Anton Chekhov........................................................................................................................................1

IT was said that a new person had appeared on the seafront: a lady with a little dog. Dmitri Dmitritch

Gurov, who had by then been a fortnight at Yalta, and so was fairly at home there, had begun to take an

interest in new arrivals. Sitting in Verney's pavilion, he saw, walking on the seafront, a fairhaired young

lady of medium height, wearing a b�ret; a white Pomeranian dog was running behind her.

And afterwards he met her in the public gardens and in the square several times a day. She was walking

alone, always wearing the same b�ret, and always with the same white dog; no one knew who she was, and

"If she is here alone without a husband or friends, it wouldn't be amiss to make her acquaintance," Gurov

He was under forty, but he had a daughter already twelve years old, and two sons at school. He had been

married young, when he was a student in his second year, and by now his wife seemed half as old again as he.

She was a tall, erect woman with dark eyebrows, staid and dignified, and, as she said of herself, intellectual.

She read a great deal, used phonetic spelling, called her husband, not Dmitri, but Dimitri, and he secretly

considered her unintelligent, narrow, inelegant, was afraid of her, and did not like to be at home. He had

begun being unfaithful to her long ago had been unfaithful to her often, and, probably on that account,

almost always spoke ill of women, and when they were talked about in his presence, used to call them "the

It seemed to him that he had been so schooled by bitter experience that he might call them what he liked, and

yet he could not get on for two days together without "the lower race." In the society of men he was bored

and not himself, with them he was cold and uncommunicative; but when he was in the company of women he

felt free, and knew what to say to them and how to behave; and he was at ease with them even when he was

silent. In his appearance, in his character, in his whole nature, there was something attractive and elusive

which allured women and disposed them in his favour; he knew that, and some force seemed to draw him,

Experience often repeated, truly bitter experience, had taught him long ago that with decent people,

especially Moscow people always slow to move and irresolute every intimacy, which at first so

agreeably diversifies life and appears a light and charming adventure, inevitably grows into a regular problem

of extreme intricacy, and in the long run the situation becomes unbearable. But at every fresh meeting with an

interesting woman this experience seemed to slip out of his memory, and he was eager for life, and

One evening he was dining in the gardens, and the lady in the b�ret came up slowly to take the next table. Her

expression, her gait, her dress, and the way she did her hair told him that she was a lady, that she was

married, that she was in Yalta for the first time and alone, and that she was dull there. . . . The stories told of

the immorality in such places as Yalta are to a great extent untrue; he despised them, and knew that such

stories were for the most part made up by persons who would themselves have been glad to sin if they had

been able; but when the lady sat down at the next table three paces from him, he remembered these tales of

easy conquests, of trips to the mountains, and the tempting thought of a swift, fleeting love affair, a romance

with an unknown woman, whose name he did not know, suddenly took possession of him.

He beckoned coaxingly to the Pomeranian, and when the dog came up to him he shook his finger at it. The

"May I give him a bone?" he asked; and when she nodded he asked courteously, "Have you been long in

"That's only the fashion to say it is dull here. A provincial will live in Belyov or Zhidra and not be dull, and

when he comes here it's 'Oh, the dulness! Oh, the dust!' One would think he came from Grenada."

She laughed. Then both continued eating in silence, like strangers, but after dinner they walked side by side;

and there sprang up between them the light jesting conversation of people who are free and satisfied, to

whom it does not matter where they go or what they talk about. They walked and talked of the strange light

on the sea: the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it. They

talked of how sultry it was after a hot day. Gurov told her that he came from Moscow, that he had taken his

degree in Arts, but had a post in a bank; that he had trained as an operasinger, but had given it up, that he

owned two houses in Moscow. . . . And from her he learnt that she had grown up in Petersburg, but had lived

in S since her marriage two years before, that she was staying another month in Yalta, and that her

husband, who needed a holiday too, might perhaps come and fetch her. She was not sure whether her husband

had a post in a Crown Department or under the Provincial Council and was amused by her own ignorance.

Afterwards he thought about her in his room at the hotel thought she would certainly meet him next day; it

would be sure to happen. As he got into bed he thought how lately she had been a girl at school, doing

lessons like his own daughter; he recalled the diffidence, the angularity, that was still manifest in her laugh

and her manner of talking with a stranger. This must have been the first time in her life she had been alone in

surroundings in which she was followed, looked at, and spoken to merely from a secret motive which she

could hardly fail to guess. He recalled her slender, delicate neck, her lovely grey eyes.

A week had passed since they had made acquaintance. It was a holiday. It was sultry indoors, while in the

street the wind whirled the dust round and round, and blew people's hats off. It was a thirsty day, and Gurov

often went into the pavilion, and pressed Anna Sergeyevna to have syrup and water or an ice. One did not

In the evening when the wind had dropped a little, they went out on the groyne to see the steamer come in.

There were a great many people walking about the harbour; they had gathered to welcome some one,

bringing bouquets. And two peculiarities of a welldressed Yalta crowd were very conspicuous: the elderly

Owing to the roughness of the sea, the steamer arrived late, after the sun had set, and it was a long time

turning about before it reached the groyne. Anna Sergeyevna looked through her lorgnette at the steamer and

the passengers as though looking for acquaintances, and when she turned to Gurov her eyes were shining. She

talked a great deal and asked disconnected questions, forgetting next moment what she had asked; then she

The festive crowd began to disperse; it was too dark to see people's faces. The wind had completely dropped,

but Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna still stood as though waiting to see some one else come from the steamer.

Anna Sergeyevna was silent now, and sniffed the flowers without looking at Gurov.

"The weather is better this evening," he said. "Where shall we go now? Shall we drive somewhere?"

Then he looked at her intently, and all at once put his arm round her and kissed her on the lips, and breathed

in the moisture and the fragrance of the flowers; and he immediately looked round him, anxiously wondering

The room was close and smelt of the scent she had bought at the Japanese shop. Gurov looked at her and

thought: "What different people one meets in the world!" From the past he preserved memories of careless,

goodnatured women, who loved cheerfully and were grateful to him for the happiness he gave them,

however brief it might be; and of women like his wife who loved without any genuine feeling, with

superfluous phrases, affectedly, hysterically, with an expression that suggested that it was not love nor

passion, but something more significant; and of two or three others, very beautiful, cold women, on whose

faces he had caught a glimpse of a rapacious expression an obstinate desire to snatch from life more than

it could give, and these were capricious, unreflecting, domineering, unintelligent women not in their first

youth, and when Gurov grew cold to them their beauty excited his hatred, and the lace on their linen seemed

But in this case there was still the diffidence, the angularity of inexperienced youth, an awkward feeling; and

there was a sense of consternation as though some one had suddenly knocked at the door. The attitude of

Anna Sergeyevna "the lady with the dog" to what had happened was somehow peculiar, very grave, as

though it were her fall so it seemed, and it was strange and inappropriate. Her face dropped and faded, and

on both sides of it her long hair hung down mournfully; she mused in a dejected attitude like "the woman

There was a watermelon on the table. Gurov cut himself a slice and began eating it without haste. There

Anna Sergeyevna was touching; there was about her the purity of a good, simple woman who had seen little

of life. The solitary candle burning on the table threw a faint light on her face, yet it was clear that she was

"Forgiven? No. I am a bad, low woman; I despise myself and don't attempt to justify myself. It's not my

husband but myself I have deceived. And not only just now; I have been deceiving myself for a long time.

My husband may be a good, honest man, but he is a flunkey! I don't know what he does there, what his work

is, but I know he is a flunkey! I was twenty when I was married to him. I have been tormented by curiosity; I

wanted something better. 'There must be a different sort of life,' I said to myself. I wanted to live! To live, to

live! . . . I was fired by curiosity . . . you don't understand it, but, I swear to God, I could not control myself;

something happened to me: I could not be restrained. I told my husband I was ill, and came here. . . . And

here I have been walking about as though I were dazed, like a mad creature; . . . and now I have become a

Gurov felt bored already, listening to her. He was irritated by the na�ve tone, by this remorse, so unexpected

and inopportune; but for the tears in her eyes, he might have thought she was jesting or playing a part.

"Believe me, believe me, I beseech you . . ." she said. "I love a pure, honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I

don't know what I am doing. Simple people say: 'The Evil One has beguiled me.' And I may say of myself

He looked at her fixed, scared eyes, kissed her, talked softly and affectionately, and by degrees she was

Afterwards when they went out there was not a soul on the seafront. The town with its cypresses had quite a

deathlike air, but the sea still broke noisily on the shore; a single barge was rocking on the waves, and a

"I found out your surname in the hall just now: it was written on the board Von Diderits," said Gurov. "Is

"No; I believe his grandfather was a German, but he is an Orthodox Russian himself."

At Oreanda they sat on a seat not far from the church, looked down at the sea, and were silent. Yalta was

hardly visible through the morning mist; white clouds stood motionless on the mountaintops. The leaves did

not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from

below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta,

no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no

more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid,

perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing

progress towards perfection. Sitting beside a young woman who in the dawn seemed so lovely, soothed and

spellbound in these magical surroundings the sea, mountains, clouds, the open sky Gurov thought how

in reality everything is beautiful in this world when one reflects: everything except what we think or do

ourselves when we forget our human dignity and the higher aims of our existence.

A man walked up to them probably a keeper looked at them and walked away. And this detail seemed

mysterious and beautiful, too. They saw a steamer come from Theodosia, with its lights out in the glow of

Then they met every day at twelve o'clock on the seafront, lunched and dined together, went for walks,

admired the sea. She complained that she slept badly, that her heart throbbed violently; asked the same

questions, troubled now by jealousy and now by the fear that he did not respect her sufficiently. And often in

the square or gardens, when there was no one near them, he suddenly drew her to him and kissed her

passionately. Complete idleness, these kisses in broad daylight while he looked round in dread of some one's

seeing them, the heat, the smell of the sea, and the continual passing to and fro before him of idle,

welldressed, wellfed people, made a new man of him; he told Anna Sergeyevna how beautiful she was,

how fascinating. He was impatiently passionate, he would not move a step away from her, while she was

often pensive and continually urged him to confess that he did not respect her, did not love her in the least,

and thought of her as nothing but a common woman. Rather late almost every evening they drove somewhere

out of town, to Oreanda or to the waterfall; and the expedition was always a success, the scenery invariably

They were expecting her husband to come, but a letter came from him, saying that there was something

wrong with his eyes, and he entreated his wife to come home as quickly as possible. Anna Sergeyevna made

"It's a good thing I am going away," she said to Gurov. "It's the finger of destiny!"

She went by coach and he went with her. They were driving the whole day. When she had got into a

She did not shed tears, but was so sad that she seemed ill, and her face was quivering.

"I shall remember you . . . think of you," she said. "God be with you; be happy. Don't remember evil against

me. We are parting forever it must be so, for we ought never to have met. Well, God be with you."

The train moved off rapidly, its lights soon vanished from sight, and a minute later there was no sound of it,

as though everything had conspired together to end as quickly as possible that sweet delirium, that madness.

Left alone on the platform, and gazing into the dark distance, Gurov listened to the chirrup of the

grasshoppers and the hum of the telegraph wires, feeling as though he had only just waked up. And he

thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an end, and

nothing was left of it but a memory. . . . He was moved, sad, and conscious of a slight remorse. This young

woman whom he would never meet again had not been happy with him; he was genuinely warm and

affectionate with her, but yet in his manner, his tone, and his caresses there had been a shade of light irony,

the coarse condescension of a happy man who was, besides, almost twice her age. All the time she had called

him kind, exceptional, lofty; obviously he had seemed to her different from what he really was, so he had

"It's time for me to go north," thought Gurov as he left the platform. "High time!"

At home in Moscow everything was in its winter routine; the stoves were heated, and in the morning it was

still dark when the children were having breakfast and getting ready for school, and the nurse would light the

lamp for a short time. The frosts had begun already. When the first snow has fallen, on the first day of

sledgedriving it is pleasant to see the white earth, the white roofs, to draw soft, delicious breath, and the

season brings back the days of one's youth. The old limes and birches, white with hoarfrost, have a

goodnatured expression; they are nearer to one's heart than cypresses and palms, and near them one doesn't

Gurov was Moscow born; he arrived in Moscow on a fine frosty day, and when he put on his fur coat and

warm gloves, and walked along Petrovka, and when on Saturday evening he heard the ringing of the bells, his

recent trip and the places he had seen lost all charm for him. Little by little he became absorbed in Moscow

life, greedily read three newspapers a day, and declared he did not read the Moscow papers on principle! He

already felt a longing to go to restaurants, clubs, dinnerparties, anniversary celebrations, and he felt flattered

at entertaining distinguished lawyers and artists, and at playing cards with a professor at the doctors' club. He

In another month, he fancied, the image of Anna Sergeyevna would be shrouded in a mist in his memory, and

only from time to time would visit him in his dreams with a touching smile as others did. But more than a

month passed, real winter had come, and everything was still clear in his memory as though he had parted

with Anna Sergeyevna only the day before. And his memories glowed more and more vividly. When in the

evening stillness he heard from his study the voices of his children, preparing their lessons, or when he

listened to a song or the organ at the restaurant, or the storm howled in the chimney, suddenly everything

would rise up in his memory: what had happened on the groyne, and the early morning with the mist on the

mountains, and the steamer coming from Theodosia, and the kisses. He would pace a long time about his

room, remembering it all and smiling; then his memories passed into dreams, and in his fancy the past was

mingled with what was to come. Anna Sergeyevna did not visit him in dreams, but followed him about

everywhere like a shadow and haunted him. When he shut his eyes he saw her as though she were living

before him, and she seemed to him lovelier, younger, tenderer than she was; and he imagined himself finer

than he had been in Yalta. In the evenings she peeped out at him from the bookcase, from the fireplace, from

the corner he heard her breathing, the caressing rustle of her dress. In the street he watched the women,

He was tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to some one. But in his home it was

impossible to talk of his love, and he had no one outside; he could not talk to his tenants nor to any one at the

bank. And what had he to talk of? Had he been in love, then? Had there been anything beautiful, poetical, or

edifying or simply interesting in his relations with Anna Sergeyevna? And there was nothing for him but to

talk vaguely of love, of woman, and no one guessed what it meant; only his wife twitched her black

One evening, coming out of the doctors' club with an official with whom he had been playing cards, he could

"If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in Yalta!"

The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and shouted:

These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation, and struck him as degrading and

unclean. What savage manners, what people! What senseless nights, what uninteresting, uneventful days! The

rage for cardplaying, the gluttony, the drunkenness, the continual talk always about the same thing. Useless

pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of

one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no

escaping or getting away from it just as though one were in a madhouse or a prison.

Gurov did not sleep all night, and was filled with indignation. And he had a headache all next day. And the

next night he slept badly; he sat up in bed, thinking, or paced up and down his room. He was sick of his

children, sick of the bank; he had no desire to go anywhere or to talk of anything.

In the holidays in December he prepared for a journey, and told his wife he was going to Petersburg to do

something in the interests of a young friend and he set off for S. What for? He did not very well

know himself. He wanted to see Anna Sergeyevna and to talk with her to arrange a meeting, if possible.

He reached S in the morning, and took the best room at the hotel, in which the floor was covered with

grey army cloth, and on the table was an inkstand, grey with dust and adorned with a figure on horseback,

with its hat in its hand and its head broken off. The hotel porter gave him the necessary information; Von

Diderits lived in a house of his own in Old Gontcharny Street it was not far from the hotel: he was rich

and lived in good style, and had his own horses; every one in the town knew him. The porter pronounced the

Gurov went without haste to Old Gontcharny Street and found the house. Just opposite the house stretched a

"One would run away from a fence like that," thought Gurov, looking from the fence to the windows of the

He considered: today was a holiday, and the husband would probably be at home. And in any case it would

be tactless to go into the house and upset her. If he were to send her a note it might fall into her husband's

hands, and then it might ruin everything. The best thing was to trust to chance. And he kept walking up and

down the street by the fence, waiting for the chance. He saw a beggar go in at the gate and dogs fly at him;

then an hour later he heard a piano, and the sounds were faint and indistinct. Probably it was Anna

Sergeyevna playing. The front door suddenly opened, and an old woman came out, followed by the familiar

white Pomeranian. Gurov was on the point of calling to the dog, but his heart began beating violently, and in

He walked up and down, and loathed the grey fence more and more, and by now he thought irritably that

Anna Sergeyevna had forgotten him, and was perhaps already amusing herself with some one else, and that

that was very natural in a young woman who had nothing to look at from morning till night but that

confounded fence. He went back to his hotel room and sat for a long while on the sofa, not knowing what to

"How stupid and worrying it is!" he thought when he woke and looked at the dark windows: it was already

evening. "Here I've had a good sleep for some reason. What shall I do in the night?"

He sat on the bed, which was covered by a cheap grey blanket, such as one sees in hospitals, and he taunted

"So much for the lady with the dog . . . so much for the adventure. . . . You're in a nice fix. . . ."

That morning at the station a poster in large letters had caught his eye. "The Geisha" was to be performed for

The theatre was full. As in all provincial theatres, there was a fog above the chandelier, the gallery was noisy

and restless; in the front row the local dandies were standing up before the beginning of the performance,

with their hands behind them; in the Governor's box the Governor's daughter, wearing a boa, was sitting in

the front seat, while the Governor himself lurked modestly behind the curtain with only his hands visible; the

orchestra was a long time tuning up; the stage curtain swayed. All the time the audience were coming in and

Anna Sergeyevna, too, came in. She sat down in the third row, and when Gurov looked at her his heart

contracted, and he understood clearly that for him there was in the whole world no creature so near, so

precious, and so important to him; she, this little woman, in no way remarkable, lost in a provincial crowd,

with a vulgar lorgnette in her hand, filled his whole life now, was his sorrow and his joy, the one happiness

that he now desired for himself, and to the sounds of the inferior orchestra, of the wretched provincial violins,

A young man with small sidewhiskers, tall and stooping, came in with Anna Sergeyevna and sat down

beside her; he bent his head at every step and seemed to be continually bowing. Most likely this was the

husband whom at Yalta, in a rush of bitter feeling, she had called a flunkey. And there really was in his long

figure, his sidewhiskers, and the small bald patch on his head, something of the flunkey's obsequiousness;

his smile was sugary, and in his buttonhole there was some badge of distinction like the number on a waiter.

During the first interval the husband went away to smoke; she remained alone in her stall. Gurov, who was

sitting in the stalls, too, went up to her and said in a trembling voice, with a forced smile:

She glanced at him and turned pale, then glanced again with horror, unable to believe her eyes, and tightly

gripped the fan and the lorgnette in her hands, evidently struggling with herself not to faint. Both were silent.

She was sitting, he was standing, frightened by her confusion and not venturing to sit down beside her. The

violins and the flute began tuning up. He felt suddenly frightened; it seemed as though all the people in the

boxes were looking at them. She got up and went quickly to the door; he followed her, and both walked

senselessly along passages, and up and down stairs, and figures in legal, scholastic, and civil service

uniforms, all wearing badges, flitted before their eyes. They caught glimpses of ladies, of fur coats hanging

on pegs; the draughts blew on them, bringing a smell of stale tobacco. And Gurov, whose heart was beating

And at that instant he recalled how when he had seen Anna Sergeyevna off at the station he had thought that

everything was over and they would never meet again. But how far they were still from the end!

On the narrow, gloomy staircase over which was written "To the Amphitheatre," she stopped.

"How you have frightened me!" she said, breathing hard, still pale and overwhelmed. "Oh, how you have

"But do understand, Anna, do understand . . ." he said hastily in a low voice. "I entreat you to understand. . .

She looked at him with dread, with entreaty, with love; she looked at him intently, to keep his features more

"I am so unhappy," she went on, not heeding him. "I have thought of nothing but you all the time; I live only

in the thought of you. And I wanted to forget, to forget you; but why, oh, why, have you come?"

On the landing above them two schoolboys were smoking and looking down, but that was nothing to Gurov;

he drew Anna Sergeyevna to him, and began kissing her face, her cheeks, and her hands.

"What are you doing, what are you doing!" she cried in horror, pushing him away. "We are mad. Go away

today; go away at once. . . . I beseech you by all that is sacred, I implore you. . . . There are people coming

"You must go away," Anna Sergeyevna went on in a whisper. "Do you hear, Dmitri Dmitritch? I will come

and see you in Moscow. I have never been happy; I am miserable now, and I never, never shall be happy,

never! Don't make me suffer still more! I swear I'll come to Moscow. But now let us part. My precious, good,

She pressed his hand and began rapidly going downstairs, looking round at him, and from her eyes he could

see that she really was unhappy. Gurov stood for a little while, listened, then, when all sound had died away,

And Anna Sergeyevna began coming to see him in Moscow. Once in two or three months she left S,

telling her husband that she was going to consult a doctor about an internal complaint and her husband

believed her, and did not believe her. In Moscow she stayed at the Slaviansky Bazaar hotel, and at once sent a

man in a red cap to Gurov. Gurov went to see her, and no one in Moscow knew of it.

Once he was going to see her in this way on a winter morning (the messenger had come the evening before

when he was out). With him walked his daughter, whom he wanted to take to school: it was on the way.

"It's three degrees above freezingpoint, and yet it is snowing," said Gurov to his daughter. "The thaw is only

on the surface of the earth; there is quite a different temperature at a greater height in the atmosphere."

He explained that, too. He talked, thinking all the while that he was going to see her, and no living soul knew

of it, and probably never would know. He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to

know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances;

and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of

circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was

sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other

people; and all that was false in him, the sheath in which he hid himself to conceal the truth such, for

instance, as his work in the bank, his discussions at the club, his "lower race," his presence with his wife at

anniversary festivities all that was open. And he judged of others by himself, not believing in what he

saw, and always believing that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy and

under the cover of night. All personal life rested on secrecy, and possibly it was partly on that account that

civilised man was so nervously anxious that personal privacy should be respected.

