. The evening before, too, he had been very gracious to him.
+
+'Thank you; she is quite well. She will perhaps be here to-day. . . . I
+think you were discussing something when I came up?'
+
+'Yes; I have had a conversation with Natalya Alexyevna. She said one
+thing to me which affected me strongly.'
+
+Volintsev did not ask what the one thing was, and in profound silence
+they all returned to Darya Mihailovna's house.
+
+Before dinner the party was again assembled in the drawing-room.
+Pigasov, however, did not come. Rudin was not at his best; he did
+nothing but press Pandalevsky to play Beethoven. Volintsev was silent
+and stared at the floor. Natalya did not leave her mother's side, and
+was at times lost in thought, and then bent over her work. Bassistoff
+did not take his eyes off Rudin, constantly on the alert for him to
+say something brilliant. About three hours were passed in this way
+rather monotonously. Alexandra Pavlovna did not come to dinner, and
+when they rose from table Volintsev at once ordered his carriage to be
+ready, and slipped away without saying good-bye to any one.
+
+His heart was heavy. He had long loved Natalya, and was repeatedly
+resolving to make her an offer. . . . She was kindly disposed to
+him,--but her heart remained unmoved; he saw that clearly. He did not
+hope to inspire in her a tenderer sentiment, and was only waiting for
+the time when she should be perfectly at home with him and intimate
+with him. What could have disturbed him? what change had he noticed
+in these two days? Natalya had behaved to him exactly the same as
+before. . . .
+
+Whether it was that some idea had come upon him that he perhaps did
+not know Natalya's character at all--that she was more a stranger to
+him than he had thought,--or jealousy had begun to work in him, or he
+had some dim presentiment of ill . . . anyway, he suffered, though he
+tried to reason with himself.
+
+When he came in to his sister's room, Lezhnyov was sitting with her.
+
+'Why have you come back so early?' asked Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Oh! I was bored.'
+
+'Was Rudin there?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Volintsev flung down his cap and sat down. Alexandra Pavlovna turned
+eagerly to him.
+
+'Please, Serezha, help me to convince this obstinate man (she
+signified Lezhnyov) that Rudin is extraordinarily clever and
+eloquent.'
+
+Volintsev muttered something.
+
+'But I am not disputing at all with you,' Lezhnyov began. 'I have no
+doubt of the cleverness and eloquence of Mr. Rudin; I only say that I
+don't like him.'
+
+'But have you seen him?' inquired Volintsev.
+
+'I saw him this morning at Darya Mihallovna's. You know he is her
+first favourite now. The time will come when she will part with
+him--Pandalevsky is the only man she will never part with--but now he
+is supreme. I saw him, to be sure! He was sitting there,--and she
+showed me off to him, "see, my good friend, what queer fish we have
+here!" But I am not a prize horse, to be trotted out on show, so I
+took myself off.'
+
+'But how did you come to be there?'
+
+'About a boundary; but that was all nonsense; she simply wanted to
+have a look at my physiognomy. She's a fine lady,--that's explanation
+enough!'
+
+'His superiority is what offends you--that's what it is!' began
+Alexandra Pavlovna warmly, 'that's what you can't forgive. But I am
+convinced that besides his cleverness he must have an excellent heart
+as well. You should see his eyes when he----'
+
+'"Of purity exalted speaks,"' quoted Lezhnyov.
+
+'You make me angry, and I shall cry. I am heartily sorry I did not go
+to Darya Mihailovna's, but stopped with you. You don't deserve it.
+Leave off teasing me,' she added, in an appealing voice, 'You had much
+better tell me about his youth.'
+
+'Rudin's youth?'
+
+'Yes, of course. Didn't you tell me you knew him well, and had known
+him a long time?'
+
+Lezhnyov got up and walked up and down the room.
+
+'Yes,' he began, 'I do know him well. You want me to tell you about
+his youth? Very well. He was born in T----, and was the son of a poor
+landowner, who died soon after. He was left alone with his mother. She
+was a very good woman, and she idolised him; she lived on nothing but
+oatmeal, and every penny she had she spent on him. He was educated in
+Moscow, first at the expense of some uncle, and afterwards, when he
+was grown up and fully fledged, at the expense of a rich prince whose
+favour he had courted--there, I beg your pardon, I won't do it
+again--with whom he had made friends. Then he went to the university.
+At the university I got to know him and we became intimate friends. I
+will tell you about our life in those days some other time, I can't
+now. Then he went abroad. . . .'
+
+Lezhnyov continued to walk up and down the room; Alexandra Pavlovna
+followed him with her eyes.
+
+'While he was abroad,' he continued, 'Rudin wrote very rarely to his
+mother, and paid her altogether only one visit for ten days. . . . The
+old lady died without him, cared for by strangers; but up to her death
+she never took her eyes off his portrait. I went to see her when I was
+staying in T----. She was a kind and hospitable woman; she always used
+to feast me on cherry jam. She loved her Mitya devotedly. People of
+the Petchorin type tell us that we always love those who are least
+capable of feeling love themselves; but it's my idea that all mothers
+love their children especially when they are absent. Afterwards I met
+Rudin abroad. Then he was connected with a lady, one of our
+countrywomen, a bluestocking, no longer young, and plain, as a
+bluestocking is bound to be. He lived a good while with her, and at
+last threw her over--or no, I beg pardon,--she threw him over. It
+was then that I too threw him over. That's all.'
+
+Lezhnyov ceased speaking, passed his hand over his brow, and dropped
+into a chair as if he were exhausted.
+
+'Do you know, Mihailo Mihailitch,' began Alexandra Pavlovna, 'you are
+a spiteful person, I see; indeed you are no better than Pigasov. I am
+convinced that all you have told me is true, that you have not made up
+anything, and yet in what an unfavourable light you have put it all!
+The poor old mother, her devotion, her solitary death, and that
+lady--What does it all amount to? You know that it's easy to put the
+life of the best of men in such colours--and without adding anything,
+observe--that every one would be shocked! But that too is slander of
+a kind!'
+
+Lezhnyov got up and again walked about the room.
+
+'I did not want to shock you at all, Alexandra Pavlovna,' he brought
+out at last, 'I am not given to slander. However,' he added, after a
+moment's thought, 'in reality there is a foundation of fact in what
+you said. I did not mean to slander Rudin; but--who knows! very likely
+he has had time to change since those days--very possibly I am unjust
+to him.'
+
+'Ah! you see. So promise me that you will renew your acquaintance with
+him, and will get to know him thoroughly and then report your final
+opinion of him to me.'
+
+'As you please. But why are you so quiet, Sergei Pavlitch?'
+
+Volintsev started and raised his head, as though he had just waked up.
+
+'What can I say? I don't know him. Besides, my head aches to-day.'
+
+'Yes, you look rather pale this evening,' remarked Alexandra Pavlovna;
+'are you unwell?'
+
+'My head aches,' repeated Volintsev, and he went away.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna and Lezhnyov looked after him, and exchanged
+glances, though they said nothing. What was passing in Volintsev's
+heart was no mystery to either of them.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+More than two months had passed; during the whole of that period Rudin
+had scarcely been away from Darya Mihailovna's house. She could not
+get on without him. To talk to him about herself and to listen to his
+eloquence became a necessity for her. He would have taken his leave on
+one occasion, on the ground that all his money was spent; she gave him
+five hundred roubles. He borrowed two hundred roubles more from
+Volintsev. Pigasov visited Darya Mihailovna much less frequently than
+before; Rudin crushed him by his presence. And indeed it was not only
+Pigasov who was conscious of an oppression.
+
+'I don't like that prig,' Pigasov used to say, 'he expresses himself
+so affectedly like a hero of a romance. If he says "I," he stops in
+rapt admiration, "I, yes, I!" and the phrases he uses are all so
+drawn-out; if you sneeze, he will begin at once to explain to you
+exactly why you sneezed and did not cough. If he praises you, it's
+just as if he were creating you a prince. If he begins to abuse
+himself, he humbles himself into the dust--come, one thinks, he will
+never dare to face the light of day after that. Not a bit of it! It
+only cheers him up, as if he'd treated himself to a glass of grog.'
+
+Pandalevsky was a little afraid of Rudin, and cautiously tried to win
+his favour. Volintsev had got on to curious terms with him. Rudin
+called him a knight-errant, and sang his praises to his face and
+behind his back; but Volintsev could not bring himself to like him and
+always felt an involuntary impatience and annoyance when Rudin devoted
+himself to enlarging on his good points in his presence. 'Is he
+making fun of me?' he thought, and he felt a throb of hatred in his
+heart. He tried to keep his feelings in check, but in vain; he was
+jealous of him on Natalya's account. And Rudin himself, though he
+always welcomed Volintsev with effusion, though he called him a
+knight-errant, and borrowed money from him, did not feel exactly
+friendly towards him. It would be difficult to define the feelings of
+these two men when they pressed each other's hands like friends and
+looked into each other's eyes.
+
+Bassistoff continued to adore Rudin, and to hang on every word he
+uttered. Rudin paid him very little attention. Once he spent a whole
+morning with him, discussing the weightiest problems of life, and
+awakening his keenest enthusiasm, but afterwards he took no further
+notice of him. Evidently it was only a phrase when he said that he was
+seeking for pure and devoted souls. With Lezhnyov, who began to be a
+frequent visitor at the house, Rudin did not enter into discussion; he
+seemed even to avoid him. Lezhnyov, on his part, too, treated him
+coldly. He did not, however, report his final conclusions about him,
+which somewhat disquieted Alexandra Pavlovna. She was fascinated by
+Rudin, but she had confidence in Lezhnyov. Every one in Darya
+Mihailovna's house humoured Rudin's fancies; his slightest preferences
+were carried out He determined the plans for the day. Not a single
+_partie de plaisir_ was arranged without his co-operation.
+
+He was not, however, very fond of any kind of impromptu excursion or
+picnic, and took part in them rather as grown-up people take part in
+children's games, with an air of kindly, but rather wearied,
+friendliness. He took interest in everything else, however. He
+discussed with Darya Mihailovna her plans for the estate, the
+education of her children, her domestic arrangements, and her affairs
+generally; he listened to her schemes, and was not bored by petty
+details, and, in his turn, proposed reforms and made suggestions.
+Darya Mihailovna agreed to them in words--and that was all. In
+matters of business she was really guided by the advice of her
+bailiff--an elderly, one-eyed Little Russian, a good-natured and
+crafty old rogue. 'What is old is fat, what is new is thin,' he used
+to say, with a quiet smile, winking his solitary eye.
+
+Next to Darya Mihailovna, it was Natalya to whom Rudin used to talk
+most often and at most length. He used privately to give her books, to
+confide his plans to her, and to read her the first pages of the
+essays and other works he had in his mind. Natalya did not always
+fully grasp the significance of them.
+
+But Rudin did not seem to care much about her understanding, so long
+as she listened to him. His intimacy with Natalya was not altogether
+pleasing to Darya Mihailovna. 'However,' she thought, 'let her chatter
+away with him in the country. She amuses him as a little girl now.
+There is no great harm in it, and, at any rate, it will improve her
+mind. At Petersburg I will soon put a stop to it.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna was mistaken. Natalya did not chatter to Rudin like a
+school-girl; she eagerly drank in his words, she tried to penetrate to
+their full significance; she submitted her thoughts, her doubts to
+him; he became her leader, her guide. So far, it was only the brain
+that was stirred, but in the young the brain is not long stirred
+alone. What sweet moments Natalya passed when at times in the garden
+on the seat, in the transparent shade of the aspen tree, Rudin began
+to read Goethe's _Faust_, Hoffman, or Bettina's letters, or Novalis,
+constantly stopping and explaining what seemed obscure to her. Like
+almost all Russian girls, she spoke German badly, but she understood
+it well, and Rudin was thoroughly imbued with German poetry, German
+romanticism and philosophy, and he drew her after him into these
+forbidden lands. Unimagined splendours were revealed there to her
+earnest eyes from the pages of the book which Rudin held on his knee;
+a stream of divine visions, of new, illuminating ideas, seemed to
+flow in rhythmic music into her soul, and in her heart, moved with the
+high delight of noble feeling, slowly was kindled and fanned into a
+flame the holy spark of enthusiasm.
+
+'Tell me, Dmitri Nikolaitch,' she began one day, sitting by the window
+at her embroidery-frame, 'shall you be in Petersburg in the winter?'
+
+'I don't know,' replied Rudin, as he let the book he had been glancing
+through fall upon his knee; 'if I can find the means, I shall go.'
+
+He spoke dejectedly; he felt tired, and had done nothing all day.
+
+'I think you are sure to find the means.'
+
+Rudin shook his head.
+
+'You think so!'
+
+And he looked away expressively.
+
+Natalya was on the point of replying, but she checked herself.
+
+'Look.' began Rudin, with a gesture towards the window, 'do you see
+that apple-tree? It is broken by the weight and abundance of its own
+fruit. True emblem of genius.'
+
+'It is broken because it had no support,' replied Natalya
+
+'I understand you, Natalya Alexyevna, but it is not so easy for a man
+to find such a support.'
+
+'I should think the sympathy of others . . . in any case isolation
+always. . . .'
+
+Natalya was rather confused, and flushed a little.
+
+'And what will you do in the country in the winter?' she added
+hurriedly.
+
+'What shall I do? I shall finish my larger essay--you know it--on
+"Tragedy in Life and in Art." I described to you the outline of it the
+day before yesterday, and shall send it to you.'
+
+'And you will publish it?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'No? For whose sake will you work then?'
+
+'And if it were for you?'
+
+Natalya dropped her eyes.
+
+'It would be far above me.'
+
+'What, may I ask, is the subject of the essay?' Bassistoff inquired
+modestly. He was sitting a little distance away.
+
+'"Tragedy in Life and in Art,"' repeated Rudin. 'Mr. Bassistoff too
+will read it. But I have not altogether settled on the fundamental
+motive. I have not so far worked out for myself the tragic
+significance of love.'
+
+Rudin liked to talk of love, and frequently did so. At first, at the
+word 'love,' Mlle, Boncourt started, and pricked up her eyes like
+an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet; but afterwards she had
+grown used to it, and now only pursed up her lips and took snuff at
+intervals.
+
+'It seems to me,' said Natalya timidly, 'that the tragic in love is
+unrequited love.'
+
+'Not at all!' replied Rudin; 'that is rather the comic side of love.
+. . . The question must be put in an altogether different way . . .
+one must attack it more deeply. . . . Love!' he pursued, 'all is
+mystery in love; how it comes, how it develops, how it passes away.
+Sometimes it comes all at once, undoubting, glad as day; sometimes it
+smoulders like fire under ashes, and only bursts into a flame in the
+heart when all is over; sometimes it winds its way into the heart like
+a serpent, and suddenly slips out of it again. . . . Yes, yes; it is
+the great problem. But who does love in our days? Who is so bold as to
+love?'
+
+And Rudin grew pensive.
+
+'Why is it we have not seen Sergei Pavlitch for so long?' he asked
+suddenly.
+
+Natalya blushed, and bent her head over her embroidery frame.
+
+'I don't know,' she murmured.
+
+'What a splendid, generous fellow he is!' Rudin declared, standing up.
+'It is one of the best types of a Russian gentleman.'
+
+Mlle, Boncourt gave him a sidelong look out of her little French eyes.
+
+Rudin walked up and down the room.
+
+'Have you noticed,' he began, turning sharply round on his heels,
+'that on the oak--and the oak is a strong tree--the old leaves only
+fall off when the new leaves begin to grow?'
+
+'Yes,' answered Natalya slowly, 'I have noticed it'
+
+'That is what happens to an old love in a strong heart; it is dead
+already, but still it holds its place; only another new love can drive
+it out.'
+
+Natalya made no reply.
+
+'What does that mean?' she was thinking.
+
+Rudin stood still, tossed his hair back, and walked away.
+
+Natalya went to her own room. She sat a long while on her little bed
+in perplexity, pondering over Rudin's last words. All at once she
+clasped her hands and began to weep bitterly. What she was weeping
+for--who can tell? She herself could not tell why her tears were
+falling so fast. She dried them; but they flowed afresh, like water
+from a long-pent-up source.
+
+On this same day Alexandra Pavlovna had a conversation with Lezhnyov
+about Rudin. At first he bore all her attacks in silence; but at last
+she succeeded in rousing him into talk.
+
+'I see,' she said to him, 'you dislike Dmitri Nikolaitch, as you did
+before. I purposely refrained from questioning you till now; but
+now you have had time to make up your mind whether there is any change
+in him, and I want to know why you don't like him.'
+
+'Very well,' answered Lezhnyov with his habitual phlegm, 'since your
+patience is exhausted; only look here, don't get angry.'
+
+'Come, begin, begin.'
+
+'And let me have my say to the end.'
+
+'Of course, of course; begin.'
+
+'Very well,' said Lezhnyov, dropping lazily on to the sofa; 'I admit
+that I certainly don't like Rudin. He is a clever fellow.'
+
+'I should think so.'
+
+'He is a remarkably clever man, though in reality essentially
+shallow.'
+
+'It's easy to say that.'
+
+'Though essentially shallow,' repeated Lezhnyov; 'but there's no
+great harm in that; we are all shallow. I will not even quarrel with
+him for being a tyrant at heart, lazy, ill-informed!'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna clasped her hands.
+
+'Rudin--ill-informed!' she cried.
+
+'Ill-informed!' repeated Lezhnyov in precisely the same voice, 'that
+he likes to live at other people's expanse, to cut a good figure, and
+so forth--all that's natural enough. But what's wrong is, that he is as
+cold as ice.'
+
+'He cold! that fiery soul cold!' interrupted Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Yes, cold as ice, and he knows it, and pretends to be fiery. What's
+bad,' pursued Lezhnyov, gradually growing warm, 'he is playing a
+dangerous game--not dangerous for him, of course; he does not risk a
+farthing, not a straw on it--but others stake their soul.'
+
+'Whom and what are you talking of? I don't understand you,' said
+Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'What's bad, he isn't honest. He's a clever man, certainly; he ought
+to know the value of his own words, and he brings them out as if they
+were worth something to him. I don't dispute that he's a fine speaker,
+but not in the Russian style. And indeed, after all, fine speaking is
+pardonable in a boy, but at his years it is disgraceful to take
+pleasure in the sound of his own voice, and to show off!'
+
+'I think, Mihailo Mihailitch, it's all the same for those who hear
+him, whether he is showing off or not.'
+
+'Excuse me, Alexandra Pavlovna, it is not all the same. One man says a
+word to me and it thrills me all over, another may say the same thing,
+or something still finer--and I don't prick up my ears. Why is that?'
+
+'You don't, perhaps,' put in Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'I don't,' retorted Lezhnyov, 'though perhaps my ears are long enough.
+The point is, that Rudin's words seem to remain mere words, and never
+to pass into deeds--and meanwhile even words may trouble a young
+heart, may be the ruin of it'
+
+'But whom do you mean, Mihailo Mihailitch?'
+
+Lezhnyov paused.
+
+'Do you want to know whom I mean, Natalya Alexyevna?'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna was taken aback for a moment, but she began to
+smile the instant after.
+
+'Really,' she began, 'what queer ideas you always have! Natalya is
+still a child; and besides, if there were anything in what you say, do
+you suppose Darya Mihailovna----'
+
+'Darya Mihailovna is an egoist to begin with, and lives for herself;
+and then she is so convinced of her own skill in educating her
+children that it does not even enter her head to feel uneasy about
+them. Nonsense! how is it possible: she has but to give one nod, one
+majestic glance--and all is over, all is obedience again. That's what
+that lady imagines; she fancies herself a female Maecenas, a learned
+woman, and God knows what, but in fact she is nothing more than a
+silly, worldly old woman. But Natalya is not a baby; believe me, she
+thinks more, and more profoundly too, than you and I do. And that her
+true, passionate, ardent nature must fall in with an actor, a flirt
+like this! But of course that's in the natural order of things.'
