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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Rudin, by Ivan Turgenev
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Rudin
+
+Author: Ivan Turgenev
+
+Translator: Constance Garnett
+
+Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6900]
+Posting Date: June 1, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS 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, but 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
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