After leaving his daughter at school, Gurov went on to the Slaviansky Bazaar. He took off his fur coat below,

went upstairs, and softly knocked at the door. Anna Sergeyevna, wearing his favourite grey dress, exhausted

by the journey and the suspense, had been expecting him since the evening before. She was pale; she looked

at him, and did not smile, and he had hardly come in when she fell on his breast. Their kiss was slow and

She could not speak; she was crying. She turned away from him, and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

"Let her have her cry out. I'll sit down and wait," he thought, and he sat down in an armchair.

Then he rang and asked for tea to be brought him, and while he drank his tea she remained standing at the

window with her back to him. She was crying from emotion, from the miserable consciousness that their life

was so hard for them; they could only meet in secret, hiding themselves from people, like thieves! Was not

It was evident to him that this love of theirs would not soon be over, that he could not see the end of it. Anna

Sergeyevna grew more and more attached to him. She adored him, and it was unthinkable to say to her that it

He went up to her and took her by the shoulders to say something affectionate and cheering, and at that

His hair was already beginning to turn grey. And it seemed strange to him that he had grown so much older,

so much plainer during the last few years. The shoulders on which his hands rested were warm and quivering.

He felt compassion for this life, still so warm and lovely, but probably already not far from beginning to fade

and wither like his own. Why did she love him so much? He always seemed to women different from what he

was, and they loved in him not himself, but the man created by their imagination, whom they had been

eagerly seeking all their lives; and afterwards, when they noticed their mistake, they loved him all the same.

And not one of them had been happy with him. Time passed, he had made their acquaintance, got on with

them, parted, but he had never once loved; it was anything you like, but not love.

And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in love for the first time in his life.

Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other like people very close and akin, like husband and wife, like tender

friends; it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why

he had a wife and she a husband; and it was as though they were a pair of birds of passage, caught and forced

to live in different cages. They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave

everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both.

In moments of depression in the past he had comforted himself with any arguments that came into his mind,

but now he no longer cared for arguments; he felt profound compassion, he wanted to be sincere and tender. .

"Don't cry, my darling," he said. "You've had your cry; that's enough. . . . Let us talk now, let us think of

Then they spent a long while taking counsel together, talked of how to avoid the necessity for secrecy, for

deception, for living in different towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How could they be free

And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would

begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most

THE Professor received a telegram from the Lyalikovs' factory; he was asked to come as quickly as possible.

The daughter of some Madame Lyalikov, apparently the owner of the factory, was ill, and that was all that

one could make out of the long, incoherent telegram. And the Professor did not go himself, but sent instead

It was two stations from Moscow, and there was a drive of three miles from the station. A carriage with three

horses had been sent to the station to meet Korolyov; the coachman wore a hat with a peacock's feather on it,

and answered every question in a loud voice like a soldier: "No, sir!" "Certainly, sir!"

It was Saturday evening; the sun was setting, the workpeople were coming in crowds from the factory to the

station, and they bowed to the carriage in which Korolyov was driving. And he was charmed with the

evening, the farmhouses and villas on the road, and the birchtrees, and the quiet atmosphere all around,

when the fields and woods and the sun seemed preparing, like the workpeople now on the eve of the holiday,

He was born and had grown up in Moscow; he did not know the country, and he had never taken any interest

in factories, or been inside one, but he had happened to read about factories, and had been in the houses of

manufacturers and had talked to them; and whenever he saw a factory far or near, he always thought how

quiet and peaceable it was outside, but within there was always sure to be impenetrable ignorance and dull

egoism on the side of the owners, wearisome, unhealthy toil on the side of the workpeople, squabbling,

vermin, vodka. And now when the workpeople timidly and respectfully made way for the carriage, in their

faces, their caps, their walk, he read physical impurity, drunkenness, nervous exhaustion, bewilderment.

They drove in at the factory gates. On each side he caught glimpses of the little houses of workpeople, of the

faces of women, of quilts and linen on the railings. "Look out!" shouted the coachman, not pulling up the

horses. It was a wide courtyard without grass, with five immense blocks of buildings with tall chimneys a

little distance one from another, warehouses and barracks, and over everything a sort of grey powder as

though from dust. Here and there, like oases in the desert, there were pitiful gardens, and the green and red

roofs of the houses in which the managers and clerks lived. The coachman suddenly pulled up the horses, and

the carriage stopped at the house, which had been newly painted grey; here was a flower garden, with a lilac

bush covered with dust, and on the yellow steps at the front door there was a strong smell of paint.

"Please come in, doctor," said women's voices in the passage and the entry, and at the same time he heard

sighs and whisperings. "Pray walk in. . . . We've been expecting you so long. . . we're in real trouble. Here,

Madame Lyalikov a stout elderly lady wearing a black silk dress with fashionable sleeves, but, judging

from her face, a simple uneducated woman looked at the doctor in a flutter, and could not bring herself to

hold out her hand to him; she did not dare. Beside her stood a personage with short hair and a pincenez; she

was wearing a blouse of many colours, and was very thin and no longer young. The servants called her

Christina Dmitryevna, and Korolyov guessed that this was the governess. Probably, as the person of most

education in the house, she had been charged to meet and receive the doctor, for she began immediately, in

great haste, stating the causes of the illness, giving trivial and tiresome details, but without saying who was ill

The doctor and the governess were sitting talking while the lady of the house stood motionless at the door,

waiting. From the conversation Korolyov learned that the patient was Madame Lyalikov's only daughter and

heiress, a girl of twenty, called Liza; she had been ill for a long time, and had consulted various doctors, and

the previous night she had suffered till morning from such violent palpitations of the heart, that no one in the

"She has been, one may say, ailing from a child," said Christina Dmitryevna in a singsong voice, continually

wiping her lips with her hand. "The doctors say it is nerves; when she was a little girl she was scrofulous, and

They went to see the invalid. Fully grown up, big and tall, but ugly like her mother, with the same little eyes

and disproportionate breadth of the lower part of the face, lying with her hair in disorder, muffled up to the

chin, she made upon Korolyov at the first minute the impression of a poor, destitute creature, sheltered and

cared for here out of charity, and he could hardly believe that this was the heiress of the five huge buildings.

He mentioned his name and pressed her hand, a large, cold, ugly hand; she sat up, and, evidently accustomed

to doctors, let herself be sounded, without showing the least concern that her shoulders and chest were

"I have palpitations of the heart," she said, "It was so awful all night. . . . I almost died of fright! Do give me

"The heart is all right," he said; "it's all going on satisfactorily; everything is in good order. Your nerves must

have been playing pranks a little, but that's so common. The attack is over by now, one must suppose; lie

At that moment a lamp was brought into the bedroom. The patient screwed up her eyes at the light, then

suddenly put her hands to her head and broke into sobs. And the impression of a destitute, ugly creature

vanished, and Korolyov no longer noticed the little eyes or the heavy development of the lower part of the

face. He saw a soft, suffering expression which was intelligent and touching: she seemed to him altogether

graceful, feminine, and simple; and he longed to soothe her, not with drugs, not with advice, but with simple,

kindly words. Her mother put her arms round her head and hugged her. What despair, what grief was in the

old woman's face! She, her mother, had reared her and brought her up, spared nothing, and devoted her whole

life to having her daughter taught French, dancing, music: had engaged a dozen teachers for her; had

consulted the best doctors, kept a governess. And now she could not make out the reason of these tears, why

there was all this misery, she could not understand, and was bewildered; and she had a guilty, agitated,

despairing expression, as though she had omitted something very important, had left something undone, had

"Lizanka, you are crying again . . . again," she said, hugging her daughter to her. "My own, my darling, my

Both wept bitterly. Korolyov sat down on the side of the bed and took Liza's hand.

"Come, give over; it's no use crying," he said kindly. "Why, there is nothing in the world that is worth those

"Our doctor at the factory gave her kalibromati," said the governess, "but I notice it only makes her worse. I

should have thought that if she is given anything for the heart it ought to be drops. . . . I forget the name. . . .

And there followed all sorts of details. She interrupted the doctor, preventing his speaking, and there was a

look of effort on her face, as though she supposed that, as the woman of most education in the house, she was

duty bound to keep up a conversation with the doctor, and on no other subject but medicine.

"I find nothing special the matter," he said, addressing the mother as he went out of the bedroom. "If your

daughter is being attended by the factory doctor, let him go on attending her. The treatment so far has been

perfectly correct, and I see no reason for changing your doctor. Why change? It's such an ordinary trouble;

He spoke deliberately as he put on his gloves, while Madame Lyalikov stood without moving, and looked at

"I have half an hour to catch the ten o'clock train," he said. "I hope I am not too late."

"And can't you stay?" she asked, and tears trickled down her cheeks again. "I am ashamed to trouble you, but

if you would be so good. . . . For God's sake," she went on in an undertone, glancing towards the door, "do

stay tonight with us! She is all I have . . . my only daughter. . . . She frightened me last night; I can't get over

He wanted to tell her that he had a great deal of work in Moscow, that his family were expecting him home; it

was disagreeable to him to spend the evening and the whole night in a strange house quite needlessly; but he

looked at her face, heaved a sigh, and began taking off his gloves without a word.

All the lamps and candles were lighted in his honour in the drawingroom and the diningroom. He sat down

at the piano and began turning over the music. Then he looked at the pictures on the walls, at the portraits.

The pictures, oilpaintings in gold frames, were views of the Crimea a stormy sea with a ship, a Catholic

monk with a wineglass; they were all dull, smooth daubs, with no trace of talent in them. There was not a

single goodlooking face among the portraits, nothing but broad cheekbones and astonishedlooking eyes.

Lyalikov, Liza's father, had a low forehead and a selfsatisfied expression; his uniform sat like a sack on his

bulky plebeian figure; on his breast was a medal and a Red Cross Badge. There was little sign of culture, and

the luxury was senseless and haphazard, and was as ill fitting as that uniform. The floors irritated him with

their brilliant polish, the lustres on the chandelier irritated him, and he was reminded for some reason of the

story of the merchant who used to go to the baths with a medal on his neck. . . .

He heard a whispering in the entry; some one was softly snoring. And suddenly from outside came harsh,

abrupt, metallic sounds, such as Korolyov had never heard before, and which he did not understand now; they

"I believe nothing would induce me to remain here to live . . ." he thought, and went back to the musicbooks

He went into supper. The table was large and laid with a vast number of dishes and wines, but there were

only two to supper: himself and Christina Dmitryevna. She drank Madeira, ate rapidly, and talked, looking at

"Our workpeople are very contented. We have performances at the factory every winter; the workpeople act

themselves. They have lectures with a magic lantern, a splendid tearoom, and everything they want. They

are very much attached to us, and when they heard that Lizanka was worse they had a service sung for her.

"Not one. Pyotr Nikanoritch died a year and a half ago, and left us alone. And so there are the three of us. In

the summer we live here, and in winter we live in Moscow, in Polianka. I have been living with them for

At supper they served sterlet, chicken rissoles, and stewed fruit; the wines were expensive French wines.

"Please don't stand on ceremony, doctor," said Christina Dmitryevna, eating and wiping her mouth with her

fist, and it was evident she found her life here exceedingly pleasant. "Please have some more."

After supper the doctor was shown to his room, where a bed had been made up for him, but he did not feel

sleepy. The room was stuffy and it smelt of paint; he put on his coat and went out.

It was cool in the open air; there was already a glimmer of dawn, and all the five blocks of buildings, with

their tall chimneys, barracks, and warehouses, were distinctly outlined against the damp air. As it was a

holiday, they were not working, and the windows were dark, and in only one of the buildings was there a

furnace burning; two windows were crimson, and fire mixed with smoke came from time to time from the

chimney. Far away beyond the yard the frogs were croaking and the nightingales singing.

Looking at the factory buildings and the barracks, where the workpeople were asleep, he thought again what

he always thought when he saw a factory. They may have performances for the workpeople, magic lanterns,

factory doctors, and improvements of all sorts, but, all the same, the workpeople he had met that day on his

way from the station did not look in any way different from those he had known long ago in his childhood,

before there were factory performances and improvements. As a doctor accustomed to judging correctly of

chronic complaints, the radical cause of which was incomprehensible and incurable, he looked upon factories

as something baffling, the cause of which also was obscure and not removable, and all the improvements in

the life of the factory hands he looked upon not as superfluous, but as comparable with the treatment of

"There is something baffling in it, of course . . ." he thought, looking at the crimson windows. "Fifteen

hundred or two thousand workpeople are working without rest in unhealthy surroundings, making bad cotton

goods, living on the verge of starvation, and only waking from this nightmare at rare intervals in the tavern; a

hundred people act as overseers, and the whole life of that hundred is spent in imposing fines, in abuse, in

injustice, and only two or three socalled owners enjoy the profits, though they don't work at all, and despise

the wretched cotton. But what are the profits, and how do they enjoy them? Madame Lyalikov and her

daughter are unhappy it makes one wretched to look at them; the only one who enjoys her life is Christina

Dmitryevna, a stupid, middleaged maiden lady in pincenez. And so it appears that all these five blocks of

buildings are at work, and inferior cotton is sold in the Eastern markets, simply that Christina Dmitryevna

Suddenly there came a strange noise, the same sound Korolyov had heard before supper. Some one was

striking on a sheet of metal near one of the buildings; he struck a note, and then at once checked the

vibrations, so that short, abrupt, discordant sounds were produced, rather like "Dair . . . dair . . . dair. . . ."

Then there was half a minute of stillness, and from another building there came sounds equally abrupt and

unpleasant, lower bass notes: "Drin . . . drin . . . drin. . ." Eleven times. Evidently it was the watchman

striking the hour. Near the third building he heard: "Zhuk . . . zhuk . . . zhuk. . . ." And so near all the

buildings, and then behind the barracks and beyond the gates. And in the stillness of the night it seemed as

though these sounds were uttered by a monster with crimson eyes the devil himself, who controlled the

Here the nightingales and the frogs could be heard more distinctly, and one could feel it was a night in May.

From the station came the noise of a train; somewhere in the distance drowsy cocks were crowing; but, all the

same, the night was still, the world was sleeping tranquilly. In a field not far from the factory there could be

"The only person who feels happy here is the governess, and the factory hands are working for her

gratification. But that's only apparent: she is only the figurehead. The real person, for whom everything is

And he thought about the devil, in whom he did not believe, and he looked round at the two windows where

the fires were gleaming. It seemed to him that out of those crimson eyes the devil himself was looking at him

that unknown force that had created the mutual relation of the strong and the weak, that coarse blunder

which one could never correct. The strong must hinder the weak from living such was the law of Nature;

but only in a newspaper article or in a school book was that intelligible and easily accepted. In the hotchpotch

which was everyday life, in the tangle of trivialities out of which human relations were woven, it was no

longer a law, but a logical absurdity, when the strong and the weak were both equally victims of their mutual

relations, unwillingly submitting to some directing force, unknown, standing outside life, apart from man.

So thought Korolyov, sitting on the planks, and little by little he was possessed by a feeling that this unknown

and mysterious force was really close by and looking at him. Meanwhile the east was growing paler, time

passed rapidly; when there was not a soul anywhere near, as though everything were dead, the five buildings

and their chimneys against the grey background of the dawn had a peculiar look not the same as by day;

one forgot altogether that inside there were steam motors, electricity, telephones, and kept thinking of

lakedwellings, of the Stone Age, feeling the presence of a crude, unconscious force. . . .

And again there came the sound: "Dair . . . dair . . . dair . . . dair . . ." twelve times. Then there was stillness,

"Zhuk . . . zhuk . . ." there resounded from a third place, abruptly, sharply, as though with annoyance

And it took four minutes to strike twelve. Then there was a hush; and again it seemed as though everything

Korolyov sat a little longer, then went to the house, but sat up for a good while longer. In the adjoining rooms

He went out to have a look at the patient. By now it was quite light in the rooms, and a faint glimmer of

sunlight, piercing through the morning mist, quivered on the floor and on the wall of the drawingroom. The

door of Liza's room was open, and she was sitting in a low chair beside her bed, with her hair down, wearing

He touched her pulse, then straightened her hair, that had fallen over her forehead.

"You are not asleep," he said. "It's beautiful weather outside. It's spring. The nightingales are singing, and you

She listened and looked into his face; her eyes were sorrowful and intelligent, and it was evident she wanted

At that moment the watchman in the yard began striking two o'clock. They heard: "Dair . . . dair . . ." and she

"I don't know. Everything here worries me," she answered, and pondered. "Everything worries me. I hear

sympathy in your voice; it seemed to me as soon as I saw you that I could tell you all about it."

"I want to tell you of my opinion. It seems to me that I have no illness, but that I am weary and frightened,

because it is bound to be so and cannot be otherwise. Even the healthiest person can't help being uneasy if,

for instance, a robber is moving about under his window. I am constantly being doctored," she went on,

looking at her knees, and she gave a shy smile. "I am very grateful, of course, and I do not deny that the

treatment is a benefit; but I should like to talk, not with a doctor, but with some intimate friend who would

"I am lonely. I have a mother; I love her, but, all the same, I am lonely. That's how it happens to be. . . .

Lonely people read a great deal, but say little and hear little. Life for them is mysterious; they are mystics and

often see the devil where he is not. Lermontov's Tamara was lonely and she saw the devil."

"Yes. You see, my whole time is free from morning till night. I read by day, and by night my head is empty;

She smiled again, raised her eyes to the doctor, and looked at him so sorrowfully, so intelligently; and it

seemed to him that she trusted him, and that she wanted to speak frankly to him, and that she thought the

And he knew what to say to her. It was clear to him that she needed as quickly as possible to give up the five

buildings and the million if she had it to leave that devil that looked out at night; it was clear to him, too,

that she thought so herself, and was only waiting for some one she trusted to confirm her.

But he did not know how to say it. How? One is shy of asking men under sentence what they have been

sentenced for; and in the same way it is awkward to ask very rich people what they want so much money for,

why they make such a poor use of their wealth, why they don't give it up, even when they see in it their

unhappiness; and if they begin a conversation about it themselves, it is usually embarrassing, awkward, and

"You in the position of a factory owner and a wealthy heiress are dissatisfied; you don't believe in your right

to it; and here now you can't sleep. That, of course, is better than if you were satisfied, slept soundly, and

thought everything was satisfactory. Your sleeplessness does you credit; in any case, it is a good sign. In

reality, such a conversation as this between us now would have been unthinkable for our parents. At night

they did not talk, but slept sound; we, our generation, sleep badly, are restless, but talk a great deal, and are

always trying to settle whether we are right or not. For our children or grandchildren that question

whether they are right or not will have been settled. Things will be clearer for them than for us. Life will

be good in fifty years' time; it's only a pity we shall not last out till then. It would be interesting to have a

"Where? . . . Why, where they like," said Korolyov; and he laughed. "There are lots of places a good,

"The sun has risen, though," he said. "It is time you were asleep. Undress and sleep soundly. Very glad to

have made your acquaintance," he went on, pressing her hand. "You are a good, interesting woman.

In the morning when the carriage was brought round they all came out on to the steps to see him off. Liza,

pale and exhausted, was in a white dress as though for a holiday, with a flower in her hair; she looked at him,

as yesterday, sorrowfully and intelligently, smiled and talked, and all with an expression as though she

wanted to tell him something special, important him alone. They could hear the larks trilling and the

church bells pealing. The windows in the factory buildings were sparkling gaily, and, driving across the yard

and afterwards along the road to the station, Korolyov thought neither of the workpeople nor of lake

dwellings, nor of the devil, but thought of the time, perhaps close at hand, when life would be as bright and

joyous as that still Sunday morning; and he thought how pleasant it was on such a morning in the spring to

MASHENKA PAVLETSKY, a young girl who had only just finished her studies at a boarding school,

returning from a walk to the house of the Kushkins, with whom she was living as a governess, found the

household in a terrible turmoil. Mihailo, the porter who opened the door to her, was excited and red as a crab.

"Madame Kushkin is in a fit, most likely, or else she has quarrelled with her husband," thought Mashenka.

In the hall and in the corridor she met maidservants. One of them was crying. Then Mashenka saw, running

out of her room, the master of the house himself, Nikolay Sergeitch, a little man with a flabby face and a bald

head, though he was not old. He was red in the face and twitching all over. He passed the governess without

Mashenka went into her room, and then, for the first time in her life, it was her lot to experience in all its

acuteness the feeling that is so familiar to persons in dependent positions, who eat the bread of the rich and

powerful, and cannot speak their minds. There was a search going on in her room. The lady of the house,

Fedosya Vassilyevna, a stout, broadshouldered, uncouth woman with thick black eyebrows, a faintly

perceptible moustache, and red hands, who was exactly like a plain, illiterate cook in face and manners, was

standing, without her cap on, at the table, putting back into Mashenka's workbag balls of wool, scraps of

materials, and bits of paper. . . . Evidently the governess's arrival took her by surprise, since, on looking

round and seeing the girl's pale and astonished face, she was a little taken aback, and muttered:

And saying something more, Madame Kushkin rustled her long skirts and went out. Mashenka looked round

her room with wondering eyes, and, unable to understand it, not knowing what to think, shrugged her

shoulders, and turned cold with dismay. What had Fedosya Vassilyevna been looking for in her workbag? If

she really had, as she said, caught her sleeve in it and upset everything, why had Nikolay Sergeitch dashed

out of her room so excited and red in the face? Why was one drawer of the table pulled out a little way? The

moneybox, in which the governess put away ten kopeck pieces and old stamps, was open. They had opened

it, but did not know how to shut it, though they had scratched the lock all over. The whatnot with her books

on it, the things on the table, the bed all bore fresh traces of a search. Her linenbasket, too. The linen had

been carefully folded, but it was not in the same order as Mashenka had left it when she went out. So the

search had been thorough, most thorough. But what was it for? Why? What had happened? Mashenka

remembered the excited porter, the general turmoil which was still going on, the weeping servantgirl; had it

not all some connection with the search that had just been made in her room? Was not she mixed up in

something dreadful? Mashenka turned pale, and feeling cold all over, sank on to her linenbasket.

