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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Eve, 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: On the Eve
+
+Author: Ivan Turgenev
+
+Commentator: Edward Garnett
+
+Translator: Constance Garnett
+
+Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6902]
+Posting Date: April 22, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON THE EVE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ON THE EVE
+
+A Novel
+
+
+By Ivan Turgenev
+
+Translated from the Russian By Constance Garnett
+
+[With an introduction by Edward Garnett]
+
+
+London: William Heinemann 1895
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+This exquisite novel, first published in 1859, like so many great works
+of art, holds depths of meaning which at first sight lie veiled under
+the simplicity and harmony of the technique. To the English reader _On
+the Eve_ is a charmingly drawn picture of a quiet Russian household,
+with a delicate analysis of a young girl's soul; but to Russians it is
+also a deep and penetrating diagnosis of the destinies of the Russia of
+the fifties.
+
+Elena, the Russian girl, is the central figure of the novel. In
+comparing her with Turgenev's other women, the reader will remark that
+he is allowed to come into closer spiritual contact with her than even
+with Lisa. The successful portraits of women drawn by men in fiction are
+generally figures for the imagination to play on; however much that is
+told to one about them, the secret springs of their character are left
+a little obscure, but when Elena stands before us we know all the
+innermost secrets of her character. Her strength of will, her serious,
+courageous, proud soul, her capacity for passion, all the play of her
+delicate idealistic nature troubled by the contradictions, aspirations,
+and unhappiness that the dawn of love brings to her, all this is
+conveyed to us by the simplest and the most consummate art. The diary
+(chapter xvi.) that Elena keeps is in itself a masterly revelation of
+a young girl's heart; it has never been equalled by any other novelist.
+How exquisitely Turgenev reveals his characters may be seen by an
+examination of the parts Shubin the artist, and Bersenyev the student,
+play towards Elena. Both young men are in love with her, and the
+description of their after relations as friends, and the feelings of
+Elena towards them, and her own self-communings are interwoven with
+unfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling shades of the
+mental life, which in the hands of many latter-day novelists build up
+characters far too thin and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenev
+are used with deftness and certainty to bring to light that great
+kingdom which is always lying hidden beneath the surface, beneath
+the common-place of daily life. In the difficult art of literary
+perspective, in the effective grouping of contrasts in character and
+the criss-cross of the influence of the different individuals, lies the
+secret of Turgenev's supremacy. As an example the reader may note how he
+is made to judge Elena through six pairs of eyes. Her father's contempt
+for his daughter, her mother's affectionate bewilderment, Shubin's
+petulant criticism, Bersenyev's half hearted enthralment, Insarov's
+recognition, and Zoya's indifference, being the facets for converging
+light on Elena's sincerity and depth of soul. Again one may note
+Turgenev's method for rehabilitating Shubin in our eyes; Shubin is
+simply made to criticise Stahov; the thing is done in a few seemingly
+careless lines, but these lines lay bare Shubin's strength and weakness,
+the fluidity of his nature. The reader who does not see the art which
+underlies almost every line of _On the Eve_ is merely paying the highest
+tribute to that art; as often the clear waters of a pool conceal its
+surprising depth. Taking Shubin's character as an example of creative
+skill, we cannot call to mind any instance in the range of European
+fiction where the typical artist mind, on its lighter sides, has been
+analysed with such delicacy and truth as here by Turgenev. Hawthorne and
+others have treated it, but the colour seems to fade from their artist
+characters when a comparison is made between them and Shubin. And yet
+Turgenev's is but a sketch of an artist, compared with, let us say, the
+admirable figure of Roderick Hudson. The irresponsibility, alertness,
+the whimsicality and mobility of Shubin combine to charm and irritate
+the reader in the exact proportion that such a character affects him in
+actual life; there is not the least touch of exaggeration, and all the
+values are kept to a marvel. Looking at the minor characters, perhaps
+one may say that the husband, Stahov, will be the most suggestive, and
+not the least familiar character, to English households. His essentially
+masculine meanness, his self-complacency, his unconscious indifference
+to the opinion of others, his absurdity as '_un pere de famille_' is
+balanced by the foolish affection and jealousy which his wife, Anna
+Vassilyevna, cannot help feeling towards him. The perfect balance and
+duality of Turgenev's outlook is here shown by the equal cleverness with
+which he seizes on and quietly derides the typical masculine and typical
+feminine attitude in such a married life as the two Stahovs'.
+
+Turning to the figure of the Bulgarian hero, it is interesting to find
+from the _Souvenirs sur Tourguenev_ (published in 1887) that Turgenev's
+only distinct failure of importance in character drawing, Insarov, was
+not taken from life, but was the legacy of a friend Karateieff, who
+implored Turgenev to work out an unfinished conception. Insarov is a
+figure of wood. He is so cleverly constructed, and the central idea
+behind him is so strong, that his wooden joints move naturally, and the
+spectator has only the instinct, not the certainty, of being cheated.
+The idea he incarnates, that of a man whose soul is aflame with
+patriotism, is finely suggested, but an idea, even a great one, does
+not make an individuality. And in fact Insarov is not a man, he is an
+automaton. To compare Shubin's utterances with his is to perceive that
+there is no spontaneity, no inevitability in Insarov. He is a patriotic
+clock wound up to go for the occasion, and in truth he is very useful.
+Only on his deathbed, when the unexpected happens, and the machinery
+runs down, do we feel moved. Then, he appears more striking dead than
+alive--a rather damning testimony to the power Turgenev credits him
+with. This artistic failure of Turgenev's is, as he no doubt recognised,
+curiously lessened by the fact that young girls of Elena's lofty
+idealistic type are particularly impressed by certain stiff types of
+men of action and great will-power, whose capacity for moving straight
+towards a certain goal by no means implies corresponding brain-power.
+The insight of a Shubin and the moral worth of a Bersenyev are not so
+valuable to the Elenas of this world, whose ardent desire to be made
+good use of, and to seek some great end, is best developed by strength
+of aim in the men they love.
+
+And now to see what the novel before us means to the Russian mind, we
+must turn to the infinitely suggestive background. Turgenev's genius was
+of the same force in politics as in art; it was that of seeing aright.
+He saw his country as it was, with clearer eyes than any man before
+or since. If Tolstoi is a purer native expression of Russia's force,
+Turgenev is the personification of Russian aspiration working with the
+instruments of wide cosmopolitan culture. As a critic of his countrymen
+nothing escaped Turgenev's eye, as a politician he foretold nearly all
+that actually came to pass in his life, and as a consummate artist,
+led first and foremost by his love for his art, his novels are undying
+historical pictures. It is not that there is anything allegorical in
+his novels--allegory is at the furthest pole from his method: it is
+that whenever he created an important figure in fiction, that figure is
+necessarily a revelation of the secrets of the fatherland, the soil, the
+race. Turgenev, in short, was a psychologist not merely of men, but of
+nations; and so the chief figure of _On the Eve_, Elena, foreshadows
+and stands for the rise of young Russia in the sixties. Elena is young
+Russia, and to whom does she turn in her prayer for strength? Not to
+Bersenyev, the philosopher, the dreamer; not to Shubin, the man carried
+outside himself by every passing distraction; but to the strong man,
+Insarov. And here the irony of Insarov being made a foreigner, a
+Bulgarian, is significant of Turgenev's distrust of his country's
+weakness. The hidden meaning of the novel is a cry to the coming men
+to unite their strength against the foe without and the foe within the
+gates; it is an appeal to them not only to hasten the death of the
+old regime of Nicolas I, but an appeal to them to conquer their
+sluggishness, their weakness, and their apathy. It is a cry for Men.
+Turgenev sought in vain in life for a type of man to satisfy Russia, and
+ended by taking no living model for his hero, but the hearsay Insarov, a
+foreigner. Russia has not yet produced men of this type. But the artist
+does not despair of the future. Here we come upon one of the most
+striking figures of Turgenev--that of Uvar Ivanovitch. He symbolises the
+ever-predominant type of Russian, the sleepy, slothful Slav of to-day,
+yesterday, and to-morrow. He is the Slav whose inherent force Europe is
+as ignorant of as he is himself. Though he speaks only twenty sentences
+in the book he is a creation of Tolstoian force. His very words are
+dark and of practically no significance. There lies the irony of the
+portrait. The last words of the novel, the most biting surely that
+Turgenev ever wrote, contain the whole essence of _On the Eve_. On the
+Eve of What? one asks. Time has given contradictory answers to the men
+of all parties. The Elenas of to-day need not turn their eyes abroad
+to find their counterpart in spirit; so far at least the pessimists are
+refuted: but the note of death that Turgenev strikes in his marvellous
+chapter on Venice has still for young Russia an ominous echo--so many
+generations have arisen eager, only to be flung aside helpless, that one
+asks, what of the generation that fronts Autocracy to-day?
+
+'Do you remember I asked you, "Will there ever be men among us?" and
+you answered, "there will be. O primaeval force!" And now from here in
+"my poetic distance", I will ask you again, "What do you say, Uvar
+Ivanovitch, will there be?"'
+
+'Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers, and fixed his enigmatical stare
+into the far distance.'
+
+This creation of an universal national type, out of the flesh and blood
+of a fat taciturn country gentleman, brings us to see that Turgenev
+was not merely an artist, but that he was a poet using fiction as his
+medium. To this end it is instructive to compare Jane Austen, perhaps
+the greatest English exponent of the domestic novel, with the Russian
+master, and to note that, while as a novelist she emerges favourably
+from the comparison, she is absolutely wanting in his poetic insight.
+How petty and parochial appears her outlook in _Emma_, compared to the
+wide and unflinching gaze of Turgenev. She painted most admirably the
+English types she knew, and how well she knew them! but she failed to
+correlate them with the national life; and yet, while her men and women
+were acting and thinking, Trafalgar and Waterloo were being fought and
+won. But each of Turgenev's novels in some subtle way suggests that the
+people he introduces are playing their little part in a great national
+drama everywhere around us, invisible, yet audible through the clamour
+of voices near us. And so _On the Eve_, the work of a poet, has certain
+deep notes, which break through the harmonious tenor of the whole, and
+strangely and swiftly transfigure the quiet story, troubling us with a
+dawning consciousness of the march of mighty events. Suddenly a strange
+sense steals upon the reader that he is living in a perilous atmosphere,
+filling his heart with foreboding, and enveloping at length the
+characters themselves, all unconsciously awaiting disaster in the
+sunny woods and gardens of Kuntsovo. But not till the last chapters are
+reached does the English reader perceive that in recreating for him the
+mental atmosphere of a single educated Russian household, Turgenev has
+been casting before his eyes the faint shadow of the national drama
+which was indeed played, though left unfinished, on the Balkan
+battlefields of 1876-7. Briefly, Turgenev, in sketching the dawn of love
+in a young girl's soul, has managed faintly, but unmistakably, to make
+spring and flourish in our minds the ineradicable, though hidden, idea
+at the back of Slav thought--the unification of the Slav races. How
+doubly welcome that art should be which can lead us, the foreigners,
+thus straight to the heart of the national secrets of a great people,
+secrets which our own critics and diplomatists must necessarily
+misrepresent. Each of Turgenev's novels may be said to contain
+a light-bringing rejoinder to the old-fashioned criticism of the
+Muscovite, current up to the rise of the Russian novel, and still,
+unfortunately, lingering among us; but _On the Eve_, of all the novels,
+contains perhaps the most instructive political lesson England can
+learn. Europe has always had, and most assuredly England has been
+over-rich in those alarm-monger critics, watchdogs for ever baying at
+Slav cupidity, treachery, intrigue, and so on and so on. It is useful to
+have these well-meaning animals on the political premises, giving noisy
+tongue whenever the Slav stretches out his long arm and opens his drowsy
+eyes, but how rare it is to find a man who can teach us to interpret
+a nation's aspirations, to gauge its inner force, its aim, its
+inevitability. Turgenev gives us such clues. In the respectful, if
+slightly forced, silence that has been imposed by certain recent
+political events on the tribe of faithful watchdogs, it may be permitted
+to one to say, that whatever England's interest may be in relation to
+Russia's development, it is better for us to understand the force of
+Russian aims, before we measure our strength against it And a novel,
+such as On the Eve, though now nearly forty years old, and to the
+short-sighted out of date, reveals in a flash the attitude of the Slav
+towards his political destiny. His aspirations may have to slumber
+through policy or necessity; they may be distorted or misrepresented, or
+led astray by official action, but we confess that for us, _On the Eve_
+suggests the existence of a mighty lake, whose waters, dammed back for a
+while, are rising slowly, but are still some way from the brim. How long
+will it take to the overflow? Nobody knows; but when the long winter
+of Russia's dark internal policy shall be broken up, will the snows,
+melting on the mountains, stream south-west, inundating the Valley of
+the Danube? Or, as the national poet, Pushkin, has sung, will there be
+a pouring of many Slavonian rivulets into the Russian sea, a powerful
+attraction of the Slav races towards a common centre to create an era of
+peace and development within, whereby Russia may rise free and rejoicing
+to face her great destinies? Hard and bitter is the shaping of nations.
+Uvar Ivanovitch still fixes his enigmatical stare into the far distance.
+
+EDWARD GARNETT
+
+January 1895.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE NAMES OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK
+
+NIKOLA'I [Nicolas] ARTE'MYEVITCH STA'HOV.
+
+A'NNA VASSI'LYEVNA.
+
+ELE'NA [LE'NOTCHKA, Helene] NIKOLA'EVNA.
+
+ZO'YA [Zoe] NIKI'TISHNA MU'LLER.
+
+ANDRE'I PETRO'VITCH BERSE'NYEV.
+
+PA'VEL [Paul] YA'KOVLITCH (or YA'KOVITCH) SHU'BIN.
+
+DMI'TRI NIKANO'ROVITCH (or NIKANO'RITCH) INSA'ROV.
+
+YEGO'R ANDRE'ITCH KURNATO'VSKY.
+
+UVA'R IVA'NOVITCH STA'HOV.
+
+AUGUSTI'NA CHRISTIA'NOVNA.
+
+A'NNUSHKA.
+
+
+In transcribing the Russian names into English--
+
+a has the sound of a in father. e,,.............a in pane.
+i,,.............ee. u,,............. oo. y is always consonantal except
+when it is the last letter of the word.
+g is always hard.
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+On one of the hottest days of the summer of 1853, in the shade of a tall
+lime-tree on the bank of the river Moskva, not far from Kuntsovo, two
+young men were lying on the grass. One, who looked about twenty-three,
+tall and swarthy, with a sharp and rather crooked nose, a high forehead,
+and a restrained smile on his wide mouth, was lying on his back and
+gazing meditatively into the distance, his small grey eyes half closed.
+The other was lying on his chest, his curly, fair head propped on his
+two hands; he, too, was looking away into the distance. He was three
+years older than his companion, but seemed much younger. His moustache
+was only just growing, and his chin was covered with a light curly down.
+There was something childishly pretty, something attractively delicate,
+in the small features of his fresh round face, in his soft brown eyes,
+lovely pouting lips, and little white hands. Everything about him
+was suggestive of the happy light-heartedness of perfect health and
+youth--the carelessness, conceit, self-indulgence, and charm of youth.
+He used his eyes, and smiled and leaned his head as boys do who know
+that people look at them admiringly. He wore a loose white coat,
+made like a blouse, a blue kerchief wrapped his slender throat, and a
+battered straw hat had been flung on the grass beside him.
+
+His companion seemed elderly in comparison with him; and no one would
+have supposed, from his angular figure, that he too was happy and
+enjoying himself. He lay in an awkward attitude; his large head--wide
+at the crown and narrower at the base--hung awkwardly on his long neck;
+awkwardness was expressed in the very pose of his hands, of his body,
+tightly clothed in a short black coat, and of his long legs with their
+knees raised, like the hind-legs of a grasshopper. For all that, it was
+impossible not to recognise that he was a man of good education; the
+whole of his clumsy person bore the stamp of good-breeding; and his
+face, plain and even a little ridiculous as it was, showed a kindly
+nature and a thoughtful habit. His name was Andrei Petrovitch Bersenyev;
+his companion, the fair-haired young man, was called Pavel Yakovlitch
+Shubin.
+
+'Why don't you lie on your face, like me?' began Shubin. 'It's ever
+so much nicer so; especially when you kick up your heels and clap them
+together--like this. You have the grass under your nose; when you're
+sick of staring at the landscape you can watch a fat beetle crawling on
+a blade of grass, or an ant fussing about. It's really much nicer.
+But you've taken up a pseudo-classical pose, for all the world like a
+ballet-dancer, when she reclines upon a rock of paste-board. You should
+remember you have a perfect right to take a rest now. It's no joking
+matter to come out third! Take your ease, sir; give up all exertion, and
+rest your weary limbs!'
+
+Shubin delivered this speech through his nose in a half-lazy,
+half-joking voice (spoilt children speak so to friends of the house who
+bring them sweetmeats), and without waiting for an answer he went on:
+
+'What strikes me most forcibly in the ants and beetles and other worthy
+insects is their astounding seriousness. They run to and fro with such
+a solemn air, as though their life were something of such importance!
+A man the lord of creation, the highest being, stares at them, if you
+please, and they pay no attention to him. Why, a gnat will even settle
+on the lord of creation's nose, and make use of him for food. It's most
+offensive. And, on the other hand, how is their life inferior to ours?
+And why shouldn't they take themselves seriously, if we are to be
+allowed to take ourselves seriously? There now, philosopher, solve that
+problem for me! Why don't you speak? Eh?'
+
+'What?' said Bersenyev, starting.
+
+'What!' repeated Shubin. 'Your friend lays his deepest thoughts before
+you, and you don't listen to him.'
+
+'I was admiring the view. Look how hot and bright those fields are in
+the sun.' Bersenyev spoke with a slight lisp.
+
+'There's some fine colour laid on there,' observed Shubin. 'Nature's a
+good hand at it, that's the fact!'
+
+Bersenyev shook his head.
+
+'You ought to be even more ecstatic over it than I. It's in your line:
+you're an artist.'
+
+'No; it's not in my line,' rejoined Shubin, putting his hat on the back
+of his head. 'Flesh is my line; my work's with flesh--modelling flesh,
+shoulders, legs, and arms, and here there's no form, no finish; it's all
+over the place.... Catch it if you can.'
+
+'But there is beauty here, too,' remarked Bersenyev.--'By the way, have
+you finished your bas-relief?'
+
+'Which one?'
+
+'The boy with the goat.'
+
+'Hang it! Hang it! Hang it!' cried Shubin, drawling--'I looked at the
+genuine old things, the antiques, and I smashed my rubbish to pieces.
+You point to nature, and say "there's beauty here, too." Of course,
+there's beauty in everything, even in your nose there's beauty; but you
+can't try after all kinds of beauty. The ancients, they didn't try after
+it; beauty came down of itself upon their creations from somewhere or
+other--from heaven, I suppose. The whole world belonged to them; it's
+not for us to be so large in our reach; our arms are short. We drop our
+hook into one little pool, and keep watch over it. If we get a bite, so
+much the better, if not----'
+
+Shubin put out his tongue.
+
+'Stop, stop,' said Bensenyev, 'that's a paradox. If you have no sympathy
+for beauty, if you do not love beauty wherever you meet it, it will not
+come to you even in your art. If a beautiful view, if beautiful music
+does not touch your heart; I mean, if you are not sympathetic----'
+
+'Ah, you are a confirmed sympathetic!' broke in Shubin, laughing at the
+new title he had coined, while Bersenyev sank into thought.
+
+'No, my dear fellow,' Shubin went on, 'you're a clever person, a
+philosopher, third graduate of the Moscow University; it's dreadful
+arguing with you, especially for an ignoramus like me, but I tell you
+what; besides my art, the only beauty I love is in women... in girls,
+and even that's recently.'
+
+He turned over on to his back and clasped his hands behind his head.
+
+A few instants passed by in silence. The hush of the noonday heat lay
+upon the drowsy, blazing fields.
+
+'Speaking of women,' Shubin began again, 'how is it no one looks after
+Stahov? Did you see him in Moscow?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'The old fellow's gone clean off his head. He sits for whole days
+together at his Augustina Christianovna's, he's bored to death, but
+still he sits there. They gaze at one another so stupidly.... It's
+positively disgusting to see them. Man's a strange animal. A man with
+such a home; but no, he must have his Augustina Christianovna! I don't
+know anything more repulsive than her face, just like a duck's! The
+other day I modelled a caricature of her in the style of Dantan. It
+wasn't half bad. I will show it you.'
+
+'And Elena Nikolaevna's bust?' inquired Bersenyev, 'is it getting on?'
+
+'No, my dear boy, it's not getting on. That face is enough to drive one
+to despair. The lines are pure, severe, correct; one would think there
+would be no difficulty in catching a likeness. It's not as easy as one
+would think though. It's like a treasure in a fairy-tale--you can't get
+hold of it. Have you ever noticed how she listens? There's not a single
+feature different, but the whole expression of the eyes is constantly
+changing, and with that the whole face changes. What is a sculptor--and
+a poor one too--to do with such a face? She's a wonderful creature--a
+strange creature,' he added after a brief pause.
+
+'Yes; she is a wonderful girl,' Bersenyev repeated after him.
+
+'And she the daughter of Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov! And after that
+people talk about blood, about stock! The amusing part of it is that
+she really is his daughter, like him, as well as like her mother, Anna
+Vassilyevna. I respect Anna Vassilyevna from the depths of my heart,
+she's been awfully good to me; but she's no better than a hen. Where
+did Elena get that soul of hers? Who kindled that fire in her? There's
+another problem for you, philosopher!'
+
+But as before, the 'philosopher' made no reply. Bersenyev did not in
+general err on the side of talkativeness, and when he did speak,
+he expressed himself awkwardly, with hesitation, and unnecessary
+gesticulation. And at this time a kind of special stillness had fallen
+on his soul, a stillness akin to lassitude and melancholy. He had not
+long come from town after prolonged hard work, which had absorbed him
+for many hours every day. The inactivity, the softness and purity of the
+air, the consciousness of having attained his object, the whimsical and
+careless talk of his friend, and the image--so suddenly called up--of
+one dear to him, all these impressions different--yet at the same time
+in a way akin--were mingled in him into a single vague emotion, which at
+once soothed and excited him, and robbed him of his power. He was a very
+highly strung young man.
+
+It was cool and peaceful under the lime-tree; the flies and bees seemed
+to hum more softly as they flitted within its circle of shade. The fresh
+fine grass, of purest emerald green, without a tinge of gold, did not
+quiver, the tall flower stalks stood motionless, as though enchanted.
+On the lower twigs of the lime-tree the little bunches of yellow flowers
+hung still as death. At every breath a sweet fragrance made its way to
+the very depths of the lungs, and eagerly the lungs inhaled it. Beyond
+the river in the distance, right up to the horizon, all was bright and
+glowing. At times a slight breeze passed over, breaking up the landscape
+and intensifying the brightness; a sunlit vapour hung over the fields.
+No sound came from the birds; they do not sing in the heat of noonday;
+but the grasshoppers were chirping everywhere, and it was pleasant as
+they sat in the cool and quietness, to hear that hot, eager sound of
+life; it disposed to slumber and inclined the heart to reveries.
+
+'Have you noticed,' began Bersenyev, eking out his words with
+gesticulations, 'what a strange feeling nature produces in us?
+Everything in nature is so complete, so defined, I mean to say, so
+content with itself, and we understand that and admire it, and at the
+same time, in me at least, it always excites a kind of restlessness, a
+kind of uneasiness, even melancholy. What is the meaning of it? Is it
+that in the face of nature we are more vividly conscious of all our
+incompleteness, our indefiniteness, or have we little of that content
+with which nature is satisfied, but something else--I mean to say, what
+we need, nature has not?'
+
+'H'm,' replied Shubin, 'I'll tell you, Andrei Petrovitch, what all that
+comes from. You describe the sensations of a solitary man, who is not
+living but only looking on in ecstasy. Why look on? Live, yourself, and
+you will be all right. However much you knock at nature's door, she will
+never answer you in comprehensible words, because she is dumb. She will
+utter a musical sound, or a moan, like a harp string, but don't expect
+a song from her. A living heart, now--that will give you your
+answer--especially a woman's heart. So, my dear fellow, I advise you
+to get yourself some one to share your heart, and all your distressing
+sensations will vanish at once. "That's what we need," as you say. This
+agitation, and melancholy, all that, you know, is simply a hunger of
+a kind. Give the stomach some real food, and everything will be right
+directly. Take your place in the landscape, live in the body, my dear
+boy. And after all, what is nature? what's the use of it? Only hear the
+word, love--what an intense, glowing sound it has! Nature--what a cold,
+pedantic expression. And so' (Shubin began humming), 'my greetings to
+Marya Petrovna! or rather,' he added, 'not Marya Petrovna, but it's all
+the same! _Voo me compreny_.'
+
+Bersenyev got up and stood with his chin leaning on his clasped hands.
+'What is there to laugh at?' he said, without looking at his companion,
+'why should you scoff? Yes, you are right: love is a grand word, a grand
+feeling.... But what sort of love do you mean?'
+
+Shubin too, got up. 'What sort? What you like, so long as it's there. I
+will confess to you that I don't believe in the existence of different
+kinds of love. If you are in love----'
+
+'With your whole heart,' put in Bersenyev.
+
+'Well, of course, that's an understood thing; the heart's not an apple;
+you can't divide it. If you're in love, you're justified. And I wasn't
+thinking of scoffing. My heart's as soft at this moment as if it had
+been melted.... I only wanted to explain why nature has the effect on us
+you spoke of. It's because she arouses in us a need for love, and is not
+capable of satisfying it. Nature is gently driving us to other living
+embraces, but we don't understand, and expect something from nature
+herself. Ah, Andrei, Andrei, this sun, this sky is beautiful, everything
+around us is beautiful, still you are sad; but if, at this instant, you
+were holding the hand of a woman you loved, if that hand and the whole
+woman were yours, if you were even seeing with her eyes, feeling not
+your own isolated emotion, but her emotion--nature would not make you
+melancholy or restless then, and you would not be observing nature's
+beauty; nature herself would be full of joy and praise; she would
+be re-echoing your hymn, because then you would have given her--dumb
+nature--speech!'
+
+Shubin leaped on to his feet and walked twice up and down, but Bersenyev
+bent his head, and his face was overcast by a faint flush.
+
+'I don't altogether agree with you,' he began: 'nature does not always
+urge us... towards love.' (He could not at once pronounce the word.)
+'Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful... yes, insoluble
+mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing
+us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks in
+her as loudly as life.'
+
+'In love, too, there is both life and death,' interposed Shubin.
+
+'And then,' Bersenyev went on: 'when I, for example, stand in the spring
+in the forest, in a green glade, when I can fancy the romantic notes of
+Oberon's fairy horn' (Bersenyev was a little ashamed when he had spoken
+these words)--'is that, too----'
+
+'The thirst for love, the thirst for happiness, nothing more!' broke
+in Shubin. 'I, too, know those notes, I know the languor and the
+expectation which come upon the soul in the forest's shade, in its deep
+recesses, or at evening in the open fields when the sun sets and the
+river mist rises behind the bushes. But forest, and river, and fields,
+and sky, every cloud and every blade of grass sets me expecting, hoping
+for happiness, I feel the approach, I hear the voice of happiness
+calling in everything. "God of my worship, bright and gay!" That was how
+I tried to begin my sole poem; you must own it's a splendid first line,
+but I could never produce a second. Happiness! happiness! as long as
+life is not over, as long as we have the use of all our limbs, as long
+as we are going up, not down, hill! Damn it all!' pursued Shubin with
+sudden vehemence, 'we are young, and neither fools nor monsters; we will
+conquer happiness for ourselves!'
+
+He shook his curls, and turned a confident almost challenging glance
+upwards to the sky. Bersenyev raised his eyes and looked at him.
+
+'Is there nothing higher than happiness?' he commented softly.
+
+'And what, for instance?' asked Shubin, stopping short.
+
+'Why, for instance, you and I are, as you say, young; we are good men,
+let us suppose; each of us desires happiness for himself.... But is that
+word, happiness, one that could unite us, set us both on fire, and make
+us clasp each other's hands? Isn't that word an egoistic one; I mean,
+isn't it a source of disunion?'
+
+'Do you know words, then, that unite men?'
+
+'Yes; and they are not few in number; and you know them, too.'
+
+'Eh? What words?'
+
+'Well, even Art--since you are an artist--Country, Science, Freedom,
+Justice.'
+
+'And what of love?' asked Shubin.
+
+'Love, too, is a word that unites; but not the love you are eager for
+now; the love which is not enjoyment, the love which is self-sacrifice.'
+
+Shubin frowned.
+
+'That's all very well for Germans; I want to love for myself; I want to
+be first.'
+
+'To be first,' repeated Bersenyev. 'But it seems to me that to put
+one's-self in the second place is the whole significance of our life.'
+
+'If all men were to act as you advise,' commented Shubin with a
+plaintive expression, 'none on earth would eat pine-apples; every one
+would be offering them to other people.'
+
+'That's as much as to say, pine-apples are not necessary; but you need
+not be alarmed; there will always be plenty of people who like them
+enough to take the bread out of other men's mouths to get them.'
+
+Both friends were silent a little.
+
+'I met Insarov again the other day,' began Bersenyev. 'I invited him to
+stay with me; I really must introduce him to you--and to the Stahovs.'
+
+'Who is Insarov? Ah, to be sure, isn't it that Servian or Bulgarian you
+were telling me about? The patriot? Now isn't it he who's at the bottom
+of all these philosophical ideas?'
+
+'Perhaps.'
+
+'Is he an exceptional individual?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Clever? Talented?'
+
+'Clever--talented--I don't know, I don't think so.'
+
+'Not? Then, what is there remarkable in him?'
+
+'You shall see. But now I think it's time to be going. Anna Vassilyevna
+will be waiting for us, very likely. What's the time?'
+
+'Three o'clock. Let us go. How baking it is! This conversation has set
+all my blood aflame. There was a moment when you, too,... I am not an
+artist for nothing; I observe everything. Confess, you are interested in
+a woman?'
+
+Shubin tried to get a look at Bersenyev's face, but he turned away and
+walked out of the lime-tree's shade. Shubin went after him, moving
+his little feet with easy grace. Bersenyev walked clumsily, with his
+shoulders high and his neck craned forward. Yet, he looked a man of
+finer breeding than Shubin; more of a gentleman, one might say, if that
+word had not been so vulgarised among us.
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The young men went down to the river Moskva and walked along its bank.
+There was a breath of freshness from the water, and the soft plash of
+tiny waves caressed the ear.
+
+'I would have another bathe,' said Shubin, 'only I'm afraid of being
+late. Look at the river; it seems to beckon us. The ancient Greeks
+would have beheld a nymph in it. But we are not Greeks, O nymph! we are
+thick-skinned Scythians.'
+
+'We have _roussalkas_,' observed Bersenyev.
+
+'Get along with your _roussalkas!_ What's the use to me--a sculptor--of
+those children of a cold, terror-stricken fancy, those shapes begotten
+in the stifling hut, in the dark of winter nights? I want light,
+space.... Good God, when shall I go to Italy? When----'
+
+'To Little Russia, I suppose you mean?'
+
+'For shame, Andrei Petrovitch, to reproach me for an act of
+unpremeditated folly, which I have repented bitterly enough without
+that. Oh, of course, I behaved like a fool; Anna Vassilyevna most kindly
+gave me the money for an expedition to Italy, and I went off to the
+Little Russians to eat dumplings and----'
+
+'Don't let me have the rest, please,' interposed Bersenyev.
+
+'Yet still, I will say, the money was not spent in vain. I saw there
+such types, especially of women.... Of course, I know; there is no
+salvation to be found outside of Italy!'
+
+'You will go to Italy,' said Bersenyev, without turning towards him,
+'and will do nothing. You will always be pluming your wings and never
+take flight. We know you!'
+
+'Stavasser has taken flight.... And he's not the only one. If I don't
+fly, it will prove that I'm a sea penguin, and have no wings. I
+am stifled here, I want to be in Italy,' pursued Shubin, 'there is
+sunshine, there is beauty.'
+
+A young girl in a large straw hat, with a pink parasol on her shoulder,
+came into sight at that instant, in the little path along which the
+friends were walking.
+
+'But what do I see? Even here, there is beauty--coming to meet us! A
+humble artist's compliments to the enchanting Zoya!' Shubin cried at
+once, with a theatrical flourish of his hat.
+
+The young girl to whom this exclamation referred, stopped, threatening
+him with her finger, and, waiting for the two friends to come up to her,
+she said in a ringing voice:
+
+'Why is it, gentlemen, you don't come in to dinner? It is on the table.'
+
+'What do I hear?' said Shubin, throwing his arms up. 'Can it be that
+you, bewitching Zoya, faced such heat to come and look for us? Dare I
+think that is the meaning of your words? Tell me, can it be so? Or no,
+do not utter that word; I shall die of regret on the spot'
+
+'Oh, do leave off, Pavel Yakovlitch,' replied the young girl with some
+annoyance. 'Why will you never talk to me seriously? I shall be angry,'
+she added with a little coquettish grimace, and she pouted.
+
+'You will not be angry with me, ideal Zoya Nikitishna; you would not
+drive me to the dark depths of hopeless despair. And I can't talk to you
+seriously, because I'm not a serious person.'
+
+The young girl shrugged her shoulders, and turned to Bersenyev.
+
+'There, he's always like that; he treats me like a child; and I am
+eighteen. I am grown-up now.'
+
+'O Lord!' groaned Shubin, rolling his eyes upwards; and Bersenyev smiled
+quietly.
+
+The girl stamped with her little foot.
+
+'Pavel Yakovlitch, I shall be angry! _Helene_ was coming with me,' she
+went on, 'but she stopped in the garden. The heat frightened her, but I
+am not afraid of the heat. Come along.'
+
+She moved forward along the path, slightly swaying her slender figure at
+each step, and with a pretty black-mittened little hand pushing her long
+soft curls back from her face.
+
+The friends walked after her (Shubin first pressed his hands, without
+speaking, to his heart, and then flung them higher than his head), and
+in a few instants they came out in front of one of the numerous country
+villas with which Kuntsovo is surrounded. A small wooden house with a
+gable, painted a pink colour, stood in the middle of the garden, and
+seemed to be peeping out innocently from behind the green trees. Zoya
+was the first to open the gate; she ran into the garden, crying: 'I have
+brought the wanderers!' A young girl, with a pale and expressive face,
+rose from a garden bench near the little path, and in the doorway of
+the house appeared a lady in a lilac silk dress, holding an embroidered
+cambric handkerchief over her head to screen it from the sun, and
+smiling with a weary and listless air.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Anna Vassilyevna Stahov--her maiden name was Shubin--had been left,
+at seven years old, an orphan and heiress of a pretty considerable
+property. She had very rich and also very poor relations; the poor
+relations were on her father's, the rich on her mother's side; the
+latter including the senator Volgin and the Princes Tchikurasov. Prince
+Ardalion Tchikurasov, who had been appointed her guardian, placed her in
+the best Moscow boarding-school, and when she left school, took her into
+his own home. He kept open house, and gave balls in the winter. Anna
+Vassilyevna's future husband, Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov, captured
+her heart at one of these balls when she was arrayed in a charming
+rose-coloured gown, with a wreath of tiny roses. She had treasured
+that wreath all her life. Nikolai Artemyevitch Stahov was the son of
+a retired captain, who had been wounded in 1812, and had received a
+lucrative post in Petersburg. Nikolai Artemyevitch entered the School
+of Cadets at sixteen, and left to go into the Guards. He was a handsome,
+well-made fellow, and reckoned almost the most dashing beau at evening
+parties of the middling sort, which were those he frequented for the
+most part; he had not gained a footing in the best society. From his
+youth he had been absorbed by two ideals: to get into the Imperial
+adjutants, and to make a good marriage; the first ideal he soon
+discarded, but he clung all the more closely to the second, and it
+was with that object that he went every winter to Moscow. Nikolai
+Artemyevitch spoke French fairly, and passed for being a philosopher,
+because he was not a rake. Even while he was no more than an ensign, he
+was given to discussing, persistently, such questions as whether it is
+possible for a man to visit the whole of the globe in the course of
+his whole lifetime, whether it is possible for a man to know what is
+happening at the bottom of the sea; and he always maintained the view
+that these things were impossible.
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch was twenty-five years old when he 'hooked' Anna
+Vassilyevna; he retired from the service and went into the country
+to manage the property. He was soon tired of country life, and as the
+peasants' labour was all commuted for rent he could easily leave the
+estate; he settled in Moscow in his wife's house. In his youth he had
+played no games of any kind, but now he developed a passion for loto,
+and, when loto was prohibited, for whist. At home he was bored; he
+formed a connection with a widow of German extraction, and spent almost
+all his time with her. In the year 1853 he had not moved to Kuntsovo; he
+stopped at Moscow, ostensibly to take advantage of the mineral waters;
+in reality, he did not want to part from his widow. He did not, however,
+have much conversation with her, but argued more than ever as to whether
+one can foretell the weather and such questions. Some one had once
+called him a _frondeur_; he was greatly delighted with that name. 'Yes,'
+he thought, letting the corners of his mouth drop complacently and
+shaking his head, 'I am not easily satisfied; you won't take me in.'
+Nikolai Artemyevitch's _frondeurism_ consisted in saying, for instance,
+when he heard the word nerves: 'And what do you mean by nerves?' or
+if some one alluded in his presence to the discoveries of astronomy,
+asking: 'And do you believe in astronomy?' When he wanted to overwhelm
+his opponent completely, he said: 'All that is nothing but words.' It
+must be admitted that to many persons remarks of that kind seemed
+(and still seem) irrefutable arguments. But Nikolai Artemyevitch never
+suspected that Augustina Christianovna, in letters to her cousin,
+Theodolina Peterzelius, called him _Mein Pinselchen_.
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch's wife, Anna Vassilyevna, was a thin, little woman
+with delicate features, and a tendency to be emotional and melancholy.