+
+'A flirt! Do you mean that he is a flirt?'
+
+'Of course he is. And tell me yourself, Alexandra Pavlovna, what is
+his position in Darya Mihailovna's house? To be the idol, the oracle
+of the household, to meddle in the arrangements, all the gossip and
+petty trifles of the house--is that a dignified position for a man
+to be in?'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna looked at Lezhnyov in surprise.
+
+'I don't know you, Mihailo Mihailitch,' she began to say. 'You are
+flushed and excited. I believe there must be something else hidden
+under this.'
+
+'Oh, so that's it! Tell a woman the truth from conviction, and she
+will never rest easy till she has invented some petty outside cause
+quite beside the point which has made you speak in precisely that
+manner and no other.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna began to get angry.
+
+'Bravo, Monsieur Lezhnyov! You begin to be as bitter against women as
+Mr. Pigasov; but you may say what you like, penetrating as you
+are, it's hard for me to believe that you understand every one and
+everything. I think you are mistaken. According to your ideas, Rudin
+is a kind of Tartuffe.'
+
+'No, the point is, that he is not even a Tartuffe. Tartuffe at least
+knew what he was aiming at; but this fellow, for all his
+cleverness----'
+
+'Well, well, what of him? Finish your sentence, you unjust, horrid
+man!'
+
+Lezhnyov got up.
+
+'Listen, Alexandra Pavlovna,' he began, 'it is you who are unjust, not
+I. You are cross with me for my harsh criticism of Rudin; I have the
+right to speak harshly of him! I have paid dearly enough, perhaps, for
+that privilege. I know him well: I lived a long while with him. You
+remember I promised to tell you some time about our life at Moscow. It
+is clear that I must do so now. But will you have the patience to hear
+me out?'
+
+'Tell me, tell me!'
+
+'Very well, then.'
+
+Lezhnyov began walking with measured steps about the room, coming to a
+standstill at times with his head bent.
+
+'You know, perhaps,' he began, 'or perhaps you don't know, that I was
+left an orphan at an early age, and by the time I was seventeen I had
+no one in authority over me. I lived at my aunt's at Moscow, and did
+just as I liked. As a boy I was rather silly and conceited, and liked
+to brag and show off. After my entrance at the university I behaved
+like a regular schoolboy, and soon got into a scrape. I won't
+tell you about it; it's not worth while. But I told a lie about it,
+and rather a shameful lie. It all came out, and I was put to open
+shame. I lost my head and cried like a child. It happened at a
+friend's rooms before a lot of fellow-students. They all began to
+laugh at me, all except one student, who, observe, had been more
+indignant with me than any, so long as I had been obstinate and would
+not confess my deceit. He took pity on me, perhaps; anyway, he took me
+by the arm and led me away to his lodging.'
+
+'Was that Rudin?' asked Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'No, it was not Rudin . . . it was a man . . . he is dead now . . . he was
+an extraordinary man. His name was Pokorsky. To describe him in a few
+words is beyond my powers, but directly one begins to speak of him,
+one does not want to speak of any one else. He had a noble, pure
+heart, and an intelligence such as I have never met since. Pokorsky
+lived in a little, low-pitched room, in an attic of an old wooden
+house. He was very poor, and supported himself somehow by giving
+lessons. Sometimes he had not even a cup of tea to offer to his
+friends, and his only sofa was so shaky that it was like being on
+board ship. But in spite of these discomforts a great many people used
+to go to see him. Every one loved him; he drew all hearts to him. You
+would not believe what sweetness and happiness there was in sitting in
+his poor little room! It was in his room I met Rudin. He had already
+parted from his prince before then.'
+
+'What was there so exceptional in this Pokorsky?' asked Alexandra
+Pavlovna.
+
+'How can I tell you? Poetry and truth--that was what drew all of us
+to him. For all his clear, broad intellect he was as sweet and simple
+as a child. Even now I have his bright laugh ringing in my ears, and
+at the same time he
+
+  Burnt his midnight lamp
+  Before the holy and the true,
+
+as a dear half-cracked fellow, the poet of our set, expressed it.'
+
+'And how did he talk?' Alexandra Pavlovna questioned again.
+
+'He talked well when he was in the mood, but not remarkably so. Rudin
+even then was twenty times as eloquent as he.'
+
+Lezhnyov stood still and folded his arms.
+
+'Pokorsky and Rudin were very unlike. There was more flash and
+brilliance about Rudin, more fluency, and perhaps more enthusiasm. He
+appeared far more gifted than Pokorsky, and yet all the while he was a
+poor creature by comparison. Rudin was excellent at developing any
+idea, he was capital in argument, but his ideas did not come from his
+own brain; he borrowed them from others, especially from Pokorsky.
+Pokorsky was quiet and soft--even weak in appearance--and he was fond
+of women to distraction, and fond of dissipation, and he would never
+take an insult from any one. Rudin seemed full of fire, and courage,
+and life, but at heart he was cold and almost a coward, until his
+vanity was touched, then he would not stop at anything. He always
+tried to get an ascendency over people, but he got it in the name of
+general principles and ideas, and certainly had a great influence over
+many. To tell the truth, no one loved him; I was the only one,
+perhaps, who was attached to him. They submitted to his yoke, but all
+were devoted to Pokorsky. Rudin never refused to argue and discuss
+with any one he met. He did not read very much, though far more anyway
+than Pokorsky and all the rest of us; besides, he had a well-arranged
+intellect, and a prodigious memory, and what an effect that has on
+young people! They must have generalisations, conclusions, incorrect
+if you like, perhaps, but still conclusions! A perfectly sincere man
+never suits them. Try to tell young people that you cannot give them
+the whole truth, and they will not listen to you. But you mustn't
+deceive them either. You want to half believe yourself that you are in
+possession of the truth. That was why Rudin had such a powerful effect
+on all of us. I told you just now, you know, that he had not read
+much, but he read philosophical books, and his brain was so
+constructed that he extracted at once from what he had read all
+the general principles, penetrated to the very root of the thing, and
+then made deductions from it in all directions--consecutive,
+brilliant, sound ideas, throwing up a wide horizon to the soul. Our
+set consisted then--it's only fair to say--of boys, and not
+well-informed boys. Philosophy, art, science, and even life itself
+were all mere words to us--ideas if you like, fascinating and
+magnificent ideas, but disconnected and isolated. The general
+connection of those ideas, the general principle of the universe we
+knew nothing of, and had had no contact with, though we discussed it
+vaguely, and tried to form an idea of it for ourselves. As we
+listened to Rudin, we felt for the first time as if we had grasped it
+at last, this general connection, as if a veil had been lifted at
+last! Even admitting he was not uttering an original thought--what of
+that! Order and harmony seemed to be established in all we knew; all
+that had been disconnected seemed to fall into a whole, to take shape
+and grow like a building before our eyes, all was full of light and
+inspiration everywhere. . . . Nothing remained meaningless and
+undesigned, in everything wise design and beauty seemed apparent,
+everything took a clear and yet mystic significance; every isolated
+event of life fell into harmony, and with a kind of holy awe and
+reverence and sweet emotion we felt ourselves to be, as it were, the
+living vessels of eternal truth, her instruments destined for some
+great . . . Doesn't it all seem very ridiculous to you?'
+
+'Not the least!' replied Alexandra Pavlovna slowly; 'why should you
+think so? I don't altogether understand you, but I don't think it
+ridiculous.'
+
+'We have had time to grow wiser since then, of course,' Lezhnyov
+continued, 'all that may seem childish to us now. . . . But, I repeat,
+we all owed a great deal to Rudin then. Pokorsky was incomparably
+nobler than he, no question about it; Pokorsky breathed fire and
+strength into all of us; but he was often depressed and silent. He was
+nervous and not robust; but when he did stretch his wings--good
+heavens!--what a flight! up to the very height of the blue heavens!
+And there was a great deal of pettiness in Rudin, handsome and stately
+as he was; he was a gossip, indeed, and he loved to have a hand in
+everything, arranging and explaining everything. His fussy activity
+was inexhaustible--he was a diplomatist by nature. I speak of him as I
+knew him then. But unluckily he has not altered. On the other hand.
+his ideals haven't altered at five-and-thirty! It's not every one who
+can say that of himself!'
+
+'Sit down,' said Alexandra Pavlovna, 'why do you keep moving about
+like a pendulum?'
+
+'I like it better,' answered Lezhnyov. 'Well, after I had come into
+Pokorsky's set, I may tell you, Alexandra Pavlovna, I was quite
+transformed; I grew humble and anxious to learn; I studied, and was
+happy and reverent--in a word, I felt just as though I had entered a
+holy temple. And really, when I recall our gatherings, upon my word
+there was much that was fine, even touching, in them. Imagine a party
+of five or six lads gathered together, one tallow candle burning. The
+tea was dreadful stuff, and the cake was stale, very stale; but you
+should have seen our faces, you should have heard our talk! Eyes were
+sparkling with enthusiasm, cheeks flushed, and hearts beating, while
+we talked of God, and truth, of the future of humanity, and poetry
+. . . often what we said was absurd, and we were in ecstasies over
+nonsense; but what of that? . . . Pokorsky sat with crossed legs, his
+pale cheek on his hand, and his eyes seemed to shed light. Rudin stood
+in the middle of the room and spoke, spoke splendidly, for all the
+world like the young Demosthenes by the resounding sea; our poet,
+Subotin of the dishevelled locks, would now and then throw out some
+abrupt exclamation as though in his sleep, while Scheller, a student
+forty years old, the son of a German pastor, who had the reputation
+among us of a profound thinker, thanks to his eternal, inviolable
+silence, held his peace with more rapt solemnity than usual; even the
+lively Shtchitof, the Aristophanes of our reunions, was subdued and
+did no more than smile, while two or three novices listened with
+reverent transports. . . . And the night seemed to fly by on wings. It
+was already the grey morning when we separated, moved, happy, aspiring
+and sober (there was no question of wine among us at such times) with
+a kind of sweet weariness in our souls . . . and one even looked up
+at the stars with a kind of confidence, as though they had become
+nearer and more comprehensible. Ah! that was a glorious time, and I
+can't bear to believe that it was altogether wasted! And it was not
+wasted--not even for those whose lives were sordid afterwards. How
+often have I chanced to come across such old college friends! You
+would think the man had sunk altogether to the brute, but one had only
+to utter Pokorsky's name before him and every trace of noble feeling
+in him was stirred at once; it was like uncorking a forgotten phial of
+fragrance in some dark and dirty room.'
+
+Lezhnyov stopped; his colourless face was flushed.
+
+'And what was the cause of your quarrel with Rudin?' said Alexandra
+Pavlovna, looking wonderingly at Lezhnyov.
+
+'I did not quarrel with him, but I parted from him when I came to know
+him thoroughly abroad. But I might well have quarrelled with him in
+Moscow, he did me a bad turn there.'
+
+'What was that?'
+
+'It was like this. I--how can I tell you?--it does not accord very
+well with my appearance, but I was always much given to falling in
+love.'
+
+'You?'
+
+'Yes, I was indeed. That's a curious idea, isn't it? But, anyway, it
+was so. Well, so I fell in love in those days with a very pretty young
+girl. . . . But why do you look at me like that? I could tell you
+something about myself a great deal more extraordinary than that!'
+
+'And what is that something, if I may know?'
+
+'Oh, just this. In those Moscow days I used to have a tryst at
+nights--with whom, would you imagine? with a young lime-tree at the
+bottom of my garden. I used to embrace its slender and graceful trunk,
+and I felt as though I were embracing all nature, and my heart melted
+and expanded as though it really were taking in the whole of nature.
+That's what I was then. And do you think, perhaps, I didn't write
+verses? Why, I even composed a whole drama in imitation of Manfred.
+Among the characters was a ghost with blood on his breast, and not his
+own blood, observe, but the blood of all humanity. . . . Yes, yes, you
+need not wonder at that. But I was beginning to tell you about my love
+affair. I made the acquaintance of a girl----'
+
+'And you gave up your trysts with the lime-tree?' inquired Alexandra
+Pavlovna.
+
+'Yes; I gave them up. This girl was a sweet, good creature, with
+clear, lively eyes and a ringing voice.'
+
+'You give an excellent description of her,' commented Alexandra
+Pavlovna with a smile.
+
+'You are such a severe critic,' retorted Lezhnyov. 'Well, this girl
+lived with her old father. . . . But I will not enter into details; I
+will only tell you that this girl was so kind-hearted, if you only
+asked her for half a cup of tea she would give it you brimming over!
+Two days after first meeting her I was wild over her, and on the
+seventh day I could hold out no longer, and confessed it in full to
+Rudin. At that time I was completely under his influence, and his
+influence, I will tell you frankly, was beneficial in many things. He
+was the first person who did not treat me with contempt, but tried to
+lick me into shape. I loved Pokorsky passionately, and felt a kind of
+awe before his purity of soul, but I came closer to Rudin. When he
+heard about my love, he fell into an indescribable ecstasy,
+congratulated me, embraced me, and at once fell to disserting and
+enlarging upon all the dignity of my new position. I pricked up my
+ears. . . . Well, you know how he can talk. His words had an
+extraordinary effect on me. I at once assumed an amazing consequence
+in my own eyes, and I put on a serious exterior and left off laughing.
+I remember I used even to go about at that time with a kind of
+circumspection, as though I had a sacred chalice within me, full of a
+priceless liquid, which I was afraid of spilling over. . . . I was
+very happy, especially as I found favour in her eyes. Rudin wanted to
+make my beloved's acquaintance, and I myself almost insisted on
+presenting him.'
+
+'Ah! I see, I see now what it is,' interrupted Alexandra Pavlovna.
+'Rudin cut you out with your charmer, and you have never been able to
+forgive him. . . . I am ready to take a wager I am right!'
+
+'You would lose your wager, Alexandra Pavlovna; you are wrong. Rudin
+did not cut me out; he did not even try to cut me out; but, all the
+same, he put an end to my happiness, though, looking at it in cool
+blood, I am ready to thank him for it now. But I nearly went out of
+my mind at the time. Rudin did not in the least wish to injure
+me--quite the contrary! But through his cursed habit of pinning every
+emotion--his own and other people's--with a phrase, as one pins
+butterflies in a case, he set to making clear to ourselves our
+relations to one another, and how we ought to treat each other, and
+arbitrarily compelled us to take stock of our feelings and ideas,
+praised us and blamed us, even entered into a correspondence with
+us--fancy! Well, he succeeded in completely disconcerting us! I should
+hardly, even then, have married the young lady (I had so much sense
+still left), but, at least, we might have spent some months happily a
+_la Paul et Virginie_; but now came strained relations,
+misunderstandings of every kind. It ended by Rudin, one fine morning,
+arriving at the conviction that it was his sacred duty as a friend to
+acquaint the old father with everything--and he did so.'
+
+'Is it possible?' cried Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Yes, and did it with my consent, observe. That's where the wonder
+comes in! . . . I remember even now what a chaos my brain was in;
+everything was simply turning round--things looked as they do in a
+camera obscura--white seemed black and black white; falsehood was
+truth, and a whim was duty. . . . Ah! even now I feel shame at the
+recollection of it! Rudin--he never flagged--not a bit of it! He
+soared through all sorts of misunderstandings and perplexities, like a
+swallow over a pond.'
+
+'And so you parted from the girl?' asked Alexandra Pavlovna, naively
+bending her head on one side, and raising her eyebrows.
+
+'We parted--and it was a horrible parting--outrageously awkward
+and public, quite unnecessarily public. . . . I wept myself, and she
+wept, and I don't know what passed. . . . It seemed as though a kind of
+Gordian knot had been tied. It had to be cut, but it was painful!
+However, everything in the world is ordered for the best. She has
+married an excellent man, and is well off now.'
+
+'But confess, you have never been able to forgive Rudin, all the
+same,' Alexandra Pavlovna was beginning.
+
+'Not at all!' interposed Lezhnyov, 'why, I cried like a child when
+he was going abroad. Still, to tell the truth, even then there was the
+germ in my heart. And when I met him later abroad . . . well, by that
+time I had grown older. . . . Rudin struck me in his true light.'
+
+'What was it exactly you discovered in him?'
+
+'Why, all I have been telling you the last hour. But enough of him.
+Perhaps everything will turn out all right. I only wanted to show you
+that, if I do judge him hardly, it is not because I don't know him.
+. . . As far as concerns Natalya Alexyevna, I won't say any more, but
+you should observe your brother.'
+
+'My brother! Why?'
+
+'Why, look at him. Do you really notice nothing?'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna looked down.
+
+'You are right,' she assented. 'Certainly--my brother--for some time
+he has not been himself. . . . But do you really think----'
+
+'Hush! I think he is coming,' whispered Lezhnyov. 'But Natalya is not
+a child, believe me, though unluckily she is as inexperienced as a
+child. You will see, that girl will astonish us all.'
+
+'In what way?'
+
+'Oh! in this way. . . . Do you know it's precisely girls like that who
+drown themselves, take poison, and so forth? Don't be misled by
+her looking so calm. Her passions are strong, and her character--my
+goodness!'
+
+'Come! I think you are indulging in a flight of fancy now. To a
+phlegmatic person like you, I suppose even I seem a volcano?'
+
+'Oh, no!' answered Lezhnyov, with a smile. 'And as for character--you
+have no character at all, thank God!'
+
+'What impertinence is that?'
+
+'That? It's the highest compliment, believe me.'
+
+Volintsev came in and looked suspiciously at Lezhnyov and his sister.
+He had grown thin of late. They both began to talk to him, but he
+scarcely smiled in response to their jests, and looked, as Pigasov
+once said of him, like a melancholy hare. But there has certainly
+never been a man in the world who, at some time in his life, has not
+looked worse than that. Volintsev felt that Natalya was drifting away
+from him, and with her it seemed as if the earth was giving way under
+his feet.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The next day was Sunday, and Natalya got up late. The day before she
+had been very silent all day; she was secretly ashamed of her tears,
+and she slept very badly. Sitting half-dressed at her little piano,
+at times she played some chords, hardly audibly for fear of waking
+Mlle. Boncourt, and then let her forehead fall on the cold keys and
+remained a long while motionless. She kept thinking, not of Rudin
+himself, but of some word he had uttered, and she was wholly buried in
+her own thought. Sometimes she recollected Volintsev. She knew that he
+loved her. But her mind did not dwell on him more than an instant. . . .
+She felt a strange agitation. In the morning she dressed hurriedly
+and went down, and after saying good-morning to her mother, seized an
+opportunity and went out alone into the garden. . . . It was a hot day,
+bright and sunny in spite of occasional showers of rain. Slight
+vapoury clouds sailed smoothly over the clear sky, scarcely obscuring
+the sun, and at times a downpour of rain fell suddenly in sheets, and
+was as quickly over. The thickly falling drops, flashing like
+diamonds, fell swiftly with a kind of dull thud; the sunshine
+glistened through their sparkling drops; the grass, that had been
+rustling in the wind, was still, thirstily drinking in the moisture;
+the drenched trees were languidly shaking all their leaves; the birds
+were busily singing, and it was pleasant to hear their twittering
+chatter mingling with the fresh gurgle and murmur of the running
+rain-water. The dusty roads were steaming and slightly spotted by the
+smart strokes of the thick drops. Then the clouds passed over, a
+slight breeze began to stir, and the grass began to take tints of
+emerald and gold. The trees seemed more transparent with their wet
+leaves clinging together. A strong scent arose from all around.