"Liza, you don't know why they have been rummaging in my room?" the governess asked her.

"They've been searching every one, miss. They've searched all my things, too. They stripped us all naked and

searched us. . . . God knows, miss, I never went near her toilettable, let alone touching the brooch. I shall

"A brooch has been stolen, I tell you. The mistress has been rummaging in everything with her own hands.

She even searched Mihailo, the porter, herself. It's a perfect disgrace! Nikolay Sergeitch simply looks on and

cackles like a hen. But you've no need to tremble like that, miss. They found nothing here. You've nothing to

"But, Liza, it's vile . . . it's insulting," said Mashenka, breathless with indignation. "It's so mean, so low! What

"You are living with strangers, miss," sighed Liza. "Though you are a young lady, still you are . . . as it were .

Mashenka threw herself on the bed and sobbed bitterly. Never in her life had she been subjected to such an

outrage, never had she been so deeply insulted. . . . She, welleducated, refined, the daughter of a teacher,

was suspected of theft; she had been searched like a streetwalker! She could not imagine a greater insult.

And to this feeling of resentment was added an oppressive dread of what would come next. All sorts of

absurd ideas came into her mind. If they could suspect her of theft, then they might arrest her, strip her naked,

and search her, then lead her through the street with an escort of soldiers, cast her into a cold, dark cell with

mice and woodlice, exactly like the dungeon in which Princess Tarakanov was imprisoned. Who would stand

up for her? Her parents lived far away in the provinces; they had not the money to come to her. In the capital

she was as solitary as in a desert, without friends or kindred. They could do what they liked with her.

"I will go to all the courts and all the lawyers," Mashenka thought, trembling. "I will explain to them, I will

Mashenka remembered that under the sheets in her basket she had some sweetmeats, which, following the

habits of her schooldays, she had put in her pocket at dinner and carried off to her room. She felt hot all over,

and was ashamed at the thought that her little secret was known to the lady of the house; and all this terror,

shame, resentment, brought on an attack of palpitation of the heart, which set up a throbbing in her temples,

Mashenka brushed her hair, wiped her face with a wet towel, and went into the diningroom. There they had

already begun dinner. At one end of the table sat Fedosya Vassilyevna with a stupid, solemn, serious face; at

the other end Nikolay Sergeitch. At the sides there were the visitors and the children. The dishes were handed

by two footmen in swallowtails and white gloves. Every one knew that there was an upset in the house, that

Madame Kushkin was in trouble, and every one was silent. Nothing was heard but the sound of munching

"I ordered that, Fenya," Nikolay Sergeitch hastened to observe. "I wanted some fish. If you don't like it, ma

Fedosya Vassilyevna did not like dishes that she had not ordered herself, and now her eyes filled with tears.

Come, don't let us agitate ourselves," Mamikov, her household doctor, observed in a honeyed voice, just

touching her arm, with a smile as honeyed. "We are nervous enough as it is. Let us forget the brooch! Health

"It's not the two thousand I regret," answered the lady, and a big tear rolled down her cheek. "It's the fact

itself that revolts me! I cannot put up with thieves in my house. I don't regret it I regret nothing; but to

steal from me is such ingratitude! That's how they repay me for my kindness. . . ."

They all looked into their plates, but Mashenka fancied after the lady's words that every one was looking at

her. A lump rose in her throat; she began crying and put her handkerchief to her lips.

And she got up from the table, scraping her chair awkwardly, and went out quickly, still more overcome with

"It's beyond everything!" said Nikolay Sergeitch, frowning. "What need was there to search her room? How

"I don't say she took the brooch," said Fedosya Vassilyevna, "but can you answer for her? To tell the truth, I

"It really was unsuitable, Fenya. . . . Excuse me, Fenya, but you've no kind of legal right to make a search."

"I know nothing about your laws. All I know is that I've lost my brooch. And I will find the brooch!" She

brought her fork down on the plate with a clatter, and her eyes flashed angrily. "And you eat your dinner, and

Nikolay Sergeitch dropped his eyes mildly and sighed. Meanwhile Mashenka, reaching her room, flung

herself on her bed. She felt now neither alarm nor shame, but she felt an intense longing to go and slap the

Lying on her bed she breathed into her pillow and dreamed of how nice it would be to go and buy the most

expensive brooch and fling it into the face of this bullying woman. If only it were God's will that Fedosya

Vassilyevna should come to ruin and wander about begging, and should taste all the horrors of poverty and

dependence, and that Mashenka, whom she had insulted, might give her alms! Oh, if only she could come in

for a big fortune, could buy a carriage, and could drive noisily past the windows so as to be envied by that

But all these were only dreams, in reality there was only one thing left to do to get away as quickly as

possible, not to stay another hour in this place. It was true it was terrible to lose her place, to go back to her

parents, who had nothing; but what could she do? Mashenka could not bear the sight of the lady of the house

nor of her little room; she felt stifled and wretched here. She was so disgusted with Fedosya Vassilyevna,

who was so obsessed by her illnesses and her supposed aristocratic rank, that everything in the world seemed

to have become coarse and unattractive because this woman was living in it. Mashenka jumped up from the

"May I come in?" asked Nikolay Sergeitch at the door; he had come up noiselessly to the door, and spoke in a

He came in and stood still near the door. His eyes looked dim and his red little nose was shiny. After dinner

he used to drink beer, and the fact was perceptible in his walk, in his feeble, flabby hands.

"I am packing. Forgive me, Nikolay Sergeitch, but I cannot remain in your house. I feel deeply insulted by

"I understand. . . . Only you are wrong to go. Why should you? They've searched your things, but you . . .

Mashenka was silent and went on packing. Nikolay Sergeitch pinched his moustache, as though wondering

"I understand, of course, but you must make allowances. You know my wife is nervous, headstrong; you

"If you are so offended," Nikolay Sergeitch went on, "well, if you like, I'm ready to apologise. I ask your

Mashenka made no answer, but only bent lower over her box. This exhausted, irresolute man was of

absolutely no significance in the household. He stood in the pitiful position of a dependent and hangeron,

"H'm! . . . You say nothing! That's not enough for you. In that case, I will apologise for my wife. In my wife's

"Then you want me to have it rankling here, under my heart. . . . You want my conscience to torment me. . .

"I know it's not your fault, Nikolay Sergeitch," said Mashenka, looking him full in the face with her big

Mashenka shook her head. Nikolay Sergeitch stopped at the window and drummed on the pane with his

"Such misunderstandings are simply torture to me," he said. "Why, do you want me to go down on my knees

to you, or what? Your pride is wounded, and here you've been crying and packing up to go; but I have pride,

too, and you do not spare it! Or do you want me to tell you what I would not tell as Confession? Do you?

"I took my wife's brooch," Nikolay Sergeitch said quickly. "Is that enough now? Are you satisfied? Yes, I . . .

took it. . . . But, of course, I count on your discretion. . . . For God's sake, not a word, not half a hint to any

Mashenka, amazed and frightened, went on packing; she snatched her things, crumpled them up, and thrust

them anyhow into the box and the basket. Now, after this candid avowal on the part of Nikolay Sergeitch, she

could not remain another minute, and could not understand how she could have gone on living in the house

"And it's nothing to wonder at," Nikolay Sergeitch went on after a pause. "It's an everyday story! I need

money, and she . . . won't give it to me. It was my father's money that bought this house and everything, you

know! It's all mine, and the brooch belonged to my mother, and . . . it's all mine! And she took it, took

possession of everything. . . . I can't go to law with her, you'll admit. . . . I beg you most earnestly, overlook it

"No!" said Mashenka resolutely, beginning to tremble. "Let me alone, I entreat you!"

"Well, God bless you!" sighed Nikolay Sergeitch, sitting down on the stool near the box. "I must own I like

people who still can feel resentment, contempt, and so on. I could sit here forever and look at your indignant

face. . . . So you won't stay, then? I understand. . . . It's bound to be so. . . Yes, of course. . . . It's all right for

you, but for me woooo! . . . I can't stir a step out of this cellar. I'd go off to one of our estates, but in

every one of them there are some of my wife's rascals. . . stewards, experts, damn them all! They mortgage

and remortgage. . . . You mustn't catch fish, must keep off the grass, mustn't break the trees."

"Nikolay Sergeitch!" his wife's voice called from the drawingroom. "Agnia, call your master!"

"Then you won't stay?" asked Nikolay Sergeitch, getting up quickly and going towards the door. "You might

as well stay, really. In the evenings I could come and have a talk with you. Eh? Stay! If you go, there won't

Nikolay Sergeitch's pale, exhausted face besought her, but Mashenka shook her head, and with a wave of his

WHEN visitors to the provincial town S complained of the dreariness and monotony of life, the

inhabitants of the town, as though defending themselves, declared that it was very nice in S, that there

was a library, a theatre, a club; that they had balls; and, finally, that there were clever, agreeable, and

interesting families with whom one could make acquaintance. And they used to point to the family of the

This family lived in their own house in the principal street, near the Governor's. Ivan Petrovitch Turkin

himself a stout, handsome, dark man with whiskers used to get up amateur performances for

benevolent objects, and used to take the part of an elderly general and cough very amusingly. He knew a

number of anecdotes, charades, proverbs, and was fond of being humorous and witty, and he always wore an

expression from which it was impossible to tell whether he were joking or in earnest. His wife, Vera

Iosifovna a thin, nicelooking lady who wore a pincenez used to write novels and stories, and was

very fond of reading them aloud to her visitors. The daughter, Ekaterina Ivanovna, a young girl, used to play

on the piano. In short, every member of the family had a special talent. The Turkins welcomed visitors, and

goodhumouredly displayed their talents with genuine simplicity. Their stone house was roomy and cool in

summer; half of the windows looked into a shady old garden, where nightingales used to sing in the spring.

When there were visitors in the house, there was a clatter of knives in the kitchen and a smell of fried onions

in the yard and that was always a sure sign of a plentiful and savoury supper to follow.

And as soon as Dmitri Ionitch Startsev was appointed the district doctor, and took up his abode at Dyalizh,

six miles from S, he, too, was told that as a cultivated man it was essential for him to make the

acquaintance of the Turkins. In the winter he was introduced to Ivan Petrovitch in the street; they talked about

the weather, about the theatre, about the cholera; an invitation followed. On a holiday in the spring it was

Ascension Day after seeing his patients, Startsev set off for town in search of a little recreation and to

make some purchases. He walked in a leisurely way (he had not yet set up his carriage), humming all the

" 'Before I'd drunk the tears from life's goblet. . . .' " In town he dined, went for a walk in the gardens, then

Ivan Petrovitch's invitation came into his mind, as it were of itself, and he decided to call on the Turkins and

"How do you do, if you please?" said Ivan Petrovitch, meeting him on the steps. "Delighted, delighted to see

such an agreeable visitor. Come along; I will introduce you to my better half. I tell him, Verotchka," he went

on, as he presented the doctor to his wife "I tell him that he has no human right to sit at home in a hospital;

"Sit here," said Vera Iosifovna, making her visitor sit down beside her. "You can dance attendance on me.

My husband is jealous he is an Othello; but we will try and behave so well that he will notice nothing."

"Ah, you spoilt chicken!" Ivan Petrovitch muttered tenderly, and he kissed her on the forehead. "You have

come just in the nick of time," he said, addressing the doctor again. "My better half has written a 'hugeous'

"Petit Jean," said Vera Iosifovna to her husband, "dites que l'on nous donne du th�."

Startsev was introduced to Ekaterina Ivanovna, a girl of eighteen, very much like her mother, thin and pretty.

Her expression was still childish and her figure was soft and slim; and her developed girlish bosom, healthy

Then they drank tea with jam, honey, and sweetmeats, and with very nice cakes, which melted in the mouth.

As the evening came on, other visitors gradually arrived, and Ivan Petrovitch fixed his laughing eyes on each

Then they all sat down in the drawingroom with very serious faces, and Vera Iosifovna read her novel. It

began like this: "The frost was intense. . . ." The windows were wide open; from the kitchen came the clatter

of knives and the smell of fried onions. . . . It was comfortable in the soft deep armchair; the lights had such

a friendly twinkle in the twilight of the drawingroom, and at the moment on a summer evening when sounds

of voices and laughter floated in from the street and whiffs of lilac from the yard, it was difficult to grasp that

the frost was intense, and that the setting sun was lighting with its chilly rays a solitary wayfarer on the

snowy plain. Vera Iosifovna read how a beautiful young countess founded a school, a hospital, a library, in

her village, and fell in love with a wandering artist; she read of what never happens in real life, and yet it was

pleasant to listen it was comfortable, and such agreeable, serene thoughts kept coming into the mind, one

And one of the visitors hearing, with his thoughts far away, said hardly audibly:

One hour passed, another. In the town gardens close by a band was playing and a chorus was singing. When

Vera Iosifovna shut her manuscript book, the company was silent for five minutes, listening to "Lutchina"

being sung by the chorus, and the song gave what was not in the novel and is in real life.

"No," she answered. "I never publish. I write it and put it away in my cupboard. Why publish?" she

The lid of the piano was raised and the music lying ready was opened. Ekaterina Ivanovna sat down and

banged on the piano with both hands, and then banged again with all her might, and then again and again; her

shoulders and bosom shook. She obstinately banged on the same notes, and it sounded as if she would not

leave off until she had hammered the keys into the piano. The drawingroom was filled with the din;

everything was resounding; the floor, the ceiling, the furniture. . . . Ekaterina Ivanovna was playing a difficult

passage, interesting simply on account of its difficulty, long and monotonous, and Startsev, listening, pictured

stones dropping down a steep hill and going on dropping, and he wished they would leave off dropping; and

at the same time Ekaterina Ivanovna, rosy from the violent exercise, strong and vigorous, with a lock of hair

falling over her forehead, attracted him very much. After the winter spent at Dyalizh among patients and

peasants, to sit in a drawingroom, to watch this young, elegant, and, in all probability, pure creature, and to

listen to these noisy, tedious but still cultured sounds, was so pleasant, so novel. . . .

"Well, Kitten, you have played as never before," said Ivan Petrovitch, with tears in his eyes, when his

daughter had finished and stood up. "Die, Denis; you won't write anything better."

All flocked round her, congratulated her, expressed astonishment, declared that it was long since they had

heard such music, and she listened in silence with a faint smile, and her whole figure was expressive of

"Splendid," said Startsev, too, carried away by the general enthusiasm. "Where have you studied?" he asked

"No, I am only preparing for the Conservatoire, and till now have been working with Madame Zavlovsky."

"Oh, no," Vera Iosifovna answered for her, "We have teachers for her at home; there might be bad influences

at the high school or a boarding school, you know. While a young girl is growing up, she ought to be under

"No, I'm going, I'm going," said Ekaterina Ivanovna, with playful caprice and stamping her foot.

And at supper it was Ivan Petrovitch who displayed his talents. Laughing only with his eyes, he told

anecdotes, made epigrams, asked ridiculous riddles and answered them himself, talking the whole time in his

extraordinary language, evolved in the course of prolonged practice in witticism and evidently now become a

But that was not all. When the guests, replete and satisfied, trooped into the hall, looking for their coats and

sticks, there bustled about them the footman Pavlusha, or, as he was called in the family, Pava a lad of

Pava struck an attitude, flung up his arm, and said in a tragic tone: "Unhappy woman, die!"

He went to a restaurant and drank some beer, then set off to walk home to Dyalizh; he walked all the way

" 'Thy voice to me so languid and caressing. . . .' " On going to bed, he felt not the slightest fatigue after the

six miles' walk. On the contrary, he felt as though he could with pleasure have walked another twenty.

Startsev kept meaning to go to the Turkins' again, but there was a great deal of work in the hospital, and he

was unable to find free time. In this way more than a year passed in work and solitude. But one day a letter in

Vera Iosifovna had been suffering for some time from migraine, but now since Kitten frightened her every

day by saying that she was going away to the Conservatoire, the attacks began to be more frequent. All the

doctors of the town had been at the Turkins'; at last it was the district doctor's turn. Vera Iosifovna wrote him

a touching letter in which she begged him to come and relieve her sufferings. Startsev went, and after that he

began to be often, very often at the Turkins'. . . . He really did something for Vera Iosifovna, and she was

already telling all her visitors that he was a wonderful and exceptional doctor. But it was not for the sake of

It was a holiday. Ekaterina Ivanovna finished her long, wearisome exercises on the piano. Then they sat a

long time in the diningroom, drinking tea, and Ivan Petrovitch told some amusing story. Then there was a

ring and he had to go into the hall to welcome a guest; Startsev took advantage of the momentary commotion,

She shrugged her shoulders, as though perplexed and not knowing what he wanted of her, but she got up and

"You play the piano for three or four hours," he said, following her; "then you sit with your mother, and there

is no possibility of speaking to you. Give me a quarter of an hour at least, I beseech you."

Autumn was approaching, and it was quiet and melancholy in the old garden; the dark leaves lay thick in the

"I haven't seen you for a whole week," Startsev went on, "and if you only knew what suffering it is! Let us sit

They had a favourite place in the garden; a seat under an old spreading maple. And now they sat down on this

"I have not seen you for a whole week; I have not heard you for so long. I long passionately, I thirst for your

She fascinated him by her freshness, the na�ve expression of her eyes and cheeks. Even in the way her dress

hung on her, he saw something extraordinarily charming, touching in its simplicity and na�ve grace; and at

the same time, in spite of this na�vet�, she seemed to him intelligent and developed beyond her years. He

could talk with her about literature, about art, about anything he liked; could complain to her of life, of

people, though it sometimes happened in the middle of serious conversation she would laugh inappropriately

or run away into the house. Like almost all girls of her neighbourhood, she had read a great deal (as a rule,

people read very little in S, and at the lending library they said if it were not for the girls and the young

Jews, they might as well shut up the library). This afforded Startsev infinite delight; he used to ask her

eagerly every time what she had been reading the last few days, and listened enthralled while she told him.

"What have you been reading this week since I saw you last?" he asked now. "Do please tell me."

" 'A Thousand Souls,' "answered Kitten. "And what a funny name Pisemsky had Alexey Feofilaktitch!

"Where are you going?" cried Startsev in horror, as she suddenly got up and walked towards the house. "I

must talk to you; I want to explain myself. . . . Stay with me just five minutes, I supplicate you!"

She stopped as though she wanted to say something, then awkwardly thrust a note into his hand, ran home

"Be in the cemetery," Startsev read, "at eleven o'clock tonight, near the tomb of Demetti."

"Well, that's not at all clever," he thought, coming to himself. "Why the cemetery? What for?"

It was clear: Kitten was playing a prank. Who would seriously dream of making an appointment at night in

the cemetery far out of the town, when it might have been arranged in the street or in the town gardens? And

was it in keeping with him a district doctor, an intelligent, staid man to be sighing, receiving notes, to

hang about cemeteries, to do silly things that even schoolboys think ridiculous nowadays? What would this

romance lead to? What would his colleagues say when they heard of it? Such were Startsev's reflections as he

wandered round the tables at the club, and at halfpast ten he suddenly set off for the cemetery.

By now he had his own pair of horses, and a coachman called Panteleimon, in a velvet waistcoat. The moon

was shining. It was still warm, warm as it is in autumn. Dogs were howling in the suburb near the

slaughterhouse. Startsev left his horses in one of the sidestreets at the end of the town, and walked on foot

"We all have our oddities," he thought. "Kitten is odd, too; and who knows? perhaps she is not joking,

perhaps she will come"; and he abandoned himself to this faint, vain hope, and it intoxicated him.

He walked for half a mile through the fields; the cemetery showed as a dark streak in the distance, like a

forest or a big garden. The wall of white stone came into sight, the gate. . . . In the moonlight he could read

on the gate: "The hour cometh." Startsev went in at the little gate, and before anything else he saw the white

crosses and monuments on both sides of the broad avenue, and the black shadows of them and the poplars;

and for a long way round it was all white and black, and the slumbering trees bowed their branches over the

white stones. It seemed as though it were lighter here than in the fields; the mapleleaves stood out sharply

like paws on the yellow sand of the avenue and on the stones, and the inscriptions on the tombs could be

clearly read. For the first moments Startsev was struck now by what he saw for the first time in his life, and

what he would probably never see again; a world not like anything else, a world in which the moonlight was

as soft and beautiful, as though slumbering here in its cradle, where there was no life, none whatever; but in

every dark poplar, in every tomb, there was felt the presence of a mystery that promised a life peaceful,

beautiful, eternal. The stones and faded flowers, together with the autumn scent of the leaves, all told of

All was silence around; the stars looked down from the sky in the profound stillness, and Startsev's footsteps

sounded loud and out of place, and only when the church clock began striking and he imagined himself dead,

buried there for ever, he felt as though some one were looking at him, and for a moment he thought that it

was not peace and tranquillity, but stifled despair, the dumb dreariness of nonexistence. . . .

Demetti's tomb was in the form of a shrine with an angel at the top. The Italian opera had once visited S

and one of the singers had died; she had been buried here, and this monument put up to her. No one in the

town remembered her, but the lamp at the entrance reflected the moonlight, and looked as though it were

There was no one, and, indeed, who would come here at midnight? But Startsev waited, and as though the

moonlight warmed his passion, he waited passionately, and, in imagination, pictured kisses and embraces. He

sat near the monument for half an hour, then paced up and down the side avenues, with his hat in his hand,

waiting and thinking of the many women and girls buried in these tombs who had been beautiful and

fascinating, who had loved, at night burned with passion, yielding themselves to caresses. How wickedly

Mother Nature jested at man's expense, after all! How humiliating it was to recognise it!