+At school, she had devoted herself to music and reading novels;
+afterwards she abandoned all that. She began to be absorbed in
+dress, and that, too, she gave up. She did, for a time, undertake her
+daughter's education, but she got tired of that too, and handed her
+over to a governess. She ended by spending her whole time in sentimental
+brooding and tender melancholy. The birth of Elena Nikolaevna had ruined
+her health, and she could never have another child. Nikolai Artemyevitch
+used to hint at this fact in justification of his intimacy with
+Augustina Christianovna. Her husband's infidelity wounded Anna
+Vassilyevna deeply; she had been specially hurt by his once giving
+his German woman, on the sly, a pair of grey horses out of her (Anna
+Vassilyevna's) own stable. She had never reproached him to his face, but
+she complained of him secretly to every one in the house in turn, even
+to her daughter. Anna Vassilyevna did not care for going out, she liked
+visitors to come and sit with her and talk to her; she collapsed at once
+when she was left alone. She had a very tender and loving heart; life
+had soon crushed her.
+
+Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin happened to be a distant cousin of hers. His
+father had been a government official in Moscow. His brothers had
+entered cadets' corps; he was the youngest, his mother's darling, and
+of delicate constitution; he stopped at home. They intended him for the
+university, and strained every effort to keep him at the gymnasium.
+From his early years he began to show an inclination for sculpture.
+The ponderous senator, Volgin, saw a statuette of his one day at his
+aunt's--he was then sixteen--and declared that he intended to protect
+this youthful genius. The sudden death of Shubin's father very nearly
+effected a complete transformation in the young man's future. The
+senator, the patron of genius, made him a present of a bust of Homer
+in plaster, and did nothing more. But Anna Vassilyevna helped him with
+money, and at nineteen he scraped through into the university in the
+faculty of medicine. Pavel felt no inclination for medical science, but,
+as the university was then constituted, it was impossible for him to
+enter in any other faculty. Besides, he looked forward to studying
+anatomy. But he did not complete his anatomical studies; at the end of
+the first year, and before the examination, he left the university to
+devote himself exclusively to his vocation. He worked zealously, but
+by fits and starts; he used to stroll about the country round Moscow
+sketching and modelling portraits of peasant girls, and striking up
+acquaintance with all sorts of people, young and old, of high and low
+degree, Italian models and Russian artists. He would not hear of
+the Academy, and recognised no one as a teacher. He was possessed of
+unmistakeable talent; it began to be talked about in Moscow. His mother,
+who came of a good Parisian family, a kind-hearted and clever woman, had
+taught him French thoroughly and had toiled and thought for him day and
+night. She was proud of him, and when, while still young in years, she
+died of consumption, she entreated Anna Vassilyevna to take him under
+her care. He was at that time twenty-one. Anna Vassilyevna carried out
+her last wish; a small room in the lodge of the country villa was given
+up to him.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+'Come to dinner, come along,' said the lady of the house in a plaintive
+voice, and they all went into the dining-room. 'Sit beside me, _Zoe_,'
+added Anna Vassilyevna, 'and you, Helene, take our guest; and you,
+_Paul_, please don't be naughty and tease _Zoe_. My head aches to-day.'
+
+Shubin again turned his eyes up to the ceiling; Zoe responded with
+a half-smile. This Zoe, or, to speak more precisely, Zoya Nikitishna
+Mueller, was a pretty, fair-haired, half-Russian German girl, with a
+little nose rather wide at the end, and tiny red lips. She sang Russian
+ballads fairly well and could play various pieces, both lively and
+sentimental, very correctly on the piano. She dressed with taste, but in
+a rather childish style, and even over-precisely. Anna Vassilyevna
+had taken her as a companion for her daughter, and she kept her
+almost constantly at her side. Elena did not complain of that; she was
+absolutely at a loss what to say to Zoya when she happened to be left
+alone with her.
+
+The dinner lasted rather a long time; Bersenyev talked with Elena about
+university life, and his own plans and hopes; Shubin listened without
+speaking, ate with an exaggerated show of greediness, and now and then
+threw comic glances of despair at Zoya, who responded always with the
+same phlegmatic smile. After dinner, Elena with Bersenyev and Shubin
+went into the garden; Zoya looked after them, and, with a slight shrug
+of her shoulders, sat down to the piano. Anna Vassilyevna began: 'Why
+don't you go for a walk, too?' but, without waiting for a reply, she
+added: 'Play me something melancholy.'
+
+'_La derniere pensee de Weber_?' suggested Zoya.
+
+'Ah, yes, Weber,' replied Anna Vassilyevna. She sank into an easy chair,
+and the tears started on to her eyelashes.
+
+Meanwhile, Elena led the two friends to an arbour of acacias, with a
+little wooden table in the middle, and seats round. Shubin looked round,
+and, whispering 'Wait a minute!' he ran off, skipping and hopping to his
+own room, brought back a piece of clay, and began modelling a bust of
+Zoya, shaking his head and muttering and laughing to himself.
+
+'At his old tricks again,' observed Elena, glancing at his work. She
+turned to Bersenyev, with whom she was continuing the conversation begun
+at dinner.
+
+'My old tricks!' repeated Shubin. 'It's a subject that's simply
+inexhaustible! To-day, particularly, she drove me out of all patience.'
+
+'Why so?' inquired Elena. 'One would think you were speaking of some
+spiteful, disagreeable old woman. She is a pretty young girl.'
+
+'Of course,' Shubin broke in, 'she is pretty, very pretty; I am sure
+that no one who meets her could fail to think: that's some one I should
+like to--dance a polka with; I'm sure, too, that she knows that, and
+is pleased.... Else, what's the meaning of those modest simpers, that
+discreet air? There, you know what I mean,' he muttered between his
+teeth. 'But now you're absorbed in something else.'
+
+And breaking up the bust of Zoya, Shubin set hastily to modelling and
+kneading the clay again with an air of vexation.
+
+'So it is your wish to be a professor?' said Elena to Bersenyev.
+
+'Yes,' he answered, squeezing his red hands between his knees. 'That's
+my cherished dream. Of course I know very well how far I fall short
+of being--to be worthy of such a high--I mean that I am too little
+prepared, but I hope to get permission for a course of travel abroad; I
+shall pass three or four years in that way, if necessary, and then----'
+
+He stopped, dropped his eyes, then quickly raising them again, he gave
+an embarrassed smile and smoothed his hair. When Bersenyev was talking
+to a woman, his words came out more slowly, and he lisped more than
+ever.
+
+'You want to be a professor of history?' inquired Elena.
+
+'Yes, or of philosophy,' he added, in a lower voice--'if that is
+possible.'
+
+'He's a perfect devil at philosophy already,' observed Shubin, making
+deep lines in the clay with his nail. 'What does he want to go abroad
+for?'
+
+'And will you be perfectly contented with such a position?' asked Elena,
+leaning on her elbow and looking him straight in the face.
+
+'Perfectly, Elena Nikolaevna, perfectly. What could be a finer vocation?
+To follow, perhaps, in the steps of Timofay Nikolaevitch ... The very
+thought of such work fills me with delight and confusion ... yes,
+confusion... which comes from a sense of my own deficiency. My dear
+father consecrated me to this work... I shall never forget his last
+words.'...
+
+'Your father died last winter?'
+
+'Yes, Elena Nikolaevna, in February.'
+
+'They say,' Elena went on, 'that he left a remarkable work in
+manuscript; is it true?'
+
+'Yes. He was a wonderful man. You would have loved him, Elena
+Nikolaevna.'
+
+'I am sure I should. And what was the subject of the work?'
+
+'To give you an idea of the subject of the work in few words, Elena
+Nikolaevna, would be somewhat difficult. My father was a learned man, a
+Schellingist; he used terms which were not always very clear----'
+
+'Andrei Petrovitch,' interrupted Elena, 'excuse my ignorance, what does
+that mean, a Schellingist?'
+
+Bersenyev smiled slightly.
+
+'A Schellingist means a follower of Schelling, a German philosopher; and
+what the philosophy of Schelling consists in----'
+
+'Andrei Petrovitch!' cried Shubin suddenly, 'for mercy's sake! Surely
+you don't mean to give Elena Nikolaevna a lecture on Schelling? Have
+pity on her!'
+
+'Not a lecture at all,' murmured Bersenyev, turning crimson. 'I
+meant----'
+
+'And why not a lecture?' put in Elena. 'You and I are in need of
+lectures, Pavel Yakovlitch.'
+
+Shubin stared at her, and suddenly burst out laughing.
+
+'What are you laughing at?' she said coldly, and almost sharply.
+
+Shubin did not answer.
+
+'Come, don't be angry,' he said, after a short pause. 'I am sorry. But
+really it's a strange taste, upon my word, to discuss philosophy in
+weather like this under these trees. Let us rather talk of nightingales
+and roses, youthful eyes and smiles.'
+
+'Yes; and of French novels, and of feminine frills and fal-lals,' Elena
+went on.
+
+'Fal-lals, too, of course,' rejoined Shubin, 'if they're pretty.'
+
+'Of course. But suppose we don't want to talk of frills? You are always
+boasting of being a free artist; why do you encroach on the freedom of
+others? And allow me to inquire, if that's your bent of mind, why do you
+attack Zoya? With her it would be peculiarly suitable to talk of frills
+and roses?'
+
+Shubin suddenly fired up, and rose from the garden seat. 'So that's it?'
+he began in a nervous voice. 'I understand your hint; you want to send
+me away to her, Elena Nikolaevna. In other words, I'm not wanted here.'
+
+'I never thought of sending you away from here.'
+
+'Do you mean to say,' Shubin continued passionately, 'that I am not
+worthy of other society, that I am her equal; that I am as vain, and
+silly and petty as that mawkish German girl? Is that it?'
+
+Elena frowned. 'You did not always speak like that of her, Pavel
+Yakovlitch,' she remarked.
+
+'Ah! reproaches! reproaches now!' cried Shubin. 'Well, then I don't
+deny there was a moment--one moment precisely, when those fresh, vulgar
+cheeks of hers... But if I wanted to repay you with reproaches and
+remind you... Good-bye,' he added suddenly, 'I feel I shall say
+something silly.'
+
+And with a blow on the clay moulded into the shape of a head, he ran out
+of the arbour and went off to his room.
+
+'What a baby,' said Elena, looking after him.
+
+'He's an artist,' observed Bersenyev with a quiet smile. 'All artists
+are like that. One must forgive them their caprices. That is their
+privilege.'
+
+'Yes,' replied Elena; 'but Pavel has not so far justified his claim to
+that privilege in any way. What has he done so far? Give me your arm,
+and let us go along the avenue. He was in our way. We were talking of
+your father's works.'
+
+Bersenyev took Elena's arm in his, and walked beside her through the
+garden; but the conversation prematurely broken off was not renewed.
+Bersenyev began again unfolding his views on the vocation of a
+professor, and on his own future career. He walked slowly beside Elena,
+moving awkwardly, awkwardly holding her arm, sometimes jostling his
+shoulder against her, and not once looking at her; but his talk
+flowed more easily, even if not perfectly freely; he spoke simply and
+genuinely, and his eyes, as they strayed slowly over the trunks of the
+trees, the sand of the path and the grass, were bright with the quiet
+ardour of generous emotions, while in his soothed voice there was heard
+the delight of a man who feels that he is succeeding in expressing
+himself to one very dear to him. Elena listened to him very attentively,
+and turning half towards him, did not take her eyes off his face,
+which had grown a little paler--off his eyes, which were soft and
+affectionate, though they avoided meeting her eyes. Her soul expanded;
+and something tender, holy, and good seemed half sinking into her heart,
+half springing up within it.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Shubin did not leave his room before night. It was already quite dark;
+the moon--not yet at the full--stood high in the sky, the milky way
+shone white, and the stars spotted the heavens, when Bersenyev, after
+taking leave of Anna Vassilyevna, Elena, and Zoya, went up to his
+friend's door. He found it locked. He knocked.
+
+'Who is there?' sounded Shubin's voice.
+
+'I,' answered Bersenyev.
+
+'What do you want?'
+
+'Let me in, Pavel; don't be sulky; aren't you ashamed of yourself?'
+
+'I am not sulky; I'm asleep and dreaming about Zoya.'
+
+'Do stop that, please; you're not a baby. Let me in. I want to talk to
+you.'
+
+'Haven't you had talk enough with Elena?'
+
+'Come, come; let me in!' Shubin responded by a pretended snore.
+
+Bersenyev shrugged his shoulders and turned homewards.
+
+The night was warm and seemed strangely still, as though everything were
+listening and expectant; and Bersenyev, enfolded in the still darkness,
+stopped involuntarily; and he, too, listened expectant. On the tree-tops
+near there was a faint stir, like the rustle of a woman's dress, awaking
+in him a feeling half-sweet, half-painful, a feeling almost of fright.
+He felt a tingling in his cheeks, his eyes were chill with momentary
+tears; he would have liked to move quite noiselessly, to steal along in
+secret. A cross gust of wind blew suddenly on him; he almost shuddered,
+and his heart stood still; a drowsy beetle fell off a twig and dropped
+with a thud on the path; Bersenyev uttered a subdued 'Ah!' and
+again stopped. But he began to think of Elena, and all these passing
+sensations vanished at once; there remained only the reviving sense of
+the night freshness, of the walk by night; his whole soul was absorbed
+by the image of the young girl. Bersenyev walked with bent head,
+recalling her words, her questions. He fancied he heard the tramp of
+quick steps behind. He listened: some one was running, some one was
+overtaking him; he heard panting, and suddenly from a black circle of
+shadow cast by a huge tree Shubin sprang out before him, quite pale in
+the light of the moon, with no cap on his disordered curls.
+
+'I am glad you came along this path,' he said with an effort. 'I should
+not have slept all night, if I had not overtaken you. Give me your hand.
+Are you going home?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'I will see you home then.'
+
+'But why have you come without a cap on?'
+
+'That doesn't matter. I took off my neckerchief too. It is quite warm.'
+
+The friends walked a few paces.
+
+'I was very stupid to-day, wasn't I?' Shubin asked suddenly.
+
+'To speak frankly, you were. I couldn't make you out. I have never
+seen you like that before. And what were you angry about really? Such
+trifles!'
+
+'H'm,' muttered Shubin. 'That's how you put it; but they were not
+trifles to me. You see,' he went on, 'I ought to point out to you that
+I--that--you may think what you please of me--I--well there! I'm in love
+with Elena.'
+
+'You in love with Elena!' repeated Bersenyev, standing still.
+
+'Yes,' pursued Shubin with affected carelessness. 'Does that astonish
+you? I will tell you something else. Till this evening I still had
+hopes that she might come to love me in time. But to-day I have seen
+for certain that there is no hope for me. She is in love with some one
+else.'
+
+'Some one else? Whom?'
+
+'Whom? You!' cried Shubin, slapping Bersenyev on the shoulder.
+
+'Me!'
+
+'You,' repeated Shubin.
+
+Bersenyev stepped back a pace, and stood motionless. Shubin looked
+intently at him.
+
+'And does that astonish you? You are a modest youth. But she loves you.
+You can make your mind easy on that score.'
+
+'What nonsense you talk!' Bersenyev protested at last with an air of
+vexation.
+
+'No, it's not nonsense. But why are we standing still? Let us go on.
+It's easier to talk as we walk. I have known her a long while, and I
+know her well. I cannot be mistaken. You are a man after her own heart.
+There was a time when she found me agreeable; but, in the first place,
+I am too frivolous a young man for her, while you are a serious person,
+you are a morally and physically well-regulated person, you--hush, I
+have not finished, you are a conscientiously disposed enthusiast,
+a genuine type of those devotees of science, of whom--no not of
+whom--whereof the middle class of Russian gentry are so justly proud!
+And, secondly, Elena caught me the other day kissing Zoya's arms!'
+
+'Zoya's?'
+
+'Yes, Zoya's. What would you have? She has such fine shoulders.'
+
+'Shoulders?'
+
+'Well there, shoulders and arms, isn't it all the same? Elena caught me
+in this unconstrained proceeding after dinner, and before dinner I had
+been abusing Zoya in her hearing. Elena unfortunately doesn't understand
+how natural such contradictions are. Then you came on the scene, you
+have faith in--what the deuce is it you have faith in?... You blush and
+look confused, you discuss Schiller and Schelling (she's always on the
+look-out for remarkable men), and so you have won the day, and I, poor
+wretch, try to joke--and all the while----'
+
+Shubin suddenly burst into tears, turned away, and dropping upon the
+ground clutched at his hair.
+
+Bersenyev went up to him.
+
+'Pavel,' he began, 'what childishness this is! Really! what's the matter
+with you to-day? God knows what nonsense you have got into your head,
+and you are crying. Upon my word, I believe you must be putting it on.'
+
+Shubin lifted up his head. The tears shone bright on his cheeks in the
+moonlight, but there was a smile on his face.
+
+'Andrei Petrovitch,' he said, 'you may think what you please about me.
+I am even ready to agree with you that I'm hysterical now, but, by God,
+I'm in love with Elena, and Elena loves you. I promised, though, to see
+you home, and I will keep my promise.'
+
+He got up.
+
+'What a night! silvery, dark, youthful! How sweet it must be to-night
+for men who are loved! How sweet for them not to sleep! Will you sleep,
+Andrei Petrovitch?'
+
+Bersenyev made no answer, and quickened his pace.
+
+'Where are you hurrying to?' Shubin went on. 'Trust my words, a night
+like this will never come again in your life, and at home, Schelling
+will keep. It's true he did you good service to-day; but you need not
+hurry for all that. Sing, if you can sing, sing louder than ever; if
+you can't sing, take off your hat, throw up your head, and smile to the
+stars. They are all looking at you, at you alone; the stars never do
+anything but look down upon lovers--that's why they are so charming. You
+are in love, I suppose, Andrei Petrovitch?... You don't answer me... why
+don't you answer?' Shubin began again: 'Oh, if you feel happy, be quiet,
+be quiet! I chatter because I am a poor devil, unloved, I am a jester,
+an artist, a buffoon; but what unutterable ecstasy would I quaff in the
+night wind under the stars, if I knew that I were loved!... Bersenyev,
+are you happy?'
+
+Bersenyev was silent as before, and walked quickly along the smooth
+path. In front, between the trees, glimmered the lights of the little
+village in which he was staying; it consisted of about a dozen small
+villas for summer visitors. At the very beginning of the village, to the
+right of the road, a little shop stood under two spreading birch-trees;
+its windows were all closed already, but a wide patch of light fell
+fan-shaped from the open door upon the trodden grass, and was cast
+upwards on the trees, showing up sharply the whitish undersides of
+the thick growing leaves. A girl, who looked like a maid-servant, was
+standing in the shop with her back against the doorpost, bargaining
+with the shopkeeper; from beneath the red kerchief which she had wrapped
+round her head, and held with bare hand under her chin, could just be
+seen her round cheek and slender throat. The young men stepped into the
+patch of light; Shubin looked into the shop, stopped short, and cried
+'Annushka!' The girl turned round quickly. They saw a nice-looking,
+rather broad but fresh face, with merry brown eyes and black eyebrows.
+'Annushka!' repeated Shubin. The girl saw him, looked scared and
+shamefaced, and without finishing her purchases, she hurried down the
+steps, slipped quickly past, and, hardly looking round, went along the
+road to the left. The shopkeeper, a puffy man, unmoved by anything in
+the world, like all country shopkeepers gasped and gaped after her,
+while Shubin turned to Bersenyev with the words: 'That's... you see...
+there's a family here I know... so at their house... you mustn't
+imagine' ... and, without finishing his speech, he ran after the
+retreating girl.
+
+'You'd better at least wipe your tears away,' Bersenyev shouted after
+him, and he could not refrain from laughing. But when he got home, his
+face had not a mirthful expression; he laughed no longer. He had not for
+a single instant believed what Shubin had told him, but the words he had
+uttered had sunk deep into his soul.
+
+'Pavel was making a fool of me,' he thought; '... but she will love one
+day... whom will she love?'
+
+In Bersenyev's room there was a piano, small, and by no means new, but
+of a soft and sweet tone, though not perfectly in tune. Bersenyev sat
+down to it, and began to strike some chords. Like all Russians of
+good birth, he had studied music in his childhood, and like almost
+all Russian gentlemen, he played very badly; but he loved music
+passionately. Strictly speaking, he did not love the art, the forms in
+which music is expressed (symphonies and sonatas, even operas wearied
+him), but he loved the poetry of music: he loved those vague and sweet,
+shapeless, and all-embracing emotions which are stirred in the soul by
+the combinations and successions of sounds. For more than an hour,
+he did not move from the piano, repeating many times the same chords,
+awkwardly picking out new ones, pausing and melting over the minor
+sevenths. His heart ached, and his eyes more than once filled with
+tears. He was not ashamed of them; he let them flow in the darkness.
+'Pavel was right,' he thought, 'I feel it; this evening will not come
+again.' At last he got up, lighted a candle, put on his dressing-gown,
+took down from the bookshelf the second volume of Raumer's _History of
+the Hohenstaufen_, and sighing twice, he set to work diligently to read
+it.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Meanwhile, Elena had gone to her room, and sat down at the open window,
+her head resting on her hands. To spend about a quarter of an hour every
+evening at her bedroom window had become a habit with her. At this time
+she held converse with herself, and passed in review the preceding day.
+She had not long reached her twentieth year. She was tall, and had a
+pale and dark face, large grey eyes under arching brows, covered with
+tiny freckles, a perfectly regular forehead and nose, tightly compressed
+lips, and a rather sharp chin. Her hair, of a chestnut shade, fell low
+on her slender neck. In her whole personality, in the expression of her
+face, intent and a little timorous, in her clear but changing glance, in
+her smile, which was, as it were, intense, in her soft and uneven voice,
+there was something nervous, electric, something impulsive and hurried,
+something, in fact, which could never be attractive to every one, which
+even repelled some.
+
+Her hands were slender and rosy, with long fingers; her feet were
+slender; she walked swiftly, almost impetuously, her figure bent a
+little forward. She had grown up very strangely; first she idolised
+her father, then she became passionately devoted to her mother, and had
+grown cold to both of them, especially to her father. Of late years she
+had behaved to her mother as to a sick grandmother; while her father,
+who had been proud of her while she had been regarded as an exceptional
+child, had come to be afraid of her when she was grown up, and said of
+her that she was a sort of enthusiastic republican--no one could say
+where she got it from. Weakness revolted her, stupidity made her angry,
+and deceit she could never, never pardon. She was exacting beyond
+all bounds, even her prayers had more than once been mingled with
+reproaches. When once a person had lost her respect--and she passed
+judgment quickly, often too quickly--he ceased to exist for her. All
+impressions cut deeply into her heart; life was bitter earnest for her.
+
+The governess to whom Anna Vassilyevna had entrusted the finishing of
+her daughter's education--an education, we may remark in parenthesis,
+which had not even been begun by the languid lady--was a Russian, the
+daughter of a ruined official, educated at a government boarding school,
+a very emotional, soft-hearted, and deceitful creature; she was for
+ever falling in love, and ended in her fiftieth year (when Elena was
+seventeen) by marrying an officer of some sort, who deserted her without
+loss of time. This governess was very fond of literature, and wrote
+verses herself; she inspired Elena with a love of reading, but reading
+alone did not satisfy the girl; from childhood she thirsted for action,
+for active well-doing--the poor, the hungry, and the sick absorbed her
+thoughts, tormented her, and made her heart heavy; she used to dream
+of them, and to ply all her friends with questions about them; she gave
+alms carefully, with unconscious solemnity, almost with a thrill of
+emotion. All ill-used creatures, starved dogs, cats condemned to death,
+sparrows fallen out of the nest, even insects and reptiles found a
+champion and protector in Elena; she fed them herself, and felt no
+repugnance for them. Her mother did not interfere with her; but her
+father used to be very indignant with his daughter, for her--as he
+called it--vulgar soft-heartedness, and declared there was not room to
+move for the cats and dogs in the house. 'Lenotchka,' he would shout to
+her, 'come quickly, here's a spider eating a fly; come and save the poor
+wretch!' And Lenotchka, all excitement, would run up, set the fly free,
+and disentangle its legs. 'Well, now let it bite you a little, since you
+are so kind,' her father would say ironically; but she did not hear him.
+At ten years old Elena made friends with a little beggar-girl, Katya,
+and used to go secretly to meet her in the garden, took her nice things
+to eat, and presented her with handkerchiefs and pennies; playthings
+Katya would not take. She would sit beside her on the dry earth among
+the bushes behind a thick growth of nettles; with a feeling of delicious
+humility she ate her stale bread and listened to her stories. Katya had
+an aunt, an ill-natured old woman, who often beat her; Katya hated her,
+and was always talking of how she would run away from her aunt and live
+in '_God's full freedom_'; with secret respect and awe Elena drank in
+these new unknown words, stared intently at Katya and everything about
+her--her quick black, almost animal eyes, her sun-burnt hands, her
+hoarse voice, even her ragged clothes--seemed to Elena at such times
+something particular and distinguished, almost holy. Elena went back
+home, and for long after dreamed of beggars and God's freedom; she would
+dream over plans of how she would cut herself a hazel stick, and put on
+a wallet and run away with Katya; how she would wander about the roads
+in a wreath of corn-flowers; she had seen Katya one day in just such a
+wreath. If, at such times, any one of her family came into the room, she
+would shun them and look shy. One day she ran out in the rain to meet
+Katya, and made her frock muddy; her father saw her, and called her a
+slut and a peasant-wench. She grew hot all over, and there was something
+of terror and rapture in her heart Katya often sang some half-brutal
+soldier's song. Elena learnt this song from her.... Anna Vassilyevna
+overheard her singing it, and was very indignant.
+
+'Where did you pick up such horrors?' she asked her daughter.
+
+Elena only looked at her mother, and would not say a word; she felt that
+she would let them tear her to pieces sooner than betray her secret, and
+again there was a terror and sweetness in her heart. Her friendship with
+Katya, however, did not last long; the poor little girl fell sick of
+fever, and in a few days she was dead.
+
+Elena was greatly distressed, and spent sleepless nights for long after
+she heard of Katya's death. The last words of the little beggar-girl
+were constantly ringing in her ears, and she fancied that she was being
+called....
+
+The years passed and passed; swiftly and noiselessly, like waters
+running under the snow, Elena's youth glided by, outwardly uneventful,
+inwardly in conflict and emotion. She had no friend; she did not get
+on with any one of all the girls who visited the Stahovs' house. Her
+parents' authority had never weighed heavily on Elena, and from her
+sixteenth year she became absolutely independent; she began to live a
+life of her own, but it was a life of solitude. Her soul glowed, and the
+fire died away again in solitude; she struggled like a bird in a cage,
+and cage there was none; no one oppressed her, no one restrained her,
+while she was torn, and fretted within. Sometimes she did not understand
+herself, was even frightened of herself. Everything that surrounded her
+seemed to her half-senseless, half-incomprehensible. 'How live without
+love? and there's no one to love!' she thought; and she felt terror
+again at these thoughts, these sensations. At eighteen, she nearly
+died of malignant fever; her whole constitution--naturally healthy
+and vigorous--was seriously affected, and it was long before it could
+perfectly recover; the last traces of the illness disappeared at last,
+but Elena Nikolaevna's father was never tired of talking with some
+spitefulness of her 'nerves.' Sometimes she fancied that she wanted
+something which no one wanted, of which no one in all Russia dreamed.
+Then she would grow calmer, and even laugh at herself, and pass day
+after day unconcernedly; but suddenly some over-mastering, nameless
+force would surge up within her, and seem to clamour for an outlet. The
+storm passed over, and the wings of her soul drooped without flight; but
+these tempests of feeling cost her much. However she might strive not
+to betray what was passing within her, the suffering of the tormented
+spirit was expressed in her even external tranquillity, and her parents
+were often justified in shrugging their shoulders in astonishment, and
+failing to understand her 'queer ways.'
+
+On the day with which our story began, Elena did not leave the window
+till later than usual. She thought much of Bersenyev, and of her
+conversation with him. She liked him; she believed in the warmth of his
+feelings, and the purity of his aims. He had never before talked to her
+as on that evening. She recalled the expression of his timid eyes, his
+smiles--and she smiled herself and fell to musing, but not of him. She
+began to look out into the night from the open window. For a long time
+she gazed at the dark, low-hanging sky; then she got up, flung back her
+hair from her face with a shake of her head, and, herself not knowing
+why, she stretched out to it--to that sky--her bare chilled arms; then
+she dropped them, fell on her knees beside her bed, pressed her face
+into the pillow, and, in spite of all her efforts not to yield to the
+passion overwhelming her, she burst into strange, uncomprehending,
+burning tears.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+The next day at twelve o'clock, Bersenyev set off in a return coach
+to Moscow. He had to get some money from the post-office, to buy some
+books, and he wanted to seize the opportunity to see Insarov and have
+some conversation with him. The idea had occurred to Bersenyev, in the
+course of his last conversation with Shubin, to invite Insarov to stay
+with him at his country lodgings. But it was some time before he found
+him out; from his former lodging he had moved to another, which it was
+not easy to discover; it was in the court at the back of a squalid stone
+house, built in the Petersburg style, between Arbaty Road and Povarsky
+Street. In vain Bersenyev wandered from one dirty staircase to another,
+in vain he called first to a doorkeeper, then to a passer-by. Porters
+even in Petersburg try to avoid the eyes of visitors, and in Moscow much
+more so; no one answered Bersenyev's call; only an inquisitive tailor,
+in his shirt sleeves, with a skein of grey thread on his shoulder,
+thrust out from a high casement window a dirty, dull, unshorn face, with
+a blackened eye; and a black and hornless goat, clambering up on to a
+dung heap, turned round, bleated plaintively, and went on chewing the
+cud faster than before. A woman in an old cloak, and shoes trodden
+down at heel, took pity at last on Bersenyev and pointed out Insarov's
+lodging to him. Bersenyev found him at home. He had taken a room with
+the very tailor who had stared down so indifferently at the perplexity
+of a wandering stranger; a large, almost empty room, with dark green
+walls, three square windows, a tiny bedstead in one corner, a little
+leather sofa in another, and a huge cage hung up to the very ceiling;
+in this cage there had once lived a nightingale. Insarov came to meet
+Bersenyev directly he crossed the threshold, but he did not exclaim,
+'Ah, it's you!' or 'Good Heavens, what happy chance has brought you?' He
+did not even say, 'How do you do?' but simply pressed his hand and led
+him up to the solitary chair in the room.
+
+'Sit down,' he said, and he seated himself on the edge of the table.
+
+'I am, as you see, still in disorder,' added Insarov, pointing to a pile
+of papers and books on the floor, 'I haven't got settled in as I ought.
+I have not had time yet.'
+
+Insarov spoke Russian perfectly correctly, pronouncing every word fully
+and purely; but his guttural though pleasant voice sounded somehow not
+Russian. Insarov's foreign extraction (he was a Bulgarian by birth)
+was still more clearly marked in his appearance; he was a young man
+of five-and-twenty, spare and sinewy, with a hollow chest and knotted
+fingers; he had sharp features, a hooked nose, blue-black hair, a low
+forehead, small, intent-looking, deep-set eyes, and bushy eyebrows; when
+he smiled, splendid white teeth gleamed for an instant between his thin,
+hard, over-defined lips. He was in a rather old but tidy coat, buttoned
+up to the throat.
+
+'Why did you leave your old lodging?' Bersenyev asked him.
+
+'This is cheaper, and nearer to the university.'
+
+'But now it's vacation.... And what could induce you to stay in the
+town in summer! You should have taken a country cottage if you were
+determined to move.'
+
+Insarov made no reply to this remark, and offered Bersenyev a pipe,
+adding: 'Excuse me, I have no cigarettes or cigars.'
+
+Bersenyev began smoking the pipe.
+
+'Here have I,' he went on, 'taken a little house near Kuntsovo, very
+cheap and very roomy. In fact there is a room to spare upstairs.'
+
+Insarov again made no answer.
+
+Bersenyev drew at the pipe: 'I have even been thinking,' he began
+again, blowing out the smoke in a thin cloud, 'that if any one could
+be found--you, for instance, I thought of--who would care, who would
+consent to establish himself there upstairs, how nice it would be! What
+do you think, Dmitri Nikanorovitch?'
+
+Insarov turned his little eyes on him. 'You propose my staying in your
+country house?'
+
+'Yes; I have a room to spare there upstairs.'
+
+'Thanks very much, Andrei Petrovitch; but I expect my means would not
+allow of it.'
+
+'How do you mean?'
+
+'My means would not allow of my living in a country house. It's
+impossible for me to keep two lodgings.'
+
+'But of course I'--Bersenyev was beginning, but he stopped short. 'You
+would have no extra expense in that way,' he went on. 'Your lodging here
+would remain for you, let us suppose; but then everything there is very
+cheap; we could even arrange so as to dine, for instance, together.'
+
+Insarov said nothing. Bersenyev began to feel awkward.
+
+'You might at least pay me a visit sometime,' he began, after a short
+pause. 'A few steps from me there's a family living with whom I want
+very much to make you acquainted. If only you knew, Insarov, what a
+marvellous girl there is there! There is an intimate friend of mine
+staying there too, a man of great talent; I am sure you would get on
+with him. [The Russian loves to be hospitable--of his friends if he can
+offer nothing else.] Really, you must come. And what would be better
+still, come and stay with me, do. We could work and read together....
+I am busy, as you know, with history and philosophy. All that would
+interest you. I have a lot of books.'
+
+Insarov got up and walked about the room. 'Let me know,' he said, 'how
+much do you pay for your cottage?'
+
+'A hundred silver roubles.'
+
+'And how many rooms are there?'
+
+'Five.'
+
+'Then one may reckon that one room costs twenty roubles?'
+
+'Yes, one may reckon so.... But really it's utterly unnecessary for me.
+It simply stands empty.'
+
+'Perhaps so; but listen,' added Insarov, with a decided, but at the same
+time good-natured movement of his head: 'I can only take advantage of
+your offer if you agree to take the sum we have reckoned. Twenty roubles
+I am able to give, the more easily, since, as you say, I shall be
+economising there in other things.'
+
+'Of course; but really I am ashamed to take it.'
+
+'Otherwise it's impossible, Andrei Petrovitch.'
+
+'Well, as you like; but what an obstinate fellow you are!'
+
+Insarov again made no reply.
+
+The young men made arrangements as to the day on which Insarov was to
+move. They called the landlord; at first he sent his daughter, a little
+girl of seven, with a large striped kerchief on her head; she listened
+attentively, almost with awe, to all Insarov said to her, and went away
+without speaking; after her, her mother, a woman far gone with child,
+made her appearance, also wearing a kerchief on her head, but a very
+diminutive one. Insarov informed her that he was going to stay at a
+cottage near Kuntsovo, but should keep on his lodging and leave all his
+things in their keeping; the tailor's wife too seemed scared and
+went away. At last the man himself came in: he seemed to understand
+everything from the first, and only said gloomily: 'Near Kuntsovo?' then
+all at once he opened the door and shouted: 'Are you going to keep the
+lodgings then?' Insarov reassured him. 'Well, one must know,' repeated
+the tailor morosely, as he disappeared.
+
+Bersenyev returned home, well content with the success of his proposal.
+Insarov escorted him to the door with cordial good manners, not common
+in Russia; and, when he was left alone, carefully took off his coat, and
+set to work upon sorting his papers.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+On the evening of the same day, Anna Vassilyevna was sitting in her
+drawing-room and was on the verge of weeping. There were also in the
+room her husband and a certain Uvar Ivanovitch Stahov, a distant cousin
+of Nikolai Artemyevitch, a retired cornet of sixty years old, a man
+corpulent to the point of immobility, with sleepy yellowish eyes, and
+colourless thick lips in a puffy yellow face. Ever since he had retired,
+he had lived in Moscow on the interest of a small capital left him by
+a wife who came of a shopkeeper's family. He did nothing, and it is
+doubtful whether he thought of anything; if he did think, he kept his
+thoughts to himself. Once only in his life he had been thrown into a
+state of excitement and shown signs of animation, and that was when he
+read in the newspapers of a new instrument at the Universal Exhibition
+in London, the 'contro-bombardon,' and became very anxious to order this
+instrument for himself, and even made inquiries as to where to send
+the money and through what office. Uvar Ivanovitch wore a loose
+snuff-coloured coat and a white neckcloth, used to eat often and much,
+and in moments of great perplexity, that is to say when it happened to
+him to express some opinion, he would flourish the fingers of his right
+hand meditatively in the air, with a convulsive spasm from the first
+finger to the little finger, and back from the little finger to the
+first finger, while he articulated with effort, 'to be sure... there
+ought to... in some sort of a way.'
+
+Uvar Ivanovitch was sitting in an easy chair by the window, breathing
+heavily; Nikolai Artemyevitch was pacing with long strides up and
+down the room, his hands thrust into his pockets; his face expressed
+dissatisfaction.
+
+He stood still at last and shook his head. 'Yes;' he began, 'in our
+day young men were brought up differently. Young men did not permit
+themselves to be lacking in respect to their elders. And nowadays, I can
+only look on and wonder. Possibly, I am all wrong, and they are quite
+right; possibly. But still I have my own views of things; I was not born
+a fool. What do you think about it, Uvar Ivanovitch?'
+
+Uvar Ivanovitch could only look at him and work his fingers.
+
+'Elena Nikolaevna, for instance,' pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, 'Elena
+Nikolaevna I don't pretend to understand. I am not elevated enough for
+her. Her heart is so large that it embraces all nature down to the least
+spider or frog, everything in fact except her own father. Well, that's
+all very well; I know it, and I don't trouble myself about it. For
+that's nerves and education and lofty aspirations, and all that is not
+in my line. But Mr. Shubin... admitting he's a wonderful artist--quite
+exceptional--that, I don't dispute; to show want of respect to his
+elder, a man to whom, at any rate, one may say he is under great
+obligation; that I confess, _dans mon gros bon sens_, I cannot
+pass over. I am not exacting by nature, no, but there is a limit to
+everything.'
+
+Anna Vassilyevna rang the bell in a tremor. A little page came in.
+
+'Why is it Pavel Yakovlitch does not come?' she said, 'what does it
+mean; I call him, and he doesn't come?'
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'And what is the object, may I ask, of your wanting to send for him? I
+don't expect that at all, I don't wish it even!'
+
+'What's the object, Nikolai Artemyevitch? He has disturbed you; very
+likely he has checked the progress of your cure. I want to have an
+explanation with him. I want to know how he has dared to annoy you.'
+
+'I tell you again, that I do not ask that. And what can induce you ...
+_devant les domestiques_!'
+
+Anna Vassilyevna flushed a little. 'You need not say that, Nikolai
+Artemyevitch. I never... _devant les domestiques_... Fedushka, go and
+see you bring Pavel Yakovlitch here at once.'
+
+The little page went off.
+
+'And that's absolutely unnecessary,' muttered Nikolai Artemyevitch
+between his teeth, and he began again pacing up and down the room. 'I
+did not bring up the subject with that object.'