+
+The sky was almost cloudless again when Natalya came into the garden.
+It was full of sweetness and peace--that soothing, blissful peace in
+which the heart of man is stirred by a sweet languor of undefined
+desire and secret emotion.
+
+Natalya walked along a long line of silver poplars beside the pond;
+suddenly, as if he had sprung out of the earth, Rudin stood before
+her. She was confused. He looked her in the face.
+
+'You are alone?' he inquired.
+
+'Yes, I am alone,' replied Natalya, 'but I was going back directly. It
+is time I was home.'
+
+'I will go with you.'
+
+And he walked along beside her.
+
+'You seem melancholy,' he said.
+
+'I--I was just going to say that I thought you were out of spirits.'
+
+'Very likely--it is often so with me. It is more excusable in me than
+in you.'
+
+'Why? Do you suppose I have nothing to be melancholy about?'
+
+'At your age you ought to find happiness in life.'
+
+Natalya walked some steps in silence.
+
+'Dmitri Nikolaitch!' she said.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Do you remember--the comparison you made yesterday--do you
+remember--of the oak?'
+
+'Yes, I remember. Well?'
+
+Natalya stole a look at Rudin.
+
+'Why did you--what did you mean by that comparison?'
+
+Rudin bent his head and fastened his eyes on the distance.
+
+'Natalya Alexyevna!' he began with the intense and pregnant
+intonation peculiar to him, which always made the listener believe
+that Rudin was not expressing even the tenth part of what he held
+locked in his heart--'Natalya Alexyevna! you may have noticed that
+I speak little of my own past. There are some chords which I do not
+touch upon at all. My heart--who need know what has passed in it? To
+expose that to view has always seemed sacrilege to me. But with you I
+cast aside reserve; you win my confidence. . . . I cannot conceal from
+you that I too have loved and have suffered like all men. . . . When
+and how? it's useless to speak of that; but my heart has known much
+bliss and much pain. . . .'
+
+Rudin made a brief pause.
+
+'What I said to you yesterday,' he went on, 'might be applied in a
+degree to me in my present position. But again it is useless to speak
+of this. That side of life is over for me now. What remains for me is
+a tedious and fatiguing journey along the parched and dusty road from
+point to point . . . When I shall arrive--whether I arrive at all--God
+knows. . . . Let us rather talk of you.'
+
+'Can it be, Dmitri Nikolaitch,' Natalya interrupted him, 'you expect
+nothing from life?'
+
+'Oh, no! I expect much, but not for myself. . . . Usefulness, the
+content that comes from activity, I shall never renounce; but I have
+renounced happiness. My hopes, my dreams, and my own happiness have
+nothing in common. Love'--(at this word he shrugged his
+shoulders)--'love is not for me; I am not worthy of it; a woman who
+loves has a right to demand the whole of a man, and I can never now
+give the whole of myself. Besides, it is for youth to win love; I am
+too old. How could I turn any one's head? God grant I keep my own head
+on my shoulders.'
+
+'I understand,' said Natalya, 'that one who is bent on a lofty aim
+must not think of himself; but cannot a woman be capable of
+appreciating such a man? I should have thought, on the contrary, that
+a woman would be sooner repelled by an egoist. . . . All young
+men--the youth you speak of--all are egoists, they are all occupied
+only with themselves, even when they love. Believe me, a woman is not
+only able to value self-sacrifice; she can sacrifice herself.'
+
+Natalya's cheeks were slightly flushed and her eyes shining. Before
+her friendship with Rudin she would never have succeeded in uttering
+such a long and ardent speech.
+
+'You have heard my views on woman's mission more than once,' replied
+Rudin with a condescending smile. 'You know that I consider that
+Joan of Arc alone could have saved France. . . . but that's not the
+point. I wanted to speak of you. You are standing on the threshold
+of life. . . . To dwell on your future is both pleasant and not
+unprofitable. . . . Listen: you know I am your friend; I take almost
+a brother's interest in you. And so I hope you will not think my
+question indiscreet; tell me, is your heart so far quite untouched?'
+
+Natalya grew hot all over and said nothing, Rudin stopped, and she
+stopped too.
+
+'You are not angry with me?' he asked.
+
+'No,' she answered, 'but I did not expect----'
+
+'However,' he went on, 'you need not answer me. I know your secret.'
+
+Natalya looked at him almost with dismay.
+
+'Yes, yes, I know who has won your heart. And I must say that you
+could not have made a better choice. He is a splendid man; he knows
+how to value you; he has not been crushed by life--he is simple and
+pure-hearted in soul . . . he will make your happiness.'
+
+'Of whom are you speaking, Dmitri Niklaitch?'
+
+'Is it possible you don't understand? Of Volintsev, of course. What?
+isn't it true?'
+
+Natalya turned a little away from Rudin. She was completely
+overwhelmed.
+
+'Do you imagine he doesn't love you? Nonsense! he does not take his
+eyes off you, and follows every movement of yours; indeed, can love
+ever be concealed? And do not you yourself look on him with favour? So
+far as I can observe, your mother, too, likes him. . . . Your
+choice----'
+
+'Dmitri Nikolaitch,' Natalya broke in, stretching out her hand in her
+confusion towards a bush near her, 'it is so difficult, really, for me
+to speak of this; but I assure you . . . you are mistaken.'
+
+'I am mistaken!' repeated Rudin. 'I think not. I have not known you
+very long, but I already know you well. What is the meaning of the
+change I see in you? I see it clearly. Are you just the same as when I
+met you first, six weeks ago? No, Natalya Alexyevna, your heart is not
+free.'
+
+'Perhaps not,' answered Natalya, hardly audibly, 'but all the same you
+are mistaken.'
+
+'How is that?' asked Rudin.
+
+'Let me go! don't question me!' replied Natalya, and with swift steps
+she turned towards the house.
+
+She was frightened herself by the feelings of which she was suddenly
+conscious in herself.
+
+Rudin overtook her and stopped her.
+
+'Natalya Alexyevna,' he said, 'this conversation cannot end like
+this; it is too important for me too. . . . How am I to understand you?'
+
+'Let me go!' repeated Natalya.
+
+'Natalya Alexyevna, for mercy's sake!'
+
+Rudin's face showed his agitation. He grew pale.
+
+'You understand everything, you must understand me too!' said Natalya;
+she snatched away her hand and went on, not looking round.
+
+'Only one word!' cried Rudin after her
+
+She stood still, but did not turn round.
+
+'You asked me what I meant by that comparison yesterday. Let me tell
+you, I don't want to deceive you. I spoke of myself, of my past,--and
+of you.'
+
+'How? of me?'
+
+'Yes, of you; I repeat, I will not deceive you. You know now what was
+the feeling, the new feeling I spoke of then. . . . Till to-day I
+should not have ventured . . .'
+
+Natalya suddenly hid her face in her hands, and ran towards the house.
+
+She was so distracted by the unexpected conclusion of her conversation
+with Rudin, that she ran past Volintsev without even noticing him. He
+was standing motionless with his back against a tree. He had arrived
+at the house a quarter of an hour before, and found Darya Mihailovna
+in the drawing-room; and after exchanging a few words got away
+unobserved and went in search of Natalya. Led by a lover's instinct,
+he went straight into the garden and came upon her and Rudin at the
+very instant when she snatched her hand away from him. Darkness seemed
+to fall upon his eyes. Gazing after Natalya, he left the tree and took
+two strides, not knowing whither or wherefore. Rudin saw him as he
+came up to him. Both looked each other in the face, bowed, and
+separated in silence.
+
+'This won't be the end of it,' both were thinking.
+
+Volintsev went to the very end of the garden. He felt sad and sick; a
+load lay on his heart, and his blood throbbed in sudden stabs at
+intervals. The rain began to fall a little again. Rudin turned into
+his own room. He, too, was disturbed; his thoughts were in a whirl.
+The trustful, unexpected contact of a young true heart is agitating
+for any one.
+
+At table everything went somehow wrong. Natalya, pale all over, could
+scarcely sit in her place and did not raise her eyes. Volintsev sat as
+usual next her, and from time to time began to talk in a constrained
+way to her. It happened that Pigasov was dining at Darya Mihailovna's
+that day. He talked more than any one at table. Among other things he
+began to maintain that men, like dogs, can be divided into the
+short-tailed and the long-tailed. People are short-tailed, he said,
+either from birth or through their own fault. The short-tailed are in
+a sorry plight; nothing succeeds with them--they have no confidence in
+themselves. But the man who has a long furry tail is happy. He may be
+weaker and inferior to the short-tailed; but he believes in himself;
+he displays his tail and every one admires it. And this is a fit
+subject for wonder; the tail, of course, is a perfectly useless part
+of the body, you admit; of what use can a tail be? but all judge of
+their abilities by their tail. 'I myself,' he concluded with a sigh,
+'belong to the number of the short-tailed, and what is most annoying,
+I cropped my tail myself.'
+
+'By which you mean to say,' commented Rudin carelessly, 'what La
+Rochefoucauld said long before you: Believe in yourself and others
+will believe in you. Why the tail was brought in, I fail to
+understand.'
+
+'Let every one,' Volintsev began sharply and with flashing eyes, 'let
+every one express himself according to his fancy. Talk of despotism!
+. . . I consider there is none worse than the despotism of so-called
+clever men; confound them!'
+
+Everyone was astonished at this outbreak from Volintsev; it was
+received in silence. Rudin tried to look at him, but he could not
+control his eyes, and turned away smiling without opening his lips.
+
+'Aha! so you too have lost your tail!' thought Pigasov; and Natalya's
+heart sank in terror. Darya Mihailovna gave Volintsev a long puzzled
+stare and at last was the first to speak; she began to describe an
+extraordinary dog belonging to a minister So-and-So.
+
+Volintsev went away soon after dinner. As he bade Natalya good-bye he
+could not resist saying to her:
+
+'Why are you confused, as though you had done wrong? You cannot have
+done wrong to any one!'
+
+Natalya did not understand at all, and could only gaze after him.
+Before tea Rudin went up to her, and bending over the table as though
+he were examining the papers, whispered:
+
+'It is all like a dream, isn't it? I absolutely must see you alone--if
+only for a minute.' He turned to Mlle, Boncourt 'Here,' he said to
+her, 'this is the article you were looking for,' and again bending
+towards Natalya, he added in a whisper, 'Try to be near the terrace in
+the lilac arbour about ten o'clock; I will wait for you.'
+
+Pigasov was the hero of the evening. Rudin left him in possession of
+the field. He afforded Darya Mihailovna much entertainment; first he
+told a story of one of his neighbours who, having been henpecked by
+his wife for thirty years, had grown so womanish that one day in
+crossing a little puddle when Pigasov was present, he put out his hand
+and picked up the skirt of his coat, as women do with their
+petticoats. Then he turned to another gentleman who to begin with had
+been a freemason, then a hypochondriac, and then wanted to be a
+banker.
+
+'How were you a freemason, Philip Stepanitch?' Pigasov asked him.
+
+'You know how; I wore the nail of my little finger long.'
+
+But what most diverted Darya Mihailovna was when Pigasov set off on a
+dissertation upon love, and maintained that even he had been sighed
+for, that one ardent German lady had even given him the nickname of
+her 'dainty little African' and her 'hoarse little crow.' Darya
+Mihailovna laughed, but Pigasov spoke the truth; he really was in a
+position to boast of his conquests. He maintained that nothing could
+be easier than to make any woman you chose fall in love with you; you
+only need repeat to her for ten days in succession that heaven is on
+her lips and bliss in her eyes, and that the rest of womankind are all
+simply rag-bags beside her; and on the eleventh day she will be ready
+to say herself that there is heaven on her lips and bliss in her eyes,
+and will be in love with you. Everything comes to pass in the world;
+so who knows, perhaps Pigasov was right?
+
+At half-past nine Rudin was already in the arbour. The stars had come
+out in the pale, distant depths of the heaven; there was still a red
+glow where the sun had set, and there the horizon seemed brighter and
+clearer; a semi-circular moon shone golden through the black network
+of the weeping birch-tree. The other trees stood like grim giants,
+with thousands of chinks looking like eyes, or fell into compact
+masses of darkness. Not a leaf was stirring; the topmost branches of
+the lilacs and acacias seemed to stretch upwards into the warm air, as
+though listening for something. The house was a dark mass now; patches
+of red light showed where the long windows were lighted up. It was a
+soft and peaceful evening, but under this peace was felt the secret
+breath of passion.
+
+Rudin stood, his arms folded on his breast, and listened with strained
+attention. His heart beat violently, and involuntarily he held his
+breath. At last he caught the sound of light, hurrying footsteps, and
+Natalya came into the arbour.
+
+Rudin rushed up to her, and took her hands. They were cold as ice.
+
+'Natalya Alexyevna!' he began, in an agitated whisper, 'I wanted to
+see you. . . . I could not wait till to-morrow. I must tell you what I
+did not suspect--what I did not realise even this morning. I love
+you!'
+
+Natalya's hands trembled feebly in his.
+
+'I love you!' he repeated, 'and how could I have deceived myself so
+long? How was it I did not guess long ago that I love you? And you?
+Natalya Alexyevna, tell me!'
+
+Natalya could scarcely draw her breath.
+
+'You see I have come here,' she uttered, at last
+
+'No, say that you love me!'
+
+'I think--yes,' she whispered.
+
+Rudin pressed her hands still more warmly, and tried to draw her to
+him.
+
+Natalya looked quickly round.
+
+'Let me go--I am frightened. . . . I think some one is listening to
+us. . . . For God's sake, be on your guard. Volintsev suspects.'
+
+'Never mind him! You saw I did not even answer him to-day. . . . Ah,
+Natalya Alexyevna, how happy I am! Nothing shall sever us now!'
+
+Natalya looked into his eyes.
+
+'Let me go,' she whispered; 'it's time.'
+
+'One instant,' began Rudin.
+
+'No, let me go, let me go.'
+
+'You seem afraid of me.'
+
+'No, but it's time.'
+
+'Repeat, then, at least once more.' . . .
+
+'You say you are happy?' asked Natalya.
+
+'I? No man in the world is happier than I am! Can you doubt it?'
+
+Natalya lifted up her head. Very beautiful was her pale, noble, young
+face, transformed by passion, in the mysterious shadows of the arbour,
+in the faint light reflected from the evening sky.
+
+'I tell you then,' she said, 'I will be yours.'
+
+'Oh, my God!' cried Rudin.
+
+But Natalya made her escape, and was gone.
+
+Rudin stood still a little while, then walked slowly out of the
+arbour. The moon threw a light on his face; there was a smile on his
+lips.
+
+'I am happy,' he uttered in a half whisper. 'Yes, I am happy,' he
+repeated, as though he wanted to convince himself.
+
+He straightened his tall figure, shook back his locks, and walked
+quickly into the garden, with a happy gesture of his hands.
+
+Meanwhile the bushes of the lilac arbour moved apart, and Pandalevsky
+appeared. He looked around warily, shook his head, pursed up his
+mouth, and said, significantly, 'So that's how it is. That must be
+brought to Darya Mihailovna's knowledge.' And he vanished.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+On his return home, Volintsev was so gloomy and dejected, he gave his
+sister such listless answers, and so quickly locked himself up in his
+room, that she decided to send a messenger to Lezhnyov. She always had
+recourse to him in times of difficulty. Lezhnyov sent her word that he
+would come in the next day.
+
+Volintsev was no more cheerful in the morning. After tea he was
+starting to superintend the work on the estate, but he stayed at home
+instead, lay on the sofa, and took up a book--a thing he did not often
+do. Volintsev had no taste for literature, and poetry simply alarmed
+him. 'This is as incomprehensible as poetry,' he used to say, and, in
+confirmation of his words, he used to quote the following lines
+from a Russian poet:--
+
+  'And till his gloomy lifetime's close
+  Nor reason nor experience proud
+  Will crush nor crumple Destiny's
+  Ensanguined forget-me-nots.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna kept looking uneasily at her brother, but she did
+not worry him with questions. A carriage drew up at the steps.
+
+'Ah!' she thought, 'Lezhnyov, thank goodness!'
+
+A servant came in and announced the arrival of Rudin.
+
+Volintsev flung his book on the floor, and raised his head. 'Who has
+come?' he asked.
+
+'Rudin, Dmitri Nikolaitch,' repeated the man. Volintsev got up.
+
+'Ask him in,' he said, 'and you, sister,' he added, turning to
+Alexandra Pavlovna, 'leave us alone.'
+
+'But why?' she was beginning.
+
+'I have a good reason,' he interrupted, passionately. 'I beg you to
+leave us.'
+
+Rudin entered. Volintsev, standing in the middle of the room, received
+him with a chilly bow, without offering his hand.
+
+'Confess you did not expect me,' began Rudin, and he laid his hat down
+by the window His lips were slightly twitching. He was ill at ease,
+but tried to conceal his embarrassment.
+
+'I did not expect you, certainly,' replied Volintsev, 'after
+yesterday. I should have more readily expected some one with a special
+message from you.'
+
+'I understand what you mean,' said Rudin, taking a seat, 'and am very
+grateful for your frankness. It is far better so. I have come myself
+to you, as to a man of honour.'
+
+'Cannot we dispense with compliments?' observed Volintsev.
+
+'I want to explain to you why I have come.'
+
+'We are acquainted; why should you not come? Besides, this is not the
+first time you have honoured me with a visit.'
+
+'I came to you as one man of honour to another,' repeated Rudin, 'and
+I want now to appeal to your sense of justice. . . . I have complete
+confidence in you.'
+
+'What is the matter?' said Volintsev, who all this time was still
+standing in his original position, staring sullenly at Rudin, and
+sometimes pulling the ends of his moustache.
+
+'If you would kindly . . . I came here to make an explanation,
+certainly, but all the same it cannot be done off-hand.'
+
+'Why not?'
+
+'A third person is involved in this matter.'
+
+'What third person?'
+
+'Sergei Pavlitch, you understand me?'
+
+'Dmitri Nikolaitch, I don't understand you in the least.'
+
+'You prefer----'
+
+'I prefer you should speak plainly!' broke in Volintsev.
+
+He was beginning to be angry in earnest.
+
+Rudin frowned.
+
+'Permit . . . we are alone . . . I must tell you--though you certainly
+are aware of it already (Volintsev shrugged his shoulders
+impatiently)--I must tell you that I love Natalya Alexyevna, and I
+have the right to believe that she loves me.'
+
+Volintsev turned white, but made no reply. He walked to the window and
+stood with his back turned.
+
+'You understand, Sergei Pavlitch,' continued Rudin, 'that if I were
+not convinced . . .'
+
+'Upon my word!' interrupted Volintsev, 'I don't doubt it in the
+least. . . . Well! so be it! Good luck to you! Only I wonder what the
+devil induced you to come with this news to me. . . . What have I to
+do with it? What is it to me whom you love, or who loves you? It
+simply passes my comprehension.'
+
+Volintsev continued to stare out of the window. His voice sounded
+choked.
+
+Rudin got up.
+
+'I will tell you, Sergei Pavlitch, why I decided to come to you, why
+I did not even think I had the right to hide from you our--our mutual
+feelings. I have too profound an esteem for you--that is why I have
+come; I did not want . . . we both did not wish to play a part before
+you. Your feeling for Natalya Alexyevna was known to me. . . . Believe
+me, I have no illusions about myself; I know how little I deserve to
+supplant you in her heart, but if it was fated this should be, is it
+made any better by pretence, hypocrisy, and deceit? Is it any better
+to expose ourselves to misunderstandings, or even to the possibilities
+of such a scene as took place yesterday at dinner? Sergei Pavlitch,
+tell me yourself, is it?'