Startsev thought this, and at the same time he wanted to cry out that he wanted love, that he was eager for it at

all costs. To his eyes they were not slabs of marble, but fair white bodies in the moonlight; he saw shapes

hiding bashfully in the shadows of the trees, felt their warmth, and the languor was oppressive. . . .

And as though a curtain were lowered, the moon went behind a cloud, and suddenly all was darkness.

Startsev could scarcely find the gate by now it was as dark as it is on an autumn night. Then he wandered

about for an hour and a half, looking for the sidestreet in which he had left his horses.

And settling himself with relief in his carriage, he thought: "Och! I ought not to get fat!"

The following evening he went to the Turkins' to make an offer. But it turned out to be an inconvenient

moment, as Ekaterina Ivanovna was in her own room having her hair done by a hairdresser. She was getting

He had to sit a long time again in the diningroom drinking tea. Ivan Petrovitch, seeing that his visitor was

bored and preoccupied, drew some notes out of his waistcoat pocket, read a funny letter from a German

steward, saying that all the ironmongery was ruined and the plasticity was peeling off the walls.

"I expect they will give a decent dowry," thought Startsev, listening absentmindedly.

After a sleepless night, he found himself in a state of stupefaction, as though he had been given something

sweet and soporific to drink; there was fog in his soul, but joy and warmth, and at the same time a sort of

"Stop before it is too late! Is she the match for you? She is spoilt, whimsical, sleeps till two o'clock in the

"Besides, if you marry her," the fragment went on, "then her relations will make you give up the district work

"After all," he thought, "if it must be the town, the town it must be. They will give a dowry; we can establish

At last Ekaterina Ivanovna came in, dressed for the ball, with a low neck, looking fresh and pretty; and

Startsev admired her so much, and went into such ecstasies, that he could say nothing, but simply stared at

She began saying goodbye, and he he had no reason for staying now got up, saying that it was time

"Well, there's no help for that," said Ivan Petrovitch. "Go, and you might take Kitten to the club on the way."

It was spotting with rain; it was very dark, and they could only tell where the horses were by Panteleimon's

"I stand upright; you lie down right; he lies all right," said Ivan Petrovitch as he put his daughter into the

"I was at the cemetery yesterday," Startsev began. "How ungenerous and merciless it was on your part! . . ."

Ekaterina Ivanovna, pleased at having so cleverly taken in a man who was in love with her, and at being the

object of such intense love, burst out laughing and suddenly uttered a shriek of terror, for, at that very minute,

the horses turned sharply in at the gate of the club, and the carriage almost tilted over. Startsev put his arm

round Ekaterina Ivanovna's waist; in her fright she nestled up to him, and he could not restrain himself, and

passionately kissed her on the lips and on the chin, and hugged her more tightly.

And a minute later she was not in the carriage, and a policeman near the lighted entrance of the club shouted

Startsev drove home, but soon afterwards returned. Attired in another man's dress suit and a stiff white tie

which kept sawing at his neck and trying to slip away from the collar, he was sitting at midnight in the club

"Ah, how little people know who have never loved! It seems to me that no one has ever yet written of love

truly, and I doubt whether this tender, joyful, agonising feeling can be described, and any one who has once

experienced it would not attempt to put it into words. What is the use of preliminaries and introductions?

What is the use of unnecessary fine words? My love is immeasurable. I beg, I beseech you," Startsev brought

"Dmitri Ionitch," said Ekaterina Ivanovna, with a very grave face, after a moment's thought "Dmitri

Ionitch, I am very grateful to you for the honour. I respect you, but . . ." she got up and continued standing,

"but, forgive me, I cannot be your wife. Let us talk seriously. Dmitri Ionitch, you know I love art beyond

everything in life. I adore music; I love it frantically; I have dedicated my whole life to it. I want to be an

artist; I want fame, success, freedom, and you want me to go on living in this town, to go on living this

empty, useless life, which has become insufferable to me. To become a wife oh, no, forgive me! One must

strive towards a lofty, glorious goal, and married life would put me in bondage for ever. Dmitri Ionitch" (she

faintly smiled as she pronounced his name; she thought of "Alexey Feofilaktitch") "Dmitri Ionitch, you

are a good, clever, honourable man; you are better than any one. . . ." Tears came into her eyes. "I feel for you

And she turned away and went out of the drawingroom to prevent herself from crying.

Startsev's heart left off throbbing uneasily. Going out of the club into the street, he first of all tore off the stiff

tie and drew a deep breath. He was a little ashamed and his vanity was wounded he had not expected a

refusal and could not believe that all his dreams, his hopes and yearnings, had led him up to such a stupid

end, just as in some little play at an amateur performance, and he was sorry for his feeling, for that love of

his, so sorry that he felt as though he could have burst into sobs or have violently belaboured Panteleimon's

For three days he could not get on with anything, he could not eat nor sleep; but when the news reached him

that Ekaterina Ivanovna had gone away to Moscow to enter the Conservatoire, he grew calmer and lived as

Afterwards, remembering sometimes how he had wandered about the cemetery or how he had driven all over

Four years had passed. Startsev already had a large practice in the town. Every morning he hurriedly saw his

patients at Dyalizh, then he drove in to see his town patients. By now he drove, not with a pair, but with a

team of three with bells on them, and he returned home late at night. He had grown broader and stouter, and

was not very fond of walking, as he was somewhat asthmatic. And Panteleimon had grown stout, too, and the

broader he grew, the more mournfully he sighed and complained of his hard luck: he was sick of driving!

Startsev used to visit various households and met many people, but did not become intimate with any one.

The inhabitants irritated him by their conversation, their views of life, and even their appearance. Experience

taught him by degrees that while he played cards or lunched with one of these people, the man was a

peaceable, friendly, and even intelligent human being; that as soon as one talked of anything not eatable, for

instance, of politics or science, he would be completely at a loss, or would expound a philosophy so stupid

and illnatured that there was nothing else to do but wave one's hand in despair and go away. Even when

Startsev tried to talk to liberal citizens, saying, for instance, that humanity, thank God, was progressing, and

that one day it would be possible to dispense with passports and capital punishment, the liberal citizen would

look at him askance and ask him mistrustfully: "Then any one could murder any one he chose in the open

street?" And when, at tea or supper, Startsev observed in company that one should work, and that one ought

not to live without working, every one took this as a reproach, and began to get angry and argue aggressively.

With all that, the inhabitants did nothing, absolutely nothing, and took no interest in anything, and it was

quite impossible to think of anything to say. And Startsev avoided conversation, and confined himself to

eating and playing vint; and when there was a family festivity in some household and he was invited to a

And everything that was said at the time was uninteresting, unjust, and stupid; he felt irritated and disturbed,

but held his tongue, and, because he sat glumly silent and looked at his plate, he was nicknamed in the town

All such entertainments as theatres and concerts he declined, but he played vint every evening for three hours

with enjoyment. He had another diversion to which he took imperceptibly, little by little: in the evening he

would take out of his pockets the notes he had gained by his practice, and sometimes there were stuffed in his

pockets notes yellow and green, and smelling of scent and vinegar and incense and fish oil up to the

value of seventy roubles; and when they amounted to some hundreds he took them to the Mutual Credit Bank

He was only twice at the Turkins' in the course of the four years after Ekaterina Ivanovna had gone away, on

each occasion at the invitation of Vera Iosifovna, who was still undergoing treatment for migraine. Every

summer Ekaterina Ivanovna came to stay with her parents, but he did not once see her; it somehow never

But now four years had passed. One still, warm morning a letter was brought to the hospital. Vera Iosifovna

wrote to Dmitri Ionitch that she was missing him very much, and begged him to come and see them, and to

relieve her sufferings; and, by the way, it was her birthday. Below was a postscript: "I join in mother's

"How do you do, if you please?" Ivan Petrovitch met him, smiling with his eyes only. "Bongjour."

Vera Iosifovna, whitehaired and looking much older, shook Startsev's hand, sighed affectedly, and said:

"You don't care to pay attentions to me, doctor. You never come and see us; I am too old for you. But now

And Kitten? She had grown thinner, paler, had grown handsomer and more graceful; but now she was

Ekaterina Ivanovna, not Kitten; she had lost the freshness and look of childish na�vet�. And in her expression

and manners there was something new guilty and diffident, as though she did not feel herself at home here

"How many summers, how many winters!" she said, giving Startsev her hand, and he could see that her heart

was beating with excitement; and looking at him intently and curiously, she went on: "How much stouter you

are! You look sunburnt and more manly, but on the whole you have changed very little."

Now, too, he thought her attractive, very attractive, but there was something lacking in her, or else something

superfluous he could not himself have said exactly what it was, but something prevented him from feeling

as before. He did not like her pallor, her new expression, her faint smile, her voice, and soon afterwards he

disliked her clothes, too, the low chair in which she was sitting; he disliked something in the past when he

had almost married her. He thought of his love, of the dreams and the hopes which had troubled him four

They had tea with cakes. Then Vera Iosifovna read aloud a novel; she read of things that never happen in real

life, and Startsev listened, looked at her handsome grey head, and waited for her to finish.

People are not stupid because they can't write novels, but because they can't conceal it when they do," he

Then Ekaterina Ivanovna played long and noisily on the piano, and when she finished she was profusely

She looked at him, and evidently expected him to ask her to go into the garden, but he remained silent.

"Let us have a talk," she said, going up to him. "How are you getting on? What are you doing? How are

things? I have been thinking about you all these days," she went on nervously. "I wanted to write to you,

wanted to come myself to see you at Dyalizh. I quite made up my mind to go, but afterwards I thought better

of it. God knows what your attitude is towards me now; I have been looking forward to seeing you today

They went into the garden and sat down on the seat under the old maple, just as they had done four years

"I feel so excited!" said Ekaterina Ivanovna, and she hid her face in her hands. "But don't pay attention to it. I

am so happy to be at home; I am so glad to see every one. I can't get used to it. So many memories! I thought

Now he saw her face near, her shining eyes, and in the darkness she looked younger than in the room, and

even her old childish expression seemed to have come back to her. And indeed she was looking at him with

na�ve curiosity, as though she wanted to get a closer view and understanding of the man who had loved her so

ardently, with such tenderness, and so unsuccessfully; her eyes thanked him for that love. And he

remembered all that had been, every minute detail; how he had wandered about the cemetery, how he had

returned home in the morning exhausted, and he suddenly felt sad and regretted the past. A warmth began

"Do you remember how I took you to the dance at the club?" he asked. "It was dark and rainy then. . ."

The warmth was glowing now in his heart, and he longed to talk, to rail at life. . . .

"Ech!" he said with a sigh. "You ask how I am living. How do we live here? Why, not at all. We grow old,

we grow stout, we grow slack. Day after day passes; life slips by without colour, without expressions,

without thoughts. . . . In the daytime working for gain, and in the evening the club, the company of

cardplayers, alcoholic, raucousvoiced gentlemen whom I can't endure. What is there nice in it?"

"Well, you have work a noble object in life. You used to be so fond of talking of your hospital. I was such

a queer girl then; I imagined myself such a great pianist. Nowadays all young ladies play the piano, and I

played, too, like everybody else, and there was nothing special about me. I am just such a pianist as my

mother is an authoress. And of course I didn't understand you then, but afterwards in Moscow I often thought

of you. I thought of no one but you. What happiness to be a district doctor; to help the suffering; to be serving

the people! What happiness!" Ekaterina Ivanovna repeated with enthusiasm. "When I thought of you in

Startsev thought of the notes he used to take out of his pockets in the evening with such pleasure, and the

"You are the best man I've known in my life," she went on. "We will see each other and talk, won't we?

Promise me. I am not a pianist; I am not in error about myself now, and I will not play before you or talk of

When they had gone into the house, and when Startsev saw in the lamplight her face, and her sad, grateful,

"You have no human right to go before supper," said Ivan Petrovitch as he saw him off. "It's extremely

perpendicular on your part. Well, now, perform!" he added, addressing Pava in the hall.

Pava, no longer a boy, but a young man with moustaches, threw himself into an attitude, flung up his arm,

All this irritated Startsev. Getting into his carriage, and looking at the dark house and garden which had once

been so precious and so dear, he thought of everything at once Vera Iosifovna's novels and Kitten's noisy

playing, and Ivan Petrovitch's jokes and Pava's tragic posturing, and thought if the most talented people in the

"You don't come and see us why?" she wrote to him. "I am afraid that you have changed towards us. I am

afraid, and I am terrified at the very thought of it. Reassure me; come and tell me that everything is well.

"Tell them, my good fellow, that I can't come today; I am very busy. Say I will come in three days or so."

But three days passed, a week passed; he still did not go. Happening once to drive past the Turkins' house, he

thought he must go in, if only for a moment, but on second thoughts . . . did not go in.

Several more years have passed. Startsev has grown stouter still, has grown corpulent, breathes heavily, and

already walks with his head thrown back. When stout and red in the face, he drives with his bells and his

team of three horses, and Panteleimon, also stout and red in the face with his thick beefy neck, sits on the

box, holding his arms stiffly out before him as though they were made of wood, and shouts to those he meets:

"Keep to the riiight!" it is an impressive picture; one might think it was not a mortal, but some heathen

deity in his chariot. He has an immense practice in the town, no time to breathe, and already has an estate and

two houses in the town, and he is looking out for a third more profitable; and when at the Mutual Credit Bank

he is told of a house that is for sale, he goes to the house without ceremony, and, marching through all the

rooms, regardless of halfdressed women and children who gaze at him in amazement and alarm, he prods at

He has a great deal to do, but still he does not give up his work as district doctor; he is greedy for gain, and he

tries to be in all places at once. At Dyalizh and in the town he is called simply "Ionitch": "Where is Ionitch

Probably because his throat is covered with rolls of fat, his voice has changed; it has become thin and sharp.

His temper has changed, too: he has grown illhumoured and irritable. When he sees his patients he is

usually out of temper; he impatiently taps the floor with his stick, and shouts in his disagreeable voice:

"Be so good as to confine yourself to answering my questions! Don't talk so much!"

During all the years he had lived at Dyalizh his love for Kitten had been his one joy, and probably his last. In

the evenings he plays vint at the club, and then sits alone at a big table and has supper. Ivan, the oldest and

most respectable of the waiters, serves him, hands him Lafitte No. 17, and every one at the club the

members of the committee, the cook and waiters know what he likes and what he doesn't like and do their

very utmost to satisfy him, or else he is sure to fly into a rage and bang on the floor with his stick.

As he eats his supper, he turns round from time to time and puts in his spoke in some conversation:

"What Turkins are you speaking of? Do you mean the people whose daughter plays on the piano?"

And the Turkins? Ivan Petrovitch has grown no older; he is not changed in the least, and still makes jokes and

tells anecdotes as of old. Vera Iosifovna still reads her novels aloud to her visitors with eagerness and

touching simplicity. And Kitten plays the piano for four hours every day. She has grown visibly older, is

constantly ailing, and every autumn goes to the Crimea with her mother. When Ivan Petrovitch sees them off

IT is, as a rule, after losing heavily at cards or after a drinkingbout when an attack of dyspepsia is setting in

that Stepan Stepanitch Zhilin wakes up in an exceptionally gloomy frame of mind. He looks sour, rumpled,

and dishevelled; there is an expression of displeasure on his grey face, as though he were offended or

disgusted by something. He dresses slowly, sips his Vichy water deliberately, and begins walking about the

"I should like to know what bbbeast comes in here and does not shut the door!" he grumbles angrily,

wrapping his dressinggown about him and spitting loudly. "Take away that paper! Why is it lying about

here? We keep twenty servants, and the place is more untidy than a pothouse. Who was that ringing? Who

"That's Anfissa, the midwife who brought our Fedya into the world," answers his wife.

"There's no making you out, Stepan Stepanitch. You asked her yourself, and now you scold."

"I am not scolding; I am speaking. You might find something to do, my dear, instead of sitting with your

hands in your lap trying to pick a quarrel. Upon my word, women are beyond my comprehension! Beyond

my comprehension! How can they waste whole days doing nothing? A man works like an ox, like a bbeast,

while his wife, the partner of his life, sits like a pretty doll, sits and does nothing but watch for an opportunity

to quarrel with her husband by way of diversion. It's time to drop these schoolgirlish ways, my dear. You are

not a schoolgirl, not a young lady; you are a wife and mother! You turn away? Aha! It's not agreeable to

"It's strange that you only speak the bitter truth when your liver is out of order."

"What if I have? Is that anybody's business? Am I obliged to give an account of my doings to any one? It's

my own money I lose, I suppose? What I spend as well as what is spent in this house belongs to me me.

And so on, all in the same style. But at no other time is Stepan Stepanitch so reasonable, virtuous, stern or

just as at dinner, when all his household are sitting about him. It usually begins with the soup. After

"One must have the taste of a pig to eat hogwash like that! There's too much salt in it; it smells of dirty rags . .

. more like bugs than onions. . . . It's simply revolting, Anfissa Ivanovna," he says, addressing the midwife.

"Every day I give no end of money for housekeeping. . . . I deny myself everything, and this is what they

provide for my dinner! I suppose they want me to give up the office and go into the kitchen to do the cooking

"Oh, you think so?" says Zhilin, looking at her angrily from under his eyelids. "Every one to his taste, of

course. It must be confessed our tastes are very different, Varvara Vassilyevna. You, for instance, are

satisfied with the behaviour of this boy" (Zhilin with a tragic gesture points to his son Fedya); "you are

Fedya, a boy of seven with a pale, sickly face, leaves off eating and drops his eyes. His face grows paler still.

"Yes, you are delighted, and I am disgusted. Which of us is right, I cannot say, but I venture to think as his

father, I know my own son better than you do. Look how he is sitting! Is that the way decently brought up

Fedya tilts his chin up, cranes his neck, and fancies that he is holding himself better. Tears come into his

"Eat your dinner! Hold your spoon properly! You wait. I'll show you, you horrid boy! Don't dare to whimper!

Fedya tries to look straight at him, but his face is quivering and his eyes fill with tears.

"Aah! . . . you cry? You are naughty and then you cry? Go and stand in the corner, you beast!"

Fedya, wincing and quivering all over, creeps down from his chair and goes into the corner.

"You won't get off with that!" his parent persists. "If nobody else cares to look after your bringing up, so be

it; I must begin. . . . I won't let you be naughty and cry at dinner, my lad! Idiot! You must do your duty! Do

you understand? Do your duty! Your father works and you must work, too! No one must eat the bread of

"For God's sake, leave off," says his wife in French. "Don't nag at us before outsiders, at least. . . . The old

I am not afraid of outsiders," answers Zhilin in Russian. "Anfissa Ivanovna sees that I am speaking the truth.

Why, do you think I ought to be pleased with the boy? Do you know what he costs me? Do you know, you

nasty boy, what you cost me? Or do you imagine that I coin money, that I get it for nothing? Don't howl!

Hold your tongue! Do you hear what I say? Do you want me to whip you, you young ruffian?"

"This is insufferable," says his mother, getting up from the table and flinging down her dinnernapkin. "You

"Now she is offended," grumbles Zhilin, with a forced smile. "She's been spoilt. . . . That's how it is, Anfissa

Ivanovna; no one likes to hear the truth nowadays. . . . It's all my fault, it seems."

Several minutes of silence follow. Zhilin looks round at the plates, and noticing that no one has yet touched

their soup, heaves a deep sigh, and stares at the flushed and uneasy face of the governess.

"Why don't you eat, Varvara Vassilyevna?" he asks. "Offended, I suppose? I see. . . . You don't like to be told

the truth. You must forgive me, it's my nature; I can't be a hypocrite. . . . I always blurt out the plain truth" (a

sigh). "But I notice that my presence is unwelcome. No one can eat or talk while I am here. . . . Well, you

Zhilin gets up and walks with dignity to the door. As he passes the weeping Fedya he stops.

"After all that has passed here, you are free," he says to Fedya, throwing back his head with dignity. "I won't

meddle in your bringing up again. I wash my hands of it! I humbly apologise that as a father, from a sincere

desire for your welfare, I have disturbed you and your mentors. At the same time, once for all I disclaim all

Fedya wails and sobs more loudly than ever. Zhilin turns with dignity to the door and departs to his bedroom.

When he wakes from his afterdinner nap he begins to feel the stings of conscience. He is ashamed to face

his wife, his son, Anfissa Ivanovna, and even feels very wretched when he recalls the scene at dinner, but his

amourpropre is too much for him; he has not the manliness to be frank, and he goes on sulking and

Waking up next morning, he feels in excellent spirits, and whistles gaily as he washes. Going into the

diningroom to breakfast, he finds there Fedya, who, at the sight of his father, gets up and looks at him

"Well, young man?" Zhilin greets him goodhumouredly, sitting down to the table. "What have you got to

tell me, young man? Are you all right? Well, come, chubby; give your father a kiss."