+
+'Good Heavens, Paul must apologise to you.'
+
+'Good Heavens, what are his apologies to me? And what do you mean by
+apologies? That's all words.'
+
+'Why, he must be corrected.'
+
+'Well, you can correct him yourself. He will listen to you sooner than
+to me. For my part I bear him no grudge.'
+
+'No, Nikolai Artemyevitch, you've not been yourself ever since you
+arrived. You have even to my eyes grown thinner lately. I am afraid your
+treatment is doing you no good.'
+
+'The treatment is quite indispensable,' observed Nikolai Artemyevitch,
+'my liver is affected.'
+
+At that instant Shubin came in. He looked tired. A slight almost
+ironical smile played on his lips.
+
+'You asked for me, Anna Vassilyevna?' he observed.
+
+'Yes, certainly I asked for you. Really, Paul, this is dreadful. I am
+very much displeased with you. How could you be wanting in respect to
+Nikolai Artemyevitch?'
+
+'Nikolai Artemyevitch has complained of me to you?' inquired Shubin, and
+with the same smile on his lips he looked at Stahov. The latter turned
+away, dropping his eyes.
+
+'Yes, he complains of you. I don't know what you have done amiss, but
+you ought to apologise at once, because his health is very much deranged
+just now, and indeed we all ought when we are young to treat our
+benefactors with respect.'
+
+'Ah, what logic!' thought Shubin, and he turned to Stahov. 'I am ready
+to apologise to you, Nikolai Artemyevitch,' he said with a polite
+half-bow, 'if I have really offended you in any way.'
+
+'I did not at all... with that idea,' rejoined Nikolai Artemyevitch,
+still as before avoiding Shubin's eyes. 'However, I will readily forgive
+you, for, as you know, I am not an exacting person.'
+
+'Oh, that admits of no doubt!' said Shubin. 'But allow me to be
+inquisitive; is Anna Vassilyevna aware precisely what constituted my
+offence?'
+
+'No, I know nothing,' observed Anna Vassilyevna, craning forward her
+head expectantly.
+
+'O Good Lord!' exclaimed Nikolai Artemyevitch hurriedly, 'how often have
+I prayed and besought, how often have I said how I hate these scenes
+and explanations! When one's been away an age, and comes home hoping for
+rest--talk of the family circle, _interieur_, being a family man--and
+here one finds scenes and unpleasantnesses. There's not a minute of
+peace. One's positively driven to the club... or, or elsewhere. A man is
+alive, he has a physical side, and it has its claims, but here----'
+
+And without concluding his sentence Nikolai Artemyevitch went quickly
+out, slamming the door.
+
+Anna Vassilyevna looked after him. 'To the club!' she muttered bitterly:
+'you are not going to the club, profligate? You've no one at the club
+to give away my horses to--horses from my own stable--and the grey ones
+too! My favourite colour. Yes, yes, fickle-hearted man,' she went on
+raising her voice, 'you are not going to the club, As for you, Paul,'
+she pursued, getting up, 'I wonder you're not ashamed. I should have
+thought you would not be so childish. And now my head has begun to ache.
+Where is Zoya, do you know?'
+
+'I think she's upstairs in her room. The wise little fox always hides in
+her hole when there's a storm in the air.'
+
+'Come, please, please!' Anna Vassilyevna began searching about her.
+'Haven't you seen my little glass of grated horse-radish? Paul, be so
+good as not to make me angry for the future.'
+
+'How make you angry, auntie? Give me your little hand to kiss. Your
+horse-radish I saw on the little table in the boudoir.'
+
+'Darya always leaves it about somewhere,' said Anna Vassilyevna, and she
+walked away with a rustle of silk skirts.
+
+Shubin was about to follow her, but he stopped on hearing Uvar
+Ivanovitch's drawling voice behind him.
+
+'I would... have given it you... young puppy,' the retired cornet
+brought out in gasps.
+
+Shubin went up to him. 'And what have I done, then, most venerable Uvar
+Ivanovitch?'
+
+'How! you are young, be respectful. Yes indeed.'
+
+'Respectful to whom?'
+
+'To whom? You know whom. Ay, grin away.'
+
+Shubin crossed his arms on his breast.
+
+'Ah, you type of the choice element in drama,' he exclaimed, 'you
+primeval force of the black earth, cornerstone of the social fabric!'
+
+Uvar Ivanovitch's fingers began to work. 'There, there, my boy, don't
+provoke me.'
+
+'Here,' pursued Shubin, 'is a gentleman, not young to judge by
+appearances, but what blissful, child-like faith is still hidden in
+him! Respect! And do you know, you primitive creature, what Nikolai
+Artemyevitch was in a rage with me for? Why I spent the whole of this
+morning with him at his German woman's; we were singing the three of
+us--"Do not leave me." You should have heard us--that would have moved
+you. We sang and sang, my dear sir--and well, I got bored; I could see
+something was wrong, there was an alarming tenderness in the air. And
+I began to tease them both. I was very successful. First she was angry
+with me, then with him; and then he got angry with her, and told her
+that he was never happy except at home, and he had a paradise there; and
+she told him he had no morals; and I murmured "Ach!" to her in German.
+He walked off and I stayed behind; he came here, to his paradise that's
+to say, and he was soon sick of paradise, so he set to grumbling. Well
+now, who do you consider was to blame?'
+
+'You, of course,' replied Uvar Ivanovitch.
+
+Shubin stared at him. 'May I venture to ask you, most reverend
+knight-errant,' he began in an obsequious voice, 'these enigmatical
+words you have deigned to utter as the result of some exercise of your
+reflecting faculties, or under the influence of a momentary necessity to
+start the vibration in the air known as sound?'
+
+'Don't tempt me, I tell you,' groaned Uvar Ivanovitch.
+
+Shubin laughed and ran away. 'Hi,' shouted Uvar Ivanovitch a quarter of
+an hour later, 'you there... a glass of spirits.'
+
+A little page brought the glass of spirits and some salt fish on a tray.
+Uvar Ivanovitch slowly took the glass from the tray and gazed a long
+while with intense attention at it, as though he could not quite
+understand what it was he had in his hand. Then he looked at the page
+and asked him, 'Wasn't his name Vaska?' Then he assumed an air of
+resignation, drank off the spirit, munched the herring and was slowly
+proceeding to get his handkerchief out of his pocket. But the page had
+long ago carried off and put away the tray and the decanter, eaten up
+the remains of the herring and had time to go off to sleep, curled up in
+a great-coat of his master's, while Uvar Ivanovitch still continued to
+hold the handkerchief before him in his opened fingers, and with the
+same intense attention gazed now at the window, now at the floor and
+walls.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Shubin went back to his room in the lodge and was just opening a book,
+when Nikolai Artemyevitch's valet came cautiously into his room and
+handed him a small triangular note, sealed with a thick heraldic crest.
+'I hope,' he found in the note, 'that you as a man of honour will
+not allow yourself to hint by so much as a single word at a certain
+promissory note which was talked of this morning. You are acquainted
+with my position and my rules, the insignificance of the sum in itself
+and the other circumstances; there are, in fine, family secrets which
+must be respected, and family tranquillity is something so sacred that
+only _etres sans cour_ (among whom I have no reason to reckon you) would
+repudiate it! Give this note back to me.--N. S.'
+
+Shubin scribbled below in pencil: 'Don't excite yourself, I'm not quite
+a sneak yet,' and gave the note back to the man, and again began
+upon the book. But it soon slipped out of his hands. He looked at the
+reddening-sky, at the two mighty young pines standing apart from the
+other trees, thought 'by day pines are bluish, but how magnificently
+green they are in the evening,' and went out into the garden, in the
+secret hope of meeting Elena there. He was not mistaken. Before him on a
+path between the bushes he caught a glimpse of her dress. He went after
+her, and when he was abreast with her, remarked:
+
+'Don't look in my direction, I'm not worth it.'
+
+She gave him a cursory glance, smiled cursorily, and walked on further
+into the depths of the garden. Shubin went after her.
+
+'I beg you not to look at me,' he began, 'and then I address you;
+flagrant contradiction. But what of that? it's not the first time I've
+contradicted myself. I have just recollected that I have never begged
+your pardon as I ought for my stupid behaviour yesterday. You are not
+angry with me, Elena Nikolaevna, are you?'
+
+She stood still and did not answer him at once--not because she was
+angry, but because her thoughts were far away.
+
+'No,' she said at last, 'I am not in the least angry.' Shubin bit his
+lip.
+
+'What an absorbed... and what an indifferent face!' he muttered. 'Elena
+Nikolaevna,' he continued, raising his voice, 'allow me to tell you a
+little anecdote. I had a friend, and this friend also had a friend, who
+at first conducted himself as befits a gentleman but afterwards took
+to drink. So one day early in the morning, my friend meets him in the
+street (and by that time, note, the acquaintance has been completely
+dropped) meets him and sees he is drunk. My friend went and turned his
+back on him. But he ran up and said, "I would not be angry," says he,
+"if you refused to recognise me, but why should you turn your back
+on me? Perhaps I have been brought to this through grief. Peace to my
+ashes!"'
+
+Shubin paused.
+
+'And is that all?' inquired Elena.
+
+'Yes that's all.'
+
+'I don't understand you. What are you hinting at? You told me just now
+not to look your way.'
+
+'Yes, and now I have told you that it's too bad to turn your back on
+me.'
+
+'But did I?' began Elena.
+
+'Did you not?'
+
+Elena flushed slightly and held out her hand to Shubin. He pressed it
+warmly.
+
+'Here you seem to have convicted me of a bad feeling,' said Elena, 'but
+your suspicion is unjust. I was not even thinking of Avoiding you.'
+
+'Granted, granted. But you must acknowledge that at that minute you had
+a thousand ideas in your head of which you would not confide one to me.
+Eh? I've spoken the truth, I'm quite sure?'
+
+'Perhaps so.'
+
+'And why is it? why?'
+
+'My ideas are not clear to myself,' said Elena.
+
+'Then it's just the time for confiding them to some one else,' put in
+Shubin. 'But I will tell you what it really is. You have a bad opinion
+of me.'
+
+'I?'
+
+'Yes you; you imagine that everything in me is half-humbug because I am
+an artist, that I am incapable not only of doing anything--in that you
+are very likely right--but even of any genuine deep feeling; you think
+that I am not capable even of weeping sincerely, that I'm a gossip and
+a slanderer,--and all because I'm an artist. What luckless, God-forsaken
+wretches we artists are after that! You, for instance, I am ready to
+adore, and you don't believe in my repentance.'
+
+'No, Pavel Yakovlitch, I believe in your repentance and I believe in
+your tears. But it seems to me that even your repentance amuses you--yes
+and your tears too.'
+
+Shubin shuddered.
+
+'Well, I see this is, as the doctors say, a hopeless case, _casus
+incurabilis_. There is nothing left but to bow the head and submit. And
+meanwhile, good Heavens, can it be true, can I possibly be absorbed in
+my own egoism when there is a soul like this living at my side? And to
+know that one will never penetrate into that soul, never will know
+why it grieves and why it rejoices, what is working within it, what it
+desires--whither it is going... Tell me,' he said after a short silence,
+'could you never under any circumstances love an artist?'
+
+Elena looked straight into his eyes.
+
+'I don't think so, Pavel Yakovlitch; no.'
+
+'Which was to be proved,' said Shubin with comical dejection. 'After
+which I suppose it would be more seemly for me not to intrude on your
+solitary walk. A professor would ask you on what data you founded your
+answer no. I'm not a professor though, but a baby according to your
+ideas; but one does not turn one's back on a baby, remember. Good-bye!
+Peace to my ashes!'
+
+Elena was on the point of stopping him, but after a moment's thought she
+too said:
+
+'Good-bye.'
+
+Shubin went out of the courtyard. At a short distance from the Stahov's
+house he was met by Bersenyev. He was walking with hurried steps, his
+head bent and his hat pushed back on his neck.
+
+'Andrei Petrovitch!' cried Shubin.
+
+He stopped.
+
+'Go on, go on,' continued Shubin, 'I only shouted, I won't detain
+you--and you'd better slip straight into the garden--you'll find Elena
+there, I fancy she's waiting for you... she's waiting for some one
+anyway.... Do you understand the force of those words: she is waiting!
+And do you know, my dear boy, an astonishing circumstance? Imagine, it's
+two years now that I have been living in the same house with her, I'm
+in love with her, and it's only just now, this minute, that I've, not
+understood, but really seen her. I have seen her and I lifted up my
+hands in amazement. Don't look at me, please, with that sham sarcastic
+smile, which does not suit your sober features. Well, now, I suppose you
+want to remind me of Annushka. What of it? I don't deny it. Annushkas
+are on my poor level. And long life to all Annushkas and Zoyas and even
+Augustina Christianovnas! You go to Elena now, and I will make my way
+to--Annushka, you fancy? No, my dear fellow, worse than that; to Prince
+Tchikurasov. He is a Maecenas of a Kazan-Tartar stock, after the style
+of Volgin. Do you see this note of invitation, these letters, R.S.V.P.?
+Even in the country there's no peace for me. Addio!' Bersenyev listened
+to Shubin's tirade in silence, looking as though he were just a little
+ashamed of him. Then he went into the courtyard of the Stahovs' house.
+And Shubin did really go to Prince Tchikurasov, to whom with the most
+cordial air he began saying the most insulting things. The Maecenas of
+the Tartars of Kazan chuckled; the Maecenas's guests laughed, but no one
+felt merry, and every one was in a bad temper when the party broke up.
+So two gentlemen slightly acquainted may be seen when they meet on the
+Nevsky Prospect suddenly grinning at one another and pursing up their
+eyes and noses and cheeks, and then, directly they have passed one
+another, they resume their former indifferent, often cross, and
+generally sickly, expression.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Elena met Bersenyev cordially, though not in the garden, but the
+drawing-room, and at once, almost impatiently, renewed the conversation
+of the previous day. She was alone; Nikolai Artemyevitch had quietly
+slipped away. Anna Vassilyevna was lying down upstairs with a wet
+bandage on her head. Zoya was sitting by her, the folds of her skirt
+arranged precisely about her, and her little hands clasped on her knees.
+Uvar Ivanovitch was reposing in the attic on a wide and comfortable
+divan, known as a 'samo-son' or 'dozer.' Bersenyev again mentioned his
+father; he held his memory sacred. Let us, too, say a few words about
+him.
+
+The owner of eighty-two serfs, whom he set free before his death, an
+old Gottingen student, and disciple of the 'Illuminati,' the author of
+a manuscript work on 'transformations or typifications of the spirit in
+the world'--a work in which Schelling's philosophy, Swedenborgianism
+and republicanism were mingled in the most original fashion--Bersenyev's
+father brought him, while still a boy, to Moscow immediately after his
+mother's death, and at once himself undertook his education. He
+prepared himself for each lesson, exerted himself with extraordinary
+conscientiousness and absolute lack of success: he was a dreamer, a
+bookworm, and a mystic; he spoke in a dull, hesitating voice, used
+obscure and roundabout expressions, metaphorical by preference, and was
+shy even of his son, whom he loved passionately. It was not surprising
+that his son was simply bewildered at his lessons, and did not advance
+in the least. The old man (he was almost fifty, he had married late in
+life) surmised at last that things were not going quite right, and he
+placed his Andrei in a school. Andrei began to learn, but he was
+not removed from his father's supervision; his father visited him
+unceasingly, wearying the schoolmaster to death with his instructions
+and conversation; the teachers, too, were bored by his uninvited visits;
+he was for ever bringing them some, as they said, far-fetched books on
+education. Even the schoolboys were embarrassed at the sight of the old
+man's swarthy, pockmarked face, his lank figure, invariably clothed in
+a sort of scanty grey dresscoat. The boys did not suspect then that this
+grim, unsmiling old gentleman, with his crane-like gait and his long
+nose, was at heart troubling and yearning over each one of them almost
+as over his own son. He once conceived the idea of talking to them about
+Washington: 'My young nurslings,' he began, but at the first sounds of
+his strange voice the young nurslings ran away. The good old Gottingen
+student did not lie on a bed of roses; he was for ever weighed down by
+the march of history, by questions and ideas of every kind. When young
+Bersenyev entered the university, his father used to drive with him
+to the lectures, but his health was already beginning to break up. The
+events of the year 1848 shook him to the foundation (it necessitated the
+re-writing of his whole book), and he died in the winter of 1853, before
+his son's time at the university was over, but he was able beforehand to
+congratulate him on his degree, and to consecrate him to the service of
+science. 'I pass on the torch to you,' he said to him two hours before
+his death. 'I held it while I could; you, too, must not let the light
+grow dim before the end.'
+
+Bersenyev talked a long while to Elena of his father. The embarrassment
+he had felt in her presence disappeared, and his lisp was less marked.
+The conversation passed on to the university.
+
+'Tell me,' Elena asked him, 'were there any remarkable men among your
+comrades?'
+
+Bersenyev was again reminded of Shubin's words.
+
+'No, Elena Nikolaevna, to tell you the truth, there was not a single
+remarkable man among us. And, indeed, where are such to be found! There
+was, they say, a good time once in the Moscow university! But not now.
+Now it's a school, not a university. I was not happy with my comrades,'
+he added, dropping his voice.
+
+'Not happy,' murmured Elena.
+
+'But I ought,' continued Bersenyev, 'to make an exception. I know one
+student--it's true he is not in the same faculty--he is certainly a
+remarkable man.'
+
+'What is his name?' Elena inquired with interest.
+
+'Insarov Dmitri Nikanorovitch. He is a Bulgarian.'
+
+'Not a Russian?'
+
+'No, he is not a Russian,'
+
+'Why is he living in Moscow, then?'
+
+'He came here to study. And do you know with what aim he is studying?
+He has a single idea: the liberation of his country. And his story is
+an exceptional one. His father was a fairly well-to-do merchant; he came
+from Tirnova. Tirnova is now a small town, but it was the capital of
+Bulgaria in the old days when Bulgaria was still an independent state.
+He traded with Sophia, and had relations with Russia; his sister,
+Insarov's aunt, is still living in Kiev, married to a senior history
+teacher in the gymnasium there. In 1835, that is to say eighteen
+years ago, a terrible crime was committed; Insarov's mother suddenly
+disappeared without leaving a trace behind; a week later she was found
+murdered.'
+
+Elena shuddered. Bersenyev stopped.
+
+'Go on, go on,' she said.
+
+'There were rumours that she had been outraged and murdered by a Turkish
+aga; her husband, Insarov's father, found out the truth, tried to avenge
+her, but only succeeded in wounding the aga with his poniard.... He was
+shot.'
+
+'Shot, and without a trial?'
+
+'Yes. Insarov was just eight years old at the time. He remained in
+the hands of neighbours. The sister heard of the fate of her brother's
+family, and wanted to take the nephew to live with her. They got him
+to Odessa, and from there to Kiev. At Kiev he lived twelve whole years.
+That's how it is he speaks Russian so well.'
+
+'He speaks Russian?'
+
+'Just as we do. When he was twenty (that was at the beginning of the
+year 1848) he began to want to return to his country. He stayed in
+Sophia and Tirnova, and travelled through the length and breadth of
+Bulgaria, spending two years there, and learning his mother tongue
+over again. The Turkish Government persecuted him, and he was certainly
+exposed to great dangers during those two years; I once caught sight of
+a broad scar on his neck, from a wound, no doubt; but he does not like
+to talk about it. He is reserved, too, in his own way. I have tried to
+question him about everything, but I could get nothing out of him. He
+answers by generalities. He's awfully obstinate. He returned to Russia
+again in 1850, to Moscow, with the intention of educating himself
+thoroughly, getting intimate with Russians, and then when he leaves the
+university----'
+
+'What then?' broke in Elena.
+
+'What God wills. It's hard to forecast the future.'
+
+For a while Elena did not take her eyes off Bersenyev.
+
+'You have greatly interested me by what you have told me,' she said.
+'What is he like, this friend of yours; what did you call him, Insarov?'
+
+'What shall I say? To my mind, he's good-looking. But you will see him
+for yourself.'
+
+'How so?'
+
+'I will bring him here to see you. He is coming to our little village
+the day after tomorrow, and is going to live with me in the same
+lodging.'
+
+'Really? But will he care to come to see us?'
+
+'I should think so. He will be delighted.'
+
+'He isn't proud, then?'
+
+'Not the least. That's to say, he is proud if you like, only not in the
+sense you mean. He will never, for instance, borrow money from any one.'
+
+'Is he poor?'
+
+'Yes, he isn't rich. When he went to Bulgaria he collected some relics
+left of his father's property, and his aunt helps him; but it all comes
+to very little.'
+
+'He must have a great deal of character,' observed Elena.
+
+'Yes. He is a man of iron. And at the same time you will see there is
+something childlike and frank, with all his concentration and even his
+reserve. It's true, his frankness is not our poor sort of frankness--the
+frankness of people who have absolutely nothing to conceal.... But
+there, I will bring him to see you; wait a little.'
+
+'And isn't he shy?' asked Elena again.
+
+'No, he's not shy. It's only vain people who are shy.'
+
+'Why, are you vain?'
+
+He was confused and made a vague gesture with his hands.
+
+'You excite my curiosity,' pursued Elena. 'But tell me, has he not taken
+vengeance on that Turkish aga?'
+
+Bersenyev smiled
+
+'Revenge is only to be found in novels, Elena Nikolaevna; and, besides,
+in twelve years that aga may well be dead.'
+
+'Mr. Insarov has never said anything, though, to you about it?'
+
+'No, never.'
+
+'Why did he go to Sophia?'
+
+'His father used to live there.'
+
+Elena grew thoughtful.
+
+'To liberate one's country!' she said. 'It is terrible even to utter
+those words, they are so grand.'
+
+At that instant Anna Vassilyevna came into the room, and the
+conversation stopped.
+
+Bersenyev was stirred by strange emotions when he returned home that
+evening. He did not regret his plan of making Elena acquainted with
+Insarov, he felt the deep impression made on her by his account of the
+young Bulgarian very natural... had he not himself tried to deepen that
+impression! But a vague, unfathomable emotion lurked secretly in his
+heart; he was sad with a sadness that had nothing noble in it. This
+sadness did not prevent him, however, from setting to work on the
+_History of the Hohenstaufen_, and beginning to read it at the very page
+at which he had left off the evening before.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Two days later, Insarov in accordance with his promise arrived at
+Bersenyev's with his luggage. He had no servant; but without any
+assistance he put his room to rights, arranged the furniture, dusted and
+swept the floor. He had special trouble with the writing table, which
+would not fit into the recess in the wall assigned for it; but Insarov,
+with the silent persistence peculiar to him succeeded in getting his own
+way with it. When he had settled in, he asked Bersenyev to let him pay
+him ten roubles in advance, and arming himself with a thick stick, set
+off to inspect the country surrounding his new abode. He returned three
+hours later; and in response to Bersenyev's invitation to share his
+repast, he said that he would not refuse to dine with him that day, but
+that he had already spoken to the woman of the house, and would get her
+to send him up his meals for the future.
+
+'Upon my word!' said Bersenyev, 'you will fare very badly; that old body
+can't cook a bit. Why don't you dine with me, we would go halves over
+the cost.'
+
+'My means don't allow me to dine as you do,' Insarov replied with a
+tranquil smile.
+
+There was something in that smile which forbade further insistence;
+Bersenyev did not add a word. After dinner he proposed to Insarov that
+he should take him to the Stahovs; but he replied that he had intended
+to devote the evening to correspondence with his Bulgarians, and so
+he would ask him to put off the visit to the Stahovs till next day.
+Bersenyev was already familiar with Insarov's unbending will; but it
+was only now when he was under the same roof with him, that he fully
+realised at last that Insarov would never alter any decision, just in
+the same way as he would never fail to carry out a promise he had
+given; to Bersenyev--a Russian to his fingertips--this more than German
+exactitude seemed at first odd, and even rather ludicrous; but he soon
+got used to it, and ended by finding it--if not deserving of respect--at
+least very convenient.
+
+The second day after his arrival, Insarov got up at four o'clock in the
+morning, made a round of almost all Kuntsovo, bathed in the river, drank
+a glass of cold milk, and then set to work. And he had plenty of work
+to do; he was studying Russian history and law, and political economy,
+translating the Bulgarian ballads and chronicles, collecting materials
+on the Eastern Question, and compiling a Russian grammar for the use of
+Bulgarians, and a Bulgarian grammar for the use of Russians. Bersenyev
+went up to him and began to discuss Feuerbach. Insarov listened
+attentively, made few remarks, but to the point; it was clear from his
+observations that he was trying to arrive at a conclusion as to whether
+he need study Feuerbach, or whether he could get on without him.
+Bersenyev turned the conversation on to his pursuits, and asked him if
+he could not show him anything. Insarov read him his translation of two
+or three Bulgarian ballads, and was anxious to hear his opinion of them.
+Bersenyev thought the translation a faithful one, but not sufficiently
+spirited. Insarov paid close attention to his criticism. From the
+ballads Bersenyev passed on to the present position of Bulgaria, and
+then for the first time he noticed what a change came over Insarov at
+the mere mention of his country: not that his face flushed nor his
+voice grew louder--no! but at once a sense of force and intense onward
+striving was expressed in his whole personality, the lines of his mouth
+grew harder and less flexible, and a dull persistent fire glowed in the
+depths of his eyes. Insarov did not care to enlarge on his own travels
+in his country; but of Bulgaria in general he talked readily with any
+one. He talked at length of the Turks, of their oppression, of
+the sorrows and disasters of his countrymen, and of their hopes:
+concentrated meditation on a single ruling passion could be heard in
+every word he uttered.
+
+'Ah, well, there's no mistake about it,' Bersenyev was reflecting
+meanwhile, 'that Turkish aga, I venture to think, has been punished for
+his father's and mother's death.'
+
+Insarov had not had time to say all he wanted to say, when the door
+opened and Shubin made his appearance.
+
+He came into the room with an almost exaggerated air of ease and
+good-humour; Bersenyev, who knew him well, could see at once that
+something had been jarring on him.
+
+'I will introduce myself without ceremony,' he began with a bright and
+open expression on his face. 'My name is Shubin; I'm a friend of this
+young man here' (he indicated Bersenyev). 'You are Mr. Insarov, of
+course, aren't you?'
+
+'I am Insarov.'
+
+'Then give me your hand and let us be friends. I don't know if Bersenyev
+has talked to you about me, but he has told me a great deal about you.
+You are staying here? Capital! Don't be offended at my staring at you
+so. I'm a sculptor by trade, and I foresee I shall in a little time be
+begging your permission to model your head.'
+
+'My head's at your service,' said Insarov.
+
+'What shall we do to-day, eh?' began Shubin, sitting down suddenly on a
+low chair, with his knees apart and his elbows propped on them. 'Andrei
+Petrovitch, has your honour any kind of plan for to-day? It's glorious
+weather; there's a scent of hay and dried strawberries as if one were
+drinking strawberry-tea for a cold. We ought to get up some kind of
+a spree. Let us show the new inhabitant of Kuntsov all its numerous
+beauties.' (Something has certainly upset him, Bersenyev kept thinking
+to himself.) 'Well, why art thou silent, friend Horatio? Open your
+prophetic lips. Shall we go off on a spree, or not?'
+
+'I don't know how Insarov feels,' observed Bersenyev. 'He is just
+getting to work, I fancy.'
+
+Shubin turned round on his chair.
+
+'You want to work?' he inquired, in a somewhat condescending voice.
+
+'No,' answered Insarov; 'to-day I could give up to walking.'
+
+'Ah!' commented Shubin. 'Well, that's delightful. Run along, my friend,
+Andrei Petrovitch, put a hat on your learned head, and let us go where
+our eyes lead us. Our eyes are young--they may lead us far. I know a
+very repulsive little restaurant, where they will give us a very beastly
+little dinner; but we shall be very jolly. Come along.'
+
+Half an hour later they were all three walking along the bank of the
+Moskva. Insarov had a rather queer cap with flaps, over which Shubin
+fell into not very spontaneous raptures. Insarov walked without
+haste, and looked about, breathing, talking, and smiling with the same
+tranquillity; he was giving this day up to pleasure, and enjoying it
+to the utmost. 'Just as well-behaved boys walk out on Sundays,' Shubin
+whispered in Bersenyev's ear. Shubin himself played the fool a great
+deal, ran in front, threw himself into the attitudes of famous statues,
+and turned somersaults on the grass; Insarov's tranquillity did not
+exactly irritate him, but it spurred him on to playing antics. 'What
+a fidget you are, Frenchman!' Bersenyev said twice to him. 'Yes, I am
+French, half French,' Shubin answered, 'and you hold the happy medium
+between jest and earnest, as a waiter once said to me.' The young men
+turned away from the river and went along a deep and narrow ravine
+between two walls of tall golden rye; a bluish shadow was cast on them
+from the rye on one side; the flashing sunlight seemed to glide over the
+tops of the ears; the larks were singing, the quails were calling: on
+all sides was the brilliant green of the grass; a warm breeze stirred
+and lifted the leaves and shook the heads of the flowers. After
+prolonged wanderings, with rest and chat between (Shubin had even tried
+to play leap-frog with a toothless peasant they met, who did nothing but
+laugh, whatever the gentlemen might do to him), the young men reached
+the 'repulsive little' restaurant: the waiter almost knocked each of
+them over, and did really provide them with a very bad dinner with a
+sort of Balkan wine, which did not, however, prevent them from being
+very jolly, as Shubin had foretold; he himself was the loudest and the
+least jolly. He drank to the health of the incomprehensible but great
+_Venelin_, the health of the Bulgarian king Kuma, Huma, or Hroma, who
+lived somewhere about the time of Adam.
+
+'In the ninth century,' Insarov corrected him.
+
+'In the ninth century?' cried Shubin. 'Oh, how delightful!'
+
+Bersenyev noticed that among all his pranks, and jests and gaiety,
+Shubin was constantly, as it were, examining Insarov; he was sounding
+him and was in inward excitement, but Insarov remained as before, calm
+and straightforward.
+
+At last they returned home, changed their dress, and resolved to finish
+the day as they had begun it, by going that evening to the Stahovs.
+Shubin ran on before them to announce their arrival.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+'The conquering hero Insarov will be here directly!' he shouted
+triumphantly, going into the Stahovs' drawing-room, where there happened
+at the instant to be only Elena and Zoya.
+
+'_Wer_?' inquired Zoya in German. When she was taken unawares she always
+used her native language. Elena drew herself up. Shubin looked at her
+with a playful smile on his lips. She felt annoyed, but said nothing.
+
+'You heard,' he repeated, 'Mr. Insarov is coming here.'
+
+'I heard,' she replied; 'and I heard how you spoke of him. I am
+surprised at you, indeed. Mr. Insarov has not yet set foot in the house,
+and you already think fit to turn him into ridicule.'
+
+Shubin was crestfallen at once.
+
+'You are right, you are always right, Elena Nikolaevna,' he muttered;
+'but I meant nothing, on my honour. We have been walking together with
+him the whole day, and he's a capital fellow, I assure you.'
+
+'I didn't ask your opinion about that,' commented Elena, getting up.
+
+'Is Mr. Insarov a young man?' asked Zoya.
+
+'He is a hundred and forty-four,' replied Shubin with an air of
+vexation.
+
+The page announced the arrival of the two friends. They came in.
+Bersenyev introduced Insarov. Elena asked them to sit down, and sat
+down herself, while Zoya went off upstairs; she had to inform Anna
+Vassilyevna of their arrival. A conversation was begun of a rather
+insignificant kind, like all first conversations. Shubin was silently
+watching from a corner, but there was nothing to watch. In Elena he
+detected signs of repressed annoyance against him--Shubin--and that was
+all. He looked at Bersenyev and at Insarov, and compared their
+faces from a sculptor's point of view. 'They are neither of them
+good-looking,' he thought, 'the Bulgarian has a characteristic
+face--there now it's in a good light; the Great-Russian is better
+adapted for painting; there are no lines, there's expression. But, I
+dare say, one might fall in love with either of them. She is not in love
+yet, but she will fall in love with Bersenyev,' he decided to himself.
+Anna Vassilyevna made her appearance in the drawing-room, and
+the conversation took the tone peculiar to summer villas--not the
+country-house tone but the peculiar summer visitor tone. It was a
+conversation diversified by plenty of subjects; but broken by short
+rather wearisome pauses every three minutes. In one of these pauses Anna
+Vassilyevna turned to Zoya. Shubin understood her silent hint, and drew
+a long face, while Zoya sat down to the piano, and played and sang all
+her pieces through. Uvar Ivanovitch showed himself for an instant in the
+doorway, but he beat a retreat, convulsively twitching his fingers. Then
+tea was served; and then the whole party went out into the garden.... It
+began to grow dark outside, and the guests took leave.
+
+Insarov had really made less impression on Elena than she had expected,
+or, speaking more exactly, he had not made the impression she had
+expected. She liked his directness and unconstraint, and she liked his
+face; but the whole character of Insarov--with his calm firmness and
+everyday simplicity--did not somehow accord with the image formed in her
+brain by Bersenyev's account of him. Elena, though she did not
+herself suspect it, had anticipated something more fateful. 'But,' she
+reflected, 'he spoke very little to-day, and I am myself to blame for
+it; I did not question him, we must have patience till next time...
+and his eyes are expressive, honest eyes.' She felt that she had no
+disposition to humble herself before him, but rather to hold out her
+hand to him in friendly equality, and she was puzzled; this was not how
+she had fancied men, like Insarov, 'heroes.' This last word reminded her
+of Shubin, and she grew hot and angry, as she lay in her bed.
+
+'How did you like your new acquaintances?' Bersenyev inquired of Insarov
+on their way home.
+
+'I liked them very much,' answered Insarov, 'especially the daughter.
+She must be a nice girl. She is excitable, but in her it's a fine kind
+of excitability.'
+
+'You must go and see them a little oftener,' observed Bersenyev.
+
+'Yes, I must,' said Insarov; and he said nothing more all the way home.
+He at once shut himself up in his room, but his candle was burning long
+after midnight.
+
+Bersenyev had had time to read a page of Raumer, when a handful of fine
+gravel came rattling on his window-pane. He could not help starting;
+opening the window he saw Shubin as white as a sheet.
+
+'What an irrepressible fellow you are, you night moth----' Bersenyev was
+beginning.
+
+'Sh--' Shubin cut him short; 'I have come to you in secret, as Max went
+to Agatha I absolutely must say a few words to you alone.'
+
+'Come into the room then.'
+
+'No, that's not necessary,' replied Shubin, and he leaned his elbows
+on the window-sill, 'it's better fun like this, more as if we were in
+Spain. To begin with, I congratulate you, you're at a premium now. Your
+belauded, exceptional man has quite missed fire. That I'll guarantee.
+And to prove my impartiality, listen--here's the sum and substance of
+Mr. Insarov. No talents, none, no poetry, any amount of capacity for
+work, an immense memory, an intellect not deep nor varied, but sound
+and quick, dry as dust, and force, and even the gift of the gab when the
+talk's about his--between ourselves let it be said--tedious Bulgaria.
+What! do you say I am unjust? One remark more: you'll never come to
+Christian names with him, and none ever has been on such terms with him.
+I, of course, as an artist, am hateful to him; and I am proud of it. Dry
+as dust, dry as dust, but he can crush all of us to powder. He's devoted
+to his country--not like our empty patriots who fawn on the people; pour
+into us, they say, thou living water! But, of course, his problem is
+easier, more intelligible: he has only to drive the Turks out, a mighty
+task. But all these qualities, thank God, don't please women. There's no
+fascination, no charm about them, as there is about you and me.'
+
+'Why do you bring me in?' muttered Bersenyev. 'And you are wrong in
+all the rest; you are not in the least hateful to him, and with his own
+countrymen he is on Christian name terms--that I know.'
+
+'That's a different matter! For them he's a hero; but, to make a
+confession, I have a very different idea of a hero; a hero ought not to
+be able to talk; a hero should roar like a bull, but when he butts with
+his horns, the walls shake. He ought not to know himself why he butts at
+things, but just to butt at them. But, perhaps, in our days heroes of a
+different stamp are needed.'
+
+'Why are you so taken up with Insarov?' asked Bersenyev. 'Can you have
+run here only to describe his character to me?'
+
+'I came here,' began Shubin, 'because I was very miserable at home.'
+
+'Oh, that's it! Don't you want to have a cry again?'
+
+'You may laugh! I came here because I'm at my wits' end, because I am
+devoured by despair, anger, jealousy.'
+
+'Jealousy? of whom?'
+
+'Of you and him and every one. I'm tortured by the thought that if I had
+understood her sooner, if I had set to work cleverly--But what's the use
+of talking! It must end by my always laughing, playing the fool, turning
+things into ridicule as she says, and then setting to and strangling
+myself.'
+
+'Stuff, you won't strangle yourself,' observed Bersenyev.
+
+'On such a night, of course not; but only let me live on till the
+autumn. On such a night people do die too, but only of happiness. Ah,
+happiness! Every shadow that stretches across the road from every tree
+seems whispering now: "I know where there is happiness... shall I tell
+you?" I would ask you to come for a walk, only now you're under the
+influence of prose. Go to sleep, and may your dreams be visited by
+mathematical figures! My heart is breaking. You, worthy gentlemen, see
+a man laughing, and that means to your notions he's all right; you can
+prove to him that he's humbugging himself, that's to say, he is not
+suffering.... God bless you!'
+
+Shubin abruptly left the window. 'Annu-shka!' Bersenyev felt an impulse
+to shout after him, but he restrained himself; Shubin had really been
+white with emotion. Two minutes later, Bersenyev even caught the sound
+of sobbing; he got up and opened the window; everything was still, only
+somewhere in the distance some one--a passing peasant, probably--was
+humming 'The Plain of Mozdok.'
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+During the first fortnight of Insarov's stay in the Kuntsovo
+neighbourhood, he did not visit the Stahovs more than four or five
+times; Bersenyev went to see them every day. Elena was always pleased to
+see him, lively and interesting talk always sprang up between them,
+and yet he often went home with a gloomy face. Shubin scarcely showed
+himself; he was working with feverish energy at his art; he either
+stayed locked up in his room, from which he would emerge in a blouse,
+smeared all over with clay, or else he spent days in Moscow where he
+had a studio, to which models and Italian sculptors, his friends and
+teachers, used to come to see him. Elena did not once succeed in talking
+with Insarov, as she would have liked to do; in his absence she prepared
+questions to ask him about many things, but when he came she felt
+ashamed of her plans. Insarov's very tranquillity embarrassed her; it
+seemed to her that she had not the right to force him to speak out; and
+she resolved to wait; for all that, she felt that at every visit however
+trivial might be the words that passed between them, he attracted her
+more and more; but she never happened to be left alone with him--and
+to grow intimate with any one, one must have at least one conversation
+alone with him. She talked a great deal about him to Bersenyev.