+
+Volintsev folded his arms on his chest, as though he were trying to
+hold himself in.
+
+'Sergei Pavlitch!' Rudin continued, 'I have given you pain, I feel
+it--but understand us--understand that we had no other means of
+proving our respect to you, of proving that we know how to value your
+honour and uprightness. Openness, complete openness with any other
+man would have been misplaced; but with you it took the form of duty.
+We are happy to think our secret is in your hands.'
+
+Volintsev gave vent to a forced laugh.
+
+'Many thanks for your confidence in me!' he exclaimed, 'though, pray
+observe, I neither wished to know your secret, nor to tell you mine,
+though you treat it as if it were your property. But excuse me, you
+speak as though for two. Does it follow I am to suppose that Natalya
+Alexyevna knows of your visit, and the object of it?'
+
+Rudin was a little taken aback.
+
+'No, I did not communicate my intention to Natalya Alexyevna; but I
+know she would share my views.'
+
+'That's all very fine indeed,' Volintsev began after a short pause,
+drumming on the window pane with his fingers, 'though I must confess
+it would have been far better if you had had rather less respect for
+me. I don't care a hang for your respect, to tell you the truth; but
+what do you want of me now?'
+
+'I want nothing--or--no! I want one thing; I want you not to regard me
+as treacherous or hypocritical, to understand me . . . I hope that now
+you cannot doubt of my sincerity . . . I want us, Sergei Pavlitch, to
+part as friends . . . you to give me your hand as you once did.'
+
+And Rudin went up to Volintsev.
+
+'Excuse me, my good sir,' said Volintsev, turning round and stepping
+back a few paces, 'I am ready to do full justice to your intentions,
+all that's very fine, I admit, very exalted, but we are simple people,
+we do not gild our gingerbread, we are not capable of following the
+flight of great minds like yours. . . . What you think sincere, we
+regard as impertinent and disingenuous and indiscreet. . . . What is
+clear and simple to you, is involved and obscure to us. . . . You boast
+of what we conceal. . . . How are we to understand you! Excuse me, I
+can neither regard you as a friend, nor will I give you my hand. . . .
+That is petty, perhaps, but I am only a petty person.'
+
+Rudin took his hat from the window seat.
+
+'Sergei Pavlitch!' he said sorrowfully, 'goodbye; I was mistaken in
+my expectations. My visit certainly was rather a strange one . . . but
+I had hoped that you . . . (Volintsev made a movement of impatience).
+. . . Excuse me, I will say no more of this. Reflecting upon it all, I
+see indeed, you are right, you could not have behaved otherwise.
+Good-bye, and allow me, at least once more, for the last time, to
+assure you of the purity of my intentions. . . . I am convinced of your
+discretion.'
+
+'That is too much!' cried Volintsev, shaking with anger, 'I never
+asked for your confidence; and so you have no right whatever to reckon
+on my discretion!'
+
+Rudin was about to say something, but he only waved his hands, bowed
+and went away, and Volintsev flung himself on the sofa and turned his
+face to the wall.
+
+'May I come in?' Alexandra Pavlovna's voice was heard saying at the
+door.
+
+Volintsev did not answer at once, and stealthily passed his hand over
+his face. 'No, Sasha,' he said, in a slightly altered voice, 'wait a
+little longer.'
+
+Half an hour later, Alexandra Pavlovna again came to the door.
+
+'Mihailo Mihailitch is here,' she said, 'will you see him?'
+
+'Yes,' answered Volintsev, 'let them show him up here.'
+
+Lezhnyov came in.
+
+'What, aren't you well?' he asked, seating himself in a chair near the
+sofa.
+
+Volintsev raised himself, and, leaning on his elbow gazed a long, long
+while into his friend's face, and then repeated to him his whole
+conversation with Rudin word for word. He had never before given
+Lezhnyov a hint of his sentiments towards Natalya, though he guessed
+they were no secret to him.
+
+'Well, brother, you have surprised me!' Lezhnyov said, as soon as
+Volintsev had finished his story. 'I expected many strange things
+from him, but this is----Still I can see him in it.'
+
+'Upon my honour!' cried Volintsev, in great excitement, 'it is simply
+insolence! Why, I almost threw him out of the window. Did he want to
+boast to me or was he afraid? What was the object of it? How could he
+make up his mind to come to a man----?'
+
+Volintsev clasped his hands over his head and was speechless.
+
+'No, brother, that's not it,' replied Lezhnyov tranquilly; 'you
+won't believe me, but he really did it from a good motive. Yes,
+indeed. It was generous, do you see, and candid, to be sure, and it
+would offer an opportunity of speechifying and giving vent to his fine
+talk, and, of course, that's what he wants, what he can't live
+without. Ah! his tongue is his enemy. Though it's a good servant to
+him too.'
+
+'With what solemnity he came in and talked, you can't imagine!'
+
+'Well, he can't do anything without that. He buttons his great-coat as
+if he were fulfilling a sacred duty. I should like to put him on a
+desert island and look round a corner to see how he would behave
+there. And he discourses on simplicity!'
+
+'But tell me, my dear fellow,' asked Volintsev, 'what is it,
+philosophy or what?'
+
+'How can I tell you? On one side it is philosophy, I daresay, and on
+the other something altogether different It is not right to put every
+folly down to philosophy.'
+
+Volintsev looked at him.
+
+'Wasn't he lying then, do you imagine?'
+
+'No, my son, he wasn't lying. But, do you know, we've talked enough of
+this. Let's light our pipes and call Alexandra Pavlovna in here. It's
+easier to talk when she's with us and easier to be silent. She shall
+make us some tea.'
+
+'Very well,' replied Volintsev. 'Sasha, come in,' he cried aloud.
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna came in. He grasped her hand and pressed it warmly
+to his lips.
+
+Rudin returned in a curious and mingled frame of mind. He was annoyed
+with himself, he reproached himself for his unpardonable precipitancy,
+his boyish impulsiveness. Some one has justly said: there is nothing
+more painful than the consciousness of having just done something
+stupid.
+
+Rudin was devoured by regret.
+
+'What evil genius drove me,' he muttered between his teeth, 'to call
+on that squire! What an idea it was! Only to expose myself to
+insolence!'
+
+But in Darya Mihailovna's house something extraordinary had been
+happening. The lady herself did not appear the whole morning, and did
+not come in to dinner; she had a headache, declared Pandalevsky, the
+only person who had been admitted to her room. Natalya, too, Rudin
+scarcely got a glimpse of: she sat in her room with Mlle. Boncourt
+When she met him at the dinner-table she looked at him so mournfully
+that his heart sank. Her face was changed as though a load of sorrow
+had descended upon her since the day before. Rudin began to be
+oppressed by a vague presentiment of trouble. In order to distract his
+mind in some way he occupied himself with Bassistoff, had much
+conversation with him, and found him an ardent, eager lad, full of
+enthusiastic hopes and still untarnished faith. In the evening Darya
+Mihailovna appeared for a couple of hours in the drawing-room. She
+was polite to Rudin, but kept him somehow at a distance, and smiled
+and frowned, talking through her nose, and in hints more than ever.
+Everything about her had the air of the society lady of the court. She
+had seemed of late rather cooler to Rudin. 'What is the secret of it?'
+he thought, with a sidelong look at her haughtily-lifted head.
+
+He had not long to wait for the solution of the enigma. As he was
+returning at twelve o'clock at night to his room, along a dark
+corridor, some one suddenly thrust a note into his hand. He looked
+round; a girl was hurrying away in the distance, Natalya's maid, he
+fancied. He went into his room, dismissed the servant, tore open the
+letter, and read the following lines in Natalya's handwriting:--
+
+'Come to-morrow at seven o'clock in the morning, not later, to Avduhin
+pond, beyond the oak copse. Any other time will be impossible. It
+will be our last meeting, all will be over, unless . . . Come. We must
+make our decision.--P.S. If I don't come, it will mean we shall not
+see each other again; then I will let you know.'
+
+Rudin turned the letter over in his hands, musing upon it, then laid
+it under his pillow, undressed, and lay down. For a long while he
+could not get to sleep, and then he slept very lightly, and it was not
+yet five o'clock when he woke up.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The Avduhin pond, near which Natalya had fixed the place of meeting,
+had long ceased to be a pond. Thirty years before it had burst through
+its banks and it had been given up since then. Only by the smooth flat
+surface of the hollow, once covered with slimy mud, and the traces of
+the banks, could one guess that it had been a pond. A farm-house had
+stood near it. It had long ago passed away. Two huge pine-trees
+preserved its memory; the wind was for ever droning and sullenly
+murmuring in their high gaunt green tops. There were mysterious tales
+among the people of a fearful crime supposed to have been committed
+under them; they used to tell, too, that not one of them would fall
+without bringing death to some one; that a third had once stood there,
+which had fallen in a storm and crushed a girl.
+
+The whole place near the old pond was supposed to be haunted; it was a
+barren wilderness, dark and gloomy, even on a sunny day--it seemed
+darker and gloomier still from the old, old forest of dead and
+withered oak-trees which was near it. A few huge trees lifted their
+grey heads above the low undergrowth of bushes like weary giants. They
+were a sinister sight; it seemed as though wicked old men had met
+together bent on some evil design. A narrow path almost
+indistinguishable wandered beside it. No one went near the Avduhin
+pond without some urgent reason. Natalya intentionally chose this
+solitary place. It was not more than half-a-mile from Darya
+Mihailovna's house.
+
+The sun had already risen some time when Rudin reached the Avduhin
+pond, but it was not a bright morning. Thick clouds of the colour of
+milk covered the whole sky, and were driven flying before the
+whistling, shrieking wind. Rudin began to walk up and down along the
+bank, which was covered with clinging burdocks and blackened nettles.
+He was not easy in his mind. These interviews, these new emotions had
+a charm for him, but they also troubled him, especially after the note
+of the night before. He felt that the end was drawing near, and was in
+secret perplexity of spirit, though none would have imagined it,
+seeing with what concentrated determination he folded his arms across
+his chest and looked around him. Pigasov had once said truly of him,
+that he was like a Chinese idol, his head was constantly overbalancing
+him. But with the head alone, however strong it may be, it is hard for
+a man to know even what is passing in himself. . . . Rudin, the
+clever, penetrating Rudin, was not capable of saying certainly whether
+he loved Natalya, whether he was suffering, and whether he would
+suffer at parting from her. Why then, since he had not the least
+disposition to play the Lovelace--one must do him that credit--had he
+turned the poor girl's head? Why was he awaiting her with a secret
+tremor? To this the only answer is that there are none so easily
+carried away as those who are without passion.
+
+He walked on the bank, while Natalya was hurrying to him straight
+across country through the wet grass.
+
+'Natalya Alexyevna, you'll get your feet wet!' said her maid Masha,
+scarcely able to keep up with her.
+
+Natalya did not hear and ran on without looking round.
+
+'Ah, supposing they've seen us!' cried Masha; 'indeed it's
+surprising how we got out of the house . . . and ma'mselle may wake
+up. . . It's a mercy it's not far. . . . Ah, the gentleman's
+waiting already,' she added, suddenly catching sight of Rudin's
+majestic figure, standing out picturesquely on the bank; 'but what
+does he want to stand on that mound for--he ought to have kept in
+the hollow.'
+
+Natalya stopped.
+
+'Wait here, Masha, by the pines,' she said, and went on to the pond.
+
+Rudin went up to her; he stopped short in amazement. He had never seen
+such an expression on her face before. Her brows were contracted, her
+lips set, her eyes looked sternly straight before her.
+
+'Dmitri Nikolaitch,' she began, 'we have no time to lose. I have come
+for five minutes. I must tell you that my mother knows everything. Mr.
+Pandalevsky saw us the day before yesterday, and he told her of our
+meeting. He was always mamma's spy. She called me in to her
+yesterday.'
+
+'Good God!' cried Rudin, 'this is terrible . . . . What did your mother
+say?'
+
+'She was not angry with me, she did not scold me, but she reproached
+me for my want of discretion.'
+
+'That was all?'
+
+'Yes, and she declared she would sooner see me dead than your wife!'
+
+'Is it possible she said that?'
+
+'Yes; and she said too that you yourself did not want to marry me at
+all, that you had only been flirting with me because you were bored,
+and that she had not expected this of you; but that she herself was to
+blame for having allowed me to see so much of you . . . that she
+relied on my good sense, that I had very much surprised her . . . and
+I don't remember now all she said to me.'
+
+Natalya uttered all this in an even, almost expressionless voice.
+
+'And you, Natalya Alexyevna, what did you answer?' asked Rudin.
+
+'What did I answer?' repeated Natalya. . . . 'What do you intend to
+do now?'
+
+'Good God, good God!' replied Rudin, 'it is cruel! So soon . . . such
+a sudden blow! . . . And is your mother in such indignation?'
+
+'Yes, yes, she will not hear of you.'
+
+'It is terrible! You mean there is no hope?
+
+'None.'
+
+'Why should we be so unhappy! That abominable Pandalevsky! . . . You
+ask me, Natalya Alexyevna, what I intend to do? My head is going
+round--I cannot take in anything . . . I can feel nothing but my
+unhappiness . . . I am amazed that you can preserve such
+self-possession!'
+
+'Do you think it is easy for me?' said Natalya.
+
+Rudin began to walk along the bank. Natalya did not take her eyes off
+him.
+
+'Your mother did not question you?' he said at last.
+
+'She asked me whether I love you.'
+
+'Well. . . and you?'
+
+Natalya was silent a moment. 'I told the truth.'
+
+Rudin took her hand.
+
+'Always, in all things generous, noble-hearted! Oh, the heart of a
+girl--it's pure gold! But did your mother really declare her decision
+so absolutely on the impossibility of our marriage?'
+
+'Yes, absolutely. I have told you already; she is convinced that you
+yourself don't think of marrying me.'
+
+'Then she regards me as a traitor! What have I done to deserve it?'
+And Rudin clutched his head in his hands.
+
+'Dmitri Nikolaitch!' said Natalya, 'we are losing our time. Remember I
+am seeing you for the last time. I came here not to weep and
+lament--you see I am not crying--I came for advice.'
+
+'And what advice can I give you, Natalya Alexyevna?'
+
+'What advice? You are a man; I am used to trusting to you, I shall
+trust you to the end. Tell me, what are your plans?'
+
+'My plans. . . . Your mother certainly will turn me out of the house.'
+
+'Perhaps. She told me yesterday that she must break off all
+acquaintance with you. . . . But you do not answer my question?'
+
+'What question?'
+
+'What do you think we must do now?'
+
+'What we must do?' replied Rudin; 'of course submit.'
+
+'Submit,' repeated Natalya slowly, and her lips turned white.
+
+'Submit to destiny,' continued Rudin. 'What is to be done? I know
+very well how bitter it is, how painful, how unendurable. But consider
+yourself, Natalya Alexyevna; I am poor. It is true I could work; but
+even if I were a rich man, could you bear a violent separation from
+your family, your mother's anger? . . . No, Natalya Alexyevna; it is
+useless even to think of it. It is clear it was not fated for us to
+live together, and the happiness of which I dreamed is not for me!'
+
+All at once Natalya hid her face in her hands and began to weep. Rudin
+went up to her.
+
+'Natalya Alexyevna! dear Natalya!' he said with warmth, 'do not cry,
+for God's sake, do not torture me, be comforted.'
+
+Natalya raised her head.
+
+'You tell me to be comforted,' she began, and her eyes blazed through
+her tears; 'I am not weeping for what you suppose--I am not sad for
+that; I am sad because I have been deceived in you. . . . What! I come
+to you for counsel, and at such a moment!--and your first word is,
+submit! submit! So this is how you translate your talk of
+independence, of sacrifice, which . . .'
+
+Her voice broke down.
+
+'But, Natalya Alexyevna,' began Rudin in confusion, 'remember--I do
+not disown my words--only----'
+
+'You asked me,' she continued with new force, 'what I answered my
+mother, when she declared she would sooner agree to my death than my
+marriage to you; I answered that I would sooner die than marry any
+other man . . . And you say, "Submit!" It must be that she is right;
+you must, through having nothing to do, through being bored, have been
+playing with me.'
+
+'I swear to you, Natalya Alexyevna--I assure you,' maintained Rudin.
+
+But she did not listen to him.
+
+'Why did you not stop me? Why did you yourself--or did you not reckon
+upon obstacles? I am ashamed to speak of this--but I see it is all
+over now.'
+
+'You must be calm, Natalya Alexyevna,' Rudin was beginning; 'we must
+think together what means----'
+
+'You have so often talked of self-sacrifice,' she broke in, 'but do
+you know, if you had said to me to-day at once, "I love you, but I
+cannot marry you, I will not answer for the future, give me your hand
+and come with me"--do you know, I would have come with you; do you
+know, I would have risked everything? But there's all the difference
+between word and deed, and you were afraid now, just as you were
+afraid the day before yesterday at dinner of Volintsev.'
+
+The colour rushed to Rudin's face. Natalya's unexpected energy had
+astounded him; but her last words wounded his vanity.
+
+'You are too angry now, Natalya Alexyevna,' he began; 'you cannot
+realise how bitterly you wound me. I hope that in time you will do me
+justice; you will understand what it has cost me to renounce the
+happiness which you have said yourself would have laid upon me no
+obligations. Your peace is dearer to me than anything in the world,
+and I should have been the basest of men, if I could have taken
+advantage----'
+
+'Perhaps, perhaps,' interrupted Natalya, 'perhaps you are right; I
+don't know what I am saying. But up to this time I believed in you,
+believed in every word you said. . . . For the future, pray keep a
+watch upon your words, do not fling them about at hazard. When I said
+to you, "I love you," I knew what that word meant; I was ready for
+everything. . . . Now I have only to thank you for a lesson--and to
+say good-bye.'
+
+'Stop, for God's sake, Natalya Alexyevna, I beseech you. I do not
+deserve your contempt, I swear to you. Put yourself in my position. I
+am responsible for you and for myself. If I did not love you with the
+most devoted love--why, good God! I should have at once proposed you
+should run away with me. . . . Sooner or later your mother would
+forgive us--and then . . . But before thinking of my own happiness----'
+
+He stopped. Natalya's eyes fastened directly upon him put him to
+confusion.
+
+'You try to prove to me that you are an honourable man, Dmitri
+Nikolaitch,' she said. 'I do not doubt that. You are not capable of
+acting from calculation; but did I want to be convinced of that? did I
+come here for that?'
+
+'I did not expect, Natalya Alexyevna----'
+
+'Ah! you have said it at last! Yes, you did not expect all this--you
+did not know me. Do not be uneasy . . . you do not love me, and I will
+never force myself on any one.'
+
+'I love you!' cried Rudin.
+
+Natalya drew herself up.
+
+'Perhaps; but how do you love me? Remember all your words, Dmitri
+Nikolaitch. You told me: "Without complete equality there is no
+love." . . . You are too exalted for me; I am no match for you. . . . I am
+punished as I deserve. There are duties before you more worthy of you.
+I shall not forget this day . . . . Good-bye.'
+
+'Natalya Alexyevna, are you going? Is it possible for us to part like
+this?'
+
+He stretched out his hand to her. She stopped. His supplicating voice
+seemed to make her waver.
+
+'No,' she uttered at last. 'I feel that something in me is broken.
+. . . I came here, I have been talking to you as if it were in delirium;
+I must try to recollect. It must not be, you yourself said, it will
+not be. Good God, when I came out here, I mentally took a farewell of
+my home, of my past--and what? whom have I met here?--a coward . . .