With a pale, grave face Fedya goes up to his father and touches his cheek with his quivering lips, then walks

ANDREY VASSILITCH KOVRIN, who held a master's degree at the University, had exhausted himself, and

had upset his nerves. He did not send for a doctor, but casually, over a bottle of wine, he spoke to a friend

who was a doctor, and the latter advised him to spend the spring and summer in the country. Very

opportunely a long letter came from Tanya Pesotsky, who asked him to come and stay with them at

To begin with that was in April he went to his own home, Kovrinka, and there spent three weeks in

solitude; then, as soon as the roads were in good condition, he set off, driving in a carriage, to visit Pesotsky,

his former guardian, who had brought him up, and was a horticulturist well known all over Russia. The

distance from Kovrinka to Borissovka was reckoned only a little over fifty miles. To drive along a soft road

Pesotsky had an immense house with columns and lions, off which the stucco was peeling, and with a

footman in swallowtails at the entrance. The old park, laid out in the English style, gloomy and severe,

stretched for almost threequarters of a mile to the river, and there ended in a steep, precipitous clay bank,

where pines grew with bare roots that looked like shaggy paws; the water shone below with an unfriendly

gleam, and the peewits flew up with a plaintive cry, and there one always felt that one must sit down and

write a ballad. But near the house itself, in the courtyard and orchard, which together with the nurseries

covered ninety acres, it was all life and gaiety even in bad weather. Such marvellous roses, lilies, camellias;

such tulips of all possible shades, from glistening white to sooty black such a wealth of flowers, in fact,

Kovrin had never seen anywhere as at Pesotsky's. It was only the beginning of spring, and the real glory of

the flowerbeds was still hidden away in the hothouses. But even the flowers along the avenues, and here

and there in the flowerbeds, were enough to make one feel, as one walked about the garden, as though one

were in a realm of tender colours, especially in the early morning when the dew was glistening on every

What was the decorative part of the garden, and what Pesotsky contemptuously spoke of as rubbish, had at

Every sort of caprice, of elaborate monstrosity and mockery at Nature was here. There were espaliers of

fruittrees, a peartree in the shape of a pyramidal poplar, spherical oaks and limetrees, an appletree in the

shape of an umbrella, plumtrees trained into arches, crests, candelabra, and even into the number 1862

the year when Pesotsky first took up horticulture. One came across, too, lovely, graceful trees with strong,

straight stems like palms, and it was only by looking intently that one could recognise these trees as

gooseberries or currants. But what made the garden most cheerful and gave it a lively air, was the continual

coming and going in it, from early morning till evening; people with wheelbarrows, shovels, and

wateringcans swarmed round the trees and bushes, in the avenues and the flowerbeds, like ants. . . .

Kovrin arrived at Pesotsky's at ten o'clock in the evening. He found Tanya and her father, Yegor Semyonitch,

in great anxiety. The clear starlight sky and the thermometer foretold a frost towards morning, and meanwhile

Ivan Karlovitch, the gardener, had gone to the town, and they had no one to rely upon. At supper they talked

of nothing but the morning frost, and it was settled that Tanya should not go to bed, and between twelve and

one should walk through the garden, and see that everything was done properly, and Yegor Semyonitch

Kovrin sat with Tanya all the evening, and after midnight went out with her into the garden. It was cold.

There was a strong smell of burning already in the garden. In the big orchard, which was called the

commercial garden, and which brought Yegor Semyonitch several thousand clear profit, a thick, black, acrid

smoke was creeping over the ground and, curling around the trees, was saving those thousands from the frost.

Here the trees were arranged as on a chessboard, in straight and regular rows like ranks of soldiers, and this

severe pedantic regularity, and the fact that all the trees were of the same size, and had tops and trunks all

exactly alike, made them look monotonous and even dreary. Kovrin and Tanya walked along the rows where

fires of dung, straw, and all sorts of refuse were smouldering, and from time to time they were met by

labourers who wandered in the smoke like shadows. The only trees in flower were the cherries, plums, and

certain sorts of apples, but the whole garden was plunged in smoke, and it was only near the nurseries that

"Even as a child I used to sneeze from the smoke here," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "but to this day I

He laughed and took her arm. Her broad, very earnest face, chilled with the frost, with her delicate black

eyebrows, the turnedup collar of her coat, which prevented her moving her head freely, and the whole of her

thin, graceful figure, with her skirts tucked up on account of the dew, touched him.

"Good heavens! she is grown up," he said. "When I went away from here last, five years ago, you were still a

child. You were such a thin, longlegged creature, with your hair hanging on your shoulders; you used to wear

short frocks, and I used to tease you, calling you a heron. . . . What time does!"

"Yes, five years!" sighed Tanya. "Much water has flowed since then. Tell me, Andryusha, honestly," she

began eagerly, looking him in the face: "do you feel strange with us now? But why do I ask you? You are a

man, you live your own interesting life, you are somebody. . . . To grow apart is so natural! But however that

may be, Andryusha, I want you to think of us as your people. We have a right to that."

"You were surprised this evening that we have so many of your photographs. You know my father adores

you. Sometimes it seems to me that he loves you more than he does me. He is proud of you. You are a clever,

extraordinary man, you have made a brilliant career for yourself, and he is persuaded that you have turned out

like this because he brought you up. I don't try to prevent him from thinking so. Let him."

Dawn was already beginning, and that was especially perceptible from the distinctness with which the coils

"It's time we were asleep, though," said Tanya, "and it's cold, too." She took his arm. "Thank you for coming,

Andryusha. We have only uninteresting acquaintances, and not many of them. We have only the garden, the

garden, the garden, and nothing else. Standards, halfstandards," she laughed. "Aports, Reinettes,

Borovinkas, budded stocks, grafted stocks. . . . All, all our life has gone into the garden. I never even dream

of anything but apples and pears. Of course, it is very nice and useful, but sometimes one longs for something

else for variety. I remember that when you used to come to us for the summer holidays, or simply a visit, it

always seemed to be fresher and brighter in the house, as though the covers had been taken off the lustres and

She talked a long while and with great feeling. For some reason the idea came into his head that in the course

of the summer he might grow fond of this little, weak, talkative creature, might be carried away and fall in

love; in their position it was so possible and natural! This thought touched and amused him; he bent down to

By the time they reached the house, Yegor Semyonitch had got up. Kovrin did not feel sleepy; he talked to

the old man and went to the garden with him. Yegor Semyonitch was a tall, broadshouldered, corpulent

man, and he suffered from asthma, yet he walked so fast that it was hard work to hurry after him. He had an

extremely preoccupied air; he was always hurrying somewhere, with an expression that suggested that if he

"Here is a business, brother . . ." he began, standing still to take breath. "On the surface of the ground, as you

see, is frost; but if you raise the thermometer on a stick fourteen feet above the ground, there it is warm. . . .

"H'm! . . . One can't know everything, of course. . . . However large the intellect may be, you can't find room

"Well, God bless you! . . ." said Yegor Semyonitch, meditatively stroking his grey whiskers. "God bless you!

But suddenly he listened, and, with a terrible face, ran off and quickly disappeared behind the trees in a cloud

"Who tied this horse to an appletree?" Kovrin heard his despairing, heartrending cry. "Who is the low

scoundrel who has dared to tie this horse to an appletree? My God, my God! They have ruined everything;

they have spoilt everything; they have done everything filthy, horrible, and abominable. The orchard's done

"What is one to do with these accursed people?" he said in a tearful voice, flinging up his hands. "Styopka

was carting dung at night, and tied the horse to an appletree! He twisted the reins round it, the rascal, as

tightly as he could, so that the bark is rubbed off in three places. What do you think of that! I spoke to him

and he stands like a post and only blinks his eyes. Hanging is too good for him."

"Well, God bless you! . . . God bless you! . . ." he muttered. "I am very glad you have come. Unutterably

Then, with the same rapid step and preoccupied face, he made the round of the whole garden, and showed his

former ward all his greenhouses and hothouses, his coveredin garden, and two apiaries which he called the

While they were walking the sun rose, flooding the garden with brilliant light. It grew warm. Foreseeing a

long, bright, cheerful day, Kovrin recollected that it was only the beginning of May, and that he had before

him a whole summer as bright, cheerful, and long; and suddenly there stirred in his bosom a joyous, youthful

feeling, such as he used to experience in his childhood, running about in that garden. And he hugged the old

man and kissed him affectionately. Both of them, feeling touched, went indoors and drank tea out of

oldfashioned china cups, with cream and satisfying krendels made with milk and eggs; and these trifles

reminded Kovrin again of his childhood and boyhood. The delightful present was blended with the

impressions of the past that stirred within him; there was a tightness at his heart; yet he was happy.

He waited till Tanya was awake and had coffee with her, went for a walk, then went to his room and sat down

to work. He read attentively, making notes, and from time to time raised his eyes to look out at the open

windows or at the fresh, still dewy flowers in the vases on the table; and again he dropped his eyes to his

book, and it seemed to him as though every vein in his body was quivering and fluttering with pleasure.

In the country he led just as nervous and restless a life as in town. He read and wrote a great deal, he studied

Italian, and when he was out for a walk, thought with pleasure that he would soon sit down to work again. He

slept so little that every one wondered at him; if he accidentally dozed for half an hour in the daytime, he

would lie awake all night, and, after a sleepless night, would feel cheerful and vigorous as though nothing had

He talked a great deal, drank wine, and smoked expensive cigars. Very often, almost every day, young ladies

of neighbouring families would come to the Pesotskys', and would sing and play the piano with Tanya;

sometimes a young neighbour who was a good violinist would come, too. Kovrin listened with eagerness to

the music and singing, and was exhausted by it, and this showed itself by his eyes closing and his head falling

One day he was sitting on the balcony after evening tea, reading. At the same time, in the drawingroom,

Tanya taking soprano, one of the young ladies a contralto, and the young man with his violin, were practising

a wellknown serenade of Braga's. Kovrin listened to the words they were Russian and could not

understand their meaning. At last, leaving his book and listening attentively, he understood: a maiden, full of

sick fancies, heard one night in her garden mysterious sounds, so strange and lovely that she was obliged to

recognise them as a holy harmony which is unintelligible to us mortals, and so flies back to heaven. Kovrin's

eyes began to close. He got up, and in exhaustion walked up and down the drawingroom, and then the

diningroom. When the singing was over he took Tanya's arm, and with her went out on the balcony.

"I have been all day thinking of a legend," he said. "I don't remember whether I have read it somewhere or

heard it, but it is a strange and almost grotesque legend. To begin with, it is somewhat obscure. A thousand

years ago a monk, dressed in black, wandered about the desert, somewhere in Syria or Arabia. . . . Some

miles from where he was, some fisherman saw another black monk, who was moving slowly over the surface

of a lake. This second monk was a mirage. Now forget all the laws of optics, which the legend does not

recognise, and listen to the rest. From that mirage there was cast another mirage, then from that other a third,

so that the image of the black monk began to be repeated endlessly from one layer of the atmosphere to

another. So that he was seen at one time in Africa, at another in Spain, then in Italy, then in the Far North. . . .

Then he passed out of the atmosphere of the earth, and now he is wandering all over the universe, still never

coming into conditions in which he might disappear. Possibly he may be seen now in Mars or in some star of

the Southern Cross. But, my dear, the real point on which the whole legend hangs lies in the fact that, exactly

a thousand years from the day when the monk walked in the desert, the mirage will return to the atmosphere

of the earth again and will appear to men. And it seems that the thousand years is almost up. . . . According to

"But the most wonderful part of it all," laughed Kovrin, "is that I simply cannot recall where I got this legend

from. Have I read it somewhere? Have I heard it? Or perhaps I dreamed of the black monk. I swear I don't

Letting Tanya go back to her visitors, he went out of the house, and, lost in meditation, walked by the

flowerbeds. The sun was already setting. The flowers, having just been watered, gave forth a damp,

irritating fragrance. Indoors they began singing again, and in the distance the violin had the effect of a human

voice. Kovrin, racking his brains to remember where he had read or heard the legend, turned slowly towards

the park, and unconsciously went as far as the river. By a little path that ran along the steep bank, between the

bare roots, he went down to the water, disturbed the peewits there and frightened two ducks. The last rays of

the setting sun still threw light here and there on the gloomy pines, but it was quite dark on the surface of the

river. Kovrin crossed to the other side by the narrow bridge. Before him lay a wide field covered with young

rye not yet in blossom. There was no living habitation, no living soul in the distance, and it seemed as though

the little path, if one went along it, would take one to the unknown, mysterious place where the sun had just

"How open, how free, how still it is here!" thought Kovrin, walking along the path. "And it feels as though all

But then waves began running across the rye, and a light evening breeze softly touched his uncovered head.

A minute later there was another gust of wind, but stronger the rye began rustling, and he heard behind

him the hollow murmur of the pines. Kovrin stood still in amazement. From the horizon there rose up to the

sky, like a whirlwind or a waterspout, a tall black column. Its outline was indistinct, but from the first instant

it could be seen that it was not standing still, but moving with fearful rapidity, moving straight towards

Kovrin, and the nearer it came the smaller and the more distinct it was. Kovrin moved aside into the rye to

A monk, dressed in black, with a grey head and black eyebrows, his arms crossed over his breast, floated by

him. . . . His bare feet did not touch the earth. After he had floated twenty feet beyond him, he looked round

at Kovrin, and nodded to him with a friendly but sly smile. But what a pale, fearfully pale, thin face!

Beginning to grow larger again, he flew across the river, collided noiselessly with the clay bank and pines,

Without trying to explain to himself the strange apparition, glad that he had succeeded in seeing so near and

so distinctly, not only the monk's black garments, but even his face and eyes, agreeably excited, he went back

In the park and in the garden people were moving about quietly, in the house they were playing so he

alone had seen the monk. He had an intense desire to tell Tanya and Yegor Semyonitch, but he reflected that

they would certainly think his words the ravings of delirium, and that would frighten them; he had better say

He laughed aloud, sang, and danced the mazurka; he was in high spirits, and all of them, the visitors and

Tanya, thought he had a peculiar look, radiant and inspired, and that he was very interesting.

After supper, when the visitors had gone, he went to his room and lay down on the sofa: he wanted to think

"Here, Andryusha; read father's articles," she said, giving him a bundle of pamphlets and proofs. "They are

"Capitally, indeed!" said Yegor Semyonitch, following her and smiling constrainedly; he was ashamed.

"Don't listen to her, please; don't read them! Though, if you want to go to sleep, read them by all means; they

"I think they are splendid articles," said Tanya, with deep conviction. "You read them, Andryusha, and

persuade father to write oftener. He could write a complete manual of horticulture."

Yegor Semyonitch gave a forced laugh, blushed, and began uttering the phrases usually made us of by an

"In that case, begin with Gaucher's article and these Russian articles," he muttered, turning over the

pamphlets with a trembling hand, "or else you won't understand. Before you read my objections, you must

know what I am objecting to. But it's all nonsense . . . tiresome stuff. Besides, I believe it's bedtime."

Tanya went away. Yegor Semyonitch sat down on the sofa by Kovrin and heaved a deep sigh.

"Yes, my boy . . ." he began after a pause. "That's how it is, my dear lecturer. Here I write articles, and take

part in exhibitions, and receive medals. . . . Pesotsky, they say, has apples the size of a head, and Pesotsky,

they say, has made his fortune with his garden. In short, 'Kotcheby is rich and glorious.' But one asks oneself:

what is it all for? The garden is certainly fine, a model. It's not really a garden, but a regular institution, which

is of the greatest public importance because it marks, so to say, a new era in Russian agriculture and Russian

"I do not mean in that sense. I meant to ask: what will happen to the garden when I die? In the condition in

which you see it now, it would not be maintained for one month without me. The whole secret of success lies

not in its being a big garden or a great number of labourers being employed in it, but in the fact that I love the

work. Do you understand? I love it perhaps more than myself. Look at me; I do everything myself. I work

from morning to night: I do all the grafting myself, the pruning myself, the planting myself. I do it all myself:

when any one helps me I am jealous and irritable till I am rude. The whole secret lies in loving it that is, in

the sharp eye of the master; yes, and in the master's hands, and in the feeling that makes one, when one goes

anywhere for an hour's visit, sit, ill at ease, with one's heart far away, afraid that something may have

happened in the garden. But when I die, who will look after it? Who will work? The gardener? The

labourers? Yes? But I will tell you, my dear fellow, the worst enemy in the garden is not a hare, not a

"And Tanya?" asked Kovrin, laughing. "She can't be more harmful than a hare? She loves the work and

"Yes, she loves it and understands it. If after my death the garden goes to her and she is the mistress, of

course nothing better could be wished. But if, which God forbid, she should marry," Yegor Semyonitch

whispered, and looked with a frightened look at Kovrin, "that's just it. If she marries and children come, she

will have no time to think about the garden. What I fear most is: she will marry some fine gentleman, and he

will be greedy, and he will let the garden to people who will run it for profit, and everything will go to the

"Perhaps it is egoism, but I tell you frankly: I don't want Tanya to get married. I am afraid of it! There is one

young dandy comes to see us, bringing his violin and scraping on it; I know Tanya will not marry him, I

know it quite well; but I can't bear to see him! Altogether, my boy, I am very queer. I know that."

Yegor Semyonitch got up and walked about the room in excitement, and it was evident that he wanted to say

"I am very fond of you, and so I am going to speak to you openly," he decided at last, thrusting his hands into

his pockets. "I deal plainly with certain delicate questions, and say exactly what I think, and I cannot endure

socalled hidden thoughts. I will speak plainly: you are the only man to whom I should not be afraid to marry

my daughter. You are a clever man with a good heart, and would not let my beloved work go to ruin; and the

chief reason is that I love you as a son, and I am proud of you. If Tanya and you could get up a romance

somehow, then well! I should be very glad and even happy. I tell you this plainly, without mincing

Kovrin laughed. Yegor Semyonitch opened the door to go out, and stood in the doorway.

"If Tanya and you had a son, I would make a horticulturist of him," he said, after a moment's thought.

Left alone, Kovrin settled himself more comfortably on the sofa and took up the articles. The title of one was

"On Intercropping"; of another, "A few Words on the Remarks of Monsieur Z. concerning the Trenching of

the Soil for a New Garden"; a third, "Additional Matter concerning Grafting with a Dormant Bud"; and they

were all of the same sort. But what a restless, jerky tone! What nervous, almost hysterical passion! Here was

an article, one would have thought, with most peaceable and impersonal contents: the subject of it was the

Russian Antonovsky Apple. But Yegor Semyonitch began it with "Audiatur altera pars," and finished it with

"Sapienti sat"; and between these two quotations a perfect torrent of venomous phrases directed "at the

learned ignorance of our recognised horticultural authorities, who observe Nature from the height of their

university chairs," or at Monsieur Gaucher, "whose success has been the work of the vulgar and the

dilettanti." "And then followed an inappropriate, affected, and insincere regret that peasants who stole fruit

"It is beautiful, charming, healthy work, but even in this there is strife and passion," thought Kovrin, "I

suppose that everywhere and in all careers men of ideas are nervous, and marked by exaggerated

He thought of Tanya, who was so pleased with Yegor Semyonitch's articles. Small, pale, and so thin that her

shoulderblades stuck out, her eyes, wide and open, dark and intelligent, had an intent gaze, as though

looking for something. She walked like her father with a little hurried step. She talked a great deal and was

fond of arguing, accompanying every phrase, however insignificant, with expressive mimicry and

Kovrin went on reading the articles, but he understood nothing of them, and flung them aside. The same

pleasant excitement with which he had earlier in the evening danced the mazurka and listened to the music

was now mastering him again and rousing a multitude of thoughts. He got up and began walking about the

room, thinking about the black monk. It occurred to him that if this strange, supernatural monk had appeared

to him only, that meant that he was ill and had reached the point of having hallucinations. This reflection

"But I am all right, and I am doing no harm to any one; so there is no harm in my hallucinations," he thought;

He sat down on the sofa and clasped his hands round his head. Restraining the unaccountable joy which filled

his whole being, he then paced up and down again, and sat down to his work. But the thought that he read in

the book did not satisfy him. He wanted something gigantic, unfathomable, stupendous. Towards morning he

When he heard the footsteps of Yegor Semyonitch going out into the garden, Kovrin rang the bell and asked

the footman to bring him some wine. He drank several glasses of Lafitte, then wrapped himself up, head and

Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya often quarrelled and said nasty things to each other.

They quarrelled about something that morning. Tanya burst out crying and went to her room. She would not

come down to dinner nor to tea. At first Yegor Semyonitch went about looking sulky and dignified, as though

to give every one to understand that for him the claims of justice and good order were more important than

anything else in the world; but he could not keep it up for long, and soon sank into depression. He walked

about the park dejectedly, continually sighing: "Oh, my God! My God!" and at dinner did not eat a morsel. At

last, guilty and consciencestricken, he knocked at the locked door and called timidly:

And from behind the door came a faint voice, weak with crying but still determined:

The depression of the master and mistress was reflected in the whole household, even in the labourers

working in the garden. Kovrin was absorbed in his interesting work, but at last he, too, felt dreary and

uncomfortable. To dissipate the general illhumour in some way, he made up his mind to intervene, and

"Fie, fie, for shame!" he began playfully, looking with surprise at Tanya's tearstained, woebegone face,

"But if you knew how he tortures me!" she said, and floods of scalding tears streamed from her big eyes. "He

torments me to death," she went on, wringing her hands. "I said nothing to him . . . nothing . . . I only said

that there was no need to keep . . . too many labourers . . . if we could hire them by the day when we wanted

them. You know . . . you know the labourers have been doing nothing for a whole week. . . . I . . . I . . . only

said that, and he shouted and . . . said . . . a lot of horrible insulting things to me. What for?"

"There, there," said Kovrin, smoothing her hair. "You've quarrelled with each other, you've cried, and that's

enough. You must not be angry for long that's wrong . . . all the more as he loves you beyond everything."