+Bersenyev realised that Elena's imagination had been struck by Insarov,
+and was glad that his friend had not 'missed fire' as Shubin had
+asserted. He told her cordially all he knew of him down to the minutest
+details (we often, when we want to please some one, bring our friends
+into our conversation, hardly ever suspecting that we are praising
+ourselves in that way), and only at times, when Elena's pale cheeks
+flushed a little and her eyes grew bright and wide, he felt a pang in
+his heart of that evil pain which he had felt before.
+
+One day Bersenyev came to the Stahovs, not at the customary time, but at
+eleven o'clock in the morning. Elena came down to him in the parlour.
+
+'Fancy,' he began with a constrained smile, 'our Insarov has
+disappeared.'
+
+'Disappeared?' said Elena.
+
+'He has disappeared. The day before yesterday he went off somewhere and
+nothing has been seen of him since.'
+
+'He did not tell you where he was going?'
+
+'No.'
+
+Elena sank into a chair.
+
+'He has most likely gone to Moscow,' she commented, trying to seem
+indifferent and at the same time wondering that she should try to seem
+indifferent.
+
+'I don't think so,' rejoined Bersenyev. 'He did not go alone.'
+
+'With whom then?'
+
+'Two people of some sort--his countrymen they must have been--came to
+him the day before yesterday, before dinner.'
+
+'Bulgarians! what makes you think so?'
+
+'Why as far as I could hear, they talked to him in some language I did
+not know, but Slavonic... You are always saying, Elena Nikolaevna, that
+there's so little mystery about Insarov; what could be more mysterious
+than this visit? Imagine, they came to him--and then there was shouting
+and quarrelling, and such savage, angry disputing.... And he shouted
+too.'
+
+'He shouted too?'
+
+'Yes. He shouted at them. They seemed to be accusing each other. And
+if you could have had a peep at these visitors. They had swarthy, heavy
+faces with high cheek bones and hook noses, both about forty years old,
+shabbily dressed, hot and dusty, looking like workmen--not workmen, and
+not gentlemen--goodness knows what sort of people they were.'
+
+'And he went away with them?'
+
+'Yes. He gave them something to eat and went off with them. The woman of
+the house told me they ate a whole huge pot of porridge between the
+two of them. They outdid one another, she said, and gobbled it up like
+wolves.'
+
+Elena gave a faint smile.
+
+'You will see,' she said, 'all this will be explained into something
+very prosaic.'
+
+'I hope it may! But you need not use that word. There is nothing prosaic
+about Insarov, though Shubin does maintain----'
+
+'Shubin!' Elena broke in, shrugging her shoulders. 'But you must confess
+these two good men gobbling up porridge----'
+
+'Even Themistocles had his supper on the eve of Salamis,' observed
+Bersenyev with a smile.
+
+'Yes; but then there was a battle next day. Any way you will let me know
+when he comes back,' said Elena, and she tried to change the subject,
+but the conversation made little progress. Zoya made her appearance
+and began walking about the room on tip-toe, giving them thereby to
+understand that Anna Vassilyevna was not yet awake.
+
+Bersenyev went away.
+
+In the evening of the same day a note from him was brought to Elena.
+'He has come back,' he wrote to her, 'sunburnt and dusty to his very
+eyebrows; but where and why he went I don't know; won't you find out?'
+
+'Won't you find out!' Elena whispered, 'as though he talked to me!'
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+The next day, at two o'clock, Elena was standing in the garden before a
+small kennel, where she was rearing two puppies. (A gardener had found
+them deserted under a hedge, and brought them to the young mistress,
+being told by the laundry-maids that she took pity on beasts of
+all sorts. He was not wrong in his reckoning. Elena had given him a
+quarter-rouble.) She looked into the kennel, assured herself that the
+puppies were alive and well, and that they had been provided with fresh
+straw, turned round, and almost uttered a cry; down an alley straight
+towards her was walking Insarov, alone.
+
+'Good-morning,' he said, coming up to her and taking off his cap. She
+noticed that he certainly had got much sunburnt during the last three
+days. 'I meant to have come here with Andrei Petrovitch, but he was
+rather slow in starting; so here I am without him. There is no one in
+your house; they are all asleep or out of doors, so I came on here.'
+
+'You seem to be apologising,' replied Elena. 'There's no need to do
+that. We are always very glad to see you. Let us sit here on the bench
+in the shade.'
+
+She seated herself. Insarov sat down near her.
+
+'You have not been at home these last days, I think?' she began.
+
+'No,' he answered. 'I went away. Did Andrei Petrovitch tell you?'
+
+Insarov looked at her, smiled, and began playing with his cap. When he
+smiled, his eyes blinked, and his lips puckered up, which gave him a
+very good-humoured appearance.
+
+'Andrei Petrovitch most likely told you too that I went away with
+some--unattractive people,' he said, still smiling.
+
+Elena was a little confused, but she felt at once that Insarov must
+always be told the truth.
+
+'Yes,' she said decisively.
+
+'What did you think of me?' he asked her suddenly.
+
+Elena raised her eyes to him.
+
+'I thought,' she said, 'I thought that you always know what you're
+doing, and you are incapable of doing anything wrong.'
+
+'Well--thanks for that. You see, Elena Nikolaevna,' he began, coming
+closer to her in a confidential way, 'there is a little family of our
+people here; among us there are men of little culture; but all are
+warmly devoted to the common cause. Unluckily, one can never get on
+without dissensions, and they all know me, and trust me; so they sent
+for me to settle a dispute. I went.'
+
+'Was it far from here?'
+
+'I went about fifty miles, to the Troitsky district. There, near the
+monastery, there are some of our people. At any rate, my trouble was not
+thrown away; I settled the matter.'
+
+'And had you much difficulty?'
+
+'Yes. One was obstinate through everything. He did not want to give back
+the money.'
+
+'What? Was the dispute over money?'
+
+'Yes; and a small sum of money too. What did you suppose?'
+
+'And you travelled over fifty miles for such trifling matters? Wasted
+three days?'
+
+'They are not trifling matters, Elena Nikolaevna, when my countrymen are
+involved. It would be wicked to refuse in such cases. I see here that
+you don't refuse help even to puppies, and I think well of you for it.
+And as for the time I have lost, that's no great harm; I will make it up
+later. Our time does not belong to us.'
+
+'To whom does it belong then?'
+
+'Why, to all who need us. I have told you all this on the spur of
+the moment, because I value your good opinion. I can fancy how Andrei
+Petrovitch must have made you wonder!'
+
+'You value my good opinion,' said Elena, in an undertone, 'why?'
+
+Insarov smiled again.
+
+'Because you are a good young lady, not an aristocrat... that's all.'
+
+A short silence followed.
+
+'Dmitri Nikanorovitch,' said Elena, 'do you know that this is the first
+time you have been so unreserved with me?'
+
+'How's that? I think I have always said everything I thought to you.'
+
+'No, this is the first time, and I am very glad, and I too want to be
+open with you. May I?'
+
+Insarov began to laugh and said: 'You may.'
+
+'I warn you I am very inquisitive.'
+
+'Never mind, tell me.'
+
+'Andrei Petrovitch has told me a great deal of your life, of your youth.
+I know of one event, one awful event.... I know you travelled afterwards
+in your own country.... Don't answer me for goodness sake, if you think
+my question indiscreet, but I am fretted by one idea.... Tell me, did
+you meet that man?'
+
+Elena caught her breath. She felt both shame and dismay at her own
+audacity. Insarov looked at her intently, slightly knitting his brows,
+and stroking his chin with his fingers.
+
+'Elena Nikolaevna,' he began at last, and his voice was much lower than
+usual, which almost frightened Elena, 'I understand what man you are
+referring to. No, I did not meet him, and thank God I did not! I did not
+try to find him. I did not try to find him: not because I did not
+think I had a right to kill him--I would kill him with a very easy
+conscience--but because now is not the time for private revenge, when
+we are concerned with the general national vengeance--or no, that is not
+the right word--when we are concerned with the liberation of a people.
+The one would be a hindrance to the other. In its own time that, too,
+will come... that too will come,' he repeated, and he shook his head.
+
+Elena looked at him from the side.
+
+'You love your country very dearly?' she articulated timidly.
+
+'That remains to be shown,' he answered. 'When one of us dies for her,
+then one can say he loved his country.'
+
+'So that, if you were cut off all chance of returning to Bulgaria,'
+continued Elena, 'would you be very unhappy in Russia?'
+
+Insarov looked down.
+
+'I think I could not bear that,' he said.
+
+'Tell me,' Elena began again, 'is it difficult to learn Bulgarian?'
+
+'Not at all. It's a disgrace to a Russian not to know Bulgarian. A
+Russian ought to know all the Slavonic dialects. Would you like me
+to bring you some Bulgarian books? You will see how easy it is. What
+ballads we have! equal to the Servian. But stop a minute, I will
+translate to you one of them. It is about... But you know a little of
+our history at least, don't you?'
+
+'No, I know nothing of it,' answered
+
+Elena.
+
+'Wait a little and I will bring you a book. You will learn the principal
+facts at least from it. Listen to the ballad then.... But I had better
+bring you a written translation, though. I am sure you will love us, you
+love all the oppressed. If you knew what a land of plenty ours is! And,
+meanwhile, it has been downtrodden, it has been ravaged,' he went on,
+with an involuntary movement of his arm, and his face darkened; 'we
+have been robbed of everything; everything, our churches, our laws, our
+lands; the unclean Turks drive us like cattle, butcher us----'
+
+'Dmitri Nikanorovitch!' cried Elena.
+
+He stopped.
+
+'I beg your pardon. I can't speak of this coolly. But you asked me just
+now whether I love my country. What else can one love on earth? What is
+the one thing unchanging, what is above all doubts, what is it--next to
+God--one must believe in? And when that country needs. ... Think; the
+poorest peasant, the poorest beggar in Bulgaria, and I have the same
+desire. All of us have one aim. You can understand what strength, what
+confidence that gives!'
+
+Insarov was silent for an instant; then he began again to talk of
+Bulgaria. Elena listened to him with absorbed, profound, and mournful
+attention. When he had finished, she asked him once more:
+
+'Then you would not stay in Russia for anything?'
+
+And when he went away, for a long time she gazed after him. On that day
+he had become a different man for her. When she walked back with him
+through the garden, he was no longer the man she had met two hours
+before.
+
+From that day he began to come more and more often, and Bersenyev less
+and less often. A strange feeling began to grow up between the two
+friends, of which they were both conscious, but to which they could
+not give a name, and which they feared to analyse. In this way a month
+passed.
+
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Anna Vassilyevna, as the reader knows already, liked staying at home;
+but at times she manifested, quite unexpectedly, an irresistible longing
+for something out of the common, some extraordinary _partie du
+plaisir_, and the more troublesome the _partie du plaisir_ was, the
+more preparations and arrangements it required, and the greater Anna
+Vassilyevna's own agitation over it, the more pleasure it gave her. If
+this mood came upon her in winter, she would order two or three boxes
+to be taken side by side, and, inviting all her acquaintances, would set
+off to the theatre or even to a masquerade; in summer she would drive
+for a trip out of town to some spot as far off as possible. The next day
+she would complain of a headache, groan and keep her bed; but within two
+months the same craving for something 'out of the common' would break
+out in her again. That was just what happened now. Some one chanced
+to refer to the beautiful scenery of Tsaritsino before her, and Anna
+Vassilyevna suddenly announced an intention of driving to Tsaritsino the
+day after tomorrow. The household was thrown into a state of bustle;
+a messenger galloped off to Moscow for Nikolai Artemyevitch; with him
+galloped the butler to buy wines, pies, and all sorts of provisions;
+Shubin was commissioned to hire an open carriage--the coach alone was
+not enough--and to order relays of horses to be ready; a page was
+twice despatched to Bersenyev and Insarov with two different notes of
+invitation, written by Zoya, the first in Russian, the second in French;
+Anna Vassilyevna herself was busy over the dresses of the young ladies
+for the expedition. Meanwhile the _partie du plaisir_ was very near
+coming to grief. Nikolai Artemyevitch arrived from Moscow in a sour,
+ill-natured, _frondeurish_ frame of mind. He was still sulky with
+Augustina Christianovna; and when he heard what the plan was, he flatly
+declared that he would not go; that to go trotting from Kuntsovo to
+Moscow and from Moscow to Tsaritsino, and then from Tsaritsino again to
+Moscow, from Moscow again to Kuntsovo, was a piece of folly; and, 'in
+fact,' he added, 'let them first prove to my satisfaction, that one can
+be merrier on one spot of the globe than another spot, and I will
+go.' This, of course, no one could prove to his satisfaction, and Anna
+Vassilyevna was ready to throw up the _partie du plaisir_ for lack of a
+solid escort; but she recollected Uvar Ivanovitch, and in her distress
+she sent to his room for him, saying: 'a drowning man catches at
+straws.' They waked him up; he came down, listened in silence to Anna
+Vassilyevna's proposition, and, to the general astonishment, with a
+flourish of his fingers, he consented to go. Anna Vassilyevna kissed
+him on the cheek, and called him a darling; Nikolai Artemyevitch smiled
+contemptuously and said: _quelle bourde!_ (he liked on occasions to make
+use of a 'smart' French word); and the following morning the coach and
+the open carriage, well-packed, rolled out of the Stahovs' court-yard.
+In the coach were the ladies, a maid, and Bersenyev; Insarov was seated
+on the box; and in the open carriage were Uvar Ivanovitch and Shubin.
+Uvar Ivanovitch had himself beckoned Shubin to him; he knew that
+he would tease him the whole way, but there existed a queer sort of
+attachment, marked by abusive candour, between the 'primeval force' and
+the young artist. On this occasion, however, Shubin left his fat friend
+in peace; he was absent-minded, silent, and gentle.
+
+The sun stood high in a cloudless blue sky when the carriage drove up to
+the ruins of Tsaritsino Castle, which looked gloomy and menacing, even
+at mid-day. The whole party stepped out on to the grass, and at once
+made a move towards the garden. In front went Elena and Zoya with
+Insarov; Anna Vassilyevna, with an expression of perfect happiness on
+her face, walked behind them, leaning on the arm of Uvar Ivanovitch. He
+waddled along panting, his new straw hat cut his forehead, and his feet
+twinged in his boots, but he was content; Shubin and Bersenyev brought
+up the rear. 'We will form the reserve, my dear boy, like veterans,'
+whispered Shubin to Bersenyev. 'Bulgaria's in it now!' he added,
+indicating Elena with his eyebrows.
+
+The weather was glorious. Everything around was flowering, humming,
+singing; in the distance shone the waters of the lakes; a light-hearted
+holiday mood took possession of all. 'Oh, how beautiful; oh, how
+beautiful!' Anna Vassilyevna repeated incessantly; Uvar Ivanovitch
+kept nodding his head approvingly in response to her enthusiastic
+exclamations, and once even articulated: 'To be sure! to be sure!' From
+time to time Elena exchanged a few words with Insarov; Zoya held the
+brim of her large hat with two fingers while her little feet, shod in
+light grey shoes with rounded toes, peeped coquettishly out from under
+her pink barege dress; she kept looking to each side and then behind
+her. 'Hey!' cried Shubin suddenly in a low voice, 'Zoya Nikitishna is
+on the lookout, it seems. I will go to her. Elena Nikolaevna despises me
+now, while you, Andrei Petrovitch, she esteems, which comes to the same
+thing. I am going; I'm tired of being glum. I should advise you, my dear
+fellow, to do some botanising; that's the best thing you could hit on in
+your position; it might be useful, too, from a scientific point of
+view. Farewell!' Shubin ran up to Zoya, offered her his arm, and saying:
+'_Ihre Hand, Madame_' caught hold of her hand, and pushed on ahead with
+her. Elena stopped, called to Bersenyev, and also took his arm,
+but continued talking to Insarov. She asked him the words for
+lily-of-the-valley, clover, oak, lime, and so on in his language...
+'Bulgaria's in it!' thought poor Andrei Petrovitch.
+
+Suddenly a shriek was heard in front; every one looked up. Shubin's
+cigar-case fell into a bush, flung by Zoya's hand. 'Wait a minute, I'll
+pay you out!' he shouted, as he crept into the bushes; he found his
+cigar-case, and was returning to Zoya; but he had hardly reached her
+side when again his cigar-case was sent flying across the road. Five
+times this trick was repeated, he kept laughing and threatening her, but
+Zoya only smiled slyly and drew herself together, like a little cat.
+At last he snatched her fingers, and squeezed them so tightly that
+she shrieked, and for a long time afterwards breathed on her hand,
+pretending to be angry, while he murmured something in her ears.
+
+'Mischievous things, young people,' Anna Vassilyevna observed gaily to
+Uvar Ivanovitch.
+
+He flourished his fingers in reply.
+
+'What a girl Zoya Nikitishna is!' said Bersenyev to Elena.
+
+'And Shubin? What of him?' she answered.
+
+Meanwhile the whole party went into the arbour, well known as Pleasant
+View arbour, and stopped to admire the view of the Tsaritsino lakes.
+They stretched one behind the other for several miles, overshadowed by
+thick woods. The bright green grass, which covered the hill sloping
+down to the largest lake, gave the water itself an extraordinarily vivid
+emerald colour. Even at the water's edge not a ripple stirred the
+smooth surface. One might fancy it a solid mass of glass lying heavy and
+shining in a huge font; the sky seemed to drop into its depths, while
+the leafy trees gazed motionless into its transparent bosom. All were
+absorbed in long and silent admiration of the view; even Shubin was
+still; even Zoya was impressed. At last, all with one mind, began to
+wish to go upon the water. Shubin, Insarov, and Bersenyev raced each
+other over the grass. They succeeded in finding a large painted boat
+and two boatmen, and beckoned to the ladies. The ladies stepped into
+the boat; Uvar Ivanovitch cautiously lowered himself into it after
+them. Great was the mirth while he got in and took his seat. 'Look out,
+master, don't drown us,' observed one of the boatmen, a snubnosed
+young fellow in a gay print shirt. 'Get along, you swell!' said Uvar
+Ivanovitch. The boat pushed off. The young men took up the oars, but
+Insarov was the oniy one of them who could row. Shubin suggested that
+they should sing some Russian song in chorus, and struck up: 'Down
+the river Volga'... Bersenyev, Zoya, and even Anna Vassilyevna, joined
+in--Insarov could not sing--but they did not keep together; at the third
+verse the singers were all wrong. Only Bersenyev tried to go on in
+the bass, 'Nothing on the waves is seen,' but he, too, was soon in
+difficulties. The boatmen looked at one another and grinned in silence.
+
+'Eh?' said Shubin, turning to them, 'the gentlefolks can't sing, you
+say?' The boy in the print shirt only shook his head. 'Wait a little
+snubnose,' retorted Shubin, 'we will show you. Zoya Nikitishna, sing us
+_Le lac_ of Niedermeyer. Stop rowing!' The wet oars stood still, lifted
+in the air like wings, and their splash died away with a tuneful drip;
+the boat drifted on a little, then stood still, rocking lightly on the
+water like a swan. Zoya affected to refuse at first.... '_Allons_' said
+Anna Vassilyevna genially.... Zoya took off her hat and began to sing:
+'_O lac, l'annee a peine a fini sa carriere_!'
+
+Her small, but pure voice, seemed to dart over the surface of the lake;
+every word echoed far off in the woods; it sounded as though some one
+were singing there, too, in a distinct, but mysterious and unearthly
+voice. When Zoya finished, a loud bravo was heard from an arbour
+near the bank, from which emerged several red-faced Germans who were
+picnicking at Tsaritsino. Several of them had their coats off, their
+ties, and even their waistcoats; and they shouted '_bis!_' with such
+unmannerly insistence that Anna Vassilyevna told the boatmen to row as
+quickly as possible to the other end of the lake. But before the boat
+reached the bank, Uvar Ivanovitch once more succeeded in surprising his
+friends; having noticed that in one part of the wood the echo repeated
+every sound with peculiar distinctness, he suddenly began to call like a
+quail. At first every one was startled, but they listened directly with
+real pleasure, especially as Uvar Ivanovitch imitated the quail's cry
+with great correctness. Spurred on by this, he tried mewing like a
+cat; but this did not go off so well; and after one more quail-call, he
+looked at them all and stopped. Shubin threw himself on him to kiss him;
+he pushed him off. At that instant the boat touched the bank, and all
+the party got out and went on shore.
+
+Meanwhile the coachman, with the groom and the maid, had brought the
+baskets out of the coach, and made dinner ready on the grass under the
+old lime-trees. They sat down round the outspread tablecloth, and fell
+upon the pies and other dainties. They all had excellent appetites,
+while Anna Vassilyevna, with unflagging hospitality, kept urging the
+guests to eat more, assuring them that nothing was more wholesome than
+eating in the open air. She even encouraged Uvar Ivanovitch with such
+assurances. 'Don't trouble about me!' he grunted with his mouth full.
+'Such a lovely day is a God-send, indeed!' she repeated constantly.
+One would not have known her; she seemed fully twenty years younger.
+Bersenyev said as much to her. 'Yes, yes.' she said; 'I could hold my
+own with any one in my day.' Shubin attached himself to Zoya, and kept
+pouring her out wine; she refused it, he pressed her, and finished by
+drinking the glass himself, and again pressing her to take another; he
+also declared that he longed to lay his head on her knee; she would on
+no account permit him 'such a liberty.' Elena seemed the most serious of
+the party, but in her heart there was a wonderful sense of peace, such
+as she had not known for long. She felt filled with boundless goodwill
+and kindness, and wanted to keep not only Insarov, but Bersenyev too,
+always at her side.... Andrei Petrovitch dimly understood what this
+meant, and secretly he sighed.
+
+The hours flew by; the evening was coming on. Anna Vassilyevna suddenly
+took alarm. 'Ah, my dear friends, how late it is!' she cried. 'All
+good things must have an end; it's time to go home.' She began bustling
+about, and they all hastened to get up and walk towards the castle,
+where the carriages were. As they walked past the lakes, they stopped
+to admire Tsaritsino for the last time. The landscape on all sides
+was glowing with the vivid hues of early evening; the sky was red, the
+leaves were flashing with changing colours as they stirred in the rising
+wind; the distant waters shone in liquid gold; the reddish turrets and
+arbours scattered about the garden stood out sharply against the dark
+green of the trees. 'Farewell, Tsaritsino, we shall not forget to-day's
+excursion!' observed Anna Vassilyevna.... But at that instant, and as
+though in confirmation of her words, a strange incident occurred, which
+certainly was not likely to be forgotten.
+
+This was what happened. Anna Vassilyevna had hardly sent her farewell
+greeting to Tsaritsino, when suddenly, a few paces from her, behind
+a high bush of lilac, were heard confused exclamations, shouts, and
+laughter; and a whole mob of disorderly men, the same devotees of song
+who had so energetically applauded Zoya, burst out on the path. These
+musical gentlemen seemed excessively elevated. They stopped at the sight
+of the ladies; but one of them, a man of immense height, with a bull
+neck and a bull's goggle eyes, separated from his companions, and,
+bowing clumsily and staggering unsteadily in his gait, approached Anna
+Vassilyevna, who was petrified with alarm.
+
+'_Bonzhoor, madame_,' he said thickly, 'how are you?'
+
+Anna Vassilyevna started back.
+
+'Why wouldn't you,' continued the giant in vile Russian, 'sing again
+when our party shouted _bis_, and bravo?'
+
+'Yes, why?' came from the ranks of his comrades.
+
+Insarov was about to step forward, but Shubin stopped him, and himself
+screened Anna Vassilyevna.
+
+'Allow me,' he began, 'honoured stranger, to express to you the
+heartfelt amazement, into which you have thrown all of us by your
+conduct. You belong, as far as I can judge, to the Saxon branch of the
+Caucasian race; consequently we are bound to assume your acquaintance
+with the customs of society, yet you address a lady to whom you have not
+been introduced. I assure you that I individually should be delighted
+another time to make your acquaintance, since I observe in you a
+phenomenal development of the muscles, biceps, triceps and deltoid, so
+that, as a sculptor, I should esteem it a genuine happiness to have you
+for a model; but on this occasion kindly leave us alone.'
+
+The 'honoured stranger' listened to Shubin's speech, his head held
+contemptuously on one side and his arms akimbo.
+
+'I don't understand what you say,' he commented at last. 'Do you suppose
+I'm a cobbler or a watchmaker? Hey! I'm an officer, an official, so
+there.'
+
+'I don't doubt that----' Shubin was beginning.
+
+'What I say is,' continued the stranger, putting him aside with his
+powerful arm, like a twig out of the path--'why didn't you sing again
+when we shouted _bis_? And I'll go away directly, this minute, only I
+tell you what I want, this fraulein, not that madam, no, not her, but
+this one or that one (he pointed to Elena and Zoya) must give me _einen
+Kuss_, as we say in German, a kiss, in fact; eh? That's not much to
+ask.'
+
+'_Einen Kuss_, that's not much,' came again from the ranks of his
+companions, '_Ih! der Stakramenter!_' cried one tipsy German, bursting
+with laughter.
+
+Zoya clutched at Insarov's arm, but he broke away from her, and stood
+directly facing the insolent giant.
+
+'You will please to move off,' he said in a voice not loud but sharp.
+
+The German gave a heavy laugh, 'Move off? Well, I like that. Can't I
+walk where I please? Move off? Why should I move off?'
+
+'Because you have dared to annoy a lady,' said Insarov, and suddenly he
+turned white, 'because you're drunk.'
+
+'Eh? me drunk? Hear what he says. _Horen Sie das, Herr Provisor_? I'm an
+officer, and he dares... Now I demand _satisfaction_. _Einen Kuss will
+ich_.'
+
+'If you come another step nearer----' began Insarov.
+
+'Well? What then'
+
+'I'll throw you in the water!'
+
+'In the water? _Herr Je_! Is that all? Well, let us see that, that would
+be very curious, too.'
+
+The officer lifted his fists and moved forward, but suddenly something
+extraordinary happened. He uttered an exclamation, his whole bulky
+person staggered, rose from the ground, his legs kicking in the air, and
+before the ladies had time to shriek, before any one had time to realise
+how it had happened, the officer's massive figure went plop with a heavy
+splash, and at once disappeared under the eddying water.
+
+'Oh!' screamed the ladies with one voice. '_Mein Gott_!' was heard from
+the other side. An instant passed... and a round head, all plastered
+over with wet hair, showed above water, it was blowing bubbles, this
+head; and floundering with two hands just at its very lips. 'He will be
+drowned, save him! save him!' cried Anna Vassilyevna to Insarov, who was
+standing with his legs apart on the bank, breathing heavily.
+
+'He will swim out,' he answered with contemptuous and unsympathetic
+indifference. 'Let us go on,' he added, taking Anna Vassilyevna by the
+arm. 'Come, Uvar Ivanovitch, Elena Nikolaevna.'
+
+'A--a--o--o' was heard at that instant, the plaint of the hapless German
+who had managed to get hold of the rushes on the bank.
+
+They all followed Insarov, and had to pass close by the party. But,
+deprived of their leader, the rowdies were subdued and did not utter
+a word; but one, the boldest of them, muttered, shaking his head
+menacingly: 'All right... we shall see though... after that'; but one of
+the others even took his hat off. Insarov struck them as formidable,
+and rightly so; something evil, something dangerous could be seen in his
+face. The Germans hastened to pull out their comrade, who, directly he
+had his feet on dry ground, broke into tearful abuse and shouted after
+the 'Russian scoundrels,' that he would make a complaint, that he would
+go to Count Von Kizerits himself, and so on.
+
+But the 'Russian scoundrels' paid no attention to his vociferations, and
+hurried on as fast as they could to the castle. They were all silent, as
+they walked through the garden, though Anna Vassilyevna sighed a little.
+But when they reached the carriages and stood still, they broke into
+an irrepressible, irresistible fit of Homeric laughter. First Shubin
+exploded, shrieking as if he were mad, Bersenyev followed with his
+gurgling guffaw, then Zoya fell into thin tinkling little trills, Anna
+Vassilyevna too suddenly broke down, Elena could not help smiling, and
+even Insarov at last could not resist it. But the loudest, longest, most
+persistent laugh was Uvar Ivanovitch's; he laughed till his sides ached,
+till he choked and panted. He would calm down a little, then would
+murmur through his tears: 'I--thought--what's that splash--and
+there--he--went plop.' And with the last word, forced out with
+convulsive effort, his whole frame was shaking with another burst of
+laughter. Zoya made him worse. 'I saw his legs,' she said, 'kicking in
+the air.' 'Yes, yes,' gasped Uvar Ivanovitch, 'his legs, his legs--and
+then splash!--there he plopped in!'
+
+'And how did Mr. Insarov manage it? why the German was three times his
+size?' said Zoya.
+
+'I'll tell you,' answered Uvar Ivanovitch, rubbing his eyes, 'I saw;
+with one arm about his waist, he tripped him up, and he went plop! I
+heard--a splash--there he went.'
+
+Long after the carriages had started, long after the castle of
+Tsaritsino was out of sight, Uvar Ivanovitch was still unable to regain
+his composure. Shubin, who was again with him in the carriage, began to
+cry shame on him at last.
+
+Insarov felt ashamed. He sat in the coach facing Elena (Bersenyev had
+taken his seat on the box), and he said nothing; she too was silent. He
+thought that she was condemning his action; but she did not condemn him.
+She had been scared at the first minute; then the expression of his face
+had impressed her; afterwards she pondered on it all. It was not quite
+clear to her what the nature of her reflections was. The emotion she had
+felt during the day had passed away; that she realised; but its
+place had been taken by another feeling which she did not yet fully
+understand. The _partie de plaisir_ had been prolonged too late;
+insensibly evening passed into night. The carriage rolled swiftly along,
+now beside ripening cornfields, where the air was heavy and fragrant
+with the smell of wheat; now beside wide meadows, from which a sudden
+wave of freshness blew lightly in the face. The sky seemed to lie
+like smoke over the horizon. At last the moon rose, dark and red. Anna
+Vassilyevna was dozing; Zoya had poked her head out of window and was
+staring at the road. It occurred to Elena at last that she had not
+spoken to Insarov for more than an hour. She turned to him with a
+trifling question; he at once answered her, delighted. Dim sounds began
+stirring indistinctly in the air, as though thousands of voices were
+talking in the distance; Moscow was coming to meet them. Lights twinkled
+afar off; they grew more and more frequent; at last there was the
+grating of the cobbles under their wheels. Anna Vassilyevna awoke, every
+one in the carriage began talking, though no one could hear what was
+said; everything was drowned in the rattle of the cobbles under the two
+carriages, and the hoofs of the eight horses. Long and wearisome seemed
+the journey from Moscow to Kuntsovo; all the party were asleep or
+silent, leaning with their heads pressed into their respective
+corners; Elena did not close her eyes; she kept them fixed on Insarov's
+dimly-outlined figure. A mood of sadness had come upon Shubin; the
+breeze was blowing into his eyes and irritating him; he retired into the
+collar of his cloak and was on the point of tears. Uvar Ivanovitch was
+snoring blissfully, rocking from side to side. The carriages came to a
+standstill at last. Two men-servants lifted Anna Vassilyevna out of
+the carriage; she was all to pieces, and at parting from her fellow
+travellers, announced that she was 'nearly dead'; they began thanking
+her, but she only repeated, 'nearly dead.' Elena for the first time
+pressed Insarov's hand at parting, and for a long while she sat at her
+window before undressing; Shubin seized an opportunity to whisper to
+Bersenyev:
+
+'There, isn't he a hero; he can pitch drunken Germans into the river!'
+
+'While you didn't even do that,' retorted Bersenyev, and he started
+homewards with Insarov.
+
+The dawn was already showing in the sky when the two friends reached
+their lodging. The sun had not yet risen, but already the chill of
+daybreak was in the air, a grey dew covered the grass, and the first
+larks were trilling high, high up in the shadowy infinity of air, whence
+like a solitary eye looked out the great, last star.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Soon after her acquaintance with Insarov, Elena (for the fifth or sixth
+time) began a diary. Here are some extracts from it:
+
+'_June_.... Andrei Petrovitch brings me books, but I can't read them.
+I'm ashamed to confess it to him; but I don't like to give back the
+books, tell lies, say I have read them. I feel that would mortify him.
+He is always watching me. He seems devoted to me. A very good man,
+Andrei Petrovitch.... What is it I want? Why is my heart so heavy, so
+oppressed? Why do I watch the birds with envy as they fly past? I feel
+that I could fly with them, fly, where I don't know, but far from here.
+And isn't that desire sinful? I have here mother, father, home. Don't
+I love them? No, I don't love them, as I should like to love. It's
+dreadful to put that in words, but it's the truth. Perhaps I am a great
+sinner; perhaps that is why I am so sad, why I have no peace. Some hand
+seems laid on me, weighing me down, as though I were in prison, and the
+walls would fall on me directly. Why is it others don't feel this? Whom
+shall I love, if I am cold to my own people? It's clear, papa is right;
+he reproaches me for loving nothing but cats and dogs. I must think
+about that. I pray very little; I must pray.... Ah, I think I should
+know how to love!... I am still shy with Mr. Insarov. I don't know why;
+I believe I'm not schoolgirlish generally, and he is so simple and kind.
+Sometimes he has a very serious face. He can't give much thought to us.
+I feel that, and am ashamed in a way to take up his time. With Andrei
+Petrovitch it's quite a different thing. I am ready to chat with him the
+whole day long. But he too always talks of Insarov. And such terrible
+facts he tells me about him! I saw him in a dream last night with a
+dagger in his hand. And he seemed to say to me, "I will kill you and I
+will kill myself!" What silliness!
+
+'Oh, if some one would say to me: "There, that's what you must do!"
+Being good--isn't much; doing good... yes, that's the great thing in
+life. But how is one to do good? Oh, if I could learn to control myself!
+I don't know why I am so often thinking of Mr. Insarov. When he comes
+and sits and listens intently, but makes no effort, no exertion himself,
+I look at him, and feel pleased, and that's all, and when he goes, I
+always go over his words, and feel vexed with myself, and upset even. I
+can't tell why. (He speaks French badly and isn't ashamed of it--I like
+that.) I always think a lot about new people, though. As I talked to
+him, I suddenly was reminded of our butler, Vassily, who rescued an old
+cripple out of a hut that was on fire, and was almost killed himself.
+Papa called him a brave fellow, mamma gave him five roubles, and I
+felt as though I could fall at his feet. And he had a simple
+face--stupid-looking even--and he took to drink later on....
+
+'I gave a penny to-day to a beggar woman, and she said to me, "Why are
+you so sorrowful?" I never suspected I looked sorrowful. I think it must
+come from being alone, always alone, for better, for worse! There is no
+one to stretch out a hand to me. Those who come to me, I don't want; and
+those I would choose--pass me by.
+
+'... I don't know what's the matter with me to-day; my head is confused,
+I want to fall on my knees and beg and pray for mercy. I don't know by
+whom or how, but I feel as if I were being tortured, and inwardly I
+am shrieking in revolt; I weep and can't be quiet.... O my God, subdue
+these outbreaks in me! Thou alone canst aid me, all else is useless; my
+miserable alms-giving, my studies can do nothing, nothing, nothing to
+help me. I should like to go out as a servant somewhere, really; that
+would do me good.
+
+'What is my youth for, what am I living for, why have I a soul, what is
+it all for?
+
+'... Insarov, Mr. Insarov--upon my word I don't know how to write--still
+interests me, I should like to know what he has within, in his soul? He
+seems so open, so easy to talk to, but I can see nothing. Sometimes he
+looks at me with such searching eyes--or is that my fancy? Paul keeps
+teasing me. I am angry with Paul. What does he want? He's in love with
+me... but his love's no good to me. He's in love with Zoya too. I'm
+unjust to him; he told me yesterday I didn't know how to be unjust by
+halves... that's true. It's very horrid.
+
+'Ah, I feel one needs unhappiness, or poverty or sickness, or else one
+gets conceited directly.
+
+'... What made Andrei Petrovitch tell me to-day about those two
+Bulgarians! He told me it as it were with some intention. What have I to
+do with Mr. Insarov? I feel cross with Andrei Petrovitch.
+
+'... I take my pen and don't know how to begin. How unexpectedly he
+began to talk to me in the garden to-day! How friendly and confiding
+he was! How quickly it happened! As if we were old, old friends and had
+only just recognised each other. How could I have not understood him
+before? How near he is to me now! And--what's so wonderful--I feel ever
+so much calmer now. It's ludicrous; yesterday I was angry with Andrei
+Petrovitch, and angry with him, I even called him _Mr. Insarov_, and
+to-day... Here at last is a true man; some one one may depend upon. He
+won't tell lies; he's the first man I have met who never tells lies; all
+the others tell lies, everything's lying. Andrei Petrovitch, dear good
+friend, why do I wrong you? No! Andrei Petrovitch is more learned than
+he is, even, perhaps more intellectual. But I don't know, he seems so
+small beside him. When he speaks of his country he seems taller, and his
+face grows handsome, and his voice is like steel, and... no... it seems
+as though there were no one in the world before whom he would flinch.
+And he doesn't only talk.... he has acted and he will act I shall ask
+him.... How suddenly he turned to me and smiled!... It's only brothers
+that smile like that! Ah, how glad I am! When he came the first time, I
+never dreamt that we should so soon get to know each other. And now I am
+even pleased that I remained indifferent to him at first. Indifferent?
+Am I not indifferent then now?... It's long since I have felt such
+inward peace. I feel so quiet, so quiet. And there's nothing to write? I
+see him often and that's all. What more is there to write?
+
+'... Paul shuts himself up, Andrei Petrovitch has taken to coming less
+often.... poor fellow! I fancy he... But that can never be, though.
+I like talking to Andrei Petrovitch; never a word of self, always of
+something sensible, useful. Very different from Shubin. Shubin's as fine
+as a butterfly, and admires his own finery; which butterflies don't do.
+But both Shubin and Andrei Petrovitch.... I know what I mean.