+and how did you know I was not able to bear a separation from my
+family? "Your mother will not consent . . . It is terrible!" That was
+all I heard from you, that you, you, Rudin?--No! good-bye. . . . Ah! if
+you had loved me, I should have felt it now, at this moment. . . . No,
+no, goodbye!'
+
+She turned swiftly and ran towards Masha, who had begun to be uneasy
+and had been making signs to her a long while.
+
+'It is _you_ who are afraid, not I!' cried Rudin after Natalya.
+
+She paid no attention to him, and hastened homewards across the
+fields. She succeeded in getting back to her bedroom; but she had
+scarcely crossed the threshold when her strength failed her, and she
+fell senseless into Masha's arms.
+
+But Rudin remained a long while still standing on the bank. At last he
+shivered, and with slow steps made his way to the little path and
+quietly walked along it. He was deeply ashamed . . . and wounded.
+'What a girl!' he thought, 'at seventeen! . . . No, I did not know
+her! . . . She is a remarkable girl. What strength of will! . . . She
+is right; she deserves another love than what I felt for her. I felt
+for her?' he asked himself. 'Can it be I already feel no more love for
+her? So this is how it was all to end! What a pitiful wretch I was
+beside her!'
+
+The slight rattle of a racing droshky made Rudin raise his head.
+Lezhnyov was driving to meet him with his invariable trotting pony.
+Rudin bowed to him without speaking, and as though struck with a
+sudden thought, turned out of the road and walked quickly in the
+direction of Darya Mihailovna's house.
+
+Lezhnyov let him pass, looked after him, and after a moment's thought
+he too turned his horse's head round, and drove back to Volintsev's,
+where he had spent the night. He found him asleep, and giving orders
+he should not be waked, he sat down on the balcony to wait for some
+tea and smoked a pipe.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Volintsev got up at ten o'clock. When he heard that Lezhnyov was
+sitting in the balcony, he was much surprised, and sent to ask him to
+come to him.
+
+'What has happened?' he asked him. 'I thought you meant to drive
+home?'
+
+'Yes; I did mean to, but I met Rudin. . . . He was wandering about the
+country with such a distracted countenance. So I turned back at once.'
+
+'You came back because you met Rudin?'
+
+'That's to say,--to tell the truth, I don't know why I came back
+myself, I suppose because I was reminded of you; I wanted to be with
+you, and I have plenty of time before I need go home.'
+
+Volintsev smiled bitterly.
+
+'Yes; one cannot think of Rudin now without thinking of me. . . .
+Boy!' he cried harshly, 'bring us some tea.'
+
+The friends began to drink tea. Lezhnyov talked of agricultural
+matters,--of a new method of roofing barns with paper. . . .
+
+Suddenly Volintsev leaped up from his chair and struck the table with
+such force that the cups and saucers rang.
+
+'No!' he cried, 'I cannot bear this any longer! I will call out this
+witty fellow, and let him shoot me,--at least I will try to put a
+bullet through his learned brains!'
+
+'What are you talking about? Upon my word!' grumbled Lezhnyov, 'how
+can you scream like that? I dropped my pipe. . . . What's the matter
+with you?'
+
+'The matter is, that I can't hear his name and keep calm; it sets all
+my blood boiling!'
+
+'Hush, my dear fellow, hush! aren't you ashamed?' rejoined
+Lezhnyov, picking up his pipe from the ground. 'Leave off! Let him
+alone!'
+
+'He has insulted me,' pursued Volintsev, walking up and down the room.
+'Yes! he has insulted me. You must admit that yourself. At first I
+was not sharp enough; he took me by surprise; and who could have
+expected this? But I will show him that he cannot make a fool of me.
+. . . I will shoot him, the damned philosopher, like a partridge.'
+
+'Much you will gain by that, indeed! I won't speak of your sister now.
+I can see you're in a passion . . . how could you think of your
+sister! But in relation to another individual--what! do you imagine,
+when you've killed the philosopher, you can improve your own chances?'
+
+Volintsev flung himself into a chair.
+
+'Then I must go away somewhere! For here my heart is simply being
+crushed by misery; only I can find no place to go.'
+
+'Go away . . . that's another matter! That I am ready to agree to. And
+do you know what I should suggest? Let us go together--to the
+Caucasus, or simply to Little Russia to eat dumplings. That's a
+capital idea, my dear fellow!'
+
+'Yes; but whom shall we leave my sister with?'
+
+'And why should not Alexandra Pavlovna come with us? Upon my soul, it
+will be splendid. As for looking after her--yes, I'll undertake
+that! There will be no difficulty in getting anything we want: if she
+likes, I will arrange a serenade under her window every night; I will
+sprinkle the coachmen with _eau de cologne_ and strew flowers along the
+roads. And we shall both be simply new men, my dear boy; we shall
+enjoy ourselves so, we shall come back so fat that we shall be proof
+against the darts of love!'
+
+'You are always joking, Misha!'
+
+'I'm not joking at all. It was a brilliant idea of yours.'
+
+'No; nonsense!' Volintsev shouted again. 'I want to fight him, to
+fight him! . . .'
+
+'Again! What a rage you are in!'
+
+A servant entered with a letter in his hand.
+
+'From whom?' asked Lezhnyov.
+
+'From Rudin, Dmitri Nikolaitch. The Lasunsky's servant brought it.'
+
+'From Rudin?' repeated Volintsev, 'to whom?'
+
+'To you.'
+
+'To me! . . . give it me!'
+
+Volintsev seized the letter, quickly tore it open, and began to read.
+Lezhnyov watched him attentively; a strange, almost joyful amazement
+was expressed on Volintsev's face; he let his hands fall by his side.
+
+'What is it?' asked Lezhnyov.
+
+'Read it,' Volintsev said in a low voice, and handed him the letter.
+
+Lezhnyov began to read. This is what Rudin wrote:
+
+'SIR--
+
+'I am going away from Darya Mihailovna's house to-day, and leaving it
+for ever. This will certainly be a surprise to you, especially after
+what passed yesterday. I cannot explain to you what exactly obliges me
+to act in this way; but it seems to me for some reason that I ought to
+let you know of my departure. You do not like me, and even regard me
+as a bad man. I do not intend to justify myself; time will justify me.
+In my opinion it is even undignified in a man and quite unprofitable
+to try to prove to a prejudiced man the injustice of his prejudice.
+Whoever wishes to understand me will not blame me, and as for any one
+who does not wish, or cannot do so,--his censure does not pain me. I
+was mistaken in you. In my eyes you remain as before a noble and
+honourable man, but I imagined you were able to be superior to the
+surroundings in which you were brought up. I was mistaken. What of
+that? It is not the first, nor will it be the last time. I repeat to
+you, I am going away. I wish you all happiness. Confess that this wish
+is completely disinterested, and I hope that now you will be happy.
+Perhaps in time you will change your opinion of me. Whether we shall
+ever meet again, I don't know, but in any case I remain your sincere
+well-wisher,
+
+'D. R.
+
+'P.S. The two hundred roubles I owe you I will send directly I reach
+my estate in T---- province. Also I beg you not to speak to Darya
+Mihailovna of this letter.
+
+'P.P.S. One last, but important request more; since I am going away, I
+hope you will not allude before Natalya Alexyevna to my visit to you.'
+
+'Well, what do you say to that?' asked Volintsev, directly Lezhnyov
+had finished the letter.
+
+'What is one to say?' replied Lezhnyov, 'Cry "Allah! Allah!" like a
+Mussulman and sit gaping with astonishment--that's all one can do. . . .
+Well, a good riddance! But it's curious: you see he thought it his
+_duty_ to write you this letter, and he came to see you from a sense of
+_duty_ . . . these gentlemen find a duty at every step, some duty they
+owe . . . or some debt,' added Lezhnyov, pointing with a smile to the
+postscript.
+
+'And what phrases he rounds off!' cried Volintsev. 'He was mistaken
+in me. He expected I would be superior to my surroundings. What a
+rigmarole! Good God! it's worse than poetry!'
+
+Lezhnyov made no reply, but his eyes were smiling. Volintsev got up.
+
+'I want to go to Darya Mihailovna's,' he announced. 'I want to find
+out what it all means.'
+
+'Wait a little, my dear boy; give him time to get off. What's the good
+of running up against him again? He is to vanish, it seems. What more
+do you want? Better go and lie down and get a little sleep; you have
+been tossing about all night, I expect. But everything will be smooth
+for you.'
+
+'What leads you to that conclusion?'
+
+'Oh, I think so. There, go and have a nap; I will go and see your
+sister. I will keep her company.'
+
+'I don't want to sleep in the least. What's the object of my going to
+bed? I had rather go out to the fields,' said Volintsev, putting on
+his out-of-door coat.
+
+'Well, that's a good thing too. Go along, and look at the fields. . . .'
+
+And Lezhnyov betook himself to the apartments of Alexandra Pavlovna.
+He found her in the drawing-room. She welcomed him effusively. She was
+always pleased when he came; but her face still looked sorrowful. She
+was uneasy about Rudin's visit the day before.
+
+'You have seen my brother?' she asked Lezhnyov. 'How is he to-day?'
+
+'All right, he has gone to the fields.'
+
+Alexandra Favlovna did not speak for a minute.
+
+'Tell me, please,' she began, gazing earnestly at the hem of her
+pocket-handkerchief, 'don't you know why . . .'
+
+'Rudin came here?' put in Lezhnyov. 'I know, he came to say good-bye.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna lifted up her head.
+
+'What, to say good-bye!'
+
+'Yes. Haven't you heard? He is leaving Darya Mihailovna's.'
+
+'He is leaving?'
+
+'For ever; at least he says so.'
+
+'But pray, how is one to explain it, after all? . . .'
+
+'Oh, that's a different matter! To explain it is impossible, but it
+is so. Something must have happened with them. He pulled the string
+too tight--and it has snapped.'
+
+'Mihailo Mihailitch!' began Alexandra Pavlovna, 'I don't understand;
+you are laughing at me, I think. . . .'
+
+'No indeed! I tell you he is going away, and he even let his friends
+know by letter. It's just as well, I daresay, from one point of view;
+but his departure has prevented one surprising enterprise from being
+carried out that I had begun to talk to your brother about.'
+
+'What do you mean? What enterprise?'
+
+'Why, I proposed to your brother that we should go on our travels, to
+distract his mind, and take you with us. To look after you especially
+I would take on myself. . . .'
+
+'That's capital!' cried Alexandra Pavlovna. 'I can fancy how you would
+look after me. Why, you would let me die of hunger.'
+
+'You say so, Alexandra Pavlovna, because you don't know me. You think
+I am a perfect blockhead, a log; but do you know I am capable of
+melting like sugar, of spending whole days on my knees?'
+
+'I should like to see that, I must say!'
+
+Lezhnyov suddenly got up. 'Well, marry me, Alexandra Pavlovna, and
+you will see all that'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna blushed up to her ears.
+
+'What did you say, Mihailo Mihailitch?' she murmured in confusion.
+
+'I said what it has been for ever so long,' answered Lezhnyov, 'on
+the tip of my tongue to say a thousand times over. I have brought it
+out at last, and you must act as you think best. But I will go away
+now, so as not to be in your way. If you will be my wife . . . I
+will walk away . . . if you don't dislike the idea, you need only send
+to call me in; I shall understand. . . .'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna tried to keep Lezhnyov, but he went quickly away,
+and going into the garden without his cap, he leaned on a little gate
+and began looking about him.
+
+'Mihailo Mihailitch!' sounded the voice of a maid-servant behind him,
+'please come in to my lady. She sent me to call you.'
+
+Mihailo Mihailitch turned round, took the girl's head in both his
+hands, to her great astonishment, and kissed her on the forehead, then
+he went in to Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+On returning home, directly after his meeting with Lezhnyov, Rudin
+shut himself up in his room, and wrote two letters; one to Volintsev
+(already known to the reader) and the other to Natalya. He sat a very
+long time over this second letter, crossed out and altered a great
+deal in it, and, copying it carefully on a fine sheet of note-paper,
+folded it up as small as possible, and put it in his pocket. With a
+look of pain on his face he paced several times up and down his room,
+sat down in the chair before the window, leaning on his arm; a tear
+slowly appeared upon his eyelashes. He got up, buttoned himself up,
+called a servant and told him to ask Darya Mihailovna if he could see
+her.
+
+The man returned quickly, answering that Darya Mihailovna would be
+delighted to see him. Rudin went to her.
+
+She received him in her study, as she had that first time, two months
+before. But now she was not alone; with her was sitting Pandalevsky,
+unassuming, fresh, neat, and agreeable as ever.
+
+Darya Mihailovna met Rudin affably, and Rudin bowed affably to her;
+but at the first glance at the smiling faces of both, any one of even
+small experience would have understood that something of an unpleasant
+nature had passed between them, even if it had not been expressed.
+Rudin knew that Darya Mihailovna was angry with him. Darya Mihailovna
+suspected that he was now aware of all that had happened.
+
+Pandalevsky's disclosure had greatly disturbed her. It touched on the
+worldly pride in her. Rudin, a poor man without rank, and so far
+without distinction, had presumed to make a secret appointment with
+her daughter--the daughter of Darya Mihailovna Lasunsky.
+
+'Granting he is clever, he is a genius!' she said, 'what does that
+prove? Why, any one may hope to be my son-in-law after that?'
+
+'For a long time I could not believe my eyes.' put in Pandalevsky. 'I
+am surprised at his not understanding his position!'
+
+Darya Mihailovna was very much agitated, and Natalya suffered for it
+
+She asked Rudin to sit down. He sat down, but not like the old Rudin,
+almost master of the house, not even like an old friend, but like a
+guest, and not even a very intimate guest. All this took place in a
+single instant . . . so water is suddenly transformed into solid ice.
+
+'I have come to you, Darya Mihailovna,' began Rudin, 'to thank you for
+your hospitality. I have had some news to-day from my little estate,
+and it is absolutely necessary for me to set off there to-day.'
+
+Darya Mihailovna looked attentively at Rudin.
+
+'He has anticipated me; it must be because he has some suspicion,' she
+thought. 'He spares one a disagreeable explanation. So much the
+better. Ah! clever people for ever!'
+
+'Really?' she replied aloud. 'Ah! how disappointing! Well, I suppose
+there's no help for it. I shall hope to see you this winter in
+Moscow. We shall soon be leaving here.'
+
+'I don't know, Darya Mihailovna, whether I shall succeed in
+getting to Moscow, but, if I can manage it, I shall regard it as a
+duty to call on you.'
+
+'Aha, my good sir!' Pandalevsky in his turn reflected; 'it's not long
+since you behaved like the master here, and now this is how you have
+to express yourself!'
+
+'Then I suppose you have unsatisfactory news from your estate?' he
+articulated, with his customary ease.
+
+'Yes,' replied Rudin drily.
+
+'Some failure of crops, I suppose?'
+
+'No; something else. Believe me, Darya Mihailovna,' added Rudin, 'I
+shall never forget the time I have spent in your house.'
+
+'And I, Dmitri Nikolaitch, shall always look back upon our
+acquaintance with you with pleasure. When must you start?'
+
+'To-day, after dinner.'
+
+'So soon! . . . Well, I wish you a successful journey. But, if your
+affairs do not detain you, perhaps you will look us up again here.'
+
+'I shall scarcely have time,' replied Rudin, getting up. 'Excuse me,'
+he added; 'I cannot at once repay you my debt, but directly I reach my
+place----'
+
+'Nonsense, Dmitri Nikolaitch!' Darya Mihailovna cut him short. 'I
+wonder you're not ashamed to speak of it! . . . What o'clock is it?'
+she asked.
+
+Pandalevsky drew a gold and enamel watch out of his waistcoat pocket,
+and looked at it carefully, bending his rosy cheek over his stiff,
+white collar.
+
+'Thirty-three minutes past two,' he announced.
+
+'It is time to dress,' observed Darya Mihailovna. 'Good-bye for the
+present, Dmitri Nikolaitch!'
+
+Rudin got up. The whole conversation between him and Darya Mihailovna
+had a special character. In the same way actors repeat their parts,
+and diplomatic dignitaries interchange their carefully-worded phrases.
+
+Rudin went away. He knew by now through experience that men and women
+of the world do not even break with a man who is of no further use to
+them, but simply let him drop, like a kid glove after a ball, like the
+paper that has wrapped up sweets, like an unsuccessful ticket for a
+lottery.
+
+He packed quickly, and began to await with impatience the moment of
+his departure. Every one in the house was very much surprised to hear
+of his intentions; even the servants looked at him with a puzzled air.
+Bassistoff did not conceal his sorrow. Natalya evidently avoided
+Rudin. She tried not to meet his eyes. He succeeded, however, in
+slipping his note into her hand. After dinner Darya Mihailovna
+repeated once more that she hoped to see him before they left for
+Moscow, but Rudin made her no reply. Pandalevsky addressed him more
+frequently than any one. More than once Rudin felt a longing to fall
+upon him and give him a slap on his rosy, blooming face. Mlle.
+Boncourt often glanced at Rudin with a peculiarly stealthy expression
+in her eyes; in old setter dogs one may sometimes see the same
+expression.
+
+'Aha!' she seemed to be saying to herself, 'so you're caught!'
+
+At last six o'clock struck, and Rudin's carriage was brought to the
+door. He began to take a hurried farewell of all. He had a feeling
+of nausea at his heart. He had not expected to leave this house like
+this; it seemed as though they were turning him out. 'What a way to do
+it all! and what was the object of being in such a hurry? Still, it is
+better so.' That was what he was thinking as he bowed in all
+directions with a forced smile. For the last time he looked at
+Natalya, and his heart throbbed; her eyes were bent upon him in sad,
+reproachful farewell.
+
+He ran quickly down the steps, and jumped into his carriage.
+Bassistoff had offered to accompany him to the next station, and he
+took his seat beside him.
+
+'Do you remember,' began Rudin, directly the carriage had driven from
+the courtyard into the broad road bordered with fir-trees, 'do you
+remember what Don Quixote says to his squire when he is leaving the
+court of the duchess? "Freedom," he says, "my friend Sancho, is one
+of the most precious possessions of man, and happy is he to whom
+Heaven has given a bit of bread, and who need not be indebted to any
+one!" What Don Quixote felt then, I feel now. . . . God grant, my dear
+Bassistoff, that you too may some day experience this feeling!'
+
+Bassistoff pressed Rudin's hand, and the honest boy's heart beat
+violently with emotion. Till they reached the station Rudin spoke of
+the dignity of man, of the meaning of true independence. He spoke
+nobly, fervently, and justly, and when the moment of separation had
+come, Bassistoff could not refrain from throwing himself on his neck
+and sobbing. Rudin himself shed tears too, but he was not weeping
+because he was parting from Bassistoff. His tears were the tears of
+wounded vanity.
+
+Natalya had gone to her own room, and there she read Rudin's letter.
+
+'Dear Natalya Alexyevna,' he wrote her, 'I have decided to depart.
+There is no other course open to me. I have decided to leave before I
+am told plainly to go. By my departure all difficulties will be put an
+end to, and there will be scarcely any one who will regret me. What
+else did I expect? . . . It is always so, but why am I writing to you?
+
+'I am parting from you probably for ever, and it would be too painful
+to me to leave you with a worse recollection of me than I deserve.
+This is why I am writing to you. I do not want either to justify
+myself or to blame any one whatever except myself; I want, as far as
+possible, to explain myself. . . . The events of the last days have
+been so unexpected, so sudden. . . .
+
+'Our interview to-day will be a memorable lesson to me. Yes, you are
+right; I did not know you, and I thought I knew you! In the course of
+my life I have had to do with people of all kinds. I have known many
+women and young girls, but in you I met for the first time an
+absolutely true and upright soul. This was something I was not used
+to, and I did not know how to appreciate you fittingly. I felt an
+attraction to you from the first day of our acquaintance; you may have
+observed it. I spent with you hour after hour without learning to know
+you; I scarcely even tried to know you--and I could imagine that I
+loved you! For this sin I am punished now.