"He has . . . has spoiled my whole life," Tanya went on, sobbing. "I hear nothing but abuse and . . . insults. He

thinks I am of no use in the house. Well! He is right. I shall go away tomorrow; I shall become a telegraph

"Come, come, come. . . . You mustn't cry, Tanya. You mustn't, dear. . . . You are both hottempered and

Kovrin talked affectionately and persuasively, while she went on crying, twitching her shoulders and

wringing her hands, as though some terrible misfortune had really befallen her. He felt all the sorrier for her

because her grief was not a serious one, yet she suffered extremely. What trivialities were enough to make

this little creature miserable for a whole day, perhaps for her whole life! Comforting Tanya, Kovrin thought

that, apart from this girl and her father, he might hunt the world over and would not find people who would

love him as one of themselves, as one of their kindred. If it had not been for those two he might very likely,

having lost his father and mother in early childhood, never to the day of his death have known what was

meant by genuine affection and that na�ve, uncritical love which is only lavished on very close blood

relations; and he felt that the nerves of this weeping, shaking girl responded to his halfsick, overstrained

nerves like iron to a magnet. He never could have loved a healthy, strong, rosycheeked woman, but pale,

And he liked stroking her hair and her shoulders, pressing her hand and wiping away her tears. . . . At last she

left off crying. She went on for a long time complaining of her father and her hard, insufferable life in that

house, entreating Kovrin to put himself in her place; then she began, little by little, smiling, and sighing that

God had given her such a bad temper. At last, laughing aloud, she called herself a fool, and ran out of the

When a little later Kovrin went into the garden, Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya were walking side by side

along an avenue as though nothing had happened, and both were eating rye bread with salt on it, as both were

Glad that he had been so successful in the part of peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park. Sitting on a garden

seat, thinking, he heard the rattle of a carriage and a feminine laugh visitors were arriving. When the

shades of evening began falling on the garden, the sounds of the violin and singing voices reached him

indistinctly, and that reminded him of the black monk. Where, in what land or in what planet, was that optical

Hardly had he recalled the legend and pictured in his imagination the dark apparition he had seen in the

ryefield, when, from behind a pinetree exactly opposite, there came out noiselessly, without the slightest

rustle, a man of medium height with uncovered grey head, all in black, and barefooted like a beggar, and his

black eyebrows stood out conspicuously on his pale, deathlike face. Nodding his head graciously, this

beggar or pilgrim came noiselessly to the seat and sat down, and Kovrin recognised him as the black monk.

For a minute they looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and the monk with friendliness, and, just as

"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin. "Why are you here and sitting still? That does not fit in with the legend."

"That does not matter," the monk answered in a low voice, not immediately turning his face towards him.

"The legend, the mirage, and I are all the products of your excited imagination. I am a phantom."

"You can think as you like," said the monk, with a faint smile. "I exist in your imagination, and your

"You have a very old, wise, and extremely expressive face, as though you really had lived more than a

thousand years," said Kovrin. "I did not know that my imagination was capable of creating such phenomena.

"Yes, you are one of those few who are justly called the chosen of God. You do the service of eternal truth.

Your thoughts, your designs, the marvellous studies you are engaged in, and all your life, bear the Divine, the

heavenly stamp, seeing that they are consecrated to the rational and the beautiful that is, to what is

"You said 'eternal truth.' . . . But is eternal truth of use to man and within his reach, if there is no eternal life?"

"Yes, of course. A grand, brilliant future is in store for you men. And the more there are like you on earth, the

sooner will this future be realised. Without you who serve the higher principle and live in full understanding

and freedom, mankind would be of little account; developing in a natural way, it would have to wait a long

time for the end of its earthly history. You will lead it some thousands of years earlier into the kingdom of

eternal truth and therein lies your supreme service. You are the incarnation of the blessing of God, which

"As of all life enjoyment. True enjoyment lies in knowledge, and eternal life provides innumerable and

inexhaustible sources of knowledge, and in that sense it has been said: 'In My Father's house there are many

"If only you knew how pleasant it is to hear you!" said Kovrin, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.

"But I know that when you go away I shall be worried by the question of your reality. You are a phantom, an

"What if you are? Why trouble yourself? You are ill because you have overworked and exhausted yourself,

and that means that you have sacrificed your health to the idea, and the time is near at hand when you will

give up life itself to it. What could be better? That is the goal towards which all divinely endowed, noble

"And are you sure that the men of genius, whom all men trust, did not see phantoms, too? The learned say

now that genius is allied to madness. My friend, healthy and normal people are only the common herd.

Reflections upon the neurasthenia of the age, nervous exhaustion and degeneracy, et cetera, can only

seriously agitate those who place the object of life in the present that is, the common herd."

"Not everything the Greeks and the Romans said is true. Exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy all that

distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs for the idea, from the common folk is repellent to the animal side of

man that is, his physical health. I repeat, if you want to be healthy and normal, go to the common herd."

"Strange that you repeat what often comes into my mind," said Kovrin. "It is as though you had seen and

overheard my secret thoughts. But don't let us talk about me. What do you mean by 'eternal truth'?"

The monk did not answer. Kovrin looked at him and could not distinguish his face. His features grew blurred

and misty. Then the monk's head and arms disappeared; his body seemed merged into the seat and the

He went back to the house, lighthearted and happy. The little the monk had said to him had flattered, not his

vanity, but his whole soul, his whole being. To be one of the chosen, to serve eternal truth, to stand in the

ranks of those who could make mankind worthy of the kingdom of God some thousands of years sooner

that is, to free men from some thousands of years of unnecessary struggle, sin, and suffering; to sacrifice to

the idea everything youth, strength, health; to be ready to die for the common weal what an exalted,

what a happy lot! He recalled his past pure, chaste, laborious; he remembered what he had learned himself

and what he had taught to others, and decided that there was no exaggeration in the monk's words.

"Are you here?" she said. "And we have been looking and looking for you. . . . But what is the matter with

you?" she asked in wonder, glancing at his radiant, ecstatic face and eyes full of tears. "How strange you are,

"I am pleased, Tanya," said Kovrin, laying his hand on her shoulders. "I am more than pleased: I am happy.

Tanya, darling Tanya, you are an extraordinary, nice creature. Dear Tanya, I am so glad, I am so glad!"

"I have just passed through an exalted, wonderful, unearthly moment. But I can't tell you all about it or you

would call me mad and not believe me. Let us talk of you. Dear, delightful Tanya! I love you, and am used to

loving you. To have you near me, to meet you a dozen times a day, has become a necessity of my existence; I

"Oh," laughed Tanya, "you will forget about us in two days. We are humble people and you are a great man."

"No; let us talk in earnest!" he said. "I shall take you with me, Tanya. Yes? Will you come with me? Will you

"Come," said Tanya, and tried to laugh again, but the laugh would not come, and patches of colour came into

She began breathing quickly and walked very quickly, but not to the house, but further into the park.

"I was not thinking of it . . . I was not thinking of it," she said, wringing her hands in despair.

And Kovrin followed her and went on talking, with the same radiant, enthusiastic face:

"I want a love that will dominate me altogether; and that love only you, Tanya, can give me. I am happy! I

She was overwhelmed, and huddling and shrinking together, seemed ten years older all at once, while he

Learning from Kovrin that not only a romance had been got up, but that there would even be a wedding,

Yegor Semyonitch spent a long time in pacing from one corner of the room to the other, trying to conceal his

agitation. His hands began trembling, his neck swelled and turned purple, he ordered his racing droshky and

drove off somewhere. Tanya, seeing how he lashed the horse, and seeing how he pulled his cap over his ears,

understood what he was feeling, shut herself up in her room, and cried the whole day.

In the hothouses the peaches and plums were already ripe; the packing and sending off of these tender and

fragile goods to Moscow took a great deal of care, work, and trouble. Owing to the fact that the summer was

very hot and dry, it was necessary to water every tree, and a great deal of time and labour was spent on doing

it. Numbers of caterpillars made their appearance, which, to Kovrin's disgust, the labourers and even Yegor

Semyonitch and Tanya squashed with their fingers. In spite of all that, they had already to book autumn

orders for fruit and trees, and to carry on a great deal of correspondence. And at the very busiest time, when

no one seemed to have a free moment, the work of the fields carried off more than half their labourers from

the garden. Yegor Semyonitch, sunburnt, exhausted, illhumoured, galloped from the fields to the garden and

back again; cried that he was being torn to pieces, and that he should put a bullet through his brains.

Then came the fuss and worry of the trousseau, to which the Pesotskys attached a good deal of importance.

Every one's head was in a whirl from the snipping of the scissors, the rattle of the sewingmachine, the smell

of hot irons, and the caprices of the dressmaker, a huffy and nervous lady. And, as illluck would have it,

visitors came every day, who had to be entertained, fed, and even put up for the night. But all this hard labour

passed unnoticed as though in a fog. Tanya felt that love and happiness had taken her unawares, though she

had, since she was fourteen, for some reason been convinced that Kovrin would marry her and no one else.

She was bewildered, could not grasp it, could not believe herself. . . . At one minute such joy would swoop

down upon her that she longed to fly away to the clouds and there pray to God, at another moment she would

remember that in August she would have to part from her home and leave her father; or, goodness knows

why, the idea would occur to her that she was worthless insignificant and unworthy of a great man like

Kovrin and she would go to her room, lock herself in, and cry bitterly for several hours. When there were

visitors, she would suddenly fancy that Kovrin looked extraordinarily handsome, and that all the women were

in love with him and envying her, and her soul was filled with pride and rapture, as though she had

vanquished the whole world; but he had only to smile politely at any young lady for her to be trembling with

jealousy, to retreat to her room and tears again. These new sensations mastered her completely; she helped

her father mechanically, without noticing peaches, caterpillars or labourers, or how rapidly the time was

It was almost the same with Yegor Semyonitch. He worked from morning till night, was always in a hurry,

was irritable, and flew into rages, but all of this was in a sort of spellbound dream. It seemed as though there

were two men in him: one was the real Yegor Semyonitch, who was moved to indignation, and clutched his

head in despair when he heard of some irregularity from Ivan Karlovitch the gardener; and another not the

real one who seemed as though he were half drunk, would interrupt a business conversation at half a

"Say what you like, there is a great deal in blood. His mother was a wonderful woman, most highminded

and intelligent. It was a pleasure to look at her good, candid, pure face; it was like the face of an angel. She

drew splendidly, wrote verses, spoke five foreign languages, sang. . . . Poor thing! she died of consumption.

"When he was a boy and growing up in my house, he had the same angelic face, good and candid. The way

he looks and talks and moves is as soft and elegant as his mother's. And his intellect! We were always struck

with his intelligence. To be sure, it's not for nothing he's a Master of Arts! It's not for nothing! And wait a bit,

But at this point the real Yegor Semyonitch, suddenly coming to himself, would make a terrible face, would

"The devils! They have spoilt everything! They have ruined everything! They have spoilt everything! The

Kovrin, meanwhile, worked with the same ardour as before, and did not notice the general commotion. Love

only added fuel to the flames. After every talk with Tanya he went to his room, happy and triumphant, took

up his book or his manuscript with the same passion with which he had just kissed Tanya and told her of his

love. What the black monk had told him of the chosen of God, of eternal truth, of the brilliant future of

mankind and so on, gave peculiar and extraordinary significance to his work, and filled his soul with pride

and the consciousness of his own exalted consequence. Once or twice a week, in the park or in the house, he

met the black monk and had long conversations with him, but this did not alarm him, but, on the contrary,

delighted him, as he was now firmly persuaded that such apparitions only visited the elect few who rise up

One day the monk appeared at dinnertime and sat in the diningroom window. Kovrin was delighted, and

very adroitly began a conversation with Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya of what might be of interest to the

monk; the blackrobed visitor listened and nodded his head graciously, and Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya

listened, too, and smiled gaily without suspecting that Kovrin was not talking to them but to his hallucination.

Imperceptibly the fast of the Assumption was approaching, and soon after came the wedding, which, at Yegor

Semyonitch's urgent desire, was celebrated with "a flourish" that is, with senseless festivities that lasted

for two whole days and nights. Three thousand roubles' worth of food and drink was consumed, but the music

of the wretched hired band, the noisy toasts, the scurrying to and fro of the footmen, the uproar and crowding,

prevented them from appreciating the taste of the expensive wines and wonderful delicacies ordered from

One long winter night Kovrin was lying in bed, reading a French novel. Poor Tanya, who had headaches in

the evenings from living in town, to which she was not accustomed, had been asleep a long while, and, from

It struck three o'clock. Kovrin put out the light and lay down to sleep, lay for a long time with his eyes closed,

but could not get to sleep because, as he fancied, the room was very hot and Tanya talked in her sleep. At

halfpast four he lighted the candle again, and this time he saw the black monk sitting in an armchair near

"Goodmorning," said the monk, and after a brief pause he asked: "What are you thinking of now?"

"Of fame," answered Kovrin. "In the French novel I have just been reading, there is a description of a young

savant, who does silly things and pines away through worrying about fame. I can't understand such anxiety."

"Because you are wise. Your attitude towards fame is one of indifference, as towards a toy which no longer

"Renown does not allure you now. What is there flattering, amusing, or edifying in their carving your name

on a tombstone, then time rubbing off the inscription together with the gilding? Moreover, happily there are

too many of you for the weak memory of mankind to be able to retain your names."

"Of course," assented Kovrin. "Besides, why should they be remembered? But let us talk of something else.

When the clock struck five, he was sitting on the bed, dangling his feet to the carpet, talking to the monk:

"In ancient times a happy man grew at last frightened of his happiness it was so great! and to propitiate

the gods he brought as a sacrifice his favourite ring. Do you know, I, too, like Polykrates, begin to be uneasy

of my happiness. It seems strange to me that from morning to night I feel nothing but joy; it fills my whole

being and smothers all other feelings. I don't know what sadness, grief, or boredom is. Here I am not asleep; I

suffer from sleeplessness, but I am not dull. I say it in earnest; I begin to feel perplexed."

"But why?" the monk asked in wonder. "Is joy a supernatural feeling? Ought it not to be the normal state of

man? The more highly a man is developed on the intellectual and moral side, the more independent he is, the

more pleasure life gives him. Socrates, Diogenes, and Marcus Aurelius, were joyful, not sorrowful. And the

"But will the gods be suddenly wrathful?" Kovrin jested; and he laughed. "If they take from me comfort and

Meanwhile Tanya woke up and looked with amazement and horror at her husband. He was talking,

addressing the armchair, laughing and gesticulating; his eyes were gleaming, and there was something

"Andryusha, whom are you talking to?" she asked, clutching the hand he stretched out to the monk.

"Oh! Whom?" said Kovrin in confusion. "Why, to him. . . . He is sitting here," he said, pointing to the black

Tanya put her arm round her husband and held him tight, as though protecting him from the apparition, and

"You are ill!" she sobbed, trembling all over. "Forgive me, my precious, my dear one, but I have noticed for a

long time that your mind is clouded in some way. . . . You are mentally ill, Andryusha. . . ."

Her trembling infected him, too. He glanced once more at the armchair, which was now empty, felt a

"It's nothing, Tanya; it's nothing," he muttered, shivering. "I really am not quite well . . . it's time to admit

"I have noticed it for a long time . . . and father has noticed it," she said, trying to suppress her sobs. "You

talk to yourself, smile somehow strangely . . . and can't sleep. Oh, my God, my God, save us!" she said in

terror. "But don't be frightened, Andryusha; for God's sake don't be frightened. . . ."

She began dressing, too. Only now, looking at her, Kovrin realised the danger of his position realised the

meaning of the black monk and his conversations with him. It was clear to him now that he was mad.

Neither of them knew why they dressed and went into the diningroom: she in front and he following her.

There they found Yegor Semyonitch standing in his dressinggown and with a candle in his hand. He was

"Don't be frightened, Andryusha," Tanya was saying, shivering as though in a fever; "don't be frightened. . . .

Kovrin was too much agitated to speak. He wanted to say to his fatherinlaw in a playful tone:

"Congratulate me; it appears I have gone out of my mind"; but he could only move his lips and smile bitterly.

At nine o'clock in the morning they put on his jacket and fur coat, wrapped him up in a shawl, and took him

Summer had come again, and the doctor advised their going into the country. Kovrin had recovered; he had

left off seeing the black monk, and he had only to get up his strength. Staying at his fatherinlaw's, he drank

a great deal of milk, worked for only two hours out of the twentyfour, and neither smoked nor drank wine.

On the evening before Elijah's Day they had an evening service in the house. When the deacon was handing

the priest the censer the immense old room smelt like a graveyard, and Kovrin felt bored. He went out into

the garden. Without noticing the gorgeous flowers, he walked about the garden, sat down on a seat, then

strolled about the park; reaching the river, he went down and then stood lost in thought, looking at the water.

The sullen pines with their shaggy roots, which had seen him a year before so young, so joyful and confident,

were not whispering now, but standing mute and motionless, as though they did not recognise him. And,

indeed, his head was closely cropped, his beautiful long hair was gone, his step was lagging, his face was

He crossed by the footbridge to the other side. Where the year before there had been rye the oats stood,

reaped, and lay in rows. The sun had set and there was a broad stretch of glowing red on the horizon, a sign

of windy weather next day. It was still. Looking in the direction from which the year before the black monk

had first appeared, Kovrin stood for twenty minutes, till the evening glow had begun to fade. . . .

When, listless and dissatisfied, he returned home the service was over. Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya were

sitting on the steps of the verandah, drinking tea. They were talking of something, but, seeing Kovrin, ceased

"No, it is not time yet . . ." he said, sitting down on the bottom step. "Drink it yourself; I don't want it."

"Yes, a great deal of good!" Kovrin laughed. "I congratulate you: I have gained a pound in weight since

Friday." He pressed his head tightly in his hands and said miserably: "Why, why have you cured me?

Preparations of bromide, idleness, hot baths, supervision, cowardly consternation at every mouthful, at every

step all this will reduce me at last to idiocy. I went out of my mind, I had megalomania; but then I was

cheerful, confident, and even happy; I was interesting and original. Now I have become more sensible and

stolid, but I am just like every one else: I am mediocrity; I am weary of life. . . . Oh, how cruelly you have

treated me! . . . I saw hallucinations, but what harm did that do to any one? I ask, what harm did that do any

"Goodness knows what you are saying!" sighed Yegor Semyonitch. "It's positively wearisome to listen to it."

The presence of other people, especially Yegor Semyonitch, irritated Kovrin now; he answered him drily,

coldly, and even rudely, never looked at him but with irony and hatred, while Yegor Semyonitch was

overcome with confusion and cleared his throat guiltily, though he was not conscious of any fault in himself.

At a loss to understand why their charming and affectionate relations had changed so abruptly, Tanya

huddled up to her father and looked anxiously in his face; she wanted to understand and could not understand,

and all that was clear to her was that their relations were growing worse and worse every day, that of late her

father had begun to look much older, and her husband had grown irritable, capricious, quarrelsome and

uninteresting. She could not laugh or sing; at dinner she ate nothing; did not sleep for nights together,

expecting something awful, and was so worn out that on one occasion she lay in a dead faint from

dinnertime till evening. During the service she thought her father was crying, and now while the three of

them were sitting together on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.

"How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their kind relations and doctors did not cure

them of their ecstasy and their inspiration," said Kovrin. "If Mahomed had taken bromide for his nerves, had

worked only two hours out of the twentyfour, and had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have left no

more trace after him than his dog. Doctors and kind relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making

mediocrity pass for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin. If only you knew," Kovrin said with

He felt intense irritation, and to avoid saying too much, he got up quickly and went into the house. It was

still, and the fragrance of the tobacco plant and the marvel of Peru floated in at the open window. The

moonlight lay in green patches on the floor and on the piano in the big dark diningroom. Kovrin

remembered the raptures of the previous summer when there had been the same scent of the marvel of Peru

and the moon had shone in at the window. To bring back the mood of last year he went quickly to his study,

lighted a strong cigar, and told the footman to bring him some wine. But the cigar left a bitter and disgusting

taste in his mouth, and the wine had not the same flavour as it had the year before. And so great is the effect

of giving up a habit, the cigar and the two gulps of wine made him giddy, and brought on palpitations of the

"Father adores you. You are cross with him about something, and it is killing him. Look at him; he is ageing,

not from day to day, but from hour to hour. I entreat you, Andryusha, for God's sake, for the sake of your

"Because he is antipathetic to me, that's all," said Kovrin carelessly; and he shrugged his shoulders. "But we

"I can't understand, I can't," said Tanya, pressing her hands to her temples and staring at a fixed point.

"Something incomprehensible, awful, is going on in the house. You have changed, grown unlike yourself. . . .

You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are irritated over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense. . . . Such

trivial things excite you, that sometimes one is simply amazed and can't believe that it is you. Come, come,

don't be angry, don't be angry," she went on, kissing his hands, frightened of her own words. "You are clever,

"He is not good; he is just goodnatured. Burlesque old uncles like your father, with wellfed, goodnatured

faces, extraordinarily hospitable and queer, at one time used to touch me and amuse me in novels and in

farces and in life; now I dislike them. They are egoists to the marrow of their bones. What disgusts me most

of all is their being so wellfed, and that purely bovine, purely hoggish optimism of a full stomach."

"This is torture," she said, and from her voice it was evident that she was utterly exhausted, and that it was

hard for her to speak. "Not one moment of peace since the winter. . . . Why, it's awful! My God! I am

"Oh, of course, I am Herod, and you and your father are the innocents. Of course."

His face seemed to Tanya ugly and unpleasant. Hatred and an ironical expression did not suit him. And,

indeed, she had noticed before that there was something lacking in his face, as though ever since his hair had

been cut his face had changed, too. She wanted to say something wounding to him, but immediately she

caught herself in this antagonistic feeling, she was frightened and went out of the bedroom.

Kovrin received a professorship at the University. The inaugural address was fixed for the second of

December, and a notice to that effect was hung up in the corridor at the University. But on the day appointed

he informed the students' inspector, by telegram, that he was prevented by illness from giving the lecture.