+
+'... He enjoys coming to us, I see that. But why? what does he find in
+me? It's true our tastes are alike; he and I, both of us don't care for
+poetry; neither of us knows anything of art. But how much better he
+is than I! He is calm, I am in perpetual excitement; he has chosen his
+path, his aim--while I--where am I going? where is my home? He is calm,
+but all his thoughts are far away. The time will come, and he will leave
+us for ever, will go home, there over the sea. Well? God grant he may!
+Any way I shall be glad that I knew him, while he was here.
+
+'Why isn't he a Russian? No, he could not be Russian.
+
+'Mamma too likes him; she says: an unassuming young man. Dear mamma! She
+does not understand him. Paul says nothing; he guessed I didn't like his
+hints, but he's jealous of him. Spiteful boy! And what right has he? Did
+I ever... All that's nonsense! What makes all that come into my head?
+
+'... Isn't it strange though, that up till now, up to twenty, I have
+never loved any one! I believe that the reason why D.'s (I shall
+call him D.--I like that name Dmitri) soul is so clear, is that he is
+entirely given up to his work, his ideal. What has he to trouble about?
+When any one has utterly... utterly... given himself up, he has little
+sorrow, he is not responsible for anything. It's not _I_ want, but _it_
+wants. By the way, he and I both love the same flowers. I picked a rose
+this morning, one leaf fell, he picked it up.... I gave him the whole
+rose.
+
+'... D. often comes to us. Yesterday he spent the whole evening. He
+wants to teach me Bulgarian. I feel happy with him, quite at home, more
+than at home.
+
+'... The days fly past.... I am happy, and somehow discontent and I am
+thankful to God, and tears are not far off. Oh these hot bright days!
+
+'... I am still light-hearted as before, and only at times, and only a
+little, sad. I am happy. Am I happy?
+
+'... It will be long before I forget the expedition yesterday. What
+strange, new, terrible impressions when he suddenly took that great
+giant and flung him like a ball into the water. I was not frightened ...
+yet he frightened me. And afterwards--what an angry face, almost cruel!
+How he said, "He will swim out!" It gave me a shock. So I did not
+understand him. And afterwards when they all laughed, when I was
+laughing, how I felt for him! He was ashamed, I felt that he was ashamed
+before me. He told me so afterwards in the carriage in the dark, when I
+tried to get a good view of him and was afraid of him. Yes, he is not
+to be trifled with, and he is a splendid champion. But why that wicked
+look, those trembling lips, that angry fire in his eyes? Or is it,
+perhaps, inevitable? Isn't it possible to be a man, a hero, and to
+remain soft and gentle? "Life is a coarse business," he said to me once
+lately. I repeated that saying to Andrei Petrovitch; he did not agree
+with D. Which of them is right? But the beginning of that day! How happy
+I was, walking beside him, even without speaking. ... But I am glad of
+what happened. I see that it was quite as it should be.
+
+'... Restlessness again... I am not quite well.... All these days I have
+written nothing in this book, because I have had no wish to write. I
+felt, whatever I write, it won't be what is in my heart. ... And what
+is in my heart? I have had a long talk with him, which revealed a great
+deal. He told me his plan (by the way, I know now how he got the wound
+in his neck.... Good God! when I think he was actually condemned
+to death, that he was only just saved, that he was wounded.... ) He
+prophesies war and will be glad of it. And for all that, I never saw D.
+so depressed. What can he... he!... be depressed by? Papa arrived home
+from town and came upon us two. He looked rather queerly at us. Andrei
+Petrovitch came; I noticed he had grown very thin and pale. He reproved
+me, saying I behave too coldly and inconsiderately to Shubin. I had
+utterly forgotten Paul's existence. I will see him, and try to smooth
+over my offence. He is nothing to me now... nor any one else in the
+world. Andrei Petrovitch talked to me in a sort of commiserating way.
+What does it all mean? Why is everything around me and within me so
+dark? I feel as if about me and within me, something mysterious were
+happening, for which I want to find the right word.... I did not sleep
+all night; my head aches. What's the good of writing? He went away so
+quickly to-day and I wanted to talk to him.... He almost seems to avoid
+me. Yes, he avoids me.
+
+'... The word is found, light has dawned on me! My God, have pity on
+me.... I love him!'
+
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+On the very day on which Elena had written this last fatal line in
+her diary, Insarov was sitting in Bersenyev's room, and Bersenyev was
+standing before him with a look of perplexity on his face. Insarov had
+just announced his intention of returning to Moscow the next day.
+
+'Upon my word!' cried Bersenyev. 'Why, the finest part of the summer is
+just beginning. What will you do in Moscow? What a sudden decision! Or
+have you had news of some sort?'
+
+'I have had no news,' replied Insarov; 'but on thinking things over, I
+find I cannot stop here.'
+
+'How can that be?'
+
+'Andrei Petrovitch,' said Insarov, 'be so kind... don't insist, please,
+I am very sorry myself to be leaving you, but it can't be helped.'
+
+Bersenyev looked at him intently.
+
+'I know,' he said at last, 'there's no persuading you. And so, it's a
+settled matter.'
+
+'Is it?'
+
+'Absolutely settled,' replied Insarov, getting up and going away.
+
+Bersenyev walked about the room, then took his hat and set off for the
+Stahovs.
+
+'You have something to tell me,' Elena said to him, directly they were
+left alone.
+
+'Yes, how did you guess?'
+
+'Never mind; tell me what it is.'
+
+Bersenyev told her of Insarov's intention.
+
+Elena turned white.
+
+'What does it mean?' she articulated with effort
+
+'You know,' observed Bersenyev, 'Dmitri Nikanorovitch does not care
+to give reasons for his actions. But I think... let us sit down, Elena
+Nikolaevna, you don't seem very well.... I fancy I can guess what is the
+real cause of this sudden departure.'
+
+'What--what cause?' repeated Elena, and unconsciously she gripped
+tightly Bersenyev's hand in her chill ringers.
+
+'You see,' began Bersenyev, with a pathetic smile, 'how can I explain to
+you? I must go back to last spring, to the time when I began to be
+more intimate with Insarov. I used to meet him then at the house of a
+relative, who had a daughter, a very pretty girl I thought that Insarov
+cared for her, and I told him so. He laughed, and answered that I was
+mistaken, that he was quite heart-whole, but if anything of that sort
+did happen to him, he should run away directly, as he did not want,
+in his own words, for the sake of personal feeling, to be false to his
+cause and his duty. "I am a Bulgarian," he said, "and I have no need of
+a Russian love----"
+
+'Well--so--now you----' whispered Elena. She involuntarily turned away
+her head, like a man expecting a blow, but she still held the hand she
+had clutched.
+
+'I think,' he said, and his own voice sank, 'I think that what I fancied
+then has really happened now.'
+
+'That is--you think--don't torture me!' broke suddenly from Elena.
+
+'I think,' Bersenyev continued hurriedly, 'that Insarov is in love now
+with a Russian girl, and he is resolved to go, according to his word.'
+
+Elena clasped his hand still tighter, and her head drooped still lower,
+as if she would hide from other eyes the flush of shame which suddenly
+blazed over her face and neck.
+
+'Andrei Petrovitch, you are kind as an angel,' she said, 'but will he
+come to say goodbye?'
+
+'Yes, I imagine so; he will be sure to come. He wouldn't like to go
+away----'
+
+'Tell him, tell him----'
+
+But here the poor girl broke down; tears rushed streaming from her eyes,
+and she ran out of the room.
+
+'So that's how she loves him,' thought Bersenyev, as he walked slowly
+home. 'I didn't expect that; I didn't think she felt so strongly. I
+am kind, she says:' he pursued his reflections:... 'Who can tell what
+feelings, what impulse drove me to tell Elena all that? It was not
+kindness; no, not kindness. It was all the accursed desire to make sure
+whether the dagger is really in the wound. I ought to be content.
+They love each other, and I have been of use to them.... The future
+go-between between science and the Russian public Shubin calls me;
+it seems as though it had been decreed at my birth that I should be a
+go-between. But if I'm mistaken? No, I'm not mistaken----'
+
+It was bitter for Andrei Petrovitch, and he could not turn his mind to
+Raumer.
+
+The next day at two o'clock Insarov arrived at the Stahovs'. As
+though by express design, there was a visitor in Anna Vassilyevna's
+drawing-room at the time, the wife of a neighbouring chief-priest, an
+excellent and worthy woman, though she had had a little unpleasantness
+with the police, because she thought fit, in the hottest part of the
+day, to bathe in a lake near the road, along which a certain dignified
+general's family used often to be passing. The presence of an outside
+person was at first even a relief to Elena, from whose face every trace
+of colour vanished, directly she heard Insarov's step; but her heart
+sank at the thought that he might go without a word with her alone. He,
+too, seemed confused, and avoided meeting her eyes. 'Surely he will not
+go directly,' thought Elena. Insarov was, in fact, turning to take leave
+of Anna Vassilyevna; Elena hastily rose and called him aside to the
+window. The priest's wife was surprised, and tried to turn round; but
+she was so tightly laced that her stays creaked at every movement, and
+she stayed where she was.
+
+'Listen,' said Elena hurriedly; 'I know what you have come for; Andrei
+Petrovitch told me of your intention, but I beg, I entreat you, do not
+say good-bye to us to-day, but come here to-morrow rather earlier, at
+eleven. I must have a few words with you.'
+
+Insarov bent his head without speaking.
+
+'I will not keep you.... You promise me?'
+
+Again Insarov bowed, but said nothing.
+
+'Lenotchka, come here,' said Anna Vassilyevna, 'look, what a charming
+reticule.'
+
+'I worked it myself,' observed the priest's wife.
+
+Elena came away from the window.
+
+Insarov did not stay more than a quarter of an hour at the Stahovs'.
+Elena watched him secretly. He was restless and ill at ease. As before,
+he did not know where to look, and he went away strangely and suddenly;
+he seemed to vanish.
+
+Slowly passed that day for Elena; still more slowly dragged on the long,
+long night. Elena sat on her bed, her arms clasping her knees, and her
+head laid on them; then she walked to the window, pressed her burning
+forehead against the cold glass, and thought and thought, going over and
+over the same thoughts till she was exhausted. Her heart seemed turned
+to stone, she did not feel it, but the veins in her head throbbed
+painfully, her hair stifled her, and her lips were dry. 'He will come...
+he did not say good-bye to mamma... he will not deceive me... Can Andrei
+Petrovitch have been right? It cannot be... He didn't promise to come
+in words... Can I have parted from him for ever----?' Those were the
+thoughts that never left her, literally never left her; they did not
+come and come again; they were for ever turning like a mist moving about
+in her brain. 'He loves me!' suddenly flashed through her, setting her
+whole nature on fire, and she gazed fixedly into the darkness; a secret
+smile parted her lips, seen by none, but she quickly shook her head,
+and clasped her hands behind her neck, and again her former thought hung
+like a mist about her. Before morning she undressed and went to bed,
+but she could not sleep. The first fiery ray of sunlight fell upon her
+room... 'Oh, if he loves me!' she cried suddenly, and unabashed by the
+light shining on her, she opened wide her arms... She got up, dressed,
+and went down. No one in the house was awake yet. She went into the
+garden, but in the garden it was peaceful, green, and fresh; the birds
+chirped so confidingly, and the flowers peeped out so gaily that she
+could not bear it. 'Oh!' she thought, 'if it is true, no blade of grass
+is happy as I. But is it true?' She went back to her room and, to kill
+time, she began changing her dress. But everything slipped out of her
+hands, and she was still sitting half-dressed before her looking-glass
+when she was summoned to morning tea. She went down; her mother noticed
+her pallor, but only said: 'How interesting you are to-day,' and taking
+her in in a glance, she added: 'How well that dress suits you; you
+should always put it on when you want to make an impression on any one.'
+Elena made no reply, and sat down in a corner. Meanwhile it struck nine
+o'clock; there were only two haurs now till eleven. Elena tried to read,
+then to sew, then to read again, then she vowed to herself to walk a
+hundred times up and down one alley, and paced it a hundred times; then
+for a long time she watched Anna Vassilyevna laying out the cards for
+patience... and looked at the clock; it was not yet ten. Shubin came
+into the drawing-room. She tried to talk to him, and begged his pardon,
+what for she did not know herself.... Every word she uttered did not
+cost her effort exactly, but roused a kind of amazement in herself.
+Shubin bent over her. She expected ridicule, raised her eyes, and saw
+before her a sorrowful and sympathetic face.... She smiled at this face.
+Shubin, too, smiled at her without speaking, and gently left her. She
+tried to keep him, but could not at once remember what to call him. At
+last it struck eleven. Then she began to wait, to wait, and to listen.
+She could do nothing now; she ceased even to think. Her heart was
+stirred into life again, and began beating louder and louder, and
+strange, to say, the time seemed flying by. A quarter of an hour passed,
+then half an hour; a few minutes more, as Elena thought, had passed,
+when suddenly she started; the clock had struck not twelve, but one. 'He
+is not coming; he is going away without saying good-bye.'... The blood
+rushed to her head with this thought. She felt that she was gasping
+for breath, that she was on the point of sobbing.... She ran to her own
+room, and fell with her face in her clasped hands on to the bed.
+
+For half an hour she lay motionless; the tears flowed through her
+fingers on to the pillow. Suddenly she raised herself and sat up,
+something strange was passing in her, her face changed, her wet eyes
+grew dry and shining, her brows were bent and her lips compressed.
+Another half-hour passed. Elena, for the last time, strained her ears to
+listen: was not that the familiar voice floating up to her? She got
+up, put on her hat and gloves, threw a cape over her shoulders, and,
+slipping unnoticed out of the house, she went with swift steps along the
+road leading to Bersenyev's lodging.
+
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Elena walked with her head bent and her eyes fixed straight before her.
+She feared nothing, she considered nothing; she wanted to see Insarov
+once more. She went on, not noticing that the sun had long ago
+disappeared behind heavy black clouds, that the wind was roaring by
+gusts in the trees and blowing her dress about her, that the dust had
+suddenly risen and was flying in a cloud along the road.... Large drops
+of rain were falling, she did not even notice it; but it fell faster
+and heavier, there were flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. Elena
+stood still looking round.... Fortunately for her, there was a little
+old broken-down chapel that had been built over a disused well not far
+from the place where she was overtaken by the storm. She ran to it
+and got under the low roof. The rain fell in torrents; the sky was
+completely overcast. In dumb despair Elena stared at the thick network
+of fast-falling drops. Her last hope of getting a sight of Insarov
+was vanishing. A little old beggar-woman came into the chapel, shook
+herself, said with a curtsy: 'Out of the rain, good lady,' and with many
+sighs and groans sat down on a ledge near the well. Elena put her hand
+into her pocket; the old woman noticed this action and a light came into
+her face, yellow and wrinkled now, though once handsome. 'Thank you,
+dear gracious lady,' she was beginning. There happened to be no purse in
+Elena's pocket, but the old woman was still holding out her hand.
+
+'I have no money, grannie,' said Elena, 'but here, take this, it will be
+of use for something.'
+
+She gave her her handkerchief.
+
+'O-oh, my pretty lady,' said the beggar, 'what do you give your
+handkerchief to me for? For a wedding-present to my grandchild when
+she's married? God reward you for your goodness!'
+
+A peal of thunder was heard.
+
+'Lord Jesus Christ,' muttered the beggar-woman, and she crossed herself
+three times. 'Why, haven't I seen you before,' she added after a brief
+pause. 'Didn't you give me alms in Christ's name?'
+
+Elena looked more attentively at the old woman and recognised her.
+
+'Yes, grannie,' she answered, 'wasn't it you asked me why I was so
+sorrowful?'
+
+'Yes, darling, yes. I fancied I knew you. And I think you've a
+heart-ache still. You seem in trouble now. Here's your handkerchief,
+too, wet from tears to be sure. Oh, you young people, you all have the
+same sorrow, a terrible woe it is!'
+
+'What sorrow, grannie?'
+
+'Ah, my good young lady, you can't deceive an old woman like me. I know
+what your heart is heavy over; your sorrow's not an uncommon one. Sure,
+I have been young too, darling. I have been through that trouble too.
+Yes. And I'll tell you something, for your goodness to me; you've won
+a good man, not a light of love, you cling to him alone; cling to him
+stronger than death. If it comes off, it comes off,--if not, it's in
+God's hands. Yes. Why are you wondering at me? I'm a fortune-teller.
+There, I'll carry away your sorrow with your handkerchief. I'll carry it
+away, and it's over. See the rain's less; you wait a little longer. It's
+not the first time I've been wet. Remember, darling; you had a sorrow,
+the sorrow has flown, and there's no memory of it. Good Lord, have mercy
+on us!'
+
+The beggar-woman got up from the edge of the well, went out of
+the chapel, and stole off on her way. Elena stared after her in
+bewilderment. 'What does this mean?' she murmured involuntarily.
+
+The rain grew less and less, the sun peeped out for an instant. Elena
+was just preparing to leave her shelter.... Suddenly, ten paces from the
+chapel, she saw Insarov. Wrapt in a cloak he was walking along the very
+road by which Elena had come; he seemed to be hurrying home.
+
+She clasped the old rail of the steps for support, and tried to call to
+him, but her voice failed her... Insarov had already passed by without
+raising his head.
+
+'Dmitri Nikanorovitch!' she said at last.
+
+Insarov stopped abruptly, looked round.... For the first minute he
+did not know Elena, but he went up to her at once. 'You! you here!' he
+cried.
+
+She walked back in silence into the chapel. Insarov followed Elena. 'You
+here?' he repeated.
+
+She was still silent, and only gazed upon him with a strange, slow,
+tender look. He dropped his eyes.
+
+'You have come from our house?' she asked.
+
+'No... not from your house.'
+
+'No?' repeated Elena, and she tried to smile. 'Is that how you keep your
+promises? I have been expecting you ever since the morning.'
+
+'I made no promise yesterday, if you remember, Elena Nikolaevna.'
+
+Again Elena faintly smiled, and she passed her hand over her face. Both
+face and hands were very white.
+
+'You meant, then, to go away without saying good-bye to us?'
+
+'Yes,' replied Insarov in a surly, thick voice.
+
+'What? After our friendship, after the talks, after everything.... Then
+if I had not met you here by chance.' (Elena's voice began to break, and
+she paused an instant)... 'you would have gone away like that, without
+even shaking hands for the last time, and you would not have cared?'
+
+Insarov turned away. 'Elena Nikolaevnas don't talk like that, please.
+I'm not over happy as it is. Believe me, my decision has cost me great
+effort. If you knew----'
+
+'I don't want to know,' Elena interposed with dismay, 'why you are
+going.... It seems it's necessary. It seems we must part. You would not
+wound your friends without good reason. But, can friends part like this?
+And we are friends, aren't we?'
+
+'No,' said Insarov.
+
+'What?' murmured Elena. Her cheeks were overspread with a faint flush.
+
+'That's just why I am going away--because we are not friends. Don't
+force me into saying what I don't want to say, and what I won't say.'
+
+'You used to be so open with me,' said Elena rather reproachfully. 'Do
+you remember?'
+
+'I used to be able to be open, then I had nothing to conceal; but
+now----'
+
+'But now?' queried Elena.
+
+'But now... now I must go away. Goodbye.'
+
+If, at that instant, Insarov had lifted his eyes to Elena, he would have
+seen that her face grew brighter and brighter as he frowned and looked
+gloomy; but he kept his eyes obstinately fixed on the ground.
+
+'Well, good-bye, Dmitri Nikanorovitch,' she began. 'But at least, since
+we have met, give me your hand now.'
+
+Insarov was stretching out his hand. 'No, I can't even do that,' he
+said, and turned away again.
+
+'You can't?'
+
+'No, I can't. Good-bye.' And he moved away to the entrance of the
+chapel.
+
+'Wait a little longer,' said Elena. 'You seem afraid of me. But I am
+braver than you,' she added, a faint tremor passing suddenly over her
+whole body. 'I can tell you... shall I?... how it was you found me here?
+Do you know where I was going?'
+
+Insarov looked in bewilderment at Elena,
+
+'I was going to you.'
+
+'To me?'
+
+Elena hid her face. 'You mean to force me to say that I love you,' she
+whispered. 'There, I have said it.'
+
+'Elena!' cried Insarov.
+
+She took his hands, looked at him, and fell on his breast.
+
+He held her close to him, and said nothing. There was no need for him
+to tell her he loved her. From that cry alone, from the instant
+transformation of the whole man, from the heaving of the breast to which
+she clung so confidingly, from the touch of his finger tips in her hair,
+Elena could feel that she was loved. He did not speak, and she needed
+no words. 'He is here, he loves me... what need of more?' The peace of
+perfect bliss, the peace of the harbour reached after storm, of the end
+attained, that heavenly peace which gives significance and beauty even
+to death, filled her with its divine flood. She desired nothing, for she
+had gained all. 'O my brother, my friend, my dear one!' her lips were
+whispering, while she did not know whose was this heart, his or her own,
+which beat so blissfully, and melted against her bosom.
+
+He stood motionless, folding in his strong embrace the young life
+surrendered to him; he felt against his heart this new, infinitely
+precious burden; a passion of tenderness, of gratitude unutterable, was
+crumbling his hard will to dust, and tears unknown till now stood in his
+eyes.
+
+She did not weep; she could only repeat, 'O my friend, my brother!'
+
+'So you will follow me everywhere?' he said to her, a quarter of an hour
+later, still enfolding her and keeping her close to him in his arms.
+
+'Everywhere, to the ends of the earth. Where you are, I will be.'
+
+'And you are not deceiving yourself, you know your parents will never
+consent to our marriage?'
+
+'I don't deceive myself; I know that.'
+
+'You know that I'm poor--almost a beggar.'
+
+'I know.'
+
+'That I'm not a Russian, that it won't be my fate to live in Russia,
+that you will have to break all your ties with your country, with your
+people.'
+
+'I know, I know.'
+
+'Do you know, too, that I have given myself up to a difficult, thankless
+cause, that I... that we shall have to expose ourselves not to dangers
+only, but to privation, humiliation, perhaps----'
+
+'I know, I know all--I love you----'
+
+'That you will have to give up all you are accustomed to, that out there
+alone among strangers, you will be forced perhaps to work----'
+
+She laid her hand on his lips. 'I love you, my dear one.'
+
+He began hotly kissing her slender, rosy hand. Elena did not draw it
+away from his lips, and with a kind of childish delight, with smiling
+curiosity, watched how he covered with kisses, first the palm, then the
+fingers....
+
+All at once she blushed and hid her face upon his breast.
+
+He lifted her head tenderly and looked steadily into her eyes. 'Welcome,
+then, my wife, before God and men!'
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+An hour later, Elena, with her hat in one hand, her cape in the other,
+walked slowly into the drawing-room of the villa. Her hair was in slight
+disorder; on each cheek was to be seen a small bright spot of colour,
+the smile would not leave her lips, her eyes were nearly shutting and
+half hidden under the lids; they, too, were smiling. She could scarcely
+move for weariness, and this weariness was pleasant to her; everything,
+indeed, was pleasant to her. Everything seemed sweet and friendly to
+her. Uvar Ivanovitch was sitting at the window; she went up to him, laid
+her hand on his shoulder, stretched a little, and involuntarily, as it
+seemed, she laughed.
+
+'What is it?' he inquired, astonished.
+
+She did not know what to say. She felt inclined to kiss Uvar Ivanovitch.
+
+'How he splashed!' she explained at last.
+
+But Uvar Ivanovitch did not stir a muscle, and continued to look with
+amazement at Elena. She dropped her hat and cape on to him.
+
+'Dear Uvar Ivanovitch,' she said, 'I am sleepy and tired,' and again she
+laughed and sank into a low chair near him.
+
+'H'm,' grunted Uvar Ivanovitch, flourishing his fingers, 'then you
+ought--yes----'
+
+Elena was looking round her and thinking, 'From all this I soon must
+part... and strange--I have no dread, no doubt, no regret.... No, I am
+sorry for mamma.' Then the little chapel rose again before her mind,
+again her voice was echoing in it, and she felt his arms about her.
+Joyously, though faintly, her heart fluttered; weighed down by the
+languor of happiness. The old beggar-woman recurred to her mind. 'She
+did really bear away my sorrow,' she thought. 'Oh, how happy I am! how
+undeservedly! how soon!' If she had let herself go in the least she
+would have melted into sweet, endless tears. She could only restrain
+them by laughing. Whatever attitude she fell into seemed to her the
+easiest, most comfortable possible; she felt as if she were being rocked
+to sleep. All her movements were slow and soft; what had become of her
+awkwardness, her haste? Zoya came in; Elena decided that she had never
+seen a more charming little face; Anna Vassilyevna came in; Elena felt a
+pang--but with what tenderness she embraced her mother and kissed her on
+the forehead near the hair, already slightly grey! Then she went away to
+her own room; how everything smiled upon her there! With what a sense
+of shamefaced triumph and tranquillity she sat down on her bed--the very
+bed on which, only three hours ago, she had spent such bitter moments!
+'And yet, even then, I knew he loved me,' she thought, 'even before...
+Ah, no! it's a sin. You are my wife,' she whispered, hiding her face in
+her hands and falling on her knees.
+
+Towards the evening, she grew more thoughtful. Sadness came upon her at
+the thought that she would not soon see Insarov. He could not without
+awakening suspicion remain at Bersenyev's, and so this was what he and
+Elena had resolved on. Insarov was to return to Moscow and to come over
+to visit them twice before the autumn; on her side she promised to write
+him letters, and, if it were possible, to arrange a meeting with him
+somewhere near Kuntsov. She went down to the drawing-room to tea, and
+found there all the household and Shubin, who looked at her sharply
+directly she came in; she tried to talk to him in a friendly way as of
+old, but she dreaded his penetration, she was afraid of herself. She
+felt sure that there was good reason for his having left her alone
+for more than a fortnight. Soon Bersenyev arrived, and gave Insarov's
+respects to Anna Vassilyevna with an apology for having gone back to
+Moscow without calling to take leave of her. Insarov's name was for the
+first time during the day pronounced before Elena. She felt that she
+reddened; she realised at the same time that she ought to express regret
+at the sudden departure of such a pleasant acquaintance; but she could
+not force herself to hypocrisy, and continued to sit without stirring
+or speaking, while Anna Vassilyevna sighed and lamented. Elena tried to
+keep near Bersenyev; she was not afraid of him, though he even knew
+part of her secret; she was safe under his wing from Shubin, who still
+persisted in staring at her--not mockingly but attentively. Bersenyev,
+too, was thrown into perplexity during the evening: he had expected to
+see Elena more gloomy. Happily for her, an argument sprang up about art
+between him and Shubin; she moved apart and heard their voices as it
+were through a dream. By degrees, not only they, but the whole room,
+everything surrounding her, seemed like a dream--everything: the samovar
+on the table, and Uvar Ivanovitch's short waistcoat, and Zoya's polished
+finger-nails, and the portrait in oils of the Grand Duke Constantine
+Pavlovitch on the wall; everything retreated, everything was wrapped
+in mist, everything ceased to exist. Only she felt sorry for them all.
+'What are they living for?' she thought.
+
+'Are you sleepy, Lenotchka?' her mother asked her. She did not hear the
+question.
+
+'A half untrue insinuation, do you say?' These words, sharply uttered by
+Shubin, suddenly awakened Elena's attention. 'Why,' he continued, 'the
+whole sting lies in that. A true insinuation makes one wretched--that's
+unchristian--and to an untrue insinuation a man is indifferent--that's
+stupid, but at a half true one he feels vexed and impatient. For
+instance, if I say that Elena Nikolaevna is in love with one of us, what
+sort of insinuation would that be, eh?'
+
+'Ah, Monsieur Paul,' said Elena, 'I should like to show myself vexed,
+but really I can't. I am so tired.'
+
+'Why don't you go to bed?' observed Anna Vassilyevna, who was always
+drowsy in the evening herself, and consequently always eager to send
+the others to bed. 'Say good-night to me, and go in God's name; Andrei
+Petrovitch will excuse you.'
+
+Elena kissed her mother, bowed to all and went away. Shubin accompanied
+her to the door. 'Elena Nikolaevna,' he whispered to her in the doorway,
+'you trample on Monsieur Paul, you mercilessly walk over him, but
+Monsieur Paul blesses you and your little feet, and the slippers on your
+little feet, and the soles of your little slippers.'
+
+Elena shrugged her shoulders, reluctantly held out her hand to him--not
+the one Insarov had kissed--and going up to her room, at once undressed,
+got into bed, and fell asleep. She slept a deep, unstirring sleep, as
+even children rarely sleep--the sleep of a child convalescent after
+sickness, when its mother sits near its cradle and watches it, and
+listens to its breathing.
+
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+'Come to my room for a minute,' Shubin said to Bersenyev, directly the
+latter had taken leave of Anna Vassilyevna: 'I have something to show
+you.'
+
+Bersenyev followed him to his attic. He was surprised to see a number of
+studies, statuettes, and busts, covered with damp cloths, set about in
+all the corners of the room.
+
+'Well I see you have been at work in earnest,' he observed to Shubin.
+
+'One must do something,' he answered. 'If one thing doesn't do, one must
+try another. However, like a true Corsican, I am more concerned with
+revenge than with pure art. _Trema, Bisanzia!_'
+
+'I don't understand you,' said Bersenyev.
+
+'Well, wait a minute. Deign to look this way, gracious friend and
+benefactor, my vengeance number one.'
+
+Shubin uncovered one figure, and Bersenyev saw a capital bust of
+Insarov, an excellent likeness. The features of the face had been
+correctly caught by Shubin to the minutest detail, and he had given him
+a fine expression, honest, generous, and bold.
+
+Bersenyev went into raptures over it.
+
+'That's simply exquisite!' he cried. 'I congratulate you. You must
+send it to the exhibition! Why do you call that magnificent work your
+vengeance?'
+
+'Because, sir, I intended to offer this magnificent work as you call it
+to Elena Nikolaevna on her name day. Do you see the allegory? We are not
+blind, we see what goes on about us, but we are gentlemen, my dear sir,
+and we take our revenge like gentlemen.... But here,' added Shubin,
+uncovering another figure, 'as the artist according to modern aesthetic
+principles enjoys the enviable privilege of embodying in himself every
+sort of baseness which he can turn into a gem of creative art, we in
+the production of this gem, number two, have taken vengeance not as
+gentlemen, but simply en canaille.'
+
+He deftly drew off the cloth, and displayed to Bersenyev's eyes a
+statuette in Dantan's style, also of Insarov. Anything cleverer and more
+spiteful could not be imagined. The young Bulgarian was represented as
+a ram standing on his hind-legs, butting forward with his horns. Dull
+solemnity and aggressiveness, obstinacy, clumsiness and narrowness were
+simply printed on the visage of the 'sire of the woolly flock,' and yet
+the likeness to Insarov was so striking that Bersenyev could not help
+laughing.
+
+'Eh? is it amusing?' said Shubin. 'Do you recognise the hero? Do you
+advise me to send it too to the exhibition? That, my dear fellow, I
+intend as a present for myself on my own name day.... Your honour will
+permit me to play the fool.'
+
+And Shubin gave three little leaps, kicking himself behind with his
+heels.
+
+Bersenyev picked up the cloth off the floor--and threw it over the
+statuette.
+
+'Ah, you, magnanimous'--began Shubin. 'Who the devil was it in history
+was so particularly magnanimous? Well, never mind! And now,' he
+continued, with melancholy triumph, uncovering a third rather large mass
+of clay, 'you shall behold something which will show you the humility
+and discernment of your friend. You will realise that he, like a true
+artist again, feels the need and the use of self-castigation. Behold!'
+
+The cloth was lifted and Bersenyev saw two heads, modelled side by side
+and close as though growing together.... He did not at once know what
+was the subject, but looking closer, he recognised in one of them
+Annushka, in the other Shubin himself. They were, however, rather
+caricatures than portraits. Annushka was represented as a handsome fat
+girl with a low forehead, eyes lost in layers of fat, and a saucily
+turned-up nose. Her thick lips had an insolent curve; her whole
+face expressed sensuality, carelessness, and boldness, not without
+goodnature. Himself Shubin had modelled as a lean emaciated rake, with
+sunken cheeks, his thin hair hanging in weak wisps about his face, a
+meaningless expression in his dim eyes, and his nose sharp and thin as a
+dead man's.
+
+Bersenyev turned away with disgust. 'A nice pair, aren't they, my dear
+fellow?' said Shubin; 'won't you graciously compose a suitable title?
+For the first two I have already thought of titles. On the bust shall be
+inscribed: "A hero resolving to liberate his country." On the statuette:
+"Look out, sausage-eating Germans!" And for this work what do you think
+of "The future of the artist Pavel Yakovlitch Shubin?" Will that do?'
+
+'Leave off,' replied Bersenyev. 'Was it worth while to waste your time
+on such a ----' He could not at once fix on a suitable word.
+
+'Disgusting thing, you mean? No, my dear fellow, excuse me, if anything
+ought to go to the exhibition, it's that group.'
+
+'It's simply disgusting,' repeated Bersenyev. 'And besides, it's
+nonsense. You have absolutely no such degrading tendencies to which,
+unhappily, our artists have such a frequent bent. You have simply
+libelled yourself.'
+
+'Do you think so?' said Shubin gloomily. 'I have none of them, and
+if they come upon me, the fault is all one person's. Do you know,'
+he added, tragically knitting his brows, 'that I have been trying
+drinking?'
+
+'Nonsense?'
+
+'Yes, I have, by God,' rejoined Shubin; and suddenly grinning and
+brightening,--'but I didn't like it, my dear boy, the stuff sticks in my
+throat, and my head afterwards is a perfect drum. The great Lushtchihin
+himself--Harlampy Lushtchihin--the greatest drunkard in Moscow, and a
+Great Russian drunkard too, declared there was nothing to be made of me.
+In his words, the bottle does not speak to me.'
+
+Bersenyev was just going to knock the group over but Shubin stopped him.
+
+'That'll do, my dear boy, don't smash it; it will serve as a lesson, a
+scare-crow.'
+
+Bersenyev laughed.
+
+'If that's what it is, I will spare your scarecrow then,' he said. And
+now, 'Long live eternal true art!'
+
+'Long live true art!' put in Shubin. 'By art the good is better and the
+bad is not all loss!'
+
+The friends shook hands warmly and parted.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Elena's first sensation on awakening was one of happy consternation.
+'Is it possible? Is it possible?' she asked herself, and her heart
+grew faint with happiness. Recollections came rushing on her... she was
+overwhelmed by them. Then again she was enfolded by the blissful peace
+of triumph. But in the course of the morning, Elena gradually became
+possessed by a spirit of unrest, and for the remainder of the day she
+felt listless and weary. It was true she knew now what she wanted, but
+that made it no easier for her. That never-to-be forgotten meeting had
+cast her for ever out of the old groove; she was no longer at the same
+standpoint, she was far away, and yet everything went on about her
+in its accustomed order, everything pursued its own course as though
+nothing were changed; the old life moved on its old way, reckoning on
+Elena's interest and co-operation as of old. She tried to begin a letter
+to Insarov, but that too was a failure; the words came on to paper
+either lifeless or false. Her diary she had put an end to by drawing a
+thick stroke under the last line. That was the past, and every thought,
+all her soul, was turned now to the future. Her heart was heavy. To sit
+with her mother who suspected nothing, to listen to her, answer her and
+talk to her, seemed to Elena something wicked; she felt the presence of
+a kind of falseness in her, she suffered though she had nothing to blush
+for; more than once an almost irresistible desire sprang up in her
+heart to tell everything without reserve, whatever might come of it
+afterwards. 'Why,' she thought, 'did not Dmitri take me away then, from
+that little chapel, wherever he wanted to go? Didn't he tell me I was
+his wife before God? What am I here for?' She suddenly began to feel shy
+of every one, even of Uvar Ivanovitch, who was flourishing his fingers
+in more perplexity than ever. Now everything about her seemed neither
+sweet nor friendly, nor even a dream, but, like a nightmare, lay,
+an immovable dead load, on her heart; seeming to reproach her and be
+indignant with her, and not to care to know about her....'You are ours
+in spite of everything,' she seemed to hear. Even her poor pets, her
+ill-used birds and animals looked at her--so at least she fancied--with
+suspicion and hostility. She felt conscience-stricken and ashamed of
+her feelings. 'This is my home after all,' she thought, 'my family, my
+country.'... 'No, it's no longer your country, nor your family,' another
+voice affirmed within her. Terror was overmastering her, and she was
+vexed with her own feebleness. The trial was only beginning and she was
+losing patience already... Was this what she had promised?
+
+She did not soon gain control of herself. But a week passed and then
+another.... Elena became a little calmer, and grew used to her new
+position. She wrote two little notes to Insarov, and carried them
+herself to the post: she could not for anything--through shame and
+through pride--have brought herself to confide in a maid. She was
+already beginning to expect him in person.... But instead of Insarov,
+one fine morning Nikolai Artemyevitch made his appearance.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+No one in the house of the retired lieutenant of guards, Stahov, had
+ever seen him so sour, and at the same time so self-confident and
+important as on that day. He walked into the drawing-room in his
+overcoat and hat, with long deliberate stride, stamping with his heels;
+he approached the looking-glass and took a long look at himself,
+shaking his head and biting his lips with imperturbable severity. Anna
+Vassilyevna met him with obvious agitation and secret delight (she never
+met him otherwise); he did not even take off his hat, nor greet her, and
+in silence gave Elena his doe-skin glove to kiss. Anna Vassilyevna began
+questioning him about the progress of his cure; he made her no reply.
+Uvar Ivanovitch made his appearance; he glanced at him and said, 'bah!'
+He usually behaved coldly and haughtily to Uvar Ivanovitch, though
+he acknowledged in him 'traces of the true Stahov blood.' Almost all
+Russian families of the nobility are convinced, as is well known, of the
+existence of exceptional hereditary characteristics, peculiar to them
+alone; we have more than once heard discussions 'among ourselves' of the
+Podsalaskinsky 'noses,' and the 'Perepreyevsky' necks. Zoya came in and
+sat down facing Nikolai Artemyevitch. He grunted, sank into an armchair,
+asked for coffee, and only then took off his hat. Coffee was brought
+him; he drank a cup, and looking at everybody in turn, he growled
+between his teeth, '_Sortes, s'il vous plait_,' and turning to his wife
+he added, '_et vous, madame, restez, je vous prie_.'
+
+They all left the room, except Anna Vassilyevna. Her head was trembling
+with agitation. The solemnity of Nikolai Artemyevitch's preparations
+impressed her. She was expecting something extraordinary.
+
+'What is it?' she cried, directly the door was closed.