+
+'Once before I loved a woman, and she loved me. My feeling for her was
+complex, like hers for me; but, as she was not simple herself, it was
+all the better for her. Truth was not told to me then, and now I did
+not recognise it when it was offered me. . . . I have recognised it at
+last, when it is too late. . . . What is past cannot be recalled. . . .
+Our lives might have become united, and they never will be united
+now. How can I prove to you that I might have loved you with real
+love--the love of the heart, not of the fancy--when I do not know
+myself whether I am capable of such love?
+
+'Nature has given me much. I know it, and I will not disguise it from
+you through false modesty, especially now at a moment so bitter, so
+humiliating for me. . . . Yes, Nature has given me much, but I shall
+die without doing anything worthy of my powers, without leaving any
+trace behind me. All my wealth is dissipated idly; I do not see the
+fruits of the seeds I sow. I am wanting in something. I cannot say
+myself exactly what it is I am wanting in. . . . I am wanting,
+certainly, in something without which one cannot move men's hearts, or
+wholly win a woman's heart; and to sway men's minds alone is
+precarious, and an empire ever unprofitable. A strange, almost
+farcical fate is mine; I would devote myself--eagerly and wholly to
+some cause,--and I cannot devote myself. I shall end by sacrificing
+myself to some folly or other in which I shall not even believe. . . .
+Alas! at thirty-five to be still preparing for something! . . .
+
+'I have never spoken so openly of myself to any one before--this is my
+confession.
+
+'But enough of me. I should like to speak of you, to give you some
+advice; I can be no use to you further. . . . You are still young; but
+as long as you live, always follow the impulse of your heart, do not
+let it be subordinated to your mind or the mind of others. Believe me,
+the simpler, the narrower the circle in which life is passed the
+better; the great thing is not to open out new sides, but that all the
+phases of life should reach perfection in their own time. "Blessed is
+he who has been young in his youth." But I see that this advice
+applies far more to myself than to you.
+
+'I confess, Natalya Alexyevna, I am very unhappy. I never deceived
+myself as to the nature of the feeling which I inspired in Darya
+Mihailovna; but I hoped I had found at least a temporary home. . . .
+Now I must take the chances of the rough world again. What will
+replace for me your conversation, your presence, your attentive and
+intelligent face? . . . I myself am to blame; but admit that fate
+seems to have designed a jest at my expense. A week ago I did not even
+myself suspect that I loved you. The day before yesterday, that
+evening in the garden, I for the first time heard from your lips, . . .
+but why remind you of what you said then? and now I am going away
+to-day. I am going away disgraced, after a cruel explanation with you,
+carrying with me no hope. . . . And you do not know yet to what a
+degree I am to blame as regards you. . . I have such a foolish lack of
+reserve, such a weak habit of confiding. But why speak of this? I am
+leaving you for ever!'
+
+(Here Rudin had related to Natalya his visit to Volintsev, but on
+second thoughts he erased all that part, and added the second
+postscript to his letter to Volintsev.)
+
+'I remain alone upon earth to devote myself, as you said to me this
+morning with bitter irony, to other interests more congenial to me.
+Alas! if I could really devote myself to these interests, if I could
+at last conquer my inertia. . . . But no! I shall remain to the end
+the incomplete creature I have always been. . . . The first obstacle,
+. . . and I collapse entirely; what has passed with you has shown me
+that If I had but sacrificed my love to my future work, to my
+vocation; but I simply was afraid of the responsibility that had
+fallen upon me, and therefore I am, truly, unworthy of you. I do not
+deserve that you should be torn out of your sphere for me. . . . And
+indeed all this, perhaps, is for the best. I shall perhaps be the
+stronger and the purer for this experience.
+
+'I wish you all happiness. Farewell! Think sometimes of me. I hope
+that you may still hear of me.
+
+'RUDIN.'
+
+
+Natalya let Rudin's letter drop on to her lap, and sat a long time
+motionless, her eyes fixed on the ground. This letter proved to her
+clearer than all possible arguments that she had been right, when in
+the morning, at her parting with Rudin, she had involuntarily cried
+out that he did not love her! But that made things no easier for her.
+She sat perfectly still; it seemed as though waves of darkness without
+a ray of light had closed over her head, and she had gone down cold
+and dumb to the depths. The first disillusionment is painful for every
+one; but for a sincere heart, averse to self-deception and innocent of
+frivolity or exaggeration, it is almost unendurable. Natalya
+remembered her childhood, how, when walking in the evening, she always
+tried to go in the direction of the setting sun, where there was light
+in the sky, and not toward the darkened half of the heavens. Life now
+stood in darkness before her, and she had turned her back on the light
+for ever. . . .
+
+Tears started into Natalya's eyes. Tears do not always bring relief.
+They are comforting and salutary when, after being long pent up in the
+breast, they flow at last--at first with violence, and then more
+easily, more softly; the dumb agony of sorrow is over with the tears.
+. . . But there are cold tears, tears that flow sparingly, wrung out
+drop by drop from the heart by the immovable, weary weight of
+pain laid upon it: they are not comforting, and bring no relief.
+Poverty weeps such tears; and the man has not yet been unhappy who has
+not shed them. Natalya knew them on that day.
+
+Two hours passed. Natalya pulled herself together, got up, wiped her
+eyes, and, lighting a candle, she burnt Rudin's letter in the flame,
+and threw the ash out of window. Then she opened Pushkin at random,
+and read the first lines that met her. (She often made it her oracle
+in this way.) This is what she saw:
+
+  'When he has known its pang, for him
+  The torturing ghost of days that are no more,
+  For him no more illusion, but remorse
+  And memory's serpent gnawing at his heart.'
+
+She stopped, and with a cold smile looked at herself in the glass,
+slightly nodded her head, and went down to the drawing-room.
+
+Darya Mihailovna, directly she saw her, called her into her study,
+made her sit near her, and caressingly stroked her cheek. Meanwhile
+she gazed attentively, almost with curiosity, into her eyes. Darya
+Mihailovna was secretly perplexed; for the first time it struck her
+that she did not really understand her daughter. When she had heard
+from Pandalevsky of her meeting with Rudin, she was not so much
+displeased as amazed that her sensible Natalya could resolve upon such
+a step. But when she had sent for her, and fell to upbraiding her--not
+at all as one would have expected from a lady of European renown, but
+with loud and vulgar abuse--Natalya's firm replies, and the resolution
+of her looks and movements, had confused and even intimidated her.
+
+Rudin's sudden, and wholly unexplained, departure had taken a great
+load off her heart, but she had expected tears, and hysterics. . . .
+Natalya's outward composure threw her out of her reckoning again.
+
+'Well, child,' began Darya Mihailovna, 'how are you to-day?' Natalya
+looked at her mother. 'He is gone, you see . . . your hero. Do you
+know why he decided on going so quickly?'
+
+'Mamma!' said Natalya in a low voice, 'I give you my word, if you will
+not mention him, you shall never hear his name from me.'
+
+'Then you acknowledge how wrongly you behaved to me?'
+
+Natalya looked down and repeated:
+
+'You shall never hear his name from me.'
+
+'Well, well,' answered Darya Mihailovna with a smile, 'I believe you.
+But the day before yesterday, do you remember how--There, we will pass
+that over. It is all over and buried and forgotten. Isn't it? Come, I
+know you again now; but I was altogether puzzled then. There, kiss me
+like a sensible girl!'
+
+Natalya lifted Darya Mihailovna's hand to her lips, and Darya
+Mihailovna kissed her stooping head.
+
+'Always listen to my advice. Do not forget that you are a Lasunsky and
+my daughter,' she added, 'and you will be happy. And now you may go.'
+
+Natalya went away in silence. Darya Mihailovna looked after her and
+thought: 'She is like me--she too will let herself be carried away by
+her feelings; _mais ella aura moins d'abandon_.' And Darya Mihailovna
+fell to musing over memories of the past . . . of the distant past.
+
+Then she summoned Mlle. Boncourt and remained a long while closeted
+with her.
+
+When she had dismissed her she sent for Pandalevsky. She wanted at all
+hazards to discover the real cause of Rudin's departure . . . but
+Pandalevsky succeeded in completely satisfying her. It was what he was
+there for.
+
+
+
+The next day Volintsev and his sister came to dinner. Darya Mihailovna
+was always very affable to him, but this time she was especially
+cordial to him. Natalya felt unbearably miserable; but Volintsev was
+so respectful, and addressed her so timidly, that she could not but be
+grateful to him in her heart. The day passed quietly, rather
+tediously, but all felt as they separated that they had fallen back
+into the old order of things; and that means much, very much.
+
+Yes, all had fallen back into their old order--all except Natalya.
+When at last she was able to be alone, she dragged herself with
+difficulty into her bed, and, weary and worn out, fell with her face
+on the pillow. Life seemed so cruel, so hateful, and so sordid, she
+was so ashamed of herself, her love, and her sorrow, that at that
+moment she would have been glad to die. . . . There were many
+sorrowful days in store for her, and sleepless nights and torturing
+emotions; but she was young--life had scarcely begun for her, and
+sooner or later life asserts its claims. Whatever blow has fallen on
+a man, he must--forgive the coarseness of the expression--eat that day
+or at least the next, and that is the first step to consolation.
+
+Natalya suffered terribly, she suffered for the first time. . . . But
+the first sorrow, like first love, does not come again--and thank God
+for it!
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+About two years had passed. The first days of May had come. Alexandra
+Pavlovna, no longer Lipin but Lezhnyov, was sitting on the balcony of
+her house; she had been married to Mihailo Mihailitch for more than a
+year. She was as charming as ever, and had only grown a little stouter
+of late. In front of the balcony, from which there were steps leading
+into the garden, a nurse was walking about carrying a rosy-cheeked
+baby in her arms, in a white cloak, with a white cap on his head.
+Alexandra Pavlovna kept her eyes constantly on him. The baby did not
+cry, but sucked his thumb gravely and looked about him. He was already
+showing himself a worthy son of Mihailo Mihailitch.
+
+On the balcony, near Alexandra Pavlovna, was sitting our old friend,
+Pigasov. He had grown noticeably greyer since we parted from him, and
+was bent and thin, and he lisped when he spoke; one of his front teeth
+had gone; and this lisp gave still greater asperity to his words. . . .
+His spitefulness had not decreased with years, but his sallies were
+less lively, and he more frequently repeated himself. Mihailo
+Mihailitch was not at home; they were expecting him in to tea. The sun
+had already set. Where it had gone down, a streak of pale gold and of
+lemon colour stretched across the distant horizon; on the opposite
+quarter of the sky was a stretch of dove-colour below and crimson
+lilac above. Light clouds seemed melting away overhead. There was
+every promise of prolonged fine weather.
+
+Suddenly Pigasov burst out laughing.
+
+'What is it, African Semenitch?' inquired Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Oh, yesterday I heard a peasant say to his wife--she had been
+chattering away--"don't squeak!" I liked that immensely. And after
+all, what can a woman talk about? I never, you know, speak of present
+company. Our ancestors were wiser than we. The beauty in their
+stories always sits at the window with a star on her brow and never
+utters a syllable. That's how it ought to be. Think of it! the day
+before yesterday, our marshal's wife--she might have sent a
+pistol-shot into my head!--says to me she doesn't like my tendencies!
+Tendencies! Come, wouldn't it be better for her and for every one if
+by some beneficent ordinance of nature she were suddenly deprived of
+the use of her tongue?'
+
+'Oh, you are always like that, African Semenitch; you are always
+attacking us poor . . . Do you know it's a misfortune of a sort,
+really? I am sorry for you.'
+
+'A misfortune! Why do you say that? To begin with, in my opinion,
+there are only three misfortunes: to live in winter in cold lodgings,
+in summer to wear tight shoes, and to spend the night in a room where
+a baby cries whom you can't get rid of with Persian powder; and
+secondly, I am now the most peaceable of men. Why, I'm a model! You
+know how properly I behave!'
+
+'Fine behaviour, indeed! Only yesterday Elena Antonovna complained to
+me of you,'
+
+'Well! And what did she tell you, if I may know?'
+
+'She told me that far one whole morning you would make no reply to all
+her questions but "what? what?" and always in the same squeaking
+voice.'
+
+Pigasov laughed.
+
+'But that was a happy idea, you'll allow, Alexandra Pavlovna, eh?'
+
+'Admirable, indeed! Can you really have behaved so rudely to a lady,
+African Semenitch?'
+
+'What! Do you regard Elena Antonovna as a lady?'
+
+'What do you regard her as?'
+
+'A drum, upon my word, an ordinary drum such as they beat with
+sticks.'
+
+'Oh,' interrupted Alexandra Pavlovna, anxious to change the
+conversation, 'they tell me one may congratulate you.'
+
+'Upon what?'
+
+'The end of your lawsuit. The Glinovsky meadows are yours.'
+
+'Yes, they are mine,' replied Pigasov gloomily.
+
+'You have been trying to gain this so many years, and now you seem
+discontented.'
+
+'I assure you, Alexandra Pavlovna,' said Pigasov slowly, 'nothing can
+be worse and more injurious than good-fortune that comes too late. It
+cannot give you pleasure in any way, and it deprives you of the
+right--the precious right--of complaining and cursing Providence. Yes,
+madam, it's a cruel and insulting trick--belated fortune.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna only shrugged her shoulders.
+
+'Nurse,' she began, 'I think it's time to put Misha to bed. Give him
+to me.'
+
+While Alexandra Pavlovna busied herself with her son, Pigasov walked
+off muttering to the other corner of the balcony.
+
+Suddenly, not far off on the road that ran the length of the garden,
+Mihailo Mihailitch made his appearance driving his racing droshky. Two
+huge house-dogs ran before the horse, one yellow, the other grey, both
+only lately obtained. They incessantly quarrelled, and were
+inseparable companions. An old pug-dog came out of the gate to meet
+them. He opened his mouth as if he were going to bark, bat ended by
+yawning and turning back again with a friendly wag of the tail.
+
+'Look here, Sasha,' cried Lezhnyov, from the distance, to his wife,
+'whom I am bringing you.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna did not at once recognise the man who was sitting
+behind her husband's back.
+
+'Ah! Mr. Bassistoff!' she cried at last
+
+'It's he,' answered Lezhnyov; 'and he has brought such glorious news.
+Wait a minute, you shall know directly.'
+
+And he drove into the courtyard.
+
+Some minutes later he came with Bassistoff into the balcony.
+
+'Hurrah!' he cried, embracing his wife, 'Serezha is going to be
+married.'
+
+'To whom?' asked Alexandra Pavlovna, much agitated.
+
+'To Natalya, of course. Our friend has brought the news from Moscow,
+and there is a letter for you.'
+
+'Do you hear, Misha,' he went on, snatching his son into his arms,
+'your uncle's going to be married? What criminal indifference! he only
+blinks his eyes!'
+
+'He is sleepy,' remarked the nurse.
+
+'Yes,' said Bassistoff, going up to Alexandra Pavlovna, 'I have come
+to-day from Moscow on business for Darya Mihailovna--to go over the
+accounts on the estate. And here is the letter.'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna opened her brother's letter in haste. It consisted
+of a few lines only. In the first transport of joy he informed his
+sister that he had made Natalya an offer, and received her consent and
+Darya Mihailovna's; and he promised to write more by the next post,
+and sent embraces and kisses to all. It was clear he was writing in a
+state of delirium.
+
+Tea was served, Bassistoff sat down. Questions were showered upon him.
+Every one, even Pigasov, was delighted at the news he had brought.
+
+'Tell me, please,' said Lezhnyov among the rest, 'rumours reached us
+of a certain Mr. Kortchagin. That was all nonsense, I suppose?'
+
+Kortchagin was a handsome young man, a society lion, excessively
+conceited and important; he behaved with extraordinary dignity, just
+as if he had not been a living man, but his own statue set up by
+public subscription.
+
+'Well, no, not altogether nonsense,' replied Bassistoff with a smile;
+'Darya Mihailovna was very favourable to him; but Natalya Alexyevna
+would not even hear of him.'
+
+'I know him,' put in Pigasov, 'he's a double dummy, a noisy dummy, if
+you like! If all people were like that, it would need a large sum of
+money to induce one to consent to live--upon my word!'
+
+'Very likely,' answered Bassistoff; 'but he plays a leading part in
+society.'
+
+'Well, never mind him!' cried Alexandra Pavlovna. 'Peace be with him!
+Ah! how glad I am for my brother I And Natalya, is she bright and
+happy?'
+
+'Yes. She is quiet, as she always is. You know her--but she seems
+contented.'
+
+The evening was spent in friendly and lively talk. They sat down to
+supper.
+
+'Oh, by the way,' inquired Lezhnyov of Bassistoff, as he poured him
+out some Lafitte, 'do you know where Rudin is?'
+
+'I don't know for certain now. He came last winter to Moscow for a
+short time, and then went with a family to Simbirsk. I corresponded
+with him for some time; in his last letter he informed me he was
+leaving Simbirsk--he did not say where he was going--and since then I
+have heard nothing of him.'
+
+'He is all right!' put in Pigasov. 'He is staying somewhere
+sermonising. That gentleman will always find two or three adherents
+everywhere, to listen to him open-mouthed and lend him money. You will
+see he will end by dying in some out-of-the-way corner in the arms of
+an old maid in a wig, who will believe he is the greatest genius in
+the world.'
+
+'You speak very harshly of him,' remarked Bassistoff, in a displeased
+undertone.
+
+'Not a bit harshly,' replied Pigasov; 'but perfectly fairly. In my
+opinion, he is simply nothing else than a sponge. I forgot to tell
+you,' he continued, turning to Lezhnyov, 'that I have made the
+acquaintance of that Terlahov, with whom Rudin travelled abroad. Yes!
+Yes! What he told me of him, you cannot imagine--it's simply
+screaming! It's a remarkable fact that all Rudin's friends and
+admirers become in time his enemies.'
+
+'I beg you to except me from the number of such friends!' interposed
+Bassistoff warmly.
+
+'Oh, you--that's a different thing! I was not speaking of you.'
+
+'But what did Terlahov tell you?' asked Alexandra Pavlovna.
+
+'Oh, he told me a great deal; there's no remembering it all. But the
+best of all was an anecdote of what happened to Rudin. As he was
+incessantly developing (these gentlemen always are developing; other
+people simply sleep and eat; but they manage their sleeping and eating
+in the intervals of development; isn't that it, Mr. Bassistoff?'
+Bassistoff made no reply.) 'And so, as he was continually developing,
+Rudin arrived at the conclusion, by means of philosophy, that he ought
+to fall in love. He began to look about for a sweetheart worthy of
+such an astonishing conclusion. Fortune smiled upon him. He made the
+acquaintance of a very pretty French dressmaker. The whole incident
+occurred in a German town on the Rhine, observe. He began to go and
+see her, to take her various books, to talk to her of Nature and
+Hegel. Can you fancy the position of the dressmaker? She took him for
+an astronomer. However, you know he's not a bad-looking fellow--and a
+foreigner, a Russian, of course--he took her fancy. Well, at last he
+invited her to a rendezvous, and a very poetical rendezvous, in a boat
+on the river. The Frenchwoman agreed; dressed herself in her best and
+went out with him in a boat. So they spent two hours. How do you think
+he was occupied all that time? He patted the Frenchwoman on the head,
+gazed thoughtfully at the sky, and frequently repeated that he felt
+for her the tenderness of a father. The Frenchwoman went back home in
+a fury, and she herself told the story to Terlahov afterwards! That's
+the kind of fellow he is.'