He had h�morrhage from the throat. He was often spitting blood, but it happened two or three times a month

that there was a considerable loss of blood, and then he grew extremely weak and sank into a drowsy

condition. This illness did not particularly frighten him, as he knew that his mother had lived for ten years or

longer suffering from the same disease, and the doctors assured him that there was no danger, and had only

advised him to avoid excitement, to lead a regular life, and to speak as little as possible.

In January again his lecture did not take place owing to the same reason, and in February it was too late to

By now he was living not with Tanya, but with another woman, who was two years older than he was, and

who looked after him as though he were a baby. He was in a calm and tranquil state of mind; he readily gave

in to her, and when Varvara Nikolaevna that was the name of his friend decided to take him to the

Crimea, he agreed, though he had a presentiment that no good would come of the trip.

They reached Sevastopol in the evening and stopped at an hotel to rest and go on the next day to Yalta. They

were both exhausted by the journey. Varvara Nikolaevna had some tea, went to bed and was soon asleep. But

Kovrin did not go to bed. An hour before starting for the station, he had received a letter from Tanya, and had

not brought himself to open it, and now it was lying in his coat pocket, and the thought of it excited him

disagreeably. At the bottom of his heart he genuinely considered now that his marriage to Tanya had been a

mistake. He was glad that their separation was final, and the thought of that woman who in the end had

turned into a living relic, still walking about though everything seemed dead in her except her big, staring,

intelligent eyes the thought of her roused in him nothing but pity and disgust with himself. The

handwriting on the envelope reminded him how cruel and unjust he had been two years before, how he had

worked off his anger at his spiritual emptiness, his boredom, his loneliness, and his dissatisfaction with life

by revenging himself on people in no way to blame. He remembered, also, how he had torn up his

dissertation and all the articles he had written during his illness, and how he had thrown them out of window,

and the bits of paper had fluttered in the wind and caught on the trees and flowers. In every line of them he

saw strange, utterly groundless pretension, shallow defiance, arrogance, megalomania; and they made him

feel as though he were reading a description of his vices. But when the last manuscript had been torn up and

sent flying out of window, he felt, for some reason, suddenly bitter and angry; he went to his wife and said a

great many unpleasant things to her. My God, how he had tormented her! One day, wanting to cause her pain,

he told her that her father had played a very unattractive part in their romance, that he had asked him to marry

her. Yegor Semyonitch accidentally overheard this, ran into the room, and, in his despair, could not utter a

word, could only stamp and make a strange, bellowing sound as though he had lost the power of speech, and

Tanya, looking at her father, had uttered a heartrending shriek and had fallen into a swoon. It was hideous.

All this came back into his memory as he looked at the familiar writing. Kovrin went out on to the balcony; it

was still warm weather and there was a smell of the sea. The wonderful bay reflected the moonshine and the

lights, and was of a colour for which it was difficult to find a name. It was a soft and tender blending of dark

blue and green; in places the water was like blue vitriol, and in places it seemed as though the moonlight were

liquefied and filling the bay instead of water. And what harmony of colours, what an atmosphere of peace,

In the lower storey under the balcony the windows were probably open, for women's voices and laughter

Kovrin made an effort, tore open the envelope, and, going back into his room, read:

"My father is just dead. I owe that to you, for you have killed him. Our garden is being ruined; strangers are

managing it already that is, the very thing is happening that poor father dreaded. That, too, I owe to you. I

hate you with my whole soul, and I hope you may soon perish. Oh, how wretched I am! Insufferable anguish

is burning my soul. . . . My curses on you. I took you for an extraordinary man, a genius; I loved you, and

Kovrin could read no more, he tore up the letter and threw it away. He was overcome by an uneasiness that

was akin to terror. Varvara Nikolaevna was asleep behind the screen, and he could hear her breathing. From

the lower storey came the sounds of laughter and women's voices, but he felt as though in the whole hotel

there were no living soul but him. Because Tanya, unhappy, broken by sorrow, had cursed him in her letter

and hoped for his perdition, he felt eerie and kept glancing hurriedly at the door, as though he were afraid that

the uncomprehended force which two years before had wrought such havoc in his life and in the life of those

He knew by experience that when his nerves were out of hand the best thing for him to do was to work. He

must sit down to the table and force himself, at all costs, to concentrate his mind on some one thought. He

took from his red portfolio a manuscript containing a sketch of a small work of the nature of a compilation,

which he had planned in case he should find it dull in the Crimea without work. He sat down to the table and

began working at this plan, and it seemed to him that his calm, peaceful, indifferent mood was coming back.

The manuscript with the sketch even led him to meditation on the vanity of the world. He thought how much

life exacts for the worthless or very commonplace blessings it can give a man. For instance, to gain, before

forty, a university chair, to be an ordinary professor, to expound ordinary and secondhand thoughts in dull,

heavy, insipid language in fact, to gain the position of a mediocre learned man, he, Kovrin, had had to

study for fifteen years, to work day and night, to endure a terrible mental illness, to experience an unhappy

marriage, and to do a great number of stupid and unjust things which it would have been pleasant not to

remember. Kovrin recognised clearly, now, that he was a mediocrity, and readily resigned himself to it, as he

The plan of the volume would have soothed him completely, but the torn letter showed white on the floor and

prevented him from concentrating his attention. He got up from the table, picked up the pieces of the letter

and threw them out of window, but there was a light wind blowing from the sea, and the bits of paper were

scattered on the windowsill. Again he was overcome by uneasiness akin to terror, and he felt as though in the

whole hotel there were no living soul but himself. . . . He went out on the balcony. The bay, like a living

thing, looked at him with its multitude of light blue, dark blue, turquoise and fiery eyes, and seemed

beckoning to him. And it really was hot and oppressive, and it would not have been amiss to have a bathe.

Suddenly in the lower storey under the balcony a violin began playing, and two soft feminine voices began

singing. It was something familiar. The song was about a maiden, full of sick fancies, who heard one night in

her garden mysterious sounds, so strange and lovely that she was obliged to recognise them as a holy

harmony which is unintelligible to us mortals, and so flies back to heaven. . . . Kovrin caught his breath and

there was a pang of sadness at his heart, and a thrill of the sweet, exquisite delight he had so long forgotten

A tall black column, like a whirlwind or a waterspout, appeared on the further side of the bay. It moved with

fearful rapidity across the bay, towards the hotel, growing smaller and darker as it came, and Kovrin only just

had time to get out of the way to let it pass. . . . The monk with bare grey head, black eyebrows, barefoot, his

arms crossed over his breast, floated by him, and stood still in the middle of the room.

"Why did you not believe me?" he asked reproachfully, looking affectionately at Kovrin. "If you had believed

me then, that you were a genius, you would not have spent these two years so gloomily and so wretchedly."

Kovrin already believed that he was one of God's chosen and a genius; he vividly recalled his conversations

with the monk in the past and tried to speak, but the blood flowed from his throat on to his breast, and not

knowing what he was doing, he passed his hands over his breast, and his cuffs were soaked with blood. He

tried to call Varvara Nikolaevna, who was asleep behind the screen; he made an effort and said:

He called Tanya, called to the great garden with the gorgeous flowers sprinkled with dew, called to the park,

the pines with their shaggy roots, the ryefield, his marvellous learning, his youth, courage, joy called to

life, which was so lovely. He saw on the floor near his face a great pool of blood, and was too weak to utter a

word, but an unspeakable, infinite happiness flooded his whole being. Below, under the balcony, they were

playing the serenade, and the black monk whispered to him that he was a genius, and that he was dying only

because his frail human body had lost its balance and could no longer serve as the mortal garb of genius.

When Varvara Nikolaevna woke up and came out from behind the screen, Kovrin was dead, and a blissful

AT five o'clock one Sunday afternoon in summer, Volodya, a plain, shy, sicklylooking lad of seventeen,

was sitting in the arbour of the Shumihins' country villa, feeling dreary. His despondent thought flowed in

three directions. In the first place, he had next day, Monday, an examination in mathematics; he knew that if

he did not get through the written examination on the morrow, he would be expelled, for he had already been

two years in the sixth form and had two and threequarter marks for algebra in his annual report. In the

second place, his presence at the villa of the Shumihins, a wealthy family with aristocratic pretensions, was a

continual source of mortification to his amourpropre. It seemed to him that Madame Shumihin looked upon

him and his maman as poor relations and dependents, that they laughed at his maman and did not respect her.

He had on one occasion accidently overheard Madame Shumihin, in the verandah, telling her cousin Anna

Fyodorovna that his maman still tried to look young and got herself up, that she never paid her losses at

cards, and had a partiality for other people's shoes and tobacco. Every day Volodya besought his maman not

to go to the Shumihins', and drew a picture of the humiliating part she played with these gentlefolk. He tried

to persuade her, said rude things, but she a frivolous, pampered woman, who had run through two

fortunes, her own and her husband's, in her time, and always gravitated towards acquaintances of high rank

did not understand him, and twice a week Volodya had to accompany her to the villa he hated.

In the third place, the youth could not for one instant get rid of a strange, unpleasant feeling which was

absolutely new to him. . . . It seemed to him that he was in love with Anna Fyodorovna, the Shumihins'

cousin, who was staying with them. She was a vivacious, loudvoiced, laughterloving, healthy, and

vigorous lady of thirty, with rosy cheeks, plump shoulders, a plump round chin and a continual smile on her

thin lips. She was neither young nor beautiful Volodya knew that perfectly well; but for some reason he

could not help thinking of her, looking at her while she shrugged her plump shoulders and moved her flat

back as she played croquet, or after prolonged laughter and running up and down stairs, sank into a low chair,

and, half closing her eyes and gasping for breath, pretended that she was stifling and could not breathe. She

was married. Her husband, a staid and dignified architect, came once a week to the villa, slept soundly, and

returned to town. Volodya's strange feeling had begun with his conceiving an unaccountable hatred for the

Now, sitting in the arbour, thinking of his examination next day, and of his maman, at whom they laughed, he

felt an intense desire to see Nyuta (that was what the Shumihins called Anna Fyodorovna), to hear her

laughter and the rustle of her dress. . . . This desire was not like the pure, poetic love of which he read in

novels and about which he dreamed every night when he went to bed; it was strange, incomprehensible; he

was ashamed of it, and afraid of it as of something very wrong and impure, something which it was

"It's not love," he said to himself. "One can't fall in love with women of thirty who are married. It is only a

Pondering on the "intrigue," he thought of his uncontrollable shyness, his lack of moustache, his freckles, his

narrow eyes, and put himself in his imagination side by side with Nyuta, and the juxtaposition seemed to him

impossible; then he made haste to imagine himself bold, handsome, witty, dressed in the latest fashion.

When his dreams were at their height, as he sat huddled together and looking at the ground in a dark corner of

the arbour, he heard the sound of light footsteps. Some one was coming slowly along the avenue. Soon the

"Who is here?" asked Nyuta, going into the arbour. "Ah, it is you, Volodya? What are you doing here?

Thinking? And how can you go on thinking, thinking, thinking? . . . That's the way to go out of your mind!"

Volodya got up and looked in a dazed way at Nyuta. She had only just come back from bathing. Over her

shoulder there was hanging a sheet and a rough towel, and from under the white silk kerchief on her head he

could see the wet hair sticking to her forehead. There was the cool damp smell of the bathhouse and of

almond soap still hanging about her. She was out of breath from running quickly. The top button of her

"Why don't you say something?" said Nyuta, looking Volodya up and down. "It's not polite to be silent when

a lady talks to you. What a clumsy seal you are though, Volodya! You always sit, saying nothing, thinking

like some philosopher. There's not a spark of life or fire in you! You are really horrid! . . . At your age you

ought to be living, skipping, and jumping, chattering, flirting, falling in love."

Volodya looked at the sheet that was held by a plump white hand, and thought. . . .

"He's mute," said Nyuta, with wonder; "it is strange, really. . . . Listen! Be a man! Come, you might smile at

least! Phew, the horrid philosopher!" she laughed. "But do you know, Volodya, why you are such a clumsy

seal? Because you don't devote yourself to the ladies. Why don't you? It's true there are no girls here, but

there is nothing to prevent your flirting with the married ladies! Why don't you flirt with me, for instance?"

"It's only very proud people who are silent and love solitude," Nyuta went on, pulling his hand away from his

forehead. "You are proud, Volodya. Why do you look at me like that from under your brows? Look me

Volodya made up his mind to speak. Wanting to smile, he twitched his lower lip, blinked, and again put his

"What do I hear?" she sang, as primadonnas sing at the opera when they hear something awful. "What?

And without his will's having any part in his action, without reflection or understanding, he took half a step

towards Nyuta and clutched her by the arm. Everything was dark before his eyes, and tears came into them.

The whole world was turned into one big, rough towel which smelt of the bathhouse.

"Bravo, bravo!" he heard a merry laugh. "Why don't you speak? I want you to speak! Well?"

Seeing that he was not prevented from holding her arm, Volodya glanced at Nyuta's laughing face, and

clumsily, awkwardly, put both arms round her waist, his hands meeting behind her back. He held her round

the waist with both arms, while, putting her hands up to her head, showing the dimples in her elbows, she set

"You must be tactful, polite, charming, and you can only become that under feminine influence. But what a

wicked, angry face you have! You must talk, laugh. . . . Yes, Volodya, don't be surly; you are young and will

have plenty of time for philosophising. Come, let go of me; I am going. Let go."

Without effort she released her waist, and, humming something, walked out of the arbour. Volodya was left

alone. He smoothed his hair, smiled, and walked three times to and fro across the arbour, then he sat down on

the bench and smiled again. He felt insufferably ashamed, so much so that he wondered that human shame

could reach such a pitch of acuteness and intensity. Shame made him smile, gesticulate, and whisper some

He was ashamed that he had been treated like a small boy, ashamed of his shyness, and, most of all, that he

had had the audacity to put his arms round the waist of a respectable married woman, though, as it seemed to

him, he had neither through age nor by external quality, nor by social position any right to do so.

He jumped up, went out of the arbour, and, without looking round, walked into the recesses of the garden

"Ah! only to get away from here as soon as possible," he thought, clutching his head. "My God! as soon as

The train by which Volodya was to go back with his maman was at eightforty. There were three hours

before the train started, but he would with pleasure have gone to the station at once without waiting for his

At eight o'clock he went to the house. His whole figure was expressive of determination: what would be,

would be! He made up his mind to go in boldly, to look them straight in the face, to speak in a loud voice,

He crossed the terrace, the big hall and the drawingroom, and there stopped to take breath. He could hear

them in the diningroom, drinking tea. Madame Shumihin, maman, and Nyuta were talking and laughing

"I assure you!" said Nyuta. "I could not believe my eyes! When he began declaring his passion and just

imagine! put his arms round my waist, I should not have recognised him. And you know he has a way

with him! When he told me he was in love with me, there was something brutal in his face, like a Circassian."

"Really!" gasped maman, going off into a peal of laughter. "Really! How he does remind me of his father!"

"How could they talk of it aloud!" he wondered in agony, clasping his hands and looking up to the sky in

horror. "They talk aloud in cold blood . . . and maman laughed! . . . Maman! My God, why didst Thou give

But he had to go to the house, come what might. He walked three times up and down the avenue, grew a little

"I am sorry, it's . . . it's time for me to go," he muttered, not raising his eyes. "Maman, it's eight o'clock!"

"You go alone, my dear," said his maman languidly. "I am staying the night with Lili. Goodbye, my dear. . . .

She made the sign of the cross over her son, and said in French, turning to Nyuta:

Saying goodbye after a fashion, without looking any one in the face, Volodya went out of the diningroom.

Ten minutes later he was walking along the road to the station, and was glad of it. Now he felt neither

About half a mile from the station, he sat down on a stone by the side of the road, and gazed at the sun, which

was half hidden behind a barrow. There were lights already here and there at the station, and one green light

glimmered dimly, but the train was not yet in sight. It was pleasant to Volodya to sit still without moving, and

to watch the evening coming little by little. The darkness of the arbour, the footsteps, the smell of the

bathhouse, the laughter, and the waist all these rose with amazing vividness before his imagination, and

"It's of no consequence. . . . She did not pull her hand away, and laughed when I held her by the waist," he

thought. "So she must have liked it. If she had disliked it she would have been angry . . . ."

And now Volodya felt sorry that he had not had more boldness there in the arbour. He felt sorry that he was

so stupidly going away, and he was by now persuaded that if the same thing happened again he would be

And it would not be difficult for the opportunity to occur again. They used to stroll about for a long time after

supper at the Shumihins'. If Volodya went for a walk with Nyuta in the dark garden, there would be an

"I will go back," he thought, "and will go by the morning train tomorrow. . . . I will say I have missed the

And he turned back. . . . Madame Shumihin, Maman, Nyuta, and one of the nieces were sitting on the

verandah, playing vint. When Volodya told them the lie that he had missed the train, they were uneasy that he

might be late for the examination day, and advised him to get up early. All the while they were playing he sat

on one side, greedily watching Nyuta and waiting. . . . He already had a plan prepared in his mind: he would

go up to Nyuta in the dark, would take her by the hand, then would embrace her; there would be no need to

But after supper the ladies did not go for a walk in the garden, but went on playing cards. They played till one

"How stupid it all is!" Volodya thought with vexation as he got into bed. "But never mind; I'll wait till

He did not attempt to go to sleep, but sat in bed, hugging his knees and thinking. All thought of the

examination was hateful to him. He had already made up his mind that they would expel him, and that there

was nothing terrible about his being expelled. On the contrary, it was a good thing a very good thing, in

fact. Next day he would be as free as a bird; he would put on ordinary clothes instead of his school uniform,

would smoke openly, come out here, and make love to Nyuta when he liked; and he would not be a

schoolboy but "a young man." And as for the rest of it, what is called a career, a future, that was clear;

Volodya would go into the army or the telegraph service, or he would go into a chemist's shop and work his

way up till he was a dispenser. . . . There were lots of callings. An hour or two passed, and he was still sitting

Towards three o'clock, when it was beginning to get light, the door creaked cautiously and his maman came

"Aren't you asleep?" she asked, yawning. "Go to sleep; I have only come in for a minute. . . . I am only

"Poor Lili has got spasms again. Go to sleep, my child, your examination's tomorrow. . . ."

She took a bottle of something out of the cupboard, went to the window, read the label, and went away.

"Marya Leontyevna, those are not the drops!" Volodya heard a woman's voice, a minute later. "That's

convallaria, and Lili wants morphine. Is your son asleep? Ask him to look for it. . . ."

It was Nyuta's voice. Volodya turned cold. He hurriedly put on his trousers, flung his coat over his shoulders,

"Do you understand? Morphine," Nyuta explained in a whisper. "There must be a label in Latin. Wake

Maman opened the door and Volodya caught sight of Nyuta. She was wearing the same loose wrapper in

which she had gone to bathe. Her hair hung loose and disordered on her shoulders, her face looked sleepy and

"Why, Volodya is not asleep," she said. "Volodya, look in the cupboard for the morphine, there's a dear!

Volodya went to the cupboard, knelt down, and began looking through the bottles and boxes of medicine. His

hands were trembling, and he had a feeling in his chest and stomach as though cold waves were running all

over his inside. He felt suffocated and giddy from the smell of ether, carbolic acid, and various drugs, which

he quite unnecessarily snatched up with his trembling fingers and spilled in so doing.

"I believe maman has gone," he thought. "That's a good thing . . . a good thing. . . ."

"In a minute. . . . Here, I believe this is morphine," said Volodya, reading on one of the labels the word

Nyuta was standing in the doorway in such a way that one foot was in his room and one was in the passage.

She was tidying her hair, which was difficult to put in order because it was so thick and long, and looked

absentmindedly at Volodya. In her loose wrap, with her sleepy face and her hair down, in the dim light that

came into the white sky not yet lit by the sun, she seemed to Volodya captivating, magnificent. . . .

Fascinated, trembling all over, and remembering with relish how he had held that exquisite body in his arms

He was silent and looked at her, then, just as in the arbour, he took her hand, and she looked at him with a

"Wait a little; I think somebody is coming. Oh, these schoolboys!" she said in an undertone, going to the door

Then it seemed to Volodya that the room, Nyuta, the sunrise and himself all melted together in one

sensation of acute, extraordinary, incredible bliss, for which one might give up one's whole life and face

eternal torments. . . . But half a minute passed and all that vanished. Volodya saw only a fat, plain face,

distorted by an expression of repulsion, and he himself suddenly felt a loathing for what had happened.

"I must go away, though," said Nyuta, looking at Volodya with disgust. "What a wretched, ugly . . . fie, ugly

How unseemly her long hair, her loose wrap, her steps, her voice seemed to Volodya now! . . .

" 'Ugly duckling' . . ." he thought after she had gone away. "I really am ugly . . . everything is ugly."

The sun was rising, the birds were singing loudly; he could hear the gardener walking in the garden and the

creaking of his wheelbarrow . . . and soon afterwards he heard the lowing of the cows and the sounds of the

shepherd's pipe. The sunlight and the sounds told him that somewhere in this world there is a pure, refined,

poetical life. But where was it? Volodya had never heard a word of it from his maman or any of the people

When the footman came to wake him for the morning train, he pretended to be asleep. . . .

Combing his hair before the lookingglass, and looking at his ugly face, pale from his sleepless night, he

When maman saw him and was horrified that he was not at his examination, Volodya said:

"I overslept myself, maman. . . . But don't worry, I will get a medical certificate."