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch flung an indifferent glance at Anna Vassilyevna.
+
+'Nothing special; what a way you have of assuming the air of a victim at
+once!' he began, quite needlessly dropping the corners of his mouth at
+every word. 'I only want to forewarn you that we shall have a new guest
+dining here to-day.'
+
+'Who is it?'
+
+'Kurnatovsky, Yegor Andreyevitch. You don't know him. The head secretary
+in the senate.'
+
+'He is to dine with us to-day?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And was it only to tell me this that you made every one go away?'
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch again flung a glance--this time one of irony--at
+Anna Vassilyevna.
+
+'Does that surprise you? Defer your surprise a little.'
+
+He ceased speaking. Anna Vassilyevna too was silent for a little time.
+
+'I could have wished----' she was beginning.
+
+'I know you have always looked on me as an "immoral" man,' began Nikolai
+Artemyevitch suddenly.
+
+'I!' muttered Anna Vassilyevna, astounded.
+
+'And very likely you are right. I don't wish to deny that I have in
+fact sometimes given you just grounds for dissatisfaction' ("my greys!"
+flashed through Anna Vassilyevna's head), 'though you must
+yourself allow, that in the condition, as you are aware, of your
+constitution----'
+
+'And I make no complaint against you, Nikolai Artemyevitch.'
+
+'_C'est possible_. In any case, I have no intention of justifying
+myself. Time will justify me. But I regard it as my duty to prove to you
+that I understand my duties, and know how to care for--for the welfare
+of the family entrusted--entrusted to me.'
+
+'What's the meaning of all this?' Anna Vassilyevna was thinking.
+(She could not guess that the preceding evening at the English club
+a discussion had arisen in a corner of the smoking-room as to the
+incapacity of Russians to make speeches. 'Which of us can speak? Mention
+any one!' one of the disputants had exclaimed. 'Well, Stahov, for
+instance,' had answered the other, pointing to Nikolai Artemyevitch, who
+stood up on the spot almost squealing with delight.)
+
+'For instance,' pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch, 'my daughter Elena. Don't
+you consider that the time has come for her to take a decisive step
+along the path--to be married, I mean to say. All these intellectual
+and philanthropic pursuits are all very well, but only up to a certain
+point, up to a certain age. It's time for her to drop her mistiness, to
+get out of the society of all these artists, scholars, and Montenegrins,
+and do like everybody else.'
+
+'How am I to understand you?' asked Anna Vassilyevna.
+
+'Well, if you will kindly listen,' answered Nikolai Artemyevitch, still
+with the same dropping of the corners of his lips, 'I will tell you
+plainly, without beating about the bush. I have made acquaintance, I
+have become intimate with this young man, Mr. Kurnatovsky, in the hope
+of having him for a son-in-law. I venture to think that when you see
+him, you will not accuse me of partiality or precipitate judgment.'
+(Nikolai Artemyevitch was admiring his own eloquence as he talked.) 'Of
+excellent education--educated in the highest legal college--excellent
+manners, thirty-three years old, and upper-secretary, a councillor, and
+a Stanislas cross on his neck. You, I hope, will do me the justice to
+allow that I do not belong to the number of those _peres de famille_
+who are mad for position; but you yourself told me that Elena Nikolaevna
+likes practical business men; Yegor Andreyevitch is in the first place
+a business man; now on the other side, my daughter has a weakness for
+generous actions; so let me tell you that Yegor Andreyevitch, directly
+he had attained the possibility--you understand me--the possibility
+of living without privation on his salary, at once gave up the yearly
+income assigned him by his father, for the benefit of his brothers.'
+
+'Who is his father?' inquired Anna Vassilyevna.
+
+'His father? His father is a man well-known in his own line, of the
+highest moral character, _un vrai stoicien_, a retired major, I think,
+overseer of all the estates of the Count B----'
+
+'Ah!' observed Anna Vassilyevna.
+
+'Ah! why ah?' interposed Nikolai Artemyevitch. 'Can you be infected with
+prejudice?'
+
+'Why, I said nothing----' Anna Vassilyevna was beginning.
+
+'No, you said, ah!--However that may be, I have thought it well to
+acquaint you with my way of thinking; and I venture to think--I venture
+to hope Mr. Kurnatovsky will be received _a bras ouverts_. He is no
+Montenegrin vagrant.'
+
+'Of course; I need only call Vanka the cook and order a few extra
+dishes.'
+
+'You are aware that I will not enter into that,' said Nikolai
+Artemyevitch; and he got up, put on his hat, and whistling (he had heard
+some one say that whistling was only permissible in a country villa and
+a riding court) went out for a stroll in the garden. Shubin watched him
+out of the little window of his lodge, and in silence put out his tongue
+at him.
+
+At ten minutes to four, a hackney-carriage drove up to the steps of the
+Stahovs's villa, and a man, still young, of prepossessing appearance,
+simply and elegantly dressed, stepped out of it and sent up his name.
+This was Yegor Andreyevitch Kurnatovsky.
+
+This was what, among other things, Elena wrote next day to Insarov:
+
+'Congratulate me, dear Dmitri, I have a suitor. He dined with us
+yesterday: papa made his acquaintance at the English club, I fancy, and
+invited him. Of course he did not come yesterday as a suitor. But good
+mamma, to whom papa had made known his hopes, whispered in my ear
+what this guest was. His name is Yegor Andreyevitch Kurnatovsky; he
+is upper-secretary to the Senate. I will first describe to you his
+appearance. He is of medium height, shorter than you, and a good figure;
+his features are regular, he is close-cropped, and wears large whiskers.
+His eyes are rather small (like yours), brown, and quick; he has a flat
+wide mouth; in his eyes and on his lips there is a perpetual sort of
+official smile; it seems to be always on duty there. He behaves very
+simply and speaks precisely, and everything about him is precise; he
+moves, laughs, and eats as though he were doing a duty. "How carefully
+she has studied him!" you are thinking, perhaps, at this minute. Yes;
+so as to be able to describe him to you. And besides, who wouldn't study
+her suitor! There's something of iron in him--and dull and empty at the
+same time--and honest; they say he is really very honest. You, too,
+are made of iron; but not like this man. At dinner he sat next me, and
+facing us sat Shubin. At first the conversation turned on commercial
+undertakings; they say he is very clever in business matters, and
+was almost throwing up his government post to take charge of a large
+manufacturing business. Pity he didn't do it! Then Shubin began to talk
+about the theatre; Mr. Kurnatovsky declared and--I must confess--without
+false modesty, that he has no ideas about art. That reminded me of
+you--but I thought; no, Dmitri and I are ignorant of art in a very
+different way though. This man seemed to mean, "I know nothing of it,
+and it's quite superfluous, still it may be admitted in a well-ordered
+state." He seems, however, to think very little about Petersburg and
+_comme il faut_: he once even called himself one of the proletariat.
+'We are working people,' he said; I thought if Dmitri had said that, I
+shouldn't have liked it; but he may talk about himself, he may boast if
+he likes. With me he is very attentive; but I kept feeling that a very,
+very condescending superior was talking with me. When he means to praise
+any one, he says So-and-so is a man of principle--that's his
+favourite word. He seems to be self-confident, hardworking, capable of
+self-sacrifice (you see, I am impartial), that's to say, of sacrificing
+his own interest; but he is a great despot. It would be woeful to fall
+into his power! At dinner they began talking about bribes.
+
+'"I know," he said, "that in many cases the man who accepts a bribe is
+not to blame; he cannot do otherwise. Still, if he is found out, he must
+be punished without mercy."' I cried, "Punish an innocent man!" '"Yes;
+for the sake of principle." '"What principle?" asked Shubin. Kurnatovsky
+seemed annoyed or surprised, and said, "That needs no explanation."
+
+'Papa, who seems to worship him, put in "of course not"; and to my
+vexation the conversation stopped there. In the evening Bersenyev came
+and got into a terrific argument with him. I have never seen our good
+Andrei Petrovitch so excited. Mr. Kurnatovsky did not at all deny the
+utility of science, universities, and so on, but still I understood
+Andrei Petrovitch's indignation. The man looks at it all as a sort of
+gymnastics. Shubin came up to me after dinner, and said, "This fellow
+here and some one else (he can never bring himself to utter your name)
+are both practical men, but see what a difference; there's the real
+living ideal given to life; and here there's not even a feeling of duty,
+simply official honesty and activity without anything inside it." Shubin
+is clever, and I remembered his words to tell you; but to my mind there
+is nothing in common between you. You have _faith_, and he has not; for
+a man cannot _have faith_ in himself only.
+
+'He did not go away till late; but mamma had time to inform me that he
+was pleased with me, and papa is in ecstasies. Did he say, I wonder,
+that I was a woman of principle? I was almost telling mamma that I was
+very sorry, but I had a husband already. Why is it papa dislikes you so?
+Mamma, we could soon manage to bring round.
+
+'Oh, my dear one! I have described this gentleman in such detail to
+deaden my heartache. I don't live without you; I am constantly seeing
+you, hearing you. I look forward to seeing you--only not at our house,
+as you intended--fancy how wretched and ill at ease we should be!--but
+you know where I wrote to you--in that wood. Oh, my dear one! How I love
+you!'
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+Three weeks after Kurnatovsky's first visit, Anna Vassilyevna, to
+Elena's great delight, returned to Moscow, to her large wooden house
+near Prechistenka; a house with columns, white lyres and wreaths over
+every window, with an attic, offices, a palisade, a huge green court, a
+well in the court and a dog's kennel near the well. Anna Vassilyevna
+had never left her country villa so early, but this year with the first
+autumn chills her face swelled; Nikolai Artemyevitch for his part,
+having finished his cure, began to want his wife; besides, Augustina
+Christianovna had gone away on a visit to her cousin in Revel; a family
+of foreigners, known as 'living statues,' _des poses plastiques_, had
+come to Moscow, and the description of them in the _Moscow Gazette_ had
+aroused Anna Vassilyevna's liveliest curiosity. In short, to stay longer
+at the villa seemed inconvenient, and even, in Nikolai Artemyevitch's
+words, incompatible with the fulfilment of his 'cherished projects.' The
+last fortnight seemed very long to Elena. Kurnatovsky came over twice
+on Sundays; on other days he was busy. He came really to see Elena,
+but talked more to Zoya, who was much pleased with him. '_Das ist ein
+Mann_!' she thought to herself, as she looked at his full manly face and
+listened to his self-confident, condescending talk. To her mind, no one
+had such a wonderful voice, no one could pronounce so nicely, 'I had
+the hon-our,' or, 'I am most de-lighted.' Insarov did not come to the
+Stahovs, but Elena saw him once in secret in a little copse by the
+Moskva river, where she arranged to meet him. They hardly had time to
+say more than a few words to each other. Shubin returned to Moscow with
+Anna Vassilyevna; Bersenyev, a few days later.
+
+Insarov was sitting in his room, and for the third time looking through
+the letters brought him from Bulgaria by hand; they were afraid to send
+them by post. He was much disturbed by them. Events were developing
+rapidly in the East; the occupation of the Principalities by Russian
+troops had thrown all men's minds into a ferment; the storm was
+growing--already could be felt the breath of approaching inevitable war.
+The fire was kindling all round, and no one could foresee how far it
+would go--where it would stop. Old wrongs, long cherished hopes--all
+were astir again. Insarov's heart throbbed eagerly; his hopes too were
+being realised. 'But is it not too soon, will it not be in vain?' he
+thought, tightly clasping his hands. 'We are not ready, but so be it! I
+must go.'
+
+Something rustled lightly at the door, it flew quickly open, and into
+the room ran Elena.
+
+Insarov, all in a tremor, rushed to her, fell on his knees before her,
+clasped her waist and pressed it close against his head.
+
+'You didn't expect me?' she said, hardly able to draw her breath, she
+had run quickly up the stairs. 'Dear one! dear one!--so this is
+where you live? I've quickly found you. The daughter of your landlord
+conducted me. We arrived the day before yesterday. I meant to write to
+you, but I thought I had better come myself. I have come for a quarter
+of an hour. Get up, shut the door.'
+
+He got up, quickly shut the door, returned to her and took her by the
+hands. He could not speak; he was choking with delight. She looked with
+a smile into his eyes... there was such rapture in them... she felt shy.
+
+'Stay,' she said, fondly taking her hand away from him, 'let me take off
+my hat.'
+
+She untied the strings of her hat, flung it down, slipped the cape off
+her shoulders, tidied her hair, and sat down on the little old sofa.
+Insarov gazed at her, without stirring, like one enchanted.
+
+'Sit down,' she said, not lifting her eyes to him and motioning him to a
+place beside her.
+
+Insarov sat down, not on the sofa, but on the floor at her feet.
+
+'Come, take off my gloves,' she said in an uncertain voice. She felt
+afraid.
+
+He began first to unbutton and then to draw off one glove; he drew it
+half off and greedily pressed his lips to the slender, soft wrist, which
+was white under it.
+
+Elena shuddered, and would have pushed him back with the other hand; he
+began kissing the other hand too. Elena drew it away, he threw back his
+head, she looked into his face, bent above him, and their lips touched.
+
+An instant passed... she broke away, got up, whispered 'No, no,' and
+went quickly up to the writing-table.
+
+'I am mistress here, you know, so you ought not to have any secrets from
+me,' she said, trying to seem at ease, and standing with her back to
+him. 'What a lot of papers! what are these letters?'
+
+Insarov knitted his brows. 'Those letters?' he said, getting up, 'you
+can read them.'
+
+Elena turned them over in her hand. 'There are so many of them, and the
+writing is so fine, and I have to go directly... let them be. They're
+not from a rival, eh?... and they're not in Russian,' she added, turning
+over the thin sheets.
+
+Insarov came close to her and fondly touched her waist. She turned
+suddenly to him, smiled brightly at him and leant against his shoulder.
+
+'Those letters are from Bulgaria, Elena; my friends write to me, they
+want me to come.'
+
+'Now? To them?'
+
+'Yes... now, while there is still time, while it is still possible to
+come.'
+
+All at once she flung both arms round his neck, 'You will take me with
+you, yes?'
+
+He pressed her to his heart. 'O my sweet girl, O my heroine, how
+you said that! But isn't it wicked, isn't it mad for me, a homeless,
+solitary man, to drag you with me... and out there too!'
+
+She shut his mouth.... 'Sh--or I shall be angry, and never come to see
+you again. Why isn't it all decided, all settled between us? Am I not
+your wife? Can a wife be parted from her husband?'
+
+'Wives don't go into war,' he said with a half-mournful smile.
+
+'Oh yes, when they can't stay behind, and I cannot stay here?'
+
+'Elena, my angel!.. but think, I have, perhaps, to leave Moscow in a
+fortnight. I can't think of university lectures, or finishing my work.'
+
+'What!' interrupted Elena, 'you have to go soon? If you like, I will
+stop at once this minute with you for ever, and not go home, shall I?
+Shall we go at once?'
+
+Insarov clasped her in his arms with redoubled warmth. 'May God so
+reward me then,' he cried, 'if I am doing wrong! From to-day, we are one
+for ever!'
+
+'Am I to stay?' asked Elena.
+
+'No, my pure girl; no, my treasure. You shall go back home to-day, only
+keep yourself in readiness. This is a matter we can't manage straight
+off; we must plan it out well. We want money, a passport----'
+
+'I have money,' put in Elena. 'Eighty roubles.'
+
+'Well, that's not much,' observed Insarov; 'but everything's a help.'
+
+'But I can get more. I will borrow. I will ask mamma.... No, I won't ask
+mamma for any.... But I can sell my watch.... I have earrings, too, and
+two bracelets... and lace.'
+
+'Money's not the chief difficulty, Elena; the passport; your passport,
+how about that?'
+
+'Yes, how about it? Is a passport absolutely necessary?'
+
+'Absolutely.'
+
+Elena laughed. 'What a queer idea! I remember when I was little... a
+maid of ours ran away. She was caught, and forgiven, and lived with us a
+long while... but still every one used to call her Tatyana, the runaway.
+I never thought then that I too might perhaps be a runaway like her.'
+
+'Elena, aren't you ashamed?'
+
+'Why? Of course it's better to go with a passport. But if we can't----'
+
+'We will settle all that later, later, wait a little,' said Insarov.
+'Let me look about; let me think a little. We will talk over everything
+together thoroughly. I too have money.'
+
+Elena pushed back the hair that fell over on his forehead.
+
+'O Dmitri! how glorious it will be for us two to set off together!'
+
+'Yes,' said Insarov, 'but there, when we get there----'
+
+'Well?' put in Elena, 'and won't it be glorious to die together too?
+but no, why should we die? We will live, we are young. How old are you?
+Twenty-six?'
+
+'Yes, twenty-six.'
+
+'And I am twenty. There is plenty of time before us. Ah, you tried to
+run away from me? You did not want a Russian's love, you Bulgarian! Let
+me see you trying to escape from me now! What would have become of us,
+if I hadn't come to you then!'
+
+'Elena, you know what forced me to go away.'
+
+'I know; you were in love, and you were afraid. But surely you must have
+suspected that you were loved?'
+
+'I swear on my honour, Elena, I didn't.'
+
+She gave him a quick unexpected kiss. 'There, I love you for that too.
+And goodbye.'
+
+'You can't stop longer?' asked Insarov.
+
+'No, dearest. Do you think it's easy for me to get out alone? The
+quarter of an hour was over long ago.' She put on her cape and hat. 'And
+you come to us to-morrow evening. No, the day after to-morrow. We shall
+be constrained and dreary, but we can't help that; at least we shall see
+each other. Good-bye. Let me go.'
+
+He embraced her for the last time. 'Ah, take care, you have broken my
+watch-chain. Oh, what a clumsy boy! There, never mind. It's all the
+better. I will go to Kuznetsky bridge, and leave it to be mended. If
+I am asked, I can say I have been to Kuznetsky bridge.' She held the
+door-handle. 'By-the-way, I forgot to tell you, Monsieur Kurnatovsky
+will certainly make me an offer in a day or two. But the answer I shall
+make him--will be this----' She put the thumb of her left hand to the
+tip of her nose and flourished the other fingers in the air. 'Good-bye
+till we see each other again. Now, I know the way... And don't lose any
+time.'
+
+Elena opened the door a little, listened, turned round to Insarov,
+nodded her head, and glided out of the room.
+
+For a minute Insarov stood before the closed door, and he too listened.
+The door downstairs into the court slammed. He went up to the sofa, sat
+down, and covered his eyes with his hands. Never before had anything
+like this happened to him. 'What have I done to deserve such love?' he
+thought. 'Is it a dream?'
+
+But the delicate scent of mignonette left by Elena in his poor dark
+little room told of her visit. And with it, it seemed that the air was
+still full of the notes of a young voice, and the sound of a light young
+tread, and the warmth and freshness of a young girlish body.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+Insarov decided to await more positive news, and began to make
+preparations for departure. The difficulty was a serious one. For
+him personally there were no obstacles. He had only to ask for a
+passport--but how would it be with Elena? To get her a passport in the
+legal way was impossible. Should he marry her secretly, and should they
+then go and present themselves to the parents?... 'They would let us go
+then,' he thought 'But if they did not? We would go all the same. But
+suppose they were to make a complaint... if... No, better try to get a
+passport somehow.'
+
+He decided to consult (of course mentioning no names) one of his
+acquaintances, an attorney, retired from practice, or perhaps struck
+off the rolls, an old and experienced hand at all sorts of clandestine
+business. This worthy person did not live near; Insarov was a whole hour
+in getting to him in a very sorry droshky, and, to make matters worse,
+he did not find him at home; and on his way back got soaked to the skin
+by a sudden downpour of rain. The next morning, in spite of a rather
+severe headache, Insarov set off a second time to call on the retired
+attorney. The retired attorney listened to him attentively, taking snuff
+from a snuff-box decorated with a picture of a full-bosomed nymph, and
+glancing stealthily at his visitor with his sly, and also snuff-coloured
+little eyes; he heard him to the end, and then demanded 'greater
+definiteness in the statement of the facts of the case'; and observing
+that Insarov was unwilling to launch into particulars (it was against
+the grain that he had come to him at all) he confined himself to the
+advice to provide himself above all things with 'the needful,' and asked
+him to come to him again, 'when you have,' he added, sniffing at the
+snuff in the open snuff-box, 'augmented your confidence and decreased
+your diffidence' (he talked with a broad accent). 'A passport,' he
+added, as though to himself, 'is a thing that can be arranged; you go
+a journey, for instance; who's to tell whether you're Marya Bredihin
+or Karolina Vogel-meier?' A feeling of nausea came over Insarov, but he
+thanked the attorney, and promised to come to him again in a day or two.
+
+The same evening he went to the Stahovs. Anna Vassilyevna met him
+cordially, reproached him a little for having quite forgotten them,
+and, finding him pale, inquired especially after his health. Nikolai
+Artemyevitch did not say a single word to him; he only stared at him
+with elaborately careless curiosity; Shubin treated him coldly; but
+Elena astounded him. She was expecting him; she had put on for him the
+very dress she wore on the day of their first interview in the chapel;
+but she welcomed him so calmly, and was so polite and carelessly gay,
+that no one looking at her could have believed that this girl's fate was
+already decided, and that it was only the secret consciousness of happy
+love that gave fire to her features, lightness and charm to all her
+gestures. She poured out tea in Zoya's place, jested, chattered; she
+knew Shubin would be watching her, that Insarov was incapable of wearing
+a mask, and incapable of appearing indifferent, and she had prepared
+herself beforehand. She was not mistaken; Shubin never took his eyes off
+her, and Insarov was very silent and gloomy the whole evening. Elena was
+so happy that she even felt an inclination to tease him.
+
+'Oh, by the way,' she said to him suddenly, 'is your plan getting on at
+all?'
+
+Insarov was taken aback.
+
+'What plan?' he said.
+
+'Why, have you forgotten?' she rejoined, laughing in his face; he alone
+could tell the meaning of that happy laugh: 'Your Bulgarian selections
+for Russian readers?'
+
+'_Quelle bourde_!' muttered Nikolai Artemyevitch between his teeth.
+
+Zoya sat down to the piano. Elena gave a just perceptible shrug of the
+shoulders, and with her eyes motioned Insarov to the door. Then she
+twice slowly touched the table with her finger, and looked at him. He
+understood that she was promising to see him in two days, and she gave
+him a quick smile when she saw he understood her. Insarov got up and
+began to take leave; he felt unwell. Kurnatovsky arrived. Nikolai
+Artemyevitch jumped up, raised his right hand higher than his head, and
+softly dropped it into the palm of the chief secretary. Insarov would
+have remained a few minutes longer, to have a look at his rival. Elena
+shook her head unseen; the host did not think it necessary to introduce
+them to one another, and Insarov departed, exchanging one last look with
+Elena. Shubin pondered and pondered, and threw himself into a fierce
+argument with Kurnatovsky on a legislative question, about which he had
+not a single idea.
+
+Insarov did not sleep all night, and in the morning he felt very ill; he
+set to work, however, putting his papers into order and writing letters,
+but his head was heavy and confused. At dinner time he began to be in
+a fever; he could eat nothing. The fever grew rapidly worse towards
+evening; he had aching pains in all his limbs, and a terrible headache.
+Insarov lay down on the very little sofa on which Elena had lately sat;
+he thought: 'It serves me right for going to that old rascal,' and he
+tried to sleep.... But the illness had by now complete mastery of him.
+His veins were throbbing violently, his blood was on fire, his thoughts
+were flying round like birds. He sank into forgetfulness. He lay like a
+man felled by a blow on his face, and suddenly, it seemed to him, some
+one was softly laughing and whispering over him: he opened his eyes with
+an effort, the light of the flaring candle smote him like a knife....
+What was it? the old attorney was before him in an Oriental silk
+gown belted with a silk handkerchief, as he had seen him the evening
+before.... 'Karolina Vogelmeier,' muttered his toothless mouth. Insarov
+stared, and the old man grew wide and thick and tall, he was no longer a
+man, he was a tree.... Insarov had to climb along its gnarled branches.
+He clung, and fell with his breast on a sharp stone, and Karolina
+Vogelmeier was sitting on her heels, looking like a pedlar-woman, and
+lisping: 'Pies, pies, pies for sale'; and there were streams of blood
+and swords flashing incessantly.... Elena! And everything vanished is a
+crimson chaos.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+'There's some one here looks like a locksmith or something of the sort,'
+Bersenyev was informed the following evening by his servant, who was
+distinguished by a severe deportment and sceptical turn of mind towards
+his master; 'he wants to see you.'
+
+'Ask him in,' said Bersenyev.
+
+The 'locksmith' entered. Bersenyev recognised in him the tailor, the
+landlord of Insarov's lodgings.
+
+'What do you want?' he asked him.
+
+'I came to your honour,' began the tailor, shifting from one foot to the
+other, and at times waving his right hand with his cuff clutched in his
+three last fingers. 'Our lodger, seemingly, is very ill.'
+
+'Insarov?'
+
+'Yes, our lodger, to be sure; yesterday morning he was still on his
+legs, in the evening he asked for nothing but drink; the missis took
+him some water, and at night he began talking away; we could hear him
+through the partition-wall; and this morning he lies without a word like
+a log, and the fever he's in, Lord have mercy on us! I thought, upon my
+word, he'll die for sure; I ought to send word to the police station, I
+thought. For he's so alone; but the missis said: "Go to that gentleman,"
+she says, "at whose country place our lodger stayed; maybe he'll tell
+you what to do, or come himself." So I've come to your honour, for we
+can't, so to say----'
+
+Bersenyev snatched up his cap, thrust a rouble into the tailor's hand,
+and at once set off with him post haste to Insarov's lodgings.
+
+He found him lying on the sofa, unconscious and not undressed. His face
+was terribly changed. Bersenyev at once ordered the people of the house
+to undress him and put him to bed, while he rushed off himself
+and returned with a doctor. The doctor prescribed leeches,
+mustard-poultices, and calomel, and ordered him to be bled.
+
+'Is he dangerously ill?' asked Bersenyev.
+
+'Yes, very dangerously,' answered the doctor. 'Severe inflammation
+of the lungs; peripneumonia fully developed, and the brain perhaps
+affected, but the patient is young. His very strength is something
+against him now. I was sent for too late; still we will do all that
+science dictates.'
+
+The doctor was young himself, and still believed in science.
+
+Bersenyev stayed the night. The people of the house seemed kind, and
+even prompt directly there was some one to tell them what was to be
+done. An assistant arrived, and began to carry out the medical measures.
+
+Towards morning Insarov revived for a few minutes, recognised Bersenyev,
+asked: 'Am I ill, then?' looked about him with the vague, listless
+bewilderment of a man dangerously ill, and again relapsed into
+unconsciousness. Bersenyev went home, changed his clothes, and, taking a
+few books along with him, he returned to Insarov's lodgings. He made up
+his mind to stay there, at least for a time. He shut in Insarov's bed
+with screens, and arranged a little place for himself by the sofa. The
+day passed slowly and drearily. Bersenyev did not leave the room except
+to get his dinner. The evening came. He lighted a candle with a shade,
+and settled down to a book. Everything was still around. Through the
+partition wall could be heard suppressed whispering in the landlord's
+room, then a yawn, and a sigh. Some one sneezed, and was scolded in
+a whisper; behind the screen was heard the patient's heavy, uneven
+breathing, sometimes broken by a short groan, and the uneasy tossing of
+his head on the pillow.... Strange fancies came over Bersenyev. He found
+himself in the room of a man whose life was hanging on a thread, the man
+whom, as he knew, Elena loved.... He remembered that night when Shubin
+had overtaken him and declared that she loved him, him, Bersenyev! And
+now.... 'What am I to do now?' he asked himself. 'Let Elena know of his
+illness? Wait a little? This would be worse news for her than what I
+told her once before; strange how fate makes me the go-between between
+them!' He made up his mind that it was better to wait a little. His eyes
+fell on the table covered with heaps of papers... 'Will he carry out his
+dreams?' thought Bersenyev. 'Can it be that all will come to nothing?'
+And he was filled with pity for the young life struck down, and he vowed
+to himself to save it.
+
+The night was an uneasy one. The sick man was very delirious. Several
+times Bersenyev got up from his little sofa, approached the bed on
+tip-toe, and listened with a heavy heart to his disconnected muttering.
+Only once Insarov spoke with sudden distinctness: 'I won't, I won't,
+she mustn't....' Bersenyev started and looked at Insarov; his face,
+suffering and death-like at the same time, was immovable, and his hands
+lay powerless. 'I won't,' he repeated, scarcely audibly.
+
+The doctor came in the morning, shook his head and wrote fresh
+prescriptions. 'The crisis is a long way off still,' he said, putting on
+his hat.
+
+'And after the crisis?' asked Bersenyev.
+
+'The crisis may end in two ways, _aut Caesar aut nihil_.
+
+The doctor went away. Bersenyev walked a few times up and down the
+street; he felt in need of fresh air. He went back and took up a book
+again. Raumer he had finished long ago; he was now making a study of
+Grote.
+
+Suddenly the door softly creaked, and the head of the landlord's
+daughter, covered as usual with a heavy kerchief, was cautiously thrust
+into the room.
+
+'Here is the lady,' she whispered, 'who gave me a silver piece.'
+
+The child's head vanished quickly, and in its place appeared Elena.
+
+Bersenyev jumped up as if he had been stung; but Elena did not stir, nor
+cry out. It seemed as if she understood everything in a single instant.
+A terrible pallor overspread her face, she went up to the screen, looked
+behind it, threw up her arms, and seemed turned to stone.
+
+A moment more and she would have flung herself on Insarov, but Bersenyev
+stopped her. 'What are you doing?' he said in a trembling whisper, 'you
+might be the death of him!'
+
+She was reeling. He led her to the sofa, and made her sit down.
+
+She looked into his face, then her eyes ran over him from head to foot,
+then stared at the floor.
+
+'Will he die?' she asked so coldly and quietly that Bersenyev was
+frightened.
+
+'For God's sake, Elena Nikolaevna,' he began, 'what are you saying? He
+is ill certainly--and rather seriously--but we will save him; I promise
+you that.'
+
+'He is unconscious?' she asked in the same tone of voice as before.
+
+'Yes, he is unconscious at present. That's always the case at the early
+stage of these illnesses, but it means nothing, nothing--I assure you.
+Drink some water.'
+
+She raised her eyes to his, and he saw she had not heard his answer.
+
+'If he dies,' she said in the same voice,' I will die too.'
+
+At that instant Insarov uttered a slight moan; she trembled all over,
+clutched at her head, then began untying the strings of her hat.
+
+'What are you doing?' Bersenyev asked her.
+
+'I will stay here.'
+
+'You will stay--for long?'
+
+'I don't know, perhaps all day, the night, always--I don't know.'
+
+'For God's sake, Elena Nikolaevna, control yourself. I could not of
+course have any expectation of seeing you here; but still I--assume you
+have come for a short time. Remember they may miss you at home.'
+
+'What then?'
+
+'They will look for you--find you----'
+
+'What then?'
+
+'Elena Nikolaevna! You see. He cannot now protect you.'
+
+She dropped her head, seemed lost in thought, raised a handkerchief
+to her lips, and convulsive sobs, tearing her by their violence, were
+suddenly wrung from her breast. She threw herself, face downwards, on
+the sofa, trying to stifle them, but still her body heaved and throbbed
+like a captured bird.
+
+'Elena Nikolaevna--for God's sake,' Bersenyev was repeating over her.
+
+'Ah! What is it?' suddenly sounded the voice of Insarov.
+
+Elena started up, and Bersenyev felt rooted to the spot. After waiting a
+little, he went up to the bed. Insarov's head lay on the pillow helpless
+as before; his eyes were closed.
+
+'Is he delirious?' whispered Elena.
+
+'It seems so,' answered Bersenyev, 'but that's nothing; it's always so,
+especially if----'
+
+'When was he taken ill?' Elena broke in.
+
+'The day before yesterday; I have been here since yesterday. Rely on
+me, Elena Nikolaevna. I will not leave him; everything shall be done. If
+necessary, we will have a consultation.'
+
+'He will die without me,' she cried, wringing her hands.
+
+'I give you my word I will let you hear every day how his illness goes
+on, and if there should be immediate danger----'
+
+'Swear you will send for me at once whenever it may be, day or night,
+write a note straight to me--I care for nothing now. Do you hear? you
+promise you will do that?'
+
+'I promise before God'
+
+'Swear it.'
+
+'I swear.'
+
+She suddenly snatched his hand, and before he had time to pull it away,
+she had bent and pressed her lips to it.
+
+'Elena Nikolaevna, what are you----' he stammered.
+
+'No--no--I won't have it----' Insarov muttered indistinctly, and sighed
+painfully.
+
+Elena went up to the screen, her handkerchief pressed between her teeth,
+and bent a long, long look on the sick man. Silent tears rolled down her
+cheeks.
+
+'Elena Nikolaevna,' Bersenyev said to her, 'he might come to himself
+and recognise you; there's no knowing if that wouldn't do harm. Besides,
+from hour to hour I expect the doctor.'
+
+Elena took her hat from the sofa, put it on and stood still. Her eyes
+strayed mournfully over the room. She seemed to be remembering....
+
+'I cannot go away,' she whispered at last.
+
+Bersenyev pressed her hand: 'Try to pull yourself together,' he said,
+'calm yourself; you are leaving him in my care. I will come to you this
+very evening.'
+
+Elena looked at him, said: 'Oh, my good, kind friend!' broke into sobs
+and rushed away.
+
+Bersenyev leaned against the door. A feeling of sorrow and bitterness,
+not without a kind of strange consolation, overcame him. 'My good, kind
+friend!' he thought and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+'Who is here?' he heard Insarov's voice.
+
+Bersenyev went up to him. 'I am here, Dmitri Nikanorovitch. How are you?
+How do you feel?'
+
+'Are you alone?' asked the sick man.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'And she?'
+
+'Whom do you mean?' Bersenyev asked almost in dismay.
+
+Insarov was silent. 'Mignonette,' he murmured, and his eyes closed
+again.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+For eight whole days Insarov lay between life and death. The doctor was
+incessantly visiting him, interested as a young man in a difficult case.
+Shubin heard of Insarov's critical position, and made inquiries after
+him. His compatriots--Bulgarians--came; among them Bersenyev recognised
+the two strange figures, who had puzzled him by their unexpected visit
+to the cottage; they all showed genuine sympathy, some offered to take
+Bersenyev's place by the patient's bed-side; but he would not consent
+to that, remembering his promise to Elena. He saw her every day and
+secretly reported to her--sometimes by word of mouth, sometimes in a
+brief note--every detail of the illness. With what sinkings of the heart
+she awaited him, how she listened and questioned him! She was always on
+the point of hastening to Insarov herself; but Bersenyev begged her not
+to do this: Insarov was seldom alone. On the first day she knew of his
+illness she herself had almost fallen ill; directly she got home,
+she shut herself up in her room; but she was summoned to dinner, and
+appeared in the dining-room with such a face that Anna Vassilyevna was
+alarmed, and was anxious to put her to bed. Elena succeeded, however, in
+controlling herself. 'If he dies,' she repeated, 'it will be the end
+of me too.' This thought tranquillised her, and enabled her to seem
+indifferent. Besides no one troubled her much; Anna Vassilyevna was
+taken up with her swollen face; Shubin was working furiously; Zoya
+was given up to pensiveness, and disposed to read _Werther_; Nikolai
+Artemyevitch was much displeased at the frequent visits of 'the
+scholar,' especially as his 'cherished projects' in regard to
+Kurnatovsky were making no way; the practical chief secretary was
+puzzled and biding his time. Elena did not even thank Bersenyev; there
+are services for which thanks are cruel and shameful. Only once at her
+fourth interview with him--Insarov had passed a very bad night, the
+doctor had hinted at a consultation--only then she reminded him of his
+promise. 'Very well, then let us go,' he said to her. She got up and
+was going to get ready. 'No,' he decided, 'let us wait till to-morrow.'
+Towards evening Insarov was rather better.
+
+For eight days this torture was prolonged. Elena appeared calm; but she
+could eat nothing, and did not sleep at night. There was a dull ache in
+all her limbs; her head seemed full of a sort of dry burning smoke. 'Our
+young lady's wasting like a candle,' her maid said of her.
+
+At last by the ninth day the crisis was passing over. Elena was sitting
+in the drawing-room near Anna Vassilyevna, and, without knowing herself
+what she was doing, was reading her the _Moscow Gazette_; Bersenyev came
+in. Elena glanced at him--how rapid, and fearful, and penetrating, and
+tremulous, was the first glance she turned on him every time--and at
+once she guessed that he brought good news. He was smiling; he nodded
+slightly to her, she got up to go and meet him.
+
+'He has regained consciousness, he is saved, he will be quite well again
+in a week,' he whispered to her.
+
+Elena had stretched out her arm as though to ward off a blow, and she
+said nothing, only her lips trembled and a flush of crimson overspread
+her whole face. Bersenyev began to talk to Anna Vassilyevna, and Elena
+went off to her own room, dropped on her knees and fell to praying, to
+thanking God. Light, shining tears trickled down her cheeks. Suddenly
+she was conscious of intense weariness, laid her head down on the
+pillow, whispered 'poor Andrei Petrovitch!' and at once fell asleep with
+wet eheeks and eyelashes. It was long since she had slept or wept.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Bersenyev's words turned out only partly true; the danger was over,
+but Insarov gained strength slowly, and the doctor talked of a complete
+undermining of the whole system. The patient left his bed for all
+that, and began to walk about the room; Bersenyev went home to his own
+lodging, but he came every day to his still feeble friend; and every day
+as before he informed Elena of the state of his health. Insarov did
+not dare to write to her, and only indirectly in his conversations with
+Bersenyev referred to her; but Bersenyev, with assumed carelessness,
+told him about his visits to the Stahovs, trying, however, to give him
+to understand that Elena had been deeply distressed, and that now she
+was calmer. Elena too did not write to Insarov; she had a plan in her
+head.
+
+One day Bersenyev had just informed her with a cheerful face that the
+doctor had already allowed Insarov to eat a cutlet, and that he would
+probably soon go out; she seemed absorbed, dropped her eyes.
+
+'Guess, what I want to say to you,' she said. Bersenyev was confused. He
+understood her.
+
+'I suppose,' he answered, looking away, 'you want to say that you wish
+to see him.'
+
+Elena crimsoned, and scarcely audibly, she breathed, 'Yes.'
+
+'Well, what then? That, I imagine, you can easily do.'--'Ugh!' he
+thought, 'what a loath-some feeling there is in my heart!'