+
+And Pigasov broke into a loud laugh.
+
+'You old cynic!' said Alexandra Pavlovna in a tone of annoyance, 'but
+I am more and more convinced that even those who attack Rudin cannot
+find any harm to say of him.'
+
+'No harm? Upon my word! and his perpetual living at other people's
+expense, his borrowing money. . . . Mihailo Mihailitch, he borrowed of
+you too, no doubt, didn't he?'
+
+'Listen, African Semenitch!' began Lezhnyov, and his face assumed a
+serious expression, 'listen; you know, and my wife knows, that the
+last time I saw him I felt no special attachment for Rudin, and I even
+often blamed him. For all that (Lezhnyov filled up the glasses with
+champagne) this is what I suggest to you now; we have just drunk to
+the health of my dear brother and his future bride; I propose that you
+drink now to the health of Dmitri Rudin!'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna and Pigasov looked in astonishment at Lezhnyov, but
+Bassistoff sat wide-eyed, blushing and trembling all over with delight.
+
+'I know him well,' continued Lezhnyov, 'I am well aware of his
+faults. They are the more conspicuous because he himself is not
+on a small scale.'
+
+'Rudin has character, genius!' cried Bassistoff.
+
+'Genius, very likely he has!' replied Lezhnyov, 'but as for character
+. . . That's just his misfortune, that there's no character in him. . .
+But that's not the point. I want to speak of what is good, of what
+is rare in him. He has enthusiasm; and believe me, who am a phlegmatic
+person enough, that is the most precious quality in our times. We have
+all become insufferably reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are
+asleep and cold, and thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm
+us! It is high time! Do you remember, Sasha, once when I was talking
+to you about him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong
+too, then. The coldness is in his blood--that is not his fault--and
+not in his head. He is not an actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor
+a scoundrel; he lives at other people's expense, not like a swindler,
+but like a child. . . . Yes; no doubt he will die somewhere in poverty
+and want; but are we to throw stones at him for that? He never does
+anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no blood; but who
+has the right to say that he has not been of use? that his words have
+not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whom nature has not
+denied, as she has to him, powers for action, and the faculty of
+carrying out their own ideas? Indeed, I myself, to begin with, have
+gained all that from him. . . . Sasha knows what Rudin did for me in
+my youth. I also maintained, I recollect, that Rudin's words could not
+produce an effect on men; but I was speaking then of men like myself,
+at my present age, of men who have already lived and been broken in by
+life. One false note in a man's eloquence, and the whole harmony is
+spoiled for us; but a young man's ear, happily, is not so over-fine,
+not so trained. If the substance of what he hears seems fine to him,
+what does he care about the intonation! The intonation he will supply
+for himself!'
+
+'Bravo, bravo!' cried Bassistoff, 'that is justly spoken! And as
+regards Rudin's influence, I swear to you, that man not only knows how
+to move you, he lifts you up, he does not let you stand still, he
+stirs you to the depths and sets you on fire!'
+
+'You hear?' continued Lezhnyov, turning to Pigasov; 'what further
+proof do you want? You attack philosophy; speaking of it, you cannot
+find words contemptuous enough. I myself am not excessively devoted to
+it, and I know little enough about it; but our principal misfortunes
+do not come from philosophy! The Russian will never be infected with
+philosophical hair-splittings and nonsense; he has too much
+common-sense for that; but we must not let every sincere effort after
+truth and knowledge be attacked under the name of philosophy. Rudin's
+misfortune is that he does not understand Russia, and that, certainly,
+is a great misfortune. Russia can do without every one of us, but not
+one of us can do without her. Woe to him who thinks he can, and woe
+twofold to him who actually does do without her! Cosmopolitanism is
+all twaddle, the cosmopolitan is a nonentity--worse than a nonentity;
+without nationality is no art, nor truth, nor life, nor anything. You
+cannot even have an ideal face without individual expression; only a
+vulgar face can be devoid of it. But I say again, that is not Rudin's
+fault; it is his fate--a cruel and unhappy fate--for which we cannot
+blame him. It would take us too far if we tried to trace why Rudins
+spring up among us. But for what is fine in him, let us be grateful to
+him. That is pleasanter than being unfair to him, and we have been
+unfair to him. It's not our business to punish him, and it's not
+needed; he has punished himself far more cruelly than he deserved. And
+God grant that unhappiness may have blotted out all the harm there was
+in him, and left only what was fine! I drink to the health of Rudin! I
+drink to the comrade of my best years, I drink to youth, to its hopes,
+its endeavours, its faith, and its honesty, to all that our hearts
+beat for at twenty; we have known, and shall know, nothing better than
+that in life. . . . I drink to that golden time--to the health of
+Rudin!'
+
+All clinked glasses with Lezhnyov. Bassistoff, in his enthusiasm,
+almost cracked his glass and drained it off at a draught. Alexandra
+Pavlovna pressed Lezhnyov's hand.
+
+'Why, Mihailo Mihailitch, I did not suspect you were an orator,'
+remarked Pigasov; 'it was equal to Mr. Rudin himself; even I was moved
+by it.'
+
+'I am not at all an orator,' replied Lezhnyov, not without annoyance,
+'but to move you, I fancy, would be difficult. But enough of Rudin;
+let us talk of something else. What of--what's his name--Pandalevsky?
+is he still living at Darya Mihailovna's?' he concluded, turning to
+Bassistoff.
+
+'Oh yes, he is still there. She has managed to get him a very
+profitable place.'
+
+Lezhnyov smiled.
+
+'That's a man who won't die in want, one can count upon that.'
+
+Supper was over. The guests dispersed. When she was left alone with
+her husband, Alexandra Pavlovna looked smiling into his face.
+
+'How splendid you were this evening, Misha,' she said, stroking his
+forehead, 'how cleverly and nobly you spoke! But confess, you
+exaggerated a little in Rudin's praise, as in old days you did in
+attacking him.'
+
+'I can't let them hit a man when he's down. And in those days I was
+afraid he was turning your head.'
+
+'No,' replied Alexandra Pavlovna naively, 'he always seemed too
+learned for me. I was afraid of him, and never knew what to say in his
+presence. But wasn't Pigasov nasty in his ridicule of him to-day?'
+
+'Pigasov?' responded Lezhnyov. 'That was just why I stood up for Rudin
+so warmly, because Pigasov was here. He dare to call Rudin a sponge
+indeed! Why, I consider the part he plays--Pigasov I mean--is a
+hundred times worse! He has an independent property, and he sneers at
+every one, and yet see how he fawns upon wealthy or distinguished
+people! Do you know that that fellow, who abuses everything and every
+one with such scorn, and attacks philosophy and women, do you know
+that when he was in the service, he took bribes and that sort of
+thing! Ugh! That's what he is!'
+
+'Is it possible?' cried Alexandra Pavlovna, 'I should never have
+expected that! Misha,' she added, after a short pause, 'I want to ask
+you----'
+
+'What?'
+
+'What do you think, will my brother be happy with Natalya?'
+
+'How can I tell you? . . . there's every likelihood of it. She will
+take the lead . . . there's no reason to hide the fact between us . . .
+she is cleverer than he is; but he's a capital fellow, and loves her
+with all his soul. What more would you have? You see we love one
+another and are happy, aren't we?'
+
+Alexandra Pavlovna smiled and pressed his hand.
+
+
+
+
+On the same day on which all that has been described took place in
+Alexandra Pavlovna's house, in one of the remote districts of Russia,
+a wretched little covered cart, drawn by three village horses was
+crawling along the high road in the sultry heat. On the front seat was
+perched a grizzled peasant in a ragged cloak, with his legs hanging
+slanting on the shaft; he kept flicking with the reins, which were of
+cord, and shaking the whip. Inside the cart there was sitting on a
+shaky portmanteau a tall man in a cap and old dusty cloak. It was
+Rudin. He sat with bent head, the peak of his cap pulled over his
+eyes. The jolting of the cart threw him from side to side; but he
+seemed utterly unconscious, as though he were asleep. At last he drew
+himself up.
+
+'When are we coming to a station?' he inquired of the peasant sitting
+in front.
+
+'Just over the hill, little father,' said the peasant, with a still
+more violent shaking of the reins. 'There's a mile and a half farther
+to go, not more. . . . Come! there! look about you. . . . I'll teach
+you,' he added in a shrill voice, setting to work to whip the
+right-hand horse.
+
+'You seem to drive very badly,' observed Rudin; 'we have been
+crawling along since early morning, and we have not succeeded in
+getting there yet. You should have sung something.'
+
+'Well, what would you have, little father? The horses, you see
+yourself, are overdone . . . and then the heat; and I can't sing. I'm
+not a coachman. . . . Hullo, you little sheep!' cried the peasant,
+suddenly turning to a man coming along in a brown smock and bark shoes
+downtrodden at heel. 'Get out of the way!'
+
+'You're a nice driver!' muttered the man after him, and stood still.
+'You wretched Muscovite,' he added in a voice full of contempt, shook
+his head and limped away.
+
+'What are you up to?' sang out the peasant at intervals, pulling at
+the shaft-horse. 'Ah, you devil! Get on!'
+
+The jaded horses dragged themselves at last up to the posting-station.
+Rudin crept out of the cart, paid the peasant (who did not bow to him,
+and kept shaking the coins in the palm of his hand a long
+while--evidently there was too little drink-money) and himself carried
+the portmanteau into the posting-station.
+
+A friend of mine who has wandered a great deal about Russia in his
+time made the observation that if the pictures hanging on the walls of
+a posting-station represent scenes from 'the Prisoner of the
+Caucasus,' or Russian generals, you may get horses soon; but if the
+pictures depict the life of the well-known gambler George de Germany,
+the traveller need not hope to get off quickly; he will have time to
+admire to the full the hair _a la cockatoo_, the white open waistcoat,
+and the exceedingly short and narrow trousers of the gambler in his
+youth, and his exasperated physiognomy, when in his old age he kills
+his son, waving a chair above him, in a cottage with a narrow
+staircase. In the room into which Rudin walked precisely these
+pictures were hanging out of 'Thirty Years, or the Life of a
+Gambler.' In response to his call the superintendent appeared, who had
+just waked up (by the way, did any one ever see a superintendent who
+had not just been asleep?), and without even waiting for Rudin's
+question, informed him in a sleepy voice that there were no horses.
+
+'How can you say there are no horses,' said Rudin, 'when you don't
+even know where I am going? I came here with village horses.'
+
+'We have no horses for anywhere,' answered the superintendent. 'But
+where are you going?'
+
+'To Sk----.'
+
+'We have no horses,' repeated the superintendent, and he went away.
+
+Rudin, vexed, went up to the window and threw his cap on the table. He
+was not much changed, but had grown rather yellow in the last two
+years; silver threads shone here and there in his curls, and his eyes,
+still magnificent, seemed somehow dimmed, fine lines, the traces of
+bitter and disquieting emotions, lay about his lips and on his
+temples. His clothes were shabby and old, and he had no linen visible
+anywhere. His best days were clearly over: as the gardeners say, he
+had gone to seed.
+
+He began reading the inscriptions on the walls--the ordinary
+distraction of weary travellers; suddenly the door creaked and the
+superintendent came in.
+
+'There are no horses for Sk----, and there won't be any for a long
+time,' he said, 'but here are some ready to go to V----.'
+
+'To V----?' said Rudin. 'Why, that's not on my road at all. I am going
+to Penza, and V---- lies, I think, in the direction of Tamboff.'
+
+'What of that? you can get there from Tamboff, and from V---- you
+won't be at all out of your road.'
+
+Rudin thought a moment.
+
+'Well, all right,' he said at last, 'tell them to put the horses to.
+It is the same to me; I will go to Tamboff.'
+
+The horses were soon ready. Rudin carried his own portmanteau, climbed
+into the cart, and took his seat, his head hanging as before. There
+was something helpless and pathetically submissive in his bent
+figure . . . . And the three horses went off at a slow trot.
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE
+
+
+Some years had passed by.
+
+It was a cold autumn day. A travelling carriage drew up at the steps
+of the principal hotel of the government town of C----; a gentleman
+yawning and stretching stepped out of it. He was not elderly, but had
+had time to acquire that fulness of figure which habitually commands
+respect. He went up the staircase to the second story, and stopped at
+the entrance to a wide corridor. Seeing no one before him he called
+out in a loud voice asking for a room. A door creaked somewhere, and a
+long waiter jumped up from behind a low screen, and came forward with
+a quick flank movement, an apparition of a glossy back and tucked-up
+sleeves in the half-dark corridor. The traveller went into the room
+and at once throwing off his cloak and scarf, sat down on the sofa,
+and with his fists propped on his knees, he first looked round as
+though he were hardly awake yet, and then gave the order to send up
+his servant. The hotel waiter made a bow and disappeared. The
+traveller was no other than Lezhnyov. He had come from the country to
+C---- about some conscription business.
+
+Lezhnyov's servant, a curly-headed, rosy-cheeked youth in a grey
+cloak, with a blue sash round the waist, and soft felt shoes, came
+into the room.
+
+'Well, my boy, here we are,' Lezhnyov said, 'and you were afraid all
+the while that a wheel would come off.'
+
+'We are here,' replied the boy, trying to smile above the high collar
+of his cloak, 'but the reason why the wheel did not come off----'
+
+'Is there no one in here?' sounded a voice in the corridor.
+
+Lezhnyov started and listened.
+
+'Eh? who is there?' repeated the voice.
+
+Lezhnyov got up, walked to the door, and quickly threw it open.
+
+Before him stood a tall man, bent and almost completely grey, in an
+old frieze coat with bronze buttons.
+
+'Rudin!' he cried in an excited voice.
+
+Rudin turned round. He could not distinguish Lezhnyov's features, as
+he stood with his back to the light, and he looked at him in
+bewilderment.
+
+'You don't know me?' said Lezhnyov.
+
+'Mihailo Mihailitch!' cried Rudin, and held out his hand, but drew it
+back again in confusion. Lezhnyov made haste to snatch it in both of
+his.
+
+'Come, come in!' he said to Rudin, and drew him into the room.
+
+'How you have changed!' exclaimed Lezhnyov after a brief silence,
+involuntarily dropping his voice.
+
+'Yes, they say so!' replied Rudin, his eyes straying about the room.
+'The years . . . and you not much. How is Alexandra--your wife?'
+
+'She is very well, thank you. But what fate brought you here?'
+
+'It is too long a story. Strictly speaking, I came here by chance. I
+was looking for a friend. But I am very glad . . .'
+
+'Where are you going to dine?'
+
+'Oh, I don't know. At some restaurant. I must go away from here
+to-day.'
+
+'You must.'
+
+Rudin smiled significantly.
+
+'Yes, I must. They are sending me off to my own place, to my home.'
+
+'Dine with me.'
+
+Rudin for the first time looked Lezhnyov straight in the face.
+
+'You invite me to dine with you?' he said.
+
+'Yes, Rudin, for the sake of old times and old comradeship. Will you?
+I did not expect to meet you, and God only knows when we shall see
+each other again. I cannot part from you like this!'
+
+'Very well, I agree!'
+
+Lezhnyov pressed Rudin's hand, and calling his servant, ordered
+dinner, and told him to have a bottle of champagne put in ice.
+
+In the course of dinner, Lezhnyov and Rudin, as though by agreement,
+kept talking of their student days, recalling many things and many
+friends--dead and living. At first Rudin spoke with little interest,
+but when he had drunk a few glasses of wine his blood grew warmer. At
+last the waiter took away the last dish, Lezhnyov got up, closed the
+door, and coming back to the table, sat down facing Rudin, and quietly
+rested his chin on his hands.
+
+'Now, then,' he began, 'tell me all that has happened to you since I
+saw you last'
+
+Rudin looked at Lezhnyov.
+
+'Good God!' thought Lezhnyov, 'how he has changed, poor fellow!'
+
+Rudin's features had undergone little change since we saw him last at
+the posting-station, though approaching old age had had time to set
+its mark upon them; but their expression had become different. His
+eyes had a changed look; his whole being, his movements, which were at
+one time slow, at another abrupt and disconnected, his crushed,
+benumbed manner of speaking, all showed an utter exhaustion, a quiet
+and secret dejection, very different from the half-assumed melancholy
+which he had affected once, as it is generally affected by youth, when
+full of hopes and confident vanity.
+
+'Tell you all that has happened to me?' he said; 'I could not tell
+you all, and it is not worth while. I am worn out; I have wandered
+far--in spirit as well as in flesh. What friends I have made--good
+God! How many things, how many men I have lost faith in! Yes, how
+many!' repeated Rudin, noticing that Lezhnyov was looking in his face
+with a kind of special sympathy. 'How many times have my own words
+grown hateful to me! I don't mean now on my own lips, but on the lips
+of those who had adopted my opinions! How many times have I passed
+from the petulance of a child to the dull insensibility of a horse who
+does not lash his tail when the whip cuts him! . . . How many times I
+have been happy and hopeful, and have made enemies and humbled myself
+for nothing! How many times I have taken flight like an eagle--and
+returned crawling like a snail whose shell has been crushed! . . .
+Where have I not been! What roads have I not travelled! . . . And the
+roads are often dirty,' added Rudin, slightly turning away. 'You know
+. . .' he was continuing. . . . 'Listen,' interrupted Lezhnyov. 'We
+used once to say "Dmitri and Mihail" to one another. Let us revive the
+old habit, . . . will you? Let us drink to those days!'
+
+Rudin started and drew himself up a little, and there was a gleam in
+his eyes of something no word can express.
+
+'Let us drink to them,' he said. 'I thank you, brother, we will drink
+to them!'
+
+Lezhnyov and Rudin drained their glasses.
+
+'You know, Mihail,' Rudin began again with a smile and a stress on the
+name, 'there is a worm in me which gnaws and worries me and never lets
+me be at peace till the end. It brings me into collision with
+people,--at first they fall under my influence, but afterwards . . .'
+
+Rudin waved his hand in the air.
+
+'Since I parted from you, Mihail, I have seen much, have experienced
+many changes. . . . I have begun life, have started on something new
+twenty times--and here--you see!'
+
+'You had no stability,' said Lezhnyov, as though to himself.
+
+'As you say, I had no stability. I never was able to construct
+anything; and it's a difficult thing, brother, to construct when one
+has to create the very ground under one's feet, to make one's own
+foundation for one's self! All my adventures--that is, speaking
+accurately, all my failures, I will not describe. I will tell of two
+or three incidents--those incidents of my life when it seemed as if
+success were smiling on me, or rather when I began to hope for
+success--which is not altogether the same thing . . .'
+
+Rudin pushed back his grey and already sparse locks with the same
+gesture which he used once to toss back his thick, dark curls.
+
+'Well, I will tell you, Mihail,' he began. 'In Moscow I came across a
+rather strange man. He was very wealthy and was the owner of extensive
+estates. His chief and only passion was love of science, universal
+science. I have never yet been able to arrive at how this passion
+arose in him! It fitted him about as well as a saddle on a cow. He
+managed with difficulty to maintain himself at his mental elevation,
+he was almost without the power of speech, he only rolled his eyes
+with expression and shook his head significantly. I never met,
+brother, a poorer and less gifted nature than his. . . . In the Smolensk
+province there are places like that--nothing but sand and a few tufts
+of grass which no animal can eat. Nothing succeeded in his hands;
+everything seemed to slip away from him; but he was still mad on
+making everything plain complicated. If it had depended on his
+arrangements, his people would have eaten standing on their heads. He
+worked, and wrote, and read indefatigably. He devoted himself to
+science with a kind of stubborn perseverance, a terrible patience; his
+vanity was immense, and he had a will of iron. He lived alone, and had
+the reputation of an eccentric. I made friends with him . . . and he
+liked me. I quickly, I must own, saw through him; but his zeal
+attracted me. Besides, he was the master of such resources; so much
+good might be done, so much real usefulness through him. . . . I was
+installed in his house and went with him to the country. My plans,
+brother, were on a vast scale; I dreamed of various reforms,
+innovations . . .'