+
+'You mean that I have already before...' said Elena. 'But I am
+afraid--now he is, you say, seldom alone.'
+
+'That's not difficult to get over,' replied Bersenyev, still not looking
+at her. 'I, of course, cannot prepare him; but give me a note. Who
+can hinder your writing to him as a good friend, in whom you take an
+interest? There's no harm in that. Appoint--I mean, write to him when
+you will come.
+
+'I am ashamed,' whispered Elena.
+
+'Give me the note, I will take it.'
+
+'There's no need of that, but I wanted to ask you--don't be angry with
+me, Andrei Petrovitch--don't go to him to-morrow!'
+
+Bersenyev bit his lip.
+
+'Ah! yes, I understand; very well, very well,' and, adding two or three
+words more, he quickly took leave.
+
+'So much the better, so much the better,' he thought, as he hurried
+home. 'I have learnt nothing new, but so much the better. What possessed
+me to go hanging on to the edge of another man's happiness? I regret
+nothing; I have done what my conscience told me; but now it is over. Let
+them be! My father was right when he used to say to me: "You and I,
+my dear boy, are not Sybarites, we are not aristocrats, we're not the
+spoilt darlings of fortune and nature, we are not even martyrs--we are
+workmen and nothing more. Put on your leather apron, workman, and take
+your place at your workman's bench, in your dark workshop, and let the
+sun shine on other men! Even our dull life has its own pride, its own
+happiness!"'
+
+The next morning Insarov got a brief note by the post. 'Expect me,'
+Elena wrote to him, 'and give orders for no one to see you. A. P. will
+not come.'
+
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Insarov read Elena's note, and at once began to set his room to rights;
+asked his landlady to take away the medicine-glasses, took off his
+dressing-gown and put on his coat. His head was swimming and his heart
+throbbing from weakness and delight. His knees were shaking; he dropped
+on to the sofa, and began to look at his watch. 'It's now a quarter to
+twelve,' he said to himself. 'She can never come before twelve: I will
+think of something else for a quarter of an hour, or I shall break down
+altogether. Before twelve she cannot possibly come.'
+
+The door was opened, and in a light silk gown, all pale, all fresh,
+young and joyful, Elena came in, and with a faint cry of delight she
+fell on his breast.
+
+'You are alive, you are mine,' she repeated, embracing and stroking
+his head. He was almost swooning, breathless at such closeness, such
+caresses, such bliss.
+
+She sat down near him, holding him fast, and began to gaze at him with
+that smiling, and caressing, and tender look, only to be seen shining in
+the eyes of a loving woman.
+
+Her face suddenly clouded over.
+
+'How thin you have grown, my poor Dmitri,' she said, passing her hand
+over his neck; 'what a beard you have.'
+
+'And you have grown thin, my poor Elena,' he answered, catching her
+fingers with his lips.
+
+She shook her curls gaily.
+
+'That's nothing. You shall see how soon we'll be strong again! The storm
+has blown over, just as it blew over and passed away that day when we
+met in the chapel. Now we are going to live.'
+
+He answered her with a smile only.
+
+'Ah, what a time we have had, Dmitri, what a cruel time! How can people
+outlive those they love? I knew beforehand what Andrei Petrovitch would
+say to me every day, I did really; my life seemed to ebb and flow with
+yours. Welcome back, my Dmitri!'
+
+He did not know what to say to her. He was longing to throw himself at
+her feet.
+
+'Another thing I observed,' she went on, pushing back his hair--'I made
+so many observations all this time in my leisure--when any one is very,
+very miserable, with what stupid attention he follows everything that's
+going on about him! I really sometimes lost myself in gazing at a fly,
+and all the while such chill and terror in my heart! But that's all
+past, all past, isn't it? Everything's bright in the future, isn't it?'
+
+'You are for me in the future,' answered Insarov, 'so it is bright for
+me.'
+
+'And for me too! But do you remember, when I was here, not the last
+time--no, not the last time,' she repeated with an involuntary shudder,
+'when we were talking, I spoke of death, I don't know why; I never
+suspected then that it was keeping watch on us. But you are well now,
+aren't you?'
+
+'I'm much better, I'm nearly well.'
+
+'You are well, you are not dead. Oh, how happy I am!'
+
+A short silence followed.
+
+'Elena?' said Insarov.
+
+'Well, my dearest?'
+
+'Tell me, did it never occur to you that this illness was sent us as a
+punishment?'
+
+Elena looked seriously at him.
+
+'That idea did come into my head, Dmitri. But I thought: what am I to be
+punished for? What duty have I transgressed, against whom have I sinned?
+Perhaps my conscience is not like other people's, but it was silent; or
+perhaps I am guilty towards you? I hinder you, I stop you.'
+
+'You don't stop me, Elena; we will go together.'
+
+'Yes, Dmitri, let us go together; I will follow you.... That is my duty.
+I love you.... I know no other duty.'
+
+'O Elena!' said Insarov, 'what chains every word of yours fastens on
+me!'
+
+'Why talk of chains?' she interposed. 'We are free people, you and I.
+Yes,' she went on, looking musingly on the floor, while with one hand
+she still stroked his hair, 'I experienced much lately of which I had
+never had any idea! If any one had told me beforehand that I, a young
+lady, well brought up, should go out from home alone on all sorts
+of made-up excuses, and to go where? to a young man's lodgings--how
+indignant I should have been! And that has all come about, and I feel no
+indignation whatever. Really!' she added, and turned to Insarov.
+
+He looked at her with such an expression of adoration, that she softly
+dropped her hand from his hair over his eyes.
+
+'Dmitri!' she began again, 'you don't know of course, I saw you there in
+that dreadful bed, I saw you in the clutches of death, unconscious.'
+
+'You saw me?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+He was silent for a little. 'And Bersenyev was here?'
+
+She nodded.
+
+Insarov bowed down before her. 'O Elena!' he whispered, 'I don't dare to
+look at you.'
+
+'Why? Andrei Petrovitch is so good. I was not ashamed before him. And
+what have I to be ashamed of? I am ready to tell all the world that I am
+yours.... And Andrei Petrovitch I trust like a brother.'
+
+'He saved me!' cried Insarov. 'He is the noblest, kindest of men!'
+
+'Yes... And do you know I owe everything to him? Do you know that it
+was he who first told me that you loved me? And if I could tell you
+everything.... Yes, he is a noble man.'
+
+Insarov looked steadily at Elena. 'He is in love with you, isn't he?'
+
+Elena dropped her eyes. 'He did love me,' she said in an undertone.
+
+Insarov pressed her hand warmly. 'Oh you Russians,' he said, 'you have
+hearts of pure gold! And he, he has been waiting on me, he has not slept
+at night. And you, you, my angel.... No reproaches, no hesitations...
+and all this for me, for me----'
+
+'Yes, yes, all for you, because they love you, Ah, Dmitri! How strange
+it is! I think I have talked to you of it before, but it doesn't matter,
+I like to repeat it, and you will like to hear it. When I saw you the
+first time----'
+
+'Why are there tears in your eyes?' Insarov interrupted her.
+
+'Tears? Are there?' She wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. 'Oh, what
+a silly boy! He doesn't know yet that people weep from happiness. I
+wanted to tell you: when I saw you the first time, I saw nothing special
+in you, really. I remember, Shubin struck me much more at first, though
+I never loved him, and as for Andrei Petrovitch--oh, there was a moment
+when I thought: isn't this he? And with you there was nothing of that
+sort; but afterwards--afterwards--you took my heart by storm!'
+
+'Have pity on me,' began Insarov. He tried to get up, but dropped down
+on to the sofa again at once.
+
+'What's the matter with you?' inquired Elena anxiously.
+
+'Nothing.... I am still rather weak. I am not strong enough yet for such
+happiness.'
+
+'Then sit quietly. Don't dare to move, don't get excited,' she added,
+threatening him with her finger. 'And why have you left off your
+dressing-gown? It's too soon to begin to be a dandy! Sit down and I will
+tell you stories. Listen and be quiet. To talk much is bad for you after
+your illness.'
+
+She began to talk to him about Shubin, about Kurnatovsky, and what she
+had been doing for the last fortnight, of how war seemed, judging from
+the newspapers, inevitable, and so directly he was perfectly well again,
+he must, without losing a minute, make arrangements for them to start.
+All this she told him sitting beside him, leaning on his shoulder....
+
+He listened to her, listened, turning pale and red. Sometimes he tried
+to stop her; suddenly he drew himself up.
+
+'Elena,' he said to her in a strange, hard voice 'leave me, go away.'
+
+'What?' she replied in bewilderment 'You feel ill?' she added quickly.
+
+'No... I'm all right... but, please, leave me now.'
+
+'I don't understand you. You drive me away?.. What are you doing?' she
+said suddenly; he had bent over from the sofa almost to the ground,
+and was pressing her feet to his lips. 'Don't do that, Dmitri....
+Dmitri----'
+
+He got up.
+
+'Then leave me! You see, Elena, when I was taken ill, I did not lose
+consciousness at first; I knew I was on the edge of the abyss; even in
+the fever, in delirium I knew, I felt vaguely that it was death coming
+to me, I took leave of life, of you, of everything; I gave up hope....
+And this return to life so suddenly; this light after the darkness,
+you--you--near me, with me--your voice, your breath.... It's more than
+I can stand! I feel I love you passionately, I hear you call yourself
+mine, I cannot answer for myself... You must go!'
+
+'Dmitri,' whispered Elena, and she nestled her head on his shoulder.
+Only now she understood him.
+
+'Elena,' he went on, 'I love you, you know that; I am ready to give my
+life for you.... Why have you come to me now, when I am weak, when I
+can't control myself, when all my blood's on fire... you are mine, you
+say... you love me------'
+
+'Dmitri,' she repeated; she flushed all over, and pressed still closer
+to him.
+
+'Elena, have pity on me; go away, I feel as if I should die.... I can't
+stand these violent emotions... my whole soul yearns for you ... think,
+death was almost parting us.. and now you are here, you are in my
+arms... Elena----'
+
+She was trembling all over. 'Take me, then,' she whispered scarcely
+above her breath.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch was walking up and down in his study with a scowl
+on his face. Shubin was sitting at the window with his legs crossed,
+tranquilly smoking a cigar.
+
+'Leave off tramping from corner to corner, please,' he observed,
+knocking the ash off his cigar. 'I keep expecting you to speak;
+there's a rick in my neck from watching you. Besides, there's something
+artificial, melodramatic in your striding.'
+
+'You can never do anything but joke,' responded Nikolai Artemyevitch.
+'You won't enter into my position, you refuse to realise that I am used
+to that woman, that I am attached to her in fact, that her absence is
+bound to distress me. Here it's October, winter is upon us. ... What can
+she be doing in Revel?'
+
+'She must be knitting stockings--for herself; for herself--not for you.'
+
+'You may laugh, you may laugh; but I tell you I know no woman like her.
+Such honesty; such disinterestedness.'
+
+'Has she cashed that bill yet?' inquired Shubin.
+
+'Such disinterestedness,' repeated Nikolai Artemyevitch; 'it's
+astonishing. They tell me there are a million other women in the world,
+but I say, show me the million; show me the million, I say; _ces femmes,
+qu'on me les montre_! And she doesn't write--that's what's killing me!'
+
+'You're eloquent as Pythagoras,' remarked Shubin; 'but do you know what
+I would advise you?'
+
+'What?'
+
+'When Augustina Christianovna comes back--you take my meaning?'
+
+'Yes, yes; well, what?'
+
+'When you see her again--you follow the line of my thought?'
+
+'Yes, yes, to be sure.'
+
+'Try beating her; see what that would do.'
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch turned away exasperated.
+
+'I thought he was really going to give me some practical advice. But
+what can one expect from him! An artist, a man of no principles----'
+
+'No principles! By the way, I'm told your favourite Mr. Kurnatovsky, the
+man of principle, cleaned you out of a hundred roubles last night. That
+was hardly delicate, you must own now.'
+
+'What of it? We were playing high. Of course, I might expect--but they
+understand so little how to appreciate him in this house----'
+
+'That he thought: get what I can!' put in Shubin: 'whether he's to be my
+father-in-law or not, is still on the knees of the gods, but a hundred
+roubles is worth something to a man who doesn't take bribes.'
+
+'Father-in-law! How the devil am I his father-in-law? _Vous revez, mon
+cher_. Of course, any other girl would be delighted with such a suitor.
+Only consider: a man of spirit and intellect, who has gained a position
+in the world, served in two provinces----'
+
+'Led the governor in one of them by the nose,' remarked Shubin.
+
+'Very likely. To be sure, that's how it should be. Practical, a business
+man----'
+
+'And a capital hand at cards,' Shubin remarked again.
+
+'To be sure, and a capital hand at cards. But Elena Nikolaevna.... Is
+there any understanding her? I should be glad to know if there is any
+one who would undertake to make out what it is she wants. One day she's
+cheerful, another she's dull; all of a sudden she's so thin there's no
+looking at her, and then suddenly she's well again, and all without any
+apparent reason----'
+
+A disagreeable-looking man-servant came in with a cup of coffee, cream
+and sugar on a tray.
+
+'The father is pleased with a suitor,' pursued Nikolai Artemyevitch,
+breaking off a lump of sugar; 'but what is that to the daughter! That
+was all very well in the old patriarchal days, but now we have changed
+all that. _Nous avons change tout ca_. Nowadays a young girl talks to
+any one she thinks fit, reads what she thinks fit; she goes about Moscow
+alone without a groom or a maid, just as in Paris; and all that is
+permitted. The other day I asked, "Where is Elena Nikolaevna?" I'm told
+she has gone out. Where? No one knows. Is that--the proper thing?'
+
+'Take your coffee, and let the man go,' said Shubin. 'You say yourself
+that one ought not _devant les domestiques_' he added in an undertone.
+
+The servant gave Shubin a dubious look, while Nikolai Artemyevitch took
+the cup of coffee, added some cream, and seized some ten lumps of sugar.
+
+'I was just going to say when the servant came in,' he began, 'that
+I count for nothing in this house. That's the long and short of the
+matter. For nowadays every one judges from appearances; one man's
+an empty-headed fool, but gives himself airs of importance, and he's
+respected; while another, very likely, has talents which might--which
+might gain him great distinction, but through modesty----'
+
+'Aren't you a born statesman?' asked Shubin in a jeering voice.
+
+'Give over playing the fool!' Nikolai Artemyevitch cried with heat. 'You
+forget yourself! Here you have another proof that I count for nothing in
+this house, nothing!'
+
+'Anna Vassilyevna ill-uses you... poor fellow!' said Shubin, stretching.
+'Ah, Nikolai Artemyevitch, we're a pair of sinners! You had much
+better be getting a little present ready for Anna Vassilyevna, It's her
+birthday in a day or two, and you know how she appreciates the least
+attention on your part.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' answered Nikolai Artemyevitch hastily. 'I'm much obliged to
+you for reminding me. Of course, of course; to be sure. I have a little
+thing, a dressing-case, I bought it the other day at Rosenstrauch's; but
+I don't know really if it will do.'
+
+'I suppose you bought it for her, the lady at Revel?'
+
+'Why, certainly.--I had some idea.'
+
+'Well, in that case, it will be sure to do.' Shubin got up from his
+seat.
+
+'Are we going out this evening, Pavel Yakovlitch, eh?' Nikolai
+Artemyevitch asked with an amicable leer.
+
+'Why yes, you are going to your club.'
+
+'After the club... after the club.'
+
+Shubin stretched himself again.
+
+'No, Nikolai Artemyevitch, I want to work to-morrow. Another time.' And
+he walked off.
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch scowled, walked twice up and down the room, took a
+velvet box with the dressing-case out of the bureau and looked at it a
+long while, rubbing it with a silk handkerchief. Then he sat down before
+a looking-glass and began carefully arranging his thick black hair,
+turning his head to right and to left with a dignified countenance, his
+tongue pressed into his cheek, never taking his eyes off his parting.
+Some one coughed behind his back; he looked round and saw the manservant
+who had brought him in his coffee.
+
+'What do you want?' he asked him.
+
+'Nikolai Artemyevitch,' said the man with a certain solemnity, 'you are
+our master?'
+
+'I know that; what next!'
+
+'Nikolai Artemyevitch, graciously do not be angry with me; but I, having
+been in your honour's service from a boy, am bound in dutiful devotion
+to bring you----'
+
+'Well what is it?'
+
+The man shifted uneasily as he stood.
+
+'You condescended to say, your honour,' he began, 'that your honour did
+not know where Elena Nikolaevna was pleased to go. I have information
+about that.'
+
+'What lies are you telling, idiot?'
+
+'That's as your honour likes, but T saw our young lady three days ago,
+as she was pleased to go into a house!'
+
+'Where? what? what house?'
+
+'In a house, near Povarsky. Not far from here. I even asked the
+doorkeeper who were the people living there.'
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch stamped with his feet.
+
+'Silence, scoundrel! How dare you?... Elena Nikolaevna, in the goodness
+of her heart, goes to visit the poor and you... Be off, fool!'
+
+The terrified servant was rushing to the door.
+
+'Stop!' cried Nikolai Artemyevitch. 'What did the doorkeeper say to
+you?'
+
+'Oh no--nothing--he said nothing--He told me--a stu--student----'
+
+'Silence, scoundrel! Listen, you dirty beast; if you ever breathe a word
+in your dreams even----'
+
+'Mercy on us----'
+
+'Silence! if you blab--if any one--if I find out--you shall find no
+hiding-place even underground! Do you hear? You can go!'
+
+The man vanished.
+
+'Good Heavens, merciful powers! what does it mean?' thought Nikolai
+Artemyevitch when he was left alone. 'What did that idiot tell me? Eh? I
+shall have to find out, though, what house it is, and who lives there.
+I must go myself. Has it come to this!... _Un laquais! Quelle
+humiliation!_'
+
+And repeating aloud: '_Un laquais!_' Nikolai Artemyevitch shut the
+dressing-case up in the bureau, and went up to Anna Vassilyevna. He
+found her in bed with her face tied up. But the sight of her sufferings
+only irritated him, and he very soon reduced her to tears.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Meanwhile the storm gathering in the East was breaking. Turkey had
+declared war on Russia; the time fixed for the evacuation of the
+Principalities had already expired, the day of the disaster of Sinope
+was not far off. The last letters received by Insarov summoned him
+urgently to his country. His health was not yet restored; he coughed,
+suffered from weakness and slight attacks of fever, but he was scarcely
+ever at home. His heart was fired, he no longer thought of his illness.
+He was for ever rushing about Moscow, having secret interviews with
+various persons, writing for whole nights, disappearing for whole days;
+he had informed his landlord that he was going away shortly, and had
+presented him already with his scanty furniture. Elena too on her side
+was getting ready for departure. One wet evening she was sitting in her
+room, and listening with involuntary depression to the sighing of the
+wind, while she hemmed handkerchiefs. Her maid came in and told her that
+her father was in her mother's room and sent for her there. 'Your mamma
+is crying,' she whispered after the retreating Elena, 'and your papa is
+angry.'
+
+Elena gave a slight shrug and went into Anna Vassflyevna's room. Nikolai
+Artemyevitch's kind-hearted spouse was half lying on a reclining chair,
+sniffing a handkerchief steeped in _eau de Cologne_; he himself was
+standing at the hearth, every button buttoned up, in a high, hard
+cravat, with a stiffly starched collar; his deportment had a vague
+suggestion of some parliamentary orator. With an orator's wave of the
+arm he motioned his daughter to a chair, and when she, not understanding
+his gesture, looked inquiringly at him, he brought out with dignity,
+without turning his head: 'I beg you to be seated.' Nikolai Artemyevitch
+always used the formal plural in addressing his wife, but only on
+extraordinary occasions in addressing his daughter.
+
+Elena sat down.
+
+Anna Vassilyevna blew her nose tearfully. Nikolai Artemyevitch thrust
+his fingers between his coat-buttons.
+
+'I sent for you, Elena Nikolaevna,' he began after a protracted silence,
+'in order to have an explanation with you, or rather in order to ask you
+for an explanation. I am displeased with you--or no--that is too little
+to say: your behaviour is a pain and an outrage to me--to me and to your
+mother--your mother whom you see here.'
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch was giving vent only to the few bass notes in
+his voice. Elena gazed in silence at him, then at Anna Vassilyevna and
+turned pale.
+
+'There was a time,' Nikolai Artemyevitch resumed, 'when daughters did
+not allow themselves to look down on their parents--when the parental
+authority forced the disobedient to tremble. That time has passed,
+unhappily: so at least many persons imagine; but let me tell you, there
+are still laws which do not permit--do not permit--in fact there are
+still laws. I beg you to mark that: there are still laws----'
+
+'But, papa,' Elena was beginning.
+
+'I beg you not to interrupt me. Let us turn in thought to the past. I
+and Anna Vassilyevna have performed our duty. I and Anna Vassilyevna
+have spared nothing in your education: neither care nor expense. What
+you have gained from our care--is a different question; but I had the
+right to expect--I and Anna Vassilyevna had the right to expect that
+you would at least hold sacred the principles of morality which we
+have--_que nous avons inculques_, which we have instilled into you,
+our only daughter. We had the right to expect that no new "ideas" could
+touch that, so to speak, holy shrine. And what do we find? I am not now
+speaking of frivolities characteristic of your sex, and age, but who
+could have anticipated that you could so far forget yourself----'
+
+'Papa,' said Elena, 'I know what you are going to say------'
+
+'No, you don't know what I am going to say!' cried Nikolai Artemyevitch
+in a falsetto shriek, suddenly losing the majesty of his oratorical
+pose, the smooth dignity of his speech, and his bass notes. 'You don't
+know, vile hussy!'
+
+'For mercy's sake, _Nicolas_,' murmured Anna Vassilyevna, '_vous me
+faites mourir_?'
+
+'Don't tell me _que je vous fais mourir_, Anna Vassilyevna! You can't
+conceive what you will hear directly! Prepare yourself for the worst, I
+warn you!'
+
+Anna Vassilyevna seemed stupefied.
+
+'No,' resumed Nikolai Artemyevitch, turning to Elena, 'you don't know
+what I am going to say!'
+
+'I am to blame towards you----' she began.
+
+'Ah, at last!'
+
+'I am to blame towards you,' pursued Elena, 'for not having long ago
+confessed----'
+
+'But do you know,' Nikolai Artemyevitch interrupted, 'that I can crush
+you with one word?'
+
+Elena raised her eyes to look at him.
+
+'Yes, madam, with one word! It's useless to look at me!' (He crossed his
+arms on his breast.) 'Allow me to ask you, do you know a certain house
+near Povarsky? Have you visited that house?' (He stamped.) 'Answer
+me, worthless girl, and don't try to hide the truth. People, people,
+servants, _madam, de vils laquais_ have seen you, as you went in there,
+to your----'
+
+Elena was crimson, her eyes were blazing.
+
+'I have no need to hide anything,' she declared. 'Yes, I have visited
+that house.'
+
+'Exactly! Do you hear, do you hear, Anna Vassilyevna? And you know, I
+presume, who lives there?'
+
+'Yes, I know; my husband.'
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch's eyes were starting out of his head.
+
+'Your----'
+
+'My husband,' repeated Elena; 'I am married to Dmitri Nikanorovitch
+Insarov.'
+
+'You?--married?'--was all Anna Vassilyevna could articulate.
+
+'Yes, mamma.... Forgive me. A fortnight ago, we were secretly married.'
+
+Anna Vassilyevna fell back in her chair; Nikolai Artemyevitch stepped
+two paces back.
+
+'Married! To that vagrant, that Montenegrin! the daughter of Nikolai
+Stahov of the higher nobility married to a vagrant, a nobody, without
+her parents' sanction! And you imagine I shall let the matter rest,
+that I shall not make a complaint, that I will allow you--that
+you--that----To the nunnery with you, and he shall go to prison, to hard
+labour! Anna Vassilyevna, inform her at once that you will cut off her
+inheritance!'
+
+'Nikolai Artemyevitch, for God's sake,' moaned Anna Vassilyevna.
+
+'And when and how was this done? Who married you? where? how? Good
+God! what will all our friends think, what will the world say! And you,
+shameless hypocrite, could go on living under your parents' roof after
+such an act! Had you no fear of--the wrath of heaven?'
+
+'Papa' said Elena (she was trembling from head to foot but her voice was
+steady), 'you are at liberty to do with me as you please, but you need
+not accuse me of shamelessness, and hypocrisy. I did not want--to give
+you pain before, but I should have had to tell you all myself in a few
+days, because we are going away--my husband and I--from here next week.'
+
+'Going away? Where to?'
+
+'To his own country, to Bulgaria.'
+
+'To the Turks!' cried Anna Vassilyevna and fell into a swoon.
+
+Elena ran to her mother.
+
+'Away!' clamoured Nikolai Artemyevitch, seizing his daughter by the arm,
+'away, unworthy girl!'
+
+But at that instant the door of the room opened, and a pale face with
+glittering eyes appeared: it was the face of Shubin.
+
+'Nikolai Artemyevitch!' he shouted at the top of his voice, 'Augustina
+Christianovna is here and is asking for you!'
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch turned round infuriated, threatening Shubin with
+his fist; he stood still a minute and rapidly went out of the room.
+
+Elena fell at her mother's feet and embraced her knees.
+
+
+
+Uvar Ivanovitch was lying on his bed. A shirt without a collar, fastened
+with a heavy stud enfolded his thick neck and fell in full flowing folds
+over the almost feminine contours of his chest, leaving visible a large
+cypress-wood cross and an amulet. His ample limbs were covered with the
+lightest bedclothes. On the little table by the bedside a candle was
+burning dimly beside a jug of kvas, and on the bed at Uvar ivanovitch's
+feet was sitting Shubin in a dejected pose.
+
+'Yes,' he was saying meditatively, 'she is married and getting ready
+to go away. Your nephew was bawling and shouting for the benefit of the
+whole house; he had shut himself up for greater privacy in his wife's
+bedroom, but not merely the maids and the footmen, the coachman even
+could hear it all! Now he's just tearing and raving round; he all but
+gave me a thrashing, he's bringing a father's curse on the scene now,
+as cross as a bear with a sore head; but that's of no importance. Anna
+Vassilyevna's crushed, but she's much more brokenhearted at her daughter
+leaving her than at her marriage.'
+
+Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers.
+
+'A mother,' he commented, 'to be sure.'
+
+'Your nephew,' resumed Shubin, 'threatens to lodge a complaint with the
+Metropolitan and the General-Governor and the Minister, but it will end
+by her going. A happy thought to ruin his own daughter! He'll crow a
+little and then lower his colours.'
+
+'They'd no right,' observed Uvar Ivanovitch, and he drank out of the
+jug.
+
+'To be sure. But what a storm of criticism, gossip, and comments will be
+raised in Moscow! She's not afraid of them.... Besides she's above them.
+She's going away... and it's awful to think where she's going--to such a
+distance, such a wilderness! What future awaits her there? I seem to
+see her setting off from a posting station in a snow-storm with thirty
+degrees of frost. She's leaving her country, and her people; but I
+understand her doing it. Whom is she leaving here behind her? What
+people has she seen? Kurnatovsky and Bersenyev and our humble selves;
+and these are the best she's seen. What is there to regret about it? One
+thing's bad; I'm told her husband--the devil, how that word sticks in my
+throat!--Insarov, I'm told, is spitting blood; that's a bad lookout. I
+saw him the other day: his face--you could model Brutus from it straight
+off. Do you know who Brutus was, Uvar Ivanovitch?'
+
+'What is there to know? a man to be sure.'
+
+'Precisely so: he was a "man." Yes he's a wonderful face, but unhealthy,
+very unhealthy.'
+
+'For fighting... it makes no difference,' observed Uvar Ivanovitch.
+
+'For fighting it makes no difference, certainly; you are pleased to
+express yourself with great justice to-day; but for living it makes all
+the difference. And you see she wants to live with him a little while.'
+
+'A youthful affair,' responded Uvar Ivanovitch.
+
+'Yes, a youthful, glorious, bold affair. Death, life, conflict, defeat,
+triumph, love, freedom, country.... Good God, grant as much to all of
+us! That's a very different thing from sitting up to one's neck in a
+bog, and pretending it's all the same to you, when in fact it really is
+all the same. While there--the strings are tuned to the highest pitch,
+to play to all the world or to break!'
+
+Shubin's head sank on to his breast.
+
+'Yes,' he resumed, after a prolonged silence, 'Insarov deserves her.
+What nonsense, though! No one deserves her... Insarov... Insarov ...
+What's the use of pretended modesty? We'll own he's a fine fellow, he
+stands on his own feet, though up to the present he has done no more
+than we poor sinners; and are we such absolutely worthless dirt? Am I
+such dirt, Uvar Ivanovitch? Has God been hard on me in every way? Has He
+given me no talents, no abilities? Who knows, perhaps, the name of Pavel
+Shubin will in time be a great name? You see that bronze farthing there
+lying on your table. Who knows; some day, perhaps in a century, that
+bronze will go to a statue of Pavel Shubin, raised in his honour by a
+grateful posterity!'
+
+Uvar Ivanovitch leaned on his elbow and stared at the enthusiastic
+artist.
+
+'That's a long way off,' he said at last with his usual gesture; 'we're
+speaking of other people, why bring in yourself?'
+
+'O great philosopher of the Russian world!' cried Shubin, 'every word
+of yours is worth its weight in gold, and it's not to me but to you a
+statue ought to be raised, and I would undertake it. There, as you are
+lying now, in that pose; one doesn't know which is uppermost in it,
+sloth or strength! That's how I would cast you in bronze. You aimed a
+just reproach at my egoism and vanity! Yes! yes! it's useless talking
+of one's-self; it's useless bragging. We have no one yet, no men, look
+where you will. Everywhere--either small fry, nibblers, Hamlets on a
+small scale, self-absorbed, or darkness and subterranean chaos, or
+idle babblers and wooden sticks. Or else they are like this: they study
+themselves to the most shameful detail, and are for ever feeling the
+pulse of every sensation and reporting to themselves: "That's what I
+feel, that's what I think." A useful, rational occupation! No, if we
+only had some sensible men among us, that girl, that delicate soul,
+would not have run away from us, would not have slipped off like a fish
+to the water! What's the meaning of it, Uvar Ivanovitch? When will our
+time come? When will men be born among us?'
+
+'Give us time,' answered Uvar Ivanovitch; 'they will be----'
+
+'They will be? soil of our country! force of the black earth! thou hast
+said: they will be. Look, I will write down your words. But why are you
+putting out the candle?'
+
+'I'm going to sleep; good-bye.'
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+Shubin had spoken truly. The unexpected news of Elena's marriage nearly
+killed Anna Vassilyevna. She took to her bed. Nikolai Artemyevitch
+insisted on her not admitting her daughter to her presence; he seemed to
+be enjoying the opportunity of showing himself in the fullest sense the
+master of the house, with all the authority of the head of the family;
+he made an incessant uproar in the household, storming at the servants,
+and constantly saying: 'I will show you who I am, I will let you
+know--you wait a little!' While he was in the house, Anna Vassilyevna
+did not see Elena, and had to be content with Zoya, who waited on
+her very devotedly, but kept thinking to herself: '_Diesen Insarof
+vorziehen--und wem?_' But directly Nikolai Artemyevitch went out--and
+that happened pretty often, Augustina Christianovna had come back in
+sober earnest--Elena went to her mother, and a long time her mother
+gazed at her in silence and in tears.
+
+This dumb reproach, more deeply than any other, cut Elena to the heart;
+at such moments she felt, not remorse, but a deep, boundless pity akin
+to remorse.
+
+'Mamma, dear mamma!' she would repeat, kissing her hands; 'what was I to
+do? I'm not to blame, I loved him, I could not have acted differently.
+Throw the blame on fate for throwing me with a man whom papa doesn't
+like, and who is taking me away from you.'
+
+'Ah!' Anna Vassilyevna cut her short, 'don't remind me of that. When I
+think where you mean to go, my heart is ready to burst!'
+
+'Dear mamma,' answered Elena, 'be comforted; at least, it might have
+been worse; I might have died.'
+
+'But, as it is, I don't expect to see you again. Either you will end
+your days there in a tent somewhere'--Anna Vassilyevna pictured Bulgaria
+as something after the nature of the Siberian swamps,--'or I shall not
+survive the separation----'
+
+'Don't say that, mamma dearest, we shall see each other again, please
+God. There are towns in Bulgaria just as there are here.'
+
+'Fine towns there, indeed! There is war going on there now; wherever
+you go, I suppose they are firing cannons off all the while... Are you
+meaning to set off soon?'
+
+'Soon... if only papa. He means to appeal to the authorities; he
+threatens to separate us.'
+
+Anna Vassilyevna turned her eyes heavenwards.
+
+'No, Lenotchka, he will not do that. I would not myself have consented
+to this marriage. I would have died first; but what's done can't be
+undone, and I will not let my daughter be disgraced.'
+
+So passed a few days. At last Anna Vassilyevna plucked up her courage,
+and one evening she shut herself up alone with her husband in her room.
+The whole house was hushed to catch every sound. At first nothing was
+to be heard; then Nikolai Artemyevitch's voice began to tune up, then
+a quarrel broke out, shouts were raised, even groans were discerned....
+Already Shubin was plotting with the maids and Zoya to rush in to the
+rescue; but the uproar in the bedroom began by degrees to grow less,
+passed into quiet talk, and ceased. Only from time to time a faint sob
+was to be heard, and then those, too, were still. There was the jingling
+of keys, the creak of a bureau being unfastened.... The door was opened,
+and Nikolai Artemyevitch appeared. He looked surlily at every one who
+met him, and went out to the club; while Anna Vassilyevna sent for
+Elena, embraced her warmly, and, with bitter tears flowing down her
+cheeks, she said:
+
+'Everything is settled, he will not make a scandal, and there is nothing
+now to hinder you from going--from abandoning us.'
+
+'You will let Dmitri come to thank you?' Elena begged her mother, as
+soon as the latter had been restored a little.
+
+'Wait a little, my darling, I cannot bear yet to see the man who has
+come between us. We shall have time before you go.'
+
+'Before we go,' repeated Elena mournfully.
+
+Nikolai Artemyevitch had consented 'not to make a scandal,' but Anna
+Vassilyevna did not tell her daughter what a price he had put on his
+consent. She did not tell her that she had promised to pay all his
+debts, and had given him a thousand roubles down on the spot. Moreover,
+he had declared decisively to Anna Vassilyevna that he had no wish to
+meet Insarov, whom he persisted in calling 'the Montenegrin vagrant,'
+and when he got to the club, he began, quite without occasion, talking
+of Elena's marriage, to his partner at cards, a retired general of
+engineers. 'You have heard,' he observed with a show of carelessness,
+'my daughter, through the higher education, has gone and married a
+student.' The general looked at him through his spectacles, muttered,
+'H'm!' and asked him what stakes would he play for.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+The day of departure drew near. November was already over; the latest
+date for starting had come. Insarov had long ago made his preparations,
+and was burning with anxiety to get out of Moscow as soon as possible.
+And the doctor was urging him on. 'You need a warm climate,' he told
+him; 'you will not get well here.' Elena, too, was fretting with
+impatience; she was worried by Insarov's pallor, and his emaciation. She
+often looked with involuntary terror at his changed face. Her position
+in her parents' house had become insupportable. Her mother mourned over
+her, as over the dead, while her father treated her with contemptuous
+coldness; the approaching separation secretly pained him too, but he
+regarded it as his duty--the duty of an offended father--to disguise his
+feelings, his weakness. Anna Vassilyevna at last expressed a wish to see
+Insarov. He was taken up to her secretly by the back stairs. After he
+had entered her room, for a long time she could not speak to him, she
+could not even bring herself to look at him; he sat down near her chair,
+and waited, with quiet respectfulness, for her first word. Elena sat
+down close, and held her mother's hand in hers. At last Anna Vassilyevna
+raised her eyes, saying: 'God is your judge, Dmitri Nikanorovitch'--she
+stopped short: the reproaches died away on her lips. 'Why, you are ill,'
+she cried: 'Elena, your husband's ill!'
+
+'I have been unwell, Anna Vassilyevna,' answered Insarov; 'and even
+now I am not quite strong yet: but I hope my native air will make me
+perfectly well again.'
+
+'Ah--Bulgaria!' murmured Anna Vassilyevna, and she thought: 'Good God,
+a Bulgarian, and dying; a voice as hollow as a drum; and eyes like
+saucers, a perfect skeleton; his coat hanging loose on his shoulders,
+his face as yellow as a guinea, and she's his wife--she loves him--it
+must be a bad dream. But----' she checked herself at once: 'Dmitri
+Nikanorovitch,' she said, 'are you absolutely, absolutely bound to go
+away?'
+
+'Absolutely, Anna Vassilyevna.'
+
+Anna Vassilyevna looked at him.
+
+'Ah, Dmitri Nikanorovitch, God grant you never have to go through what
+I am going through now. But you will promise me to take care of her--to
+love her. You will not have to face poverty while I am living!'
+
+Tears choked her voice. She opened her arms, and Elena and Insarov flung
+themselves into her embrace.
+
+The fatal day had come at last. It had been arranged that Elena should
+say good-bye to her parents at home, and should start on the journey
+from Insarov's lodgings. The departure was fixed for twelve o'clock.
+About a quarter of an hour before the appointed time Bersenyev arrived.
+He had expected to find Insarov's compatriots at his lodgings, anxious
+to see him off; but they had already gone before; and with them the
+two mysterious persons known to the reader (they had been witnesses at
+Insarov's wedding). The tailor met the 'kind gentlemen' with a bow; he,
+presumably, to drown his grief, but possibly to celebrate his delight at
+getting the furniture, had been drinking heavily; his wife soon led him
+away. In the room everything was by this time ready; a trunk, tied
+up with cord, stood on the floor. Bersenyev sank into thought: many
+memories came rushing upon him.
+
+Twelve o'clock had long ago struck; and the driver had already brought
+round the horses, but the 'young people' still did not appear. At last
+hurrying steps were heard on the stairs, and Elena came out escorted by
+Insarov and Shubin. Elena's eyes were red; she had left her mother lying
+unconscious; the parting had been terrible. Elena had not seen Bersenyev
+for more than a week: he had been seldom of late at the Stahovs'. She
+had not expected to meet him; and crying, 'You! thank you!' she threw
+herself on his neck; Insarov, too, embraced him. A painful silence
+followed. What could these three say to one another? what were they
+feeling in their hearts? Shubin realised the necessity of cutting short
+everything painful with light words.