+
+'Just as at the Lasunsky's, do you remember, Dmitri?' responded
+Lezhnyov, with an indulgent smile.
+
+'Ah, but then I knew in my heart that nothing would come of my words;
+but this time . . . an altogether different field of activity lay open
+before me. . . . I took with me books on agriculture . . . to tell the
+truth, I did not read one of them through. . . . Well, I set to work.
+At first it did not progress as I had expected; but afterwards it did
+get on in a way. My new friend looked on and said nothing; he did not
+interfere with me, at least not to any noticeable extent. He accepted
+my suggestions, and carried them out, but with a stubborn sullenness,
+a secret want of faith; and he bent everything his own way. He prized
+extremely every idea of his own. He got to it with difficulty, like a
+ladybird on a blade of grass, and he would sit and sit upon it, as
+though pluming his wings and getting ready for a flight, and suddenly
+he would fall off and begin crawling again. . . . Don't be surprised
+at these comparisons; at that time they were always crowding on my
+imagination. So I struggled on there for two years. The work did not
+progress much in spite of all my efforts. I began to be tired of it,
+my friend bored me; I had come to sneer at him, and he stifled me like
+a featherbed; his want of faith had changed into a dumb resentment; a
+feeling of hostility had laid hold of both of us; we could scarcely
+now speak of anything; he quietly but incessantly tried to show me
+that he was not under my influence; my arrangements were either set
+aside or altogether transformed. I realised, at last, that I was
+playing the part of a toady in the noble landowner's house by
+providing him with intellectual amusement. It was very bitter to me to
+have wasted my time and strength for nothing, most bitter to feel that
+I had again and again been deceived in my expectations. I knew very
+well what I was losing if I went away; but I could not control myself,
+and one day after a painful and revolting scene of which I was a
+witness, and which showed my friend in a most disadvantageous light, I
+quarrelled with him finally, went away, and threw up this newfangled
+pedant, made of a queer compound of our native flour kneaded up with
+German treacle.'
+
+'That is, you threw up your daily bread, Dmitri,' said Lezhnyov,
+laying both hands on Rudin's shoulders.
+
+'Yes, and again I was turned adrift, empty-handed and penniless, to
+fly whither I listed. Ah! let us drink!'
+
+'To your health!' said Lezhnyov, getting up and kissing Rudin on the
+forehead. 'To your health and to the memory of Pokorsky. He, too,
+knew how to be poor.'
+
+'Well, that was number one of my adventures,' began Rudin, after a
+short pause. 'Shall I go on?'
+
+'Go on, please.'
+
+'Ah! I have no wish for talking. I am tired of talking, brother. . . .
+However, so be it. After knocking about in various parts--by the way,
+I might tell you how I became the secretary of a benevolent dignitary,
+and what came of that; but that would take me too long. . . . After
+knocking about in various parts, I resolved to become at last--don't
+smile, please--a practical business man. The opportunity came in this
+way. I became friendly with--he was much talked of at one time--a man
+called Kurbyev.'
+
+'Oh, I never heard of him. But, really, Dmitri, with your
+intelligence, how was it you did not suspect that to be a business man
+was not the business for you?'
+
+'I know, brother, that it was not; but, then, what is the business for
+me? But if you had seen Kurbyev! Do not, pray, fancy him as some
+empty-headed chatterer. They say I was eloquent once. I was simply
+nothing beside him. He was a man of wonderful learning and
+knowledge,--an intellect, brother, a creative intellect, for business
+and commercial enterprises. His brain seemed seething with the
+boldest, the most unexpected schemes. I joined him and we decided to
+turn our powers to a work of public utility.'
+
+'What was it, may I know?'
+
+Rudin dropped his eyes.
+
+'You will laugh at it, Mihail.
+
+'Why should I? No, I will not laugh.'
+
+'We resolved to make a river in the K---- province fit for
+navigation,' said Rudin with an embarrassed smile.
+
+'Really! This Kurbyev was a capitalist, then?'
+
+'He was poorer than I,' responded Rudin, and his grey head sank on
+his breast.
+
+Lezhnyov began to laugh, but he stopped suddenly and took Rudin by the
+hand.
+
+'Pardon me, brother, I beg,' he said, 'but I did not expect that.
+Well, so I suppose your enterprise did not get further than paper?'
+
+'Not so. A beginning was made. We hired workmen, and set to work. But
+then we were met by various obstacles. In the first place the
+millowners would not meet us favourably at all; and more than that, we
+could not turn the water out of its course without machinery, and we
+had not money enough for machinery. For six months we lived in mud
+huts. Kurbyev lived on dry bread, and I, too, had not much to eat.
+However, I don't complain of that; the scenery there is something
+magnificent. We struggled and struggled on, appealing to merchants,
+writing letters and circulars. It ended in my spending my last
+farthing on the project.'
+
+'Well!' observed Lezhnyov, 'I imagine to spend your last farthing,
+Dmitri, was not a difficult matter?'
+
+'It was not difficult, certainly.'
+
+Rudin looked out of the window.
+
+'But the project really was not a bad one, and it might have been of
+immense service.'
+
+'And where did Kurbyev go to?' asked Lezhnyov.
+
+'Oh, he is now in Siberia, he has become a gold-digger. And you will
+see he will make himself a position; he will get on.'
+
+'Perhaps; but then you will not be likely to make a position for
+yourself, it seems.'
+
+'Well, that can't be helped! But I know I was always a frivolous
+creature in your eyes.'
+
+'Hush, brother; there was a time, certainly, when I saw your weak
+side; but now, believe me, I have learnt to value you. You will not
+make yourself a position. And I love you, Dmitri, for that, indeed I
+do!'
+
+Rudin smiled faintly.
+
+'Truly?'
+
+'I respect you for it!' repeated Lezhnyov. 'Do you understand me?'
+
+Both were silent for a little.
+
+'Well, shall I proceed to number three?' asked Rudin.
+
+'Please do.'
+
+'Very well. The third and last. I have only now got clear of number
+three. But am I not boring you, Mihail?'
+
+'Go on, go on.'
+
+'Well,' began Rudin, 'once the idea occurred to me at some leisure
+moment--I always had plenty of leisure moments--the idea occurred to
+me; I have knowledge enough, my intentions are good. I suppose even
+you will not deny me good intentions?'
+
+'I should think not!'
+
+'In all other directions I had failed more or less . . . why should I
+not become an instructor, or speaking simply a teacher . . . rather
+than waste my life?'
+
+Rudin stopped and sighed.
+
+'Rather than waste my life, would it not be better to try to pass on
+to others what I know; perhaps they may extract at least some use from
+my knowledge. My abilities are above the ordinary anyway, I am a
+master of language. So I resolved to devote myself to this new work. I
+had difficulty in obtaining a post; I did not want to give private
+lessons; there was nothing I could do in the lower schools. At last I
+succeeded in getting an appointment as professor in the gymnasium
+here.'
+
+'As professor of what?' asked Lezhnyov.
+
+'Professor of literature. I can tell you I never started on any work
+with such zest as I did on this. The thought of producing an effect
+upon the young inspired me. I spent three weeks over the composition
+of my opening lecture.'
+
+'Have you got it, Dmitri?' interrupted Lezhnyov.
+
+'No! I lost it somewhere. It went off fairly well, and was liked. I
+can see now the faces of my listeners--good young faces, with an
+expression of pure-souled attention and sympathy, and even of
+amazement. I mounted the platform and read my lecture in a fever; I
+thought it would fill more than an hour, but I had finished it in
+twenty minutes. The inspector was sitting there--a dry old man in
+silver spectacles and a short wig--he sometimes turned his head in my
+direction. When I had finished, he jumped up from his seat and said to
+me, "Good, but rather over their heads, obscure, and too little said
+about the subject." But the pupils followed me with appreciation in
+their looks--indeed they did. Ah, that is how youth is so precious! I
+gave a second written lecture, and a third. After that I began to
+lecture extempore.'
+
+'And you had success?' asked Lezhnyov.
+
+'I had a great success. I gave my audience all that was in my soul.
+Among them were two or three really remarkable boys; the rest did not
+understand me much. I must confess though that even those who did
+understand me sometimes embarrassed me by their questions. But I did
+not lose heart. They all loved me; I gave them all full marks in
+examinations. But then an intrigue was started against me--or no! it
+was not an intrigue at all; it simply was, that I was not in my proper
+place. I was a hindrance to the others, and they were a hindrance to
+me. I lectured to the gymnasium pupils in a way lectures are not given
+every day, even to students; they carried away very little from my
+lectures. . . . I myself did not know the facts enough. Besides, I was
+not satisfied with the limited sphere assigned to me--you know that is
+always my weakness. I wanted radical reforms, and I swear to you
+that these reforms were both sensible and easy to carry out. I hoped
+to carry them through the director, a good and honest man, over whom I
+had at first some influence. His wife aided me. I have not, brother,
+met many women like her in my life. She was about forty; but she
+believed in goodness, and loved everything fine with the enthusiasm of
+a girl of fifteen, and was not afraid to give utterance to her
+convictions before any one whatever. I shall never forget her generous
+enthusiasm and goodness. By her advice I drew up a plan. . . . But
+then my influence was undermined, I was misrepresented to her. My
+chief enemy was the professor of mathematics, a little sour, bilious
+man who believed in nothing, a character like Pigasov, but far more
+able than he was . . . . By the way, how is Pigasov, is he living?'
+
+'Oh, yes; and only fancy, he is married to a peasant woman, who, they
+say, beats him.'
+
+'Serve him right! And Natalya Alexyevna--is she well?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Is she happy?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Rudin was silent for a little.
+
+'What was I talking about? . . . Oh yes! about the professor of
+mathematics. He perfectly hated me; he compared my lectures to
+fireworks, pounced upon every expression of mine that was not
+altogether clear, once even put me to confusion over some monument of
+the sixteenth century. . . . But the most important thing was, he
+suspected my intentions; my last soap-bubble struck on him as on a
+spike, and burst. The inspector, whom I had not got on with from the
+first, set the director against me. A scene followed. I was not ready
+to give in; I got hot; the matter came to the knowledge of the
+authorities; I was forced to resign. I did not stop there; I wanted to
+prove that they could not treat me like that. . . . But they could
+treat me as they liked. . . . Now I am forced to leave the town.'
+
+A silence followed. Both the friends sat with bowed heads.
+
+Rudin was the first to speak.
+
+'Yes, brother,' he began, 'I can say now, in the words of Koltsov,
+"Thou hast led me astray, my youth, till there is nowhere I can
+turn my steps." . . . And yet can it be that I was fit for nothing,
+that for me there was, as it were, no work on earth to do? I have
+often put myself this question, and, however much I tried to humble
+myself in my own eyes, I could not but feel the existence of faculties
+within me which are not given to every one! Why have these faculties
+remained fruitless? And let me say more; you know, when I was with you
+abroad, Mihail, I was conceited and full of erroneous ideas. . . .
+Certainly I did not then realise clearly what I wanted; I lived upon
+words, and believed in phantoms. But now, I swear to you, I could
+speak out before all men every desire I feel. I have absolutely
+nothing to hide; I am absolutely, in the fullest meaning of the word,
+a well-intentioned man. I am humble, I am ready to adapt myself to
+circumstances; I want little; I want to do the good that lies nearest,
+to be even a little use. But no! I never succeed. What does it mean?
+What hinders me from living and working like others? . . . I am only
+dreaming of it now. But no sooner do I get into any definite position
+when fate throws the dice from me. I have come to dread it--my
+destiny. . . . Why is it so? Explain this enigma to me!'
+
+'An enigma!' repeated Lezhnyov. 'Yes, that's true; you have always
+been an enigma for me. Even in our young days, when, after some
+trifling prank, you would suddenly speak as though you were pierced to
+the heart, and then you would begin again . . . well you know what I
+mean . . . even then I did not understand. That is why I grew apart
+from you. . . . You have so much power, such unwearying striving after
+the ideal.'
+
+'Words, all words! There was nothing done!' Rudin broke in.
+
+'Nothing done! What is there to do?'
+
+'What is there to do! To keep an old blind woman and all her family by
+one's work, as, do you remember, Mihail, Pryazhentsov did. . . That's
+doing something.'
+
+'Yes, but a good word--is also something done.'
+
+Rudin looked at Lezhnyov without speaking and faintly shook his head.
+
+Lezhnyov wanted to say something, and he passed his hand over his
+face.
+
+'And so you are going to your country place?' he asked at last
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'There you have some property left?'
+
+'Something is left me there. Two souls and a half. It is a corner to
+die in. You are thinking perhaps at this moment: "Even now he cannot
+do without fine words!" Words indeed have been my ruin; they have
+consumed me, and to the end I cannot be free of them. But what I have
+said was not mere words. These white hairs, brother, these wrinkles,
+these ragged elbows--they are not mere words. You have always been
+hard on me, Mihail, and you were right; but now is not a time to be
+hard, when all is over, when there's no oil left in the lamp, and the
+lamp itself is broken, and the wick is just smouldering out. Death,
+brother, should reconcile at last . . .'
+
+Lezhnyov jumped up.
+
+'Rudin!' he cried, 'why do you speak like that to me? How have I
+deserved it from you? Am I such a judge, and what kind of a man should
+I be, if at the sight of your hollow cheeks and wrinkles, "mere words"
+could occur to my mind? Do you want to know what I think of you,
+Dmitri? Well! I think: here is a man--with his abilities, what might
+he not have attained to, what worldly advantages might he not have
+possessed by now, if he had liked! . . . and I meet him hungry and
+homeless . . . .'
+
+'I rouse your compassion,' Rudin murmured in a choked voice.
+
+'No, you are wrong. You inspire respect in me--that is what I feel.
+Who prevented you from spending year after year at that landowner's,
+who was your friend, and who would, I am fully persuaded, have made
+provision for you, if you had only been willing to humour him? Why
+could you not live harmoniously at the gymnasium, why have
+you--strange man!--with whatever ideas you have entered upon an
+undertaking, infallibly every time ended by sacrificing your personal
+interests, ever refusing to take root in any but good ground, however
+profitable it might be?'
+
+'I was born a rolling stone,' Rudin said, with a weary smile. 'I
+cannot stop myself.'
+
+'That is true; but you cannot stop, not because there is a worm
+gnawing you, as you said to me at first. . . . It is not a worm, not the
+spirit of idle restlessness--it is the fire of the love of truth that
+burns in you, and clearly, in spite of your failings; it burns in you
+more hotly than in many who do not consider themselves egoists and
+dare to call you a humbug perhaps. I, for one, in your place should
+long ago have succeeded in silencing that worm in me, and should have
+given in to everything; and you have not even been embittered by it,
+Dmitri. You are ready, I am sure, to-day, to set to some new work
+again like a boy.'
+
+'No, brother, I am tired now,' said Rudin. 'I have had enough.'
+
+'Tired! Any other man would have been dead long ago. You say that
+death reconciles; but does not life, don't you think, reconcile? A man
+who has lived and has not grown tolerant towards others does not
+deserve to meet with tolerance himself. And who can say he does not
+need tolerance? You have done what you could, Dmitri . . . you have
+struggled so long as you could . . . what more? Our paths lay apart,' . . .
+
+'You were utterly different from me,' Rudin put in with a sigh.
+
+'Our paths lay apart,' continued Lezhnyov, 'perhaps exactly because,
+thanks to my position, my cool blood, and other fortunate
+circumstances, nothing hindered me from being a stay-at-home, and
+remaining a spectator with folded hands; but you had to go out into
+the world, to turn up your shirt-sleeves, to toil and labour. Our
+paths lay apart--but see how near one another we are. We speak almost
+the same language, with half a hint we understand one another, we grew
+up on the same ideas. There is little left us now, brother; we are the
+last of the Mohicans! We might differ and even quarrel in old days,
+when so much life still remained before us; but now, when the ranks
+are thinned about us, when the younger generation is coming upon us
+with other aims than ours, we ought to keep close to one another! Let
+us clink glasses, Dmitri, and sing as of old, _Gaudeamus igitur_!'
+
+The friends clinked their glasses, and sang the old student song in
+strained voices, all out of tune, in the true Russian style.
+
+'So you are going now to your country place,' Lezhnyov began again.
+'I don't think you will stay there long, and I cannot imagine where and
+how you will end. . . . But remember, whatever happens to you, you
+have always a place, a nest where you can hide yourself. That is my
+home,--do you hear, old fellow? Thought, too, has its veterans; they,
+too, ought to have their home.'
+
+Rudin got up.
+
+'Thanks, brother,' he said, 'thanks! I will not forget this in you.
+Only I do not deserve a home. I have wasted my life, and have not
+served thought, as I ought.'
+
+'Hush!' said Lezhnyov. 'Every man remains what Nature has made him,
+and one cannot ask more of him! You have called yourself the Wandering
+Jew. . . . But how do you know,--perhaps it was right for you to be
+ever wandering, perhaps in that way you are fulfilling a higher
+calling than you know; popular wisdom says truly that we are all in
+God's hands. You are going, Dmitri,' continued Lezhnyov, seeing that
+Rudin was taking his hat 'You will not stop the night?'
+
+'Yes, I am going! Good-bye. Thanks. . . . I shall come to a bad end.'
+
+'God only knows. . . . You are resolved to go?'
+
+'Yes, I am going. Good-bye. Do not remember evil against me.'
+
+'Well, do not remember evil against me either,--and don't forget what
+I said to you. Good-bye.' . . .
+
+The friends embraced one another. Rudin went quickly away.
+
+Lezhnyov walked up and down the room a long while, stopped before the
+window thinking, and murmured half aloud, 'Poor fellow!' Then sitting
+down to the table, he began to write a letter to his wife.
+
+But outside a wind had risen, and was howling with ill-omened moans,
+and wrathfully shaking the rattling window-panes. The long autumn
+night came on. Well for the man on such a night who sits under the
+shelter of home, who has a warm corner in safety. . . . And the Lord
+help all homeless wanderers!
+
+
+
+
+
+On a sultry afternoon on the 26th of July in 1848 in Paris, when the
+Revolution of the _ateliers nationaux_ had already been almost
+suppressed, a line battalion was taking a barricade in one of the
+narrow alleys of the Faubourg St Antoine. A few gunshots had already
+broken it; its surviving defenders abandoned it, and were only
+thinking of their own safety, when suddenly on the very top of the
+barricade, on the frame of an overturned omnibus, appeared a tall man
+in an old overcoat, with a red sash, and a straw hat on his grey
+dishevelled hair. In one hand he held a red flag, in the other a blunt
+curved sabre, and as he scrambled up, he shouted something in a shrill
+strained voice, waving his flag and sabre. A Vincennes tirailleur took
+aim at him--fired. The tall man dropped the flag--and like a sack he
+toppled over face downwards, as though he were falling at some one's
+feet. The bullet had passed through his heart.
+
+'_Tiens_!' said one of the escaping revolutionists to another, '_on
+vient de tuer le Polonais_!
+
+'_Bigre_!' answered the other, and both ran into the cellar of a house,
+the shutters of which were all closed, and its wall streaked with
+traces of powder and shot.
+
+This 'Polonais' was Dmitri Rudin.
+
+
+
+
+THE END,
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Rudin
+by Ivan Turgenev
+Translated by Constance Garnett
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RUDIN ***
+
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