+
+'Our trio has come together again,' he began, 'for the last time. Let us
+submit to the decrees of fate; speak of the past with kindness; and in
+God's name go forward to the new life! In God's name, on our distant
+way,' he began to hum, and stopped short. He felt suddenly ashamed
+and awkward. It is a sin to sing where the dead are lying: and at that
+instant, in that room, the past of which he had spoken was dying, the
+past of the people met together in it. It was dying to be born again in
+a new life--doubtless--still it was death.
+
+'Come, Elena,' began Insarov, turning to his wife, 'I think everything
+is done? Everything paid, and everything packed. There's nothing more
+except to take the box down.' He called his landlord.
+
+The tailor came into the room, together with his wife and daughter. He
+listened, slightly reeling, to Insarov's instructions, dragged the box
+up on to his shoulders, and ran quickly down the staircases, tramping
+heavily with his boots.
+
+'Now, after the Russian custom, we must sit down,' observed Insarov.
+
+They all sat down; Bersenyev seated himself on the old sofa, Elena sat
+next him; the landlady and her daughter squatted in the doorway. All
+were silent; all smiled constrainedly, though no one knew why he was
+smiling; each of them wanted to say something at parting, and each
+(except, of course, the landlady and her daughter, they were simply
+rolling their eyes) felt that at such moments it is only permissible to
+utter common-places, that any word of importance, of sense, or even of
+deep feeling, would be somehow out of place, almost insincere. Insarov
+was the first to get up, and he began crossing himself. 'Farewell, our
+little room!' he cried.
+
+Then came kisses, the sounding but cold kisses of leave-taking, good
+wishes--half expressed--for the journey, promises to write, the last,
+half-smothered words of farewell.
+
+Elena, all in tears, had already taken her seat in the sledge; Insarov
+had carefully wrapped her feet up in a rug; Shubin, Bersenyev, the
+landlord, his wife, the little daughter, with the inevitable kerchief
+on her head, the doorkeeper, a workman in a striped bedgown, were all
+standing on the steps, when suddenly a splendid sledge, harnessed with
+spirited horses, flew into the courtyard, and from the sledge, shaking
+the snow off the collar of his cloak, leapt Nikolai Artemyevitch.
+
+'I am not too late, thank God,' he cried, running up to their sledge.
+'Here, Elena, is our last parental benediction,' he said, bending down
+under the hood, and taking from his pocket a little holy image, sewn in
+a velvet bag, he put it round her neck. She began to sob, and kiss
+his hands; and the coachman meantime pulled out of the forepart of the
+sledge a half bottle of champagne, and three glasses.
+
+'Come!' said Nikolai Artemyevitch--and his own tears were trickling on
+to the beaver collar of his cloak--'we must drink to--good journey--good
+wishes----' He began pouring out the champagne: his hands were shaking,
+the foam rose over the edge and fell on to the snow. He took one glass,
+and gave the other two to Elena and Insarov, who by now was seated
+beside hen 'God give you----' began Nikolai Artemyevitch, and he could
+not go on: he drank off the wine; they, too, drank off their glasses.
+'Now you should drink, gentlemen,' he added, turning to Shubin and
+Bersenyev, but at that instant the driver started the horses. Nikolai
+Artemyevitch ran beside the sledge. 'Mind and write to us,' he said in
+a broken voice. Elena put out her head, saying: 'Good-bye, papa, Andrei
+Petrovitch, Pavel Yakovlitch, good-bye all, good-bye, Russia!' and
+dropped back in her place. The driver flourished his whip, and gave a
+whistle; the sledge, its runners crunching on the snow, turned out of
+the gates to the right and disappeared.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+It was a bright April day. On the broad lagoon which separates Venice
+from the narrow strip of accumulated sea sand, called the Lido, a
+gondola was gliding--swaying rhythmically at every push made by the
+gondolier as he leaned on the big pole. Under its low awning, on soft
+leather cushions, were sitting Elena and Insarov.
+
+Elena's features had not changed much since the day of her departure
+from Moscow, but their expression was different; it was more thoughtful
+and more severe, and her eyes had a bolder look. Her whole figure had
+grown finer and more mature, and the hair seemed to lie in greater
+thickness and luxuriance along her white brow and her fresh cheeks. Only
+about her lips, when she was not smiling, a scarcely perceptible line
+showed the presence of a hidden constant anxiety. In Insarov's face, on
+the contrary, the expression had remained the same, but his features had
+undergone a cruel change. He had grown thin, old, pale and bent; he was
+constantly coughing a short dry cough, and his sunken eyes shone with
+a strange brilliance. On the way from Russia, Insarov had lain ill for
+almost two months at Vienna, and only at the end of March had he been
+able to come with his wife to Venice; from there he was hoping to
+make his way through Zara to Servia, to Bulgaria; the other roads were
+closed. The war was now at its height about the Danube; England and
+France had declared war on Russia, all the Slavonic countries were
+roused and were preparing for an uprising.
+
+The gondola put in to the inner shore of the Lido. Elena and Insarov
+walked along the narrow sandy road planted with sickly trees (every year
+they plant them and every year they die) to the outer shore of the Lido,
+to the sea.
+
+They walked along the beach. The Adriatic rolled its muddy-blue waves
+before them; they raced into the shore, foaming and hissing, and drew
+back again, leaving fine shells and fragments of seaweed on the beach.
+
+'What a desolate place!' observed Elena 'I'm afraid it's too cold for
+you here, but I guess why you wanted to come here.'
+
+'Cold!' rejoined Insarov with a rapid and bitter smile, 'I shall be a
+fine soldier, if I'm to be afraid of the cold. I came here... I will
+tell you why. I look across that sea, and I feel as though here, I am
+nearer my country. It is there, you know,' he added, stretching out his
+hand to the East, 'the wind blows from there.'
+
+'Will not this wind bring the ship you are expecting?' said Elena. 'See,
+there is a white sail, is not that it?'
+
+Insarov gazed seaward into the distance to where Elena was pointing.
+
+'Renditch promised to arrange everything for us within a week,' he said,
+'we can rely on him, I think.... Did you hear, Elena,' he added with
+sudden animation, 'they say the poor Dalmatian fishermen have sacrificed
+their dredging weights--you know the leads they weigh their nets with
+for letting them down to the bottom--to make bullets! They have no
+money, they only just live by fishing; but they have joyfully given up
+their last property, and now are starving. What a nation!'
+
+'_Aufgepasst_!' shouted a haughty voice behind them. The heavy thud of
+horse's hoofs was heard, and an Austrian officer in a short grey tunic
+and a green cap galloped past them--they had scarcely time to get out of
+the way.
+
+Insarov looked darkly after him.
+
+'He was not to blame,' said Elena, 'you know, they have no other place
+where they can ride.'
+
+'He was not to blame,' answered Insarov 'but he made my blood boil with
+his shout, his moustaches, his cap, his whole appearance. Let us go
+back.'
+
+'Yes, let us go back, Dmitri. It's really cold here. You did not take
+care of yourself after your Moscow illness, and you had to pay for that
+at Vienna. Now you must be more cautious.'
+
+Insarov did not answer, but the same bitter smile passed over his lips.
+
+'If you like,' Elena went on, 'we will go along to the Canal Grande.
+We have not seen Venice properly, you know, all the while we have been
+here. And in the evening we are going to the theatre; I have two tickets
+for the stalls. They say there's a new opera being given. If you like,
+we will give up to-day to one another; we will forget politics and
+war and everything, we will forget everything but that we are alive,
+breathing, thinking together; that we are one for ever--would you like
+that?'
+
+'If you would like it, Elena,' answered Insarov, 'it follows that I
+should like it too.'
+
+'I knew that,' observed Elena with a smile, 'come, let us go.'
+
+They went back to the gondola, took their seats, told the gondolier to
+take them without hurry along the Canal Grande.
+
+No one who has not seen Venice in April knows all the unutterable
+fascinations of that magic town. The softness and mildness of spring
+harmonise with Venice, just as the glaring sun of summer suits the
+magnificence of Genoa, and as the gold and purple of autumn suits the
+grand antiquity of Rome. The beauty of Venice, like the spring, touches
+the soul and moves it to desire; it frets and tortures the inexperienced
+heart like the promise of a coming bliss, mysterious but not elusive.
+Everything in it is bright, and everything is wrapt in a drowsy,
+tangible mist, as it were, of the hush of love; everything in it is so
+silent, and everything in it is kindly; everything in it is feminine,
+from its name upwards. It has well been given the name of 'the fair
+city.' Its masses of palaces and churches stand out light and wonderful
+like the graceful dream of a young god; there is something magical,
+something strange and bewitching in the greenish-grey light and silken
+shimmer of the silent water of the canals, in the noiseless gliding of
+the gondolas, in the absence of the coarse din of a town, the coarse
+rattling, and crashing, and uproar. 'Venice is dead, Venice is
+deserted,' her citizens will tell you, but perhaps this last charm--the
+charm of decay--was not vouchsafed her in the very heyday of the flower
+and majesty of her beauty. He who has not seen her, knows her not;
+neither Canaletto nor Guardi (to say nothing of later painters) has been
+able to convey the silvery tenderness of the atmosphere, the horizon so
+close, yet so elusive, the divine harmony of exquisite lines and melting
+colours. One who has outlived his life, who has been crushed by it,
+should not visit Venice; she will be cruel to him as the memory of
+unfulfilled dreams of early days; but sweet to one whose strength is at
+its full, who is conscious of happiness; let him bring his bliss under
+her enchanted skies; and however bright it may be, Venice will make it
+more golden with her unfading splendour.
+
+The gondola in which Insarov and Elena were sitting passed _Riva dei
+Schiavoni_, the palace of the Doges, and Piazzetta, and entered the
+Grand Canal. On both sides stretched marble palaces; they seemed to
+float softly by, scarcely letting the eye seize or absorb their beauty.
+Elena felt herself deeply happy; in the perfect blue of her heavens
+there was only one dark cloud--and it was in the far distance; Insarov
+was much better that day. They glided as far as the acute angle of the
+Rialto and turned back. Elena was afraid of the chill of the churches
+for Insarov; but she remembered the academy delle Belle Arti, and told
+the gondolier to go towards it. They quickly walked through all the
+rooms of that little museum. Being neither connoisseurs nor dilettantes,
+they did not stop before every picture; they put no constraint on
+themselves; a spirit of light-hearted gaiety came over them. Everything
+seemed suddenly very entertaining. (Children know this feeling very
+well.) To the great scandal of three English visitors, Elena laughed
+till she cried over the St Mark of Tintoretto, skipping down from the
+sky like a frog into the water, to deliver the tortured slave; Insarov
+in his turn fell into raptures over the back and legs of the sturdy man
+in the green cloak, who stands in the foreground of Titian's Ascension
+and holds his arms outstretched after the Madonna; but the Madonna--a
+splendid, powerful woman, calmly and majestically making her way towards
+the bosom of God the Father--impressed both Insarov and Elena; they
+liked, too, the austere and reverent painting of the elder Cima da
+Conegliano. As they were leaving the academy, they took another look
+at the Englishmen behind them--with their long rabbit-like teeth and
+drooping whiskers--and laughed; they glanced at their gondolier with his
+abbreviated jacket and short breeches--and laughed; they caught sight of
+a woman selling old clothes with a knob of grey hair on the very top
+of her head--and laughed more than ever; they looked into one another's
+face--and went off into peals of laughter, and directly they had sat
+down in the gondola, they clasped each other's hand in a close, close
+grip. They reached their hotel, ran into their room, and ordered dinner
+to be brought in. Their gaiety did not desert them at dinner. They
+pressed each other to eat, drank to the health of their friends in
+Moscow, clapped their hands at the waiter for a delicious dish of fish,
+and kept asking him for live _frutti di mare_; the waiter shrugged his
+shoulders and scraped with his feet, but when he had left them, he shook
+his head and once even muttered with a sigh, _poveretti_! (poor things!)
+After dinner they set off for the theatre.
+
+They were giving an opera of Verdi's, which though, honestly speaking,
+rather vulgar, has already succeeded in making the round of all the
+European theatres, an opera, well-known among Russians, _La Traviata_.
+The season in Venice was over, and none of the singers rose above the
+level of mediocrity; every one shouted to the best of their abilities.
+The part of Violetta was performed by an artist, of no renown, and
+judging by the cool reception given her by the public, not a favourite,
+but she was not destitute of talent. She was a young, and not very
+pretty, black-eyed girl with an unequal and already overstrained voice.
+Her dress was ill-chosen and naively gaudy; her hair was hidden in a
+red net, her dress of faded blue satin was too tight for her, and thick
+Swedish gloves reached up to her sharp elbows. Indeed, how could she,
+the daughter of some Bergamese shepherd, know how Parisian _dames aux
+camelias_ dress! And she did not understand how to move on the stage;
+but there was much truth and artless simplicity in her acting, and she
+sang with that passion of expression and rhythm which is only vouchsafed
+to Italians. Elena and Insarov were sitting alone together in a dark box
+close to the stage; the mirthful mood which had come upon them in the
+academy _delle Belle Arti_ had not yet passed off. When the father of
+the unhappy young man who had fallen into the snares of the enchantress
+came on to the stage in a yellow frock-coat and a dishevelled white wig,
+opened his mouth awry, and losing his presence of mind before he had
+begun, only brought out a faint bass _tremolo_, they almost burst into
+laughter. ... But Violetta's acting impressed them.
+
+'They hardly clap that poor girl at all,' said Elena, 'but I like her
+a thousand times better than some conceited second-rate celebrity who
+would grimace and attitudinise all the while for effect. This girl seems
+as though it were all in earnest; look, she pays no attention to the
+public.'
+
+Insarov bent over the edge of the box, and looked attentively at
+Violetta.
+
+'Yes,' he commented, 'she is in earnest; she's on the brink of the grave
+herself.'
+
+Elena was mute.
+
+The third act began. The curtain rose--Elena shuddered at the sight of
+the bed, the drawn curtains, the glass of medicine, the shaded lamps.
+She recalled the near past. 'What of the future? What of the present?'
+flashed across her mind. As though in response to her thought, the
+artist's mimic cough on the stage was answered in the box by the hoarse,
+terribly real cough of Insarov. Elena stole a glance at him, and at once
+gave her features a calm and untroubled expression; Insarov understood
+her, and he began himself to smile, and softly to hum the tune of the
+song.
+
+But he was soon quiet. Violetta's acting became steadily better,
+and freer. She had thrown aside everything subsidiary, everything
+superfluous, and _found herself_; a rare, a lofty delight for an artist!
+She had suddenly crossed the limit, which it is impossible to define,
+beyond which is the abiding place of beauty. The audience was thrilled
+and astonished. The plain girl with the broken voice began to get a hold
+on it, to master it. And the singer's voice even did not sound broken
+now; it had gained mellowness and strength. Alfredo made his entrance;
+Violetta's cry of happiness almost raised that storm in the audience
+known as _fanatisme_, beside which all the applause of our northern
+audiences is nothing. A brief interval passed--and again the audience
+were in transports. The duet began, the best thing in the opera, in
+which the composer has succeeded in expressing all the pathos of the
+senseless waste of youth, the final struggle of despairing, helpless
+love. Caught up and carried along by the general sympathy, with tears of
+artistic delight and real suffering in her eyes, the singer let
+herself be borne along on the wave of passion within her; her face
+was transfigured, and in the presence of the threatening signs of fast
+approaching death, the words: '_Lascia mi vivero--morir si giovane_'
+(let me live--to die so young!) burst from her in such a tempest of
+prayer rising to heaven, that the whole theatre shook with frenzied
+applause and shouts of delight.
+
+Elena felt cold all over. Softly her hand sought Insarov's, found it,
+and clasped it tightly. He responded to its pressure; but she did not
+look at him, nor he at her. Very different was the clasp of hands with
+which they had greeted each other in the gondola a few hours before.
+
+Again they glided along the Canal Grande towards their hotel. Night had
+set in now, a clear, soft night. The same palaces met them, but they
+seemed different. Those that were lighted up by the moon shone with
+pale gold, and in this pale light all details of ornaments and lines of
+windows and balconies seemed lost; they stood out more clearly in the
+buildings that were wrapped in a light veil of unbroken shadow.
+The gondolas, with their little red lamps, seemed to flit past
+more noiselessly and swiftly than ever; their steel beaks flashed
+mysteriously, mysteriously their oars rose and fell over the ripples
+stirred by little silvery fish; here and there was heard the brief,
+subdued call of a gondolier (they never sing now); scarcely another
+sound was to be heard. The hotel where Insarov and Elena were staying
+was on the _Riva dei Schiavoni_; before they reached it they left the
+gondola, and walked several times round the Square of St. Mark, under
+the arches, where numbers of holiday makers were gathered before the
+tiny cafes. There is a special sweetness in wandering alone with one you
+love, in a strange city among strangers; everything seems beautiful and
+full of meaning, you feel peace and goodwill to all men, you wish all
+the same happiness that fills your heart. But Elena could not now give
+herself up without a care to the sense of her happiness; her heart could
+not regain its calm after the emotions that had so lately shaken it;
+and Insarov, as he walked by the palace of the Doges, pointed without
+speaking to the mouths of the Austrian cannons, peeping out from the
+lower arches, and pulled his hat down over his eyes. By now he felt
+tired, and, with a last glance at the church of St. Mark, at its cupola,
+where on the bluish lead bright patches of phosphorescent light shone in
+the rays of the moon, they turned slowly homewards.
+
+Their little room looked out on to the lagoon, which stretches from the
+_Riva del Schiavoni_ to the Giudecca. Almost facing their hotel rose the
+slender tower of S. George; high against the sky on the right shone the
+golden ball of the Customs House; and, decked like a bride, stood the
+loveliest of the churches, the _Redentore_ of Palladio; on the left
+were the black masts and rigging of ships, the funnels of steamers;
+a half-furled sail hung in one place like a great wing, and the flags
+scarcely stirred. Insarov sat down at the window, but Elena did not
+let him admire the view for long; he seemed suddenly feverish, he was
+overcome by consuming weakness. She put him to bed, and, waiting till he
+had fallen asleep, she returned to the window. Oh, how still and kindly
+was the night, what dovelike softness breathed in the deep-blue air!
+Every suffering, every sorrow surely must be soothed to slumber under
+that clear sky, under that pure, holy light! 'O God,' thought Elena,
+'why must there be death, why is there separation, and disease and
+tears? or else, why this beauty, this sweet feeling of hope, this
+soothing sense of an abiding refuge, an unchanging support, an
+everlasting protection? What is the meaning of this smiling, blessing
+sky; this happy, sleeping earth? Can it be that all that is only in us,
+and that outside us is eternal cold and silence? Can it be that we are
+alone... alone... and there, on all sides, in all those unattainable
+depths and abysses--nothing is akin to us; all, all is strange and apart
+from us? Why, then, have we this desire for, this delight in prayer?'
+(_Morir si giovane_ was echoing in her heart.)... 'Is it impossible,
+then, to propitiate, to avert, to save... O God! is it impossible to
+believe in miracle?' She dropped her head on to her clasped hands.
+'Enough,' she whispered. 'Indeed enough! I have been happy not for
+moments only, not for hours, not for whole days even, but for whole
+weeks together. And what right had I to happiness?' She felt terror at
+the thought of her happiness. 'What, if that cannot be?' she thought.
+'What, if it is not granted for nothing? Why, it has been heaven... and
+we are mortals, poor sinful mortals.... _Morir si giovane_. Oh, dark
+omen, away! It's not only for me his life is needed!
+
+'But what, if it is a punishment,' she thought again; 'what, if we must
+now pay the penalty of our guilt in full? My conscience was silent, it
+is silent now, but is that a proof of innocence? O God, can we be so
+guilty! Canst Thou who hast created this night, this sky, wish to punish
+us for having loved each other? If it be so, if he has sinned, if I have
+sinned,' she added with involuntary force, 'grant that he, O God, grant
+that we both, may die at least a noble, glorious death--there, on the
+plains of his country, not here in this dark room.
+
+'And the grief of my poor, lonely mother?' she asked herself, and was
+bewildered, and could find no answer to her question. Elena did not know
+that every man's happiness is built on the unhappiness of another, that
+even his advantage, his comfort, like a statue needs a pedestal, the
+disadvantage, the discomfort of others.
+
+'Renditch!' muttered Insarov in his sleep.
+
+Elena went up to him on tiptoe, bent over him, and wiped the
+perspiration from his face. He tossed a little on his pillow, and was
+still again.
+
+She went back again to the window, and again her thoughts took
+possession of her. She began to argue with herself, to assure herself
+that there was no reason to be afraid. She even began to feel ashamed
+of her weakness. 'Is there any danger? isn't he better?' she murmured.
+'Why, if we had not been at the theatre to-day, all this would never
+have entered my head.'
+
+At that instant she saw high above the water a white sea-gull; some
+fisherman had scared it, it seemed, for it flew noiselessly with
+uncertain course, as though seeking a spot where it could alight. 'Come,
+if it flies here,' thought Elena, 'it will be a good omen.' ... The
+sea-gull flew round in a circle, folded its wings, and, as though it had
+been shot, dropped with a plaintive cry in the distance behind a dark
+ship. Elena shuddered; then she was ashamed of having shuddered, and,
+without undressing, she lay down on the bed beside Insarov, who was
+breathing quickly and heavily.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+Insarov waked late with a dull pain in his head, and a feeling, as he
+expressed it, of disgusting weakness all over. He got up however.
+
+'Renditch has not come?' was his first question.
+
+'Not yet,' answered Elena, and she handed him the latest number of the
+_Osservatore Triestino_, in which there was much upon the war, the Slav
+Provinces, and the Principalities. Insarov began reading it; she busied
+herself in getting some coffee ready for him. Some one knocked at the
+door.
+
+'Renditch,' both thought at once, but a voice said in Russian, 'May I
+come in?' Elena and Insarov looked at each other in astonishment; and
+without waiting for an answer, an elegantly dressed young man entered
+the room, with a small sharp-featured face, and bright little eyes. He
+was beaming all over, as though he had just won a fortune or heard a
+most delightful piece of news.
+
+Insarov got up from his seat
+
+'You don't recognise me,' began the stranger, going up to him with an
+easy air, and bowing politely to Elena, 'Lupoyarov, do you remember, we
+met at Moscow at the E----'s.'
+
+'Yes, at the E----'s,' replied Insarov.
+
+'To be sure, to be sure! I beg you to present me to your wife. Madam,
+I have always had the profoundest respect for Dmitri Vassilyevitch' (he
+corrected himself)--'for Nikanor Vassilyevitch, and am very happy
+to have the pleasure at last of making your acquaintance. Fancy,' he
+continued, turning to Insarov, 'I only heard yesterday evening that
+you were here. I am staying at this hotel too. What a city! Venice is
+poetry--that's the only word for it! But one thing's really awful: the
+cursed Austrians meeting one at every turn! ah, these Austrians! By the
+way, have you heard, there's been a decisive battle on the Danube: three
+hundred Turkish officers killed, Silistria taken; Servia has declared
+its independence. You, as a patriot, ought to be in transports, oughtn't
+you? Even my Slavonic blood's positively on fire! I advise you to be
+more careful, though; I'm convinced there's a watch kept on you. The
+spies here are something awful! A suspicious-looking man came up to me
+yesterday and asked: "Are you a Russian?" I told him I was a Dane. But
+you seem unwell, dear Nikanor Vassilyevitch. You ought to see a doctor;
+madam, you ought to make your husband see a doctor. Yesterday I ran
+through the palaces and churches, as though I were crazy. I suppose
+you've been in the palace of the Doges? What magnificence everywhere!
+Especially that great hall and Marino Faliero's place: there's an
+inscription: _decapitati pro criminibus_. I've been in the famous
+prisons too; that threw me into indignation, you may fancy. I've always,
+you remember perhaps, taken an interest in social questions, and taken
+sides against aristocracy--well, that's where I should like to send the
+champions of aristocracy--to those dungeons. How well Byron said: _I
+stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs_; though he was an aristocrat
+too. I was always for progress--the younger generation are all for
+progress. And what do you say to the Anglo-French business? We shall see
+whether they can do much, Boustrapa and Palmerston. You know Palmerston
+has been made Prime Minister. No, say what you like, the Russian fist is
+not to be despised. He's awfully deep that Boustrapa! If you like I will
+lend you _Les Chatiments de Victor Hugo_--it's marvellous--_L'avenir,
+le gendarme de Dieu_--rather boldly written, but what force in it,
+what force! That was a fine saying, too, of Prince Vyazemsky's: "Europe
+repeats: Bash-Kadik-Lar keeping an eye on Sinope." I adore poetry. I
+have Proudhon's last work, too--I have everything. I don't know how you
+feel, but I'm glad of the war; only as I'm not required at home, I'm
+going from here to Florence, and to Rome. France I can't go to--so I'm
+thinking of Spain--the women there, I'm told, are marvellous! only such
+poverty, and so many insects. I would be off to California--we Russians
+are ready to do anything--but I promised an editor to study the question
+of the commerce of the Mediterranean in detail. You will say that's
+an uninteresting, special subject, but that's just what we need,
+specialists; we have philosophised enough, now we need the practical,
+the practical. But you are very unwell, Nikanor Vassilyevitch, I am
+tiring you, perhaps, but still I must stay a little longer.'
+
+And for a long time Lupoyarov still babbled on in the same way, and, as
+he went away, he promised to come again.
+
+Worn out by the unexpected visit, Insarov lay down on the sofa.
+'So this,' he said, mournfully looking at Elena, 'is your younger
+generation! There are plenty who show off, and give themselves airs,
+while at heart they are as empty chatterboxes as that worthy.'
+
+Elena made no reply to her husband; at that instant she was far more
+concerned at Insarov's weakness than at the character of the whole
+younger generation in Russia. She sat down near him, and took up some
+work. He closed his eyes, and lay without moving, white and thin. Elena
+glanced at his sharp profile, at his emaciated hands, and felt a sudden
+pang of terror.
+
+'Dmitri,' she began.
+
+He started. 'Eh? Has Renditch come?'
+
+'Not yet--but what do you think--you are in a fever, you are really not
+quite well, shouldn't we send for a doctor?'
+
+'That wretched gossip has frightened you. There's no necessity. I
+will rest a little, and it will pass off. After dinner we will go out
+again--somewhere.'
+
+Two hours passed. Insarov still lay on the sofa, but he could not sleep,
+though he did not open his eyes. Elena did not leave his side; she had
+dropped her work upon her knee, and did not stir.
+
+'Why don't you go to sleep?' she asked at last.
+
+'Wait a little.' He took her hand, and placed it under his head.
+'There--that is nice. Wake me at once directly Renditch comes. If
+he says the ship is ready, we will start at once. We ought to pack
+everything.'
+
+'Packing won't take long,' answered Elena.
+
+'That fellow babbled something about a battle, about Servia,' said
+Insarov, after a short interval. 'I suppose he made it all up. But we
+must, we must start. We can't lose time. Be ready.'
+
+He fell asleep, and everything was still in the room.
+
+Elena let her head rest against the back of her chair, and gazed a long
+while out of the window. The weather had changed for the worse; the wind
+had risen. Great white clouds were scudding over the sky, a slender mast
+was swaying in the distance, a long streamer, with a red cross on it,
+kept fluttering, falling, and fluttering again. The pendulum of the
+old-fashioned clock ticked drearily, with a kind of melancholy whirr.
+Elena shut her eyes. She had slept badly all night; gradually she, too,
+fell asleep.
+
+She had a strange dream. She thought sha was floating in a boat on the
+Tsaritsino lake with some unknown people. They did not speak, but sat
+motionless, no one was rowing; the boat was moving by itself. Elena
+was not afraid, but she felt dreary; she wanted to know who were these
+people, and why she was with them? She looked and the lake grew broader,
+the banks vanished--now it was not a lake but a stormy sea: immense blue
+silent waves rocked the boat majestically; something menacing, roaring
+was rising from the depths; her unknown companions jumped up, shrieking,
+wringing their hands... Elena recognised their faces; her father
+was among them. But a kind of white whirlwind came flying over the
+waves--everything was turning round, everything was confounded together.
+
+Elena looked about her; as before, all around was white; but it was
+snow, snow, boundless plains of snow. And she was not now in a boat, but
+travelling, as she had come from Moscow, in a sledge; she was not alone;
+by her side was sitting a little creature muffled in an old cloak; Elena
+looked closely; it was Katya, her poor little friend. Elena was seized
+with terror. 'Why, isn't she dead?' she thought.
+
+'Katya, where are we going together?' Katya did not answer, and nestled
+herself closer in her little cloak; she was freezing. Elena too was
+cold; she looked along the road into the distance; far away a town could
+be seen through the fine drifting snow. High white towers with silvery
+cupolas... 'Katya, Katya, is it Moscow? No,' thought Elena, 'it is
+Solovetsky Monastery; it's full of little narrow cells like a beehive;
+it's stifling, cramping there--and Dmitri's shut up there. I must rescue
+him.'... Suddenly a grey, yawning abyss opened before her. The sledge
+was falling, Katya was laughing. 'Elena, Elena!' came a voice from the
+abyss.
+
+'Elena!' sounded distinctly in her ears. She raised her head quickly,
+turned round, and was stupefied: Insarov, white as snow, the snow of her
+dream, had half risen from the sofa, and was staring at her with large,
+bright, dreadful eyes. His hair hung in disorder on his forehead and his
+lips parted strangely. Horror, mingled with an anguish of tenderness,
+was expressed on his suddenly transfigured face.
+
+'Elena!' he articulated, 'I am dying.'
+
+She fell with a scream on her knees, and clung to his breast.
+
+'It's all over,' repeated Insarov: 'I'm dying... Good-bye, my poor girl!
+good-bye, my country!' and he fell backwards on to the sofa.
+
+Elena rushed out of the room, began calling for help; a waiter ran for a
+doctor. Elena clung to Insarov.
+
+At that instant in the doorway appeared a broad-shouldered, sunburnt
+man, in a stout frieze coat and a low oil-skin hat. He stood still in
+bewilderment.
+
+'Renditch!' cried Elena, 'it's you! Look, for God's sake, he's ill!
+What's wrong? Good God! He went out yesterday, he was talking to me just
+now.'
+
+Renditch said nothing and only moved on one side. There slipped quickly
+past him a little figure in a wig and spectacles; it was a doctor living
+in the same hotel. He went up to Insarov.
+
+'Signora,' he said, after the lapse of a few minutes, 'the foreign
+gentleman is dead--_il Signore forestiere e morte_--of aneurism in
+combination with disease of the lungs.'
+
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+The next day, in the same room, Renditch was standing at the window;
+before him, wrapped in a shawl, sat Elena. In the next room, Insarov
+lay in his coffin. Elena's face was both scared and lifeless; two lines
+could be seen on her forehead between her eyebrows; they gave a strained
+expression to her fixed eyes. In the window lay an open letter from Anna
+Vassilyevna. She begged her daughter to come to Moscow if only for a
+month, complained of her loneliness, and of Nikolai Artemyevitch, sent
+greetings to Insarov, inquired after his health, and begged him to spare
+his wife.
+
+Renditch was a Dalmatian, a sailor, with whom Insarov had become
+acquainted during his wanderings in his own country, and whom he had
+sought out in Venice. He was a dry, gruff man, full of daring and
+devoted to the Slavonic cause. He despised the Turks and hated the
+Austrians.
+
+'How long must you remain at Venice?' Elena asked him in Italian. And
+her voice was as lifeless as her face.
+
+'One day for freighting and not to rouse suspicions, and then straight
+to Zara. I shall have sad news for our countrymen. They have long been
+expecting him; they rested their hopes on him.'
+
+'They rested their hopes on him,' Elena repeated mechanically.
+
+'When will you bury him?' asked Renditch.
+
+Elena not at once replied, 'To-morrow.'
+
+'To-morrow? I will stop; I should like to throw a handful of earth into
+his grave. And you will want help. But it would have been better for him
+to lie in Slavonic earth.'
+
+Elena looked at Renditch.
+
+'Captain,' she said, 'take me and him and carry us across to the other
+side of the sea, away from here. Isn't that possible?'
+
+Renditch considered: 'Possible certainly, but difficult. We shall have
+to come into collision with the damned authorities here. But supposing
+we arrange all that and bury him there, how am I to bring you back?'
+
+'You need not bring me back.'
+
+'What? where will you stop?'
+
+'I shall find some place for myself; only take us, take me.'
+
+Renditch scratched the back of his head.
+
+'You know best; but it's all very difficult. I will, I will try; and you
+expect me here in two hours' time.'
+
+He went away. Elena passed into the next room, leaned against the wall,
+and for a long time stood there as though turned to stone. Then she
+dropped on her knees, but she could not pray. There was no reproach in
+her heart; she did not dare to question God's will, to ask why He had
+not spared, pitied, saved, why He had punished her beyond her guilt,
+if she were guilty. Each of us is guilty by the fact that he lives; and
+there is no one so great a thinker, so great a benefactor of mankind
+that he might hope to have a right to live for the service he has
+done.... Still Elena could not pray; she was a stone.
+
+The same night a broad-bottomed boat put off from the hotel where the
+Insarovs lived. In the boat sat Elena with Renditch and beside them
+stood a long box covered with a black cloth. They rowed for about an
+hour, and at last reached a small two-masted ship, which was riding at
+anchor at the very entrance of the harbour. Elena and Renditch got
+into the ship; the sailors carried in the box. At midnight a storm had
+arisen, but early in the morning the ship had passed out of the Lido.
+During the day the storm raged with fearful violence, and experienced
+seamen in Lloyd's offices shook their heads and prophesied no good.
+The Adriatic Sea between Venice, Trieste, and the Dalmatian coast is
+particularly dangerous.
+
+Three weeks after Elena's departure from Vienna, Anna Vassilyevna
+received the following letter in Moscow:--
+
+'My DEAR PARENTS.--I am saying goodbye to you for ever. You will never
+see me again. Dmitri died yesterday. Everything is over for me. To-day
+I am setting off with his body to Zara. I will bury him, and what will
+become of me, I don't know. But now I have no country but Dmitri's
+country. There, they are preparing for revolution, they are getting
+ready for war. I will join the Sisters of Mercy; I will tend the sick
+and the wounded. I don't know what will become of me, but even after
+Dmitri's death, I will be faithful to his memory, to the work of his
+whole life. I have learnt Bulgarian and Servian. Very likely, I shall
+not have strength to live through it all for long--so much the better.
+I have been brought to the edge of the precipice and I must fall over.
+Fate did not bring us together for nothing; who knows?--perhaps I killed
+him; now it is his turn to draw me after him. I sought happiness, and I
+shall find--perhaps death. It seems it was to be thus: it seems it was a
+sin.... But death covers all and reconciles all; does it not? Forgive
+me all the suffering I have caused you; it was not under my control. But
+how could I return to Russia; What have I to do in Russia?
+
+'Accept my last kisses and blessings, and do not condemn me.
+
+R.'
+
+* * *
+
+Nearly five years have passed since then, and no further news of Elena
+has come. All letters and inquiries were fruitless; in vain did Nikolai
+Artemyevitch himself make a journey to Venice and to Zara after peace
+was concluded. In Venice he learnt what is already known to the reader,
+but in Zara no one could give him any positive information about
+Renditch and the ship he had taken. There were dark rumours that some
+years back, after a great storm, the sea had thrown up on shore a coffin
+in which had been found a man's body... But according to other more
+trustworthy accounts this coffin had not been thrown up by the sea at
+all, but had been carried over and buried near the shore by a foreign
+lady, coming from Venice; some added that they had seen this lady
+afterwards in Herzegovina, with the forces which were there assembled;
+they even described her dress, black from head to foot However it was,
+all trace of Elena had disappeared beyond recovery for ever; and no one
+knows whether she is still living, whether she is hidden away somewhere,
+or whether the petty drama of life is over--the little ferment of her
+existence is at an end; and she has found death in her turn. It happens
+at times that a man wakes up and asks himself with involuntary horror,
+'Can I be already thirty ... forty... fifty? How is it life has passed
+so soon? How is it death has moved up so close?' Death is like a fisher
+who catches fish in his net and leaves them for a while in the water;
+the fish is still swimming but the net is round him, and the fisher will
+draw him up--when he thinks fit.
+
+* * *
+
+What became of the other characters of our story?
+
+Anna Vassilyevna is still living; she has aged very much since the blow
+that has fallen on her; is less complaining, but far more wretched.
+Nikolai Artemyevitch, too, has grown older and greyer, and has parted
+from Augustina Christianovna.... He has taken now to abusing everything
+foreign. His housekeeper, a handsome woman of thirty, a Russian, wears
+silk dresses and gold rings and bracelets. Kurnatovsky, like every man
+of ardent temperament and dark complexion, a devoted admirer of pretty
+blondes, married Zoya; she is in complete subjection to him and has even
+given up thinking in German. Bersenyev is in Heidelberg; he has been
+sent abroad at the expense of government; he has visited Berlin and
+Paris and is not wasting his time; he has become a thoroughly efficient
+professor. The attention of the learned public has been caught by his
+two articles: 'On some peculiarities of ancient law as regards judicial
+sentences,' and 'On the significance of cities in civilisation.' It
+is only a pity that both articles are written in rather a heavy style,
+disfigured by foreign words. Shubin is in Rome; he is completely given
+up to his art and is reckoned one of the most remarkable and
+promising of young sculptors. Severe tourists consider that he has not
+sufficiently studied the antique, that he has 'no style,' and reckon
+him one of the French school; he has had a great many orders from
+the English and Americans. Of late, there has been much talk about
+a Bacchante of his; the Russian Count Boboshkin, the well-known
+millionaire, thought of buying it for one thousand scudi, but decided
+in preference to give three thousand to another sculptor, French _pur
+sang_, for a group entitled, 'A youthful shepherdess dying for love in
+the bosom of the Genius of Spring.' Shubin writes from time to time to
+Uvar Ivanovitch, who alone has remained quite unaltered in all respects.
+'Do you remember,' he wrote to him lately, 'what you said to me that
+night, when poor Elena's marriage was made known, when I was sitting on
+your bed talking to you? Do you remember I asked you, "Will there ever
+be men among us?" and you answered "There will be." O primeval force!
+And now from here in "my poetic distance," I will ask you again: "What
+do you say, Uvar Ivanovitch, will there be?"'
+
+Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare
+into the far distance.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of On the Eve, by Ivan Turgenev
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