Madame Shumihin and Nyuta waked up at one o'clock. Volodya heard Madame Shumihin open her window

with a bang, heard Nyuta go off into a peal of laughter in reply to her coarse voice. He saw the door open and

a string of nieces and other toadies (among the latter was his maman) file into lunch, caught a glimpse of

Nyuta's freshly washed laughing face, and, beside her, the black brows and beard of her husband the

Nyuta was wearing a Little Russian dress which did not suit her at all, and made her look clumsy; the

architect was making dull and vulgar jokes. The rissoles served at lunch had too much onion in them so it

seemed to Volodya. It also seemed to him that Nyuta laughed loudly on purpose, and kept glancing in his

direction to give him to understand that the memory of the night did not trouble her in the least, and that she

At four o'clock Volodya drove to the station with his maman. Foul memories, the sleepless night, the prospect

of expulsion from school, the stings of conscience all roused in him now an oppressive, gloomy anger. He

looked at maman's sharp profile, at her little nose, and at the raincoat which was a present from Nyuta, and

"Why do you powder? It's not becoming at your age! You make yourself up, don't pay your debts at cards,

smoke other people's tobacco. . . . It's hateful! I don't love you . . . I don't love you!"

He was insulting her, and she moved her little eyes about in alarm, flung up her hands, and whispered in

"What are you saying, my dear! Good gracious! the coachman will hear! Be quiet or the coachman will hear!

"I don't love you . . . I don't love you!" he went on breathlessly. "You've no soul and no morals. . . . Don't

dare to wear that raincoat! Do you hear? Or else I will tear it into rags. . . ."

"And where is my father's fortune? Where is your money? You have wasted it all. I am not ashamed of being

poor, but I am ashamed of having such a mother. . . . When my schoolfellows ask questions about you, I

In the train they had to pass two stations before they reached the town. Volodya spent all the time on the little

platform between two carriages and shivered all over. He did not want to go into the compartment because

there the mother he hated was sitting. He hated himself, hated the ticket collectors, the smoke from the

engine, the cold to which he attributed his shivering. And the heavier the weight on his heart, the more

strongly he felt that somewhere in the world, among some people, there was a pure, honourable, warm,

refined life, full of love, affection, gaiety, and serenity. . . . He felt this and was so intensely miserable that

In the town maman and Volodya lived with Marya Petrovna, a lady of noble rank, who had a large flat and let

rooms to boarders. maman had two rooms, one with windows and two pictures in gold frames hanging on the

walls, in which her bed stood and in which she lived, and a little dark room opening out of it in which

Volodya lived. Here there was a sofa on which he slept, and, except that sofa, there was no other furniture;

the rest of the room was entirely filled up with wicker baskets full of clothes, cardboard hatboxes, and all

sorts of rubbish, which maman preserved for some reason or other. Volodya prepared his lessons either in his

mother's room or in the "general room," as the large room in which the boarders assembled at dinnertime

On reaching home he lay down on his sofa and put the quilt over him to stop his shivering. The cardboard

hatboxes, the wicker baskets, and the other rubbish, reminded him that he had not a room of his own, that he

had no refuge in which he could get away from his mother, from her visitors, and from the voices that were

floating up from the "general room." The satchel and the books lying about in the corners reminded him of

the examination he had missed. . . . For some reason there came into his mind, quite inappropriately,

Mentone, where he had lived with his father when he was seven years old; he thought of Biarritz and two

little English girls with whom he ran about on the sand. . . . He tried to recall to his memory the colour of the

sky, the sea, the height of the waves, and his mood at the time, but he could not succeed. The English girls

flitted before his imagination as though they were living; all the rest was a medley of images that floated

"No; it's cold here," thought Volodya. He got up, put on his overcoat, and went into the "general room."

There they were drinking tea. There were three people at the samovar: maman; an old lady with tortoiseshell

pincenez, who gave music lessons; and Avgustin Mihalitch, an elderly and very stout Frenchman, who was

"I have had no dinner today," said maman. "I ought to send the maid to buy some bread."

"Oh, that's of no consequence," said the Frenchman, with a broad smile. "I will go for some bread myself at

He laid his strong, pungent cigar in a conspicuous place, put on his hat and went out. After he had gone away

maman began telling the music teacher how she had been staying at the Shumihins', and how warmly they

"Lili Shumihin is a relation of mine, you know," she said. "Her late husband, General Shumihin, was a cousin

He knew perfectly well that what his mother said was true; in what she was saying about General Shumihin

and about Baroness Kolb there was not a word of lying, but nevertheless he felt that she was lying. There was

a suggestion of falsehood in her manner of speaking, in the expression of her face, in her eyes, in everything.

"You are lying," repeated Volodya; and he brought his fist down on the table with such force that all the

crockery shook and maman's tea was spilt over. "Why do you talk about generals and baronesses? It's all

The music teacher was disconcerted, and coughed into her handkerchief, affecting to sneeze, and maman

He had been in the street already; he was ashamed to go to his schoolfellows. Again, quite incongruously, he

remembered the two little English girls. . . . He paced up and down the "general room," and went into

Avgustin Mihalitch's room. Here there was a strong smell of ethereal oils and glycerine soap. On the table, in

the window, and even on the chairs, there were a number of bottles, glasses, and wineglasses containing

fluids of various colours. Volodya took up from the table a newspaper, opened it and read the title Figaro. . .

There was a strong and pleasant scent about the paper. Then he took a revolver from the table. . . .

"There, there! Don't take any notice of it." The music teacher was comforting maman in the next room. "He is

young! Young people of his age never restrain themselves. One must resign oneself to that."

"No, Yevgenya Andreyevna; he's too spoilt," said maman in a singsong voice. "He has no one in authority

Volodya put the muzzle of the revolver to his mouth, felt something like a trigger or spring, and pressed it

with his finger. . . . Then felt something else projecting, and once more pressed it. Taking the muzzle out of

his mouth, he wiped it with the lapel of his coat, looked at the lock. He had never in his life taken a weapon in

Avgustin Mihalitch went into the "general room," and with a laugh began telling them about something.

Volodya put the muzzle in his mouth again, pressed it with his teeth, and pressed something with his fingers.

There was a sound of a shot. . . . Something hit Volodya in the back of his head with terrible violence, and he

fell on the table with his face downwards among the bottles and glasses. Then he saw his father, as in

Mentone, in a tophat with a wide black band on it, wearing mourning for some lady, suddenly seize him by

THROUGH causes which it is not the time to go into in detail, I had to enter the service of a Petersburg

official called Orlov, in the capacity of a footman. He was about five and thirty, and was called Georgy*

I entered this Orlov's service on account of his father, a prominent political man, whom I looked upon as a

serious enemy of my cause. I reckoned that, living with the son, I should from the conversations I should

hear, and from the letters and papers I should find on the table learn every detail of the father's plans and

As a rule at eleven o'clock in the morning the electric bell rang in my footman's quarters to let me know that

my master was awake. When I went into the bedroom with his polished shoes and brushed clothes, Georgy

Ivanitch would be sitting in his bed with a face that looked, not drowsy, but rather exhausted by sleep, and he

would gaze off in one direction without any sign of satisfaction at having waked. I helped him to dress, and

he let me do it with an air of reluctance without speaking or noticing my presence; then with his head wet

with washing, smelling of fresh scent, he used to go into the diningroom to drink his coffee. He used to sit at

the table, sipping his coffee and glancing through the newspapers, while the maid Polya and I stood

respectfully at the door gazing at him. Two grownup persons had to stand watching with the gravest

attention a third drinking coffee and munching rusks. It was probably ludicrous and grotesque, but I saw

nothing humiliating in having to stand near the door, though I was quite as well born and well educated as

I was in the first stage of consumption, and was suffering from something else, possibly even more serious

than consumption. I don't know whether it was the effect of my illness or of an incipient change in my

philosophy of life of which I was not conscious at the time, but I was, day by day, more possessed by a

passionate, irritating longing for ordinary everyday life. I yearned for mental tranquillity, health, fresh air,

good food. I was becoming a dreamer, and, like a dreamer, I did not know exactly what I wanted. Sometimes

I felt inclined to go into a monastery, to sit there for days together by the window and gaze at the trees and

the fields; sometimes I fancied I would buy fifteen acres of land and settle down as a country gentleman;

sometimes I inwardly vowed to take up science and become a professor at some provincial university. I was a

retired navy lieutenant; I dreamed of the sea, of our squadron, and of the corvette in which I had made the

cruise round the world. I longed to experience again the indescribable feeling when, walking in the tropical

forest or looking at the sunset in the Bay of Bengal, one is thrilled with ecstasy and at the same time

homesick. I dreamed of mountains, women, music, and, with the curiosity of a child, I looked into people's

faces, listened to their voices. And when I stood at the door and watched Orlov sipping his coffee, I felt not a

In appearance Orlov was a typical Petersburger, with narrow shoulders, a long waist, sunken temples, eyes of

an indefinite colour, and scanty, dingycoloured hair, beard and moustaches. His face had a stale, unpleasant

look, though it was studiously cared for. It was particularly unpleasant when he was asleep or lost in thought.

It is not worth while describing a quite ordinary appearance; besides, Petersburg is not Spain, and a man's

appearance is not of much consequence even in love affairs, and is only of value to a handsome footman or

coachman. I have spoken of Orlov's face and hair only because there was something in his appearance worth

mentioning. When Orlov took a newspaper or book, whatever it might be, or met people, whoever they be, an

ironical smile began to come into his eyes, and his whole countenance assumed an expression of light

mockery in which there was no malice. Before reading or hearing anything he always had his irony in

readiness, as a savage has his shield. It was an habitual irony, like some old liquor brewed years ago, and now

it came into his face probably without any participation of his will, as it were by reflex action. But of that

Soon after midday he took his portfolio, full of papers, and drove to his office. He dined away from home and

returned after eight o'clock. I used to light the lamp and candles in his study, and he would sit down in a low

chair with his legs stretched out on another chair, and, reclining in that position, would begin reading. Almost

every day he brought in new books with him or received parcels of them from the shops, and there were

heaps of books in three languages, to say nothing of Russian, which he had read and thrown away, in the

corners of my room and under my bed. He read with extraordinary rapidity. They say: "Tell me what you

read, and I'll tell you who you are." That may be true, but it was absolutely impossible to judge of Orlov by

what he read. It was a regular hotchpotch. Philosophy, French novels, political economy, finance, new poets,

and publications of the firm Posrednik* and he read it all with the same rapidity and with the same

* I.e., Tchertkov and others, publishers of Tolstoy, who issued good literature for peasants' reading.

After ten o'clock he carefully dressed, often in evening dress, very rarely in his kammerjunker's uniform,

Our relations were quiet and peaceful, and we never had any misunderstanding. As a rule he did not notice

my presence, and when he talked to me there was no expression of irony on his face he evidently did not

I only once saw him angry. One day it was a week after I had entered his service he came back from

some dinner at nine o'clock; his face looked illhumoured and exhausted. When I followed him into his study

I was offended, and was on the point of answering, and goodness knows how it would have ended if Polya,

"There really is a disagreeable smell," she said, raising her eyebrows. "What can it be from? Stepan, open the

With much bustle and many exclamations, she went through all the rooms, rustling her skirts and squeezing

the sprayer with a hissing sound. And Orlov was still out of humour; he was obviously restraining himself not

to vent his illtemper aloud. He was sitting at the table and rapidly writing a letter. After writing a few lines

At last the letter was written; he got up from the table and said, turning to me:

"Go to Znamensky Street and deliver this letter to Zinaida Fyodorovna Krasnovsky in person. But first ask

the porter whether her husband that is, Mr. Krasnovsky has returned yet. If he has returned, don't

deliver the letter, but come back. Wait a minute! . . . If she asks whether I have any one here, tell her that

I drove to Znamensky Street. The porter told me that Mr. Krasnovsky had not yet come in, and I made my

way up to the third storey. The door was opened by a tall, stout, drabcoloured flunkey with black whiskers,

who in a sleepy, churlish, and apathetic voice, such as only flunkeys use in addressing other flunkeys, asked

me what I wanted. Before I had time to answer, a lady dressed in black came hurriedly into the hall. She

She tore the letter open impatiently, and holding it in both hands, so that I saw her sparkling diamond rings,

she began reading. I made out a pale face with soft lines, a prominent chin, and long dark lashes. From her

"Give him my thanks and my greetings," she said when she had finished the letter. "Is there any one with

Georgy Ivanitch?" she asked softly, joyfully, and as though ashamed of her mistrust.

"Give him my greetings and thanks," she repeated, bending her head sideways, and, reading the letter as she

walked, she went noiselessly out. I saw few women at that time, and this lady of whom I had a passing

glimpse made an impression on me. As I walked home I recalled her face and the delicate fragrance about

And so my relations with my employer were quiet and peaceful, but still the unclean and degrading element

which I so dreaded on becoming a footman was conspicuous and made itself felt every day. I did not get on

with Polya. She was a wellfed and pampered hussy who adored Orlov because he was a gentleman and

despised me because I was a footman. Probably, from the point of view of a real flunkey or cook, she was

fascinating, with her red cheeks, her turnedup nose, her coquettish glances, and the plumpness, one might

almost say fatness, of her person. She powdered her face, coloured her lips and eyebrows, laced herself in,

and wore a bustle, and a bangle made of coins. She walked with little ripping steps; as she walked she

swayed, or, as they say, wriggled her shoulders and back. The rustle of her skirts, the creaking of her stays,

the jingle her bangle and the vulgar smell of lip salve, toilet vinegar, and scent stolen from her master,

aroused me whilst I was doing the rooms with her in the morning a sensation as though I were taking part

Either because I did not steal as she did, or because I displayed no desire to become her lover, which she

probably looked upon as an insult, or perhaps because she felt that I was a man of a different order, she hated

me from the first day. My inexperience, my appearance so unlike a flunkey and my illness, seemed to

her pitiful and excited her disgust. I had a bad cough at that time, and sometimes at night I prevented her from

sleeping, as our rooms were only divided by a wooden partition, and every morning she said to me:

"Again you didn't let me sleep. You ought to be in hospital instead of in service."

She so genuinely believed that I was hardly a human being, but something infinitely below her, that, like the

Roman matrons who were not ashamed to bathe before their slaves, she sometimes went about in my

Once when I was in a happy, dreamy mood, I asked her at dinner (we had soup and roast meat sent in from a

"Then," I went on, "you believe there will be a day of judgment, and that we shall have to answer to God for

She gave me no reply, but simply made a contemptuous grimace, and, looking that time at her cold eyes and

overfed expression, I realised that for her complete and finished personality no God, no conscience, no laws

existed, and that if I had had to set fire to the house, to murder or to rob, I could not have hired a better

In my novel surroundings I felt very uncomfortable for the first week at Orlov's before I got used to being

addressed as "thou," and being constantly obliged to tell lies (saying "My master is not at home" when he

was). In my flunkey's swallowtail I felt as though I were in armour. But I grew accustomed to it in time.

Like a genuine footman, I waited at table, tidied the rooms, ran and drove about on errands of all sorts. When

Orlov did not want to keep an appointment with Zinaida Fyodorovna, or when he forgot that he had promised

to go and see her, I drove to Znamensky Street, put a letter into her hands and told a lie. And the result of it

all was quite different from what I had expected when I became a footman. Every day of this new life of mine

was wasted for me and my cause, as Orlov never spoke of his father, nor did his visitors, and all I could learn

of the stateman's doings was, as before, what I could glean from the newspapers or from correspondence with

my comrades. The hundreds of notes and papers I used to find in the study and read had not the remotest

connection with what I was looking for. Orlov was absolutely uninterested in his father's political work, and

looked as though he had never heard of it, or as though his father had long been dead.

I ordered a piece of roast beef from the restaurant and telephoned to Eliseyev's to send us caviare, cheese,

oysters, and so on. I bought playingcards. Polya was busy all day getting ready the teathings and the dinner

service. To tell the truth, this spurt of activity came as a pleasant change in our idle life, and Thursdays were

Only three visitors used to come. The most important and perhaps the most interesting was the one called

Pekarsky a tall, lean man of five and forty, with a long hooked nose, with a big black beard, and a bald

patch on his head. His eyes were large and prominent, and his expression was grave and thoughtful like that

of a Greek philosopher. He was on the board of management of some railway, and also had some post in a

bank; he was a consulting lawyer in some important Government institution, and had business relations with

a large number of private persons as a trustee, chairman of committees, and so on. He was of quite a low

grade in the service, and modestly spoke of himself as a lawyer, but he had a vast influence. A note or card

from him was enough to make a celebrated doctor, a director of a railway, or a great dignitary see any one

without waiting; and it was said that through his protection one might obtain even a post of the Fourth Class,

and get any sort of unpleasant business hushed up. He was looked upon as a very intelligent man, but his was

a strange, peculiar intelligence. He was able to multiply 213 by 373 in his head instantaneously, or turn

English pounds into German marks without help of pencil or paper; he understood finance and railway

business thoroughly, and the machinery of Russian administration had no secrets for him; he was a most

skilful pleader in civil suits, and it was not easy to get the better of him at law. But that exceptional

intelligence could not grasp many things which are understood even by some stupid people. For instance, he

was absolutely unable to understand why people are depressed, why they weep, shoot themselves, and even

kill others; why they fret about things that do not affect them personally, and why they laugh when they read

Gogol or Shtchedrin. . . . Everything abstract, everything belonging to the domain of thought and feeling, was

to him boring and incomprehensible, like music to one who has no ear. He looked at people simply from the

business point of view, and divided them into competent and incompetent. No other classification existed for

him. Honesty and rectitude were only signs of competence. Drinking, gambling, and debauchery were

permissible, but must not be allowed to interfere with business. Believing in God was rather stupid, but

religion ought be safeguarded, as the common people must have some principle to restrain them, otherwise

they would not work. Punishment is only necessary as deterrent. There was no need to go away for holidays,

as it was just as nice in town. And so on. He was a widower and had no children, but lived on a large scale, as

The second visitor, Kukushkin, an actual civil councillor though a young man, was short, and was

conspicuous for his extremely unpleasant appearance, which was due to the disproportion between his fat,

puffy body and his lean little face. His lips were puckered up suavely, and his little trimmed moustaches

looked as though they had been fixed on with glue. He was a man with the manners of a lizard. He did not

walk, but, as it were, crept along with tiny steps, squirming and sniggering, and when he laughed he showed

his teeth. He was a clerk on special commissions, and did nothing, though he received a good salary,

especially in the summer, when special and lucrative jobs were found for him. He was a man of personal

ambition, not only to the marrow of his bones, but more fundamentally to the last drop of his blood; but

even in his ambitions he was petty and did not rely on himself, but was building his career on the chance

favour flung him by his superiors. For the sake of obtaining some foreign decoration, or for the sake of

having his name mentioned in the newspapers as having been present at some special service in the company

of other great personages, he was ready to submit to any kind of humiliation, to beg, to flatter, to promise. He

flattered Orlov and Pekarsky from cowardice, because he thought they were powerful; he flattered Polya and

me because we were in the service of a powerful man. Whenever I took off his fur coat he tittered and asked

me: "Stepan, are you married?" and then unseemly vulgarities followed by way of showing me special

attention. Kukushkin flattered Orlov's weaknesses, humoured his corrupted and blas� ways; to please him he

affected malicious raillery and atheism, in his company criticised persons before whom in other places he

would slavishly grovel. When at supper they talked of love and women, he pretended to be a subtle and

perverse voluptuary. As a rule, one may say, Petersburg rakes are fond of talking of their abnormal tastes.

Some young actual civil councillor is perfectly satisfied with the embraces of his cook or of some unhappy

streetwalker on the Nevsky Prospect, but to listen to him you would think he was contaminated by all the

vices of East and West combined, that he was an honourary member of a dozen iniquitous secret societies and

was already marked by the police. Kukushkin lied about himself in an unconscionable way, and they did not

The third guest was Gruzin, the son of a worthy and learned general; a man of Orlov's age, with long hair,

shortsighted eyes, and gold spectacles. I remember his long white fingers, that looked like a pianist's; and,

indeed, there was something of a musician, of a virtuoso, about his whole figure. The first violins in

orchestras look just like that. He used to cough, suffered from migraine, and seemed invalidish and delicate.

Probably at home he was dressed and undressed like a baby. He had finished at the College of Jurisprudence,

and had at first served in the Department of Justice, then he was transferred to the Senate; he left that, and

through patronage had received a post in the Department of Crown Estates, and had soon afterwards given

that up. In my time he was serving in Orlov's department; he was his headclerk, but he said that he should

soon exchange into the Department of Justice again. He took his duties and his shifting about from one post

to another with exceptional levity, and when people talked before him seriously of grades in the service,

decorations, salaries, he smiled goodnaturedly and repeated Prutkov's aphorism: "It's only in the

Government service you learn the truth." He had a little wife with a wrinkled face, who was very jealous of

him, and five weedylooking children. He was unfaithful to his wife, he was only fond of his children when

he saw them, and on the whole was rather indifferent to his family, and made fun of them. He and his family

existed on credit, borrowing wherever they could at every opportunity, even from his superiors in the office

and porters in people's houses. His was a flabby nature; he was so lazy that he did not care what became of

himself, and drifted along heedless where or why he was going. He went where he was taken. If he was taken

to some low haunt, he went; if wine was set before him, he drank if it were not put before him, he

abstained; if wives were abused in his presence, he abused his wife, declaring she had ruined his life when

wives were praised, he praised his and said quite sincerely: "I am very fond of her, poor thing!" He had no fur

coat and always wore a rug which smelt of the nursery. When at supper he rolled balls of bread and drank a

great deal of red wine, absorbed in thought, strange to say, I used to feel almost certain that there was

something in him of which perhaps he had a vague sense, though in the bustle and vulgarity of his daily life

he had not time to understand and appreciate it. He played a little on the piano. Sometimes he would sit down

"What does the coming day bring to me?" But at once, as though afraid, he would get up and walk from the

The visitors usually arrived about ten o'clock. They played cards in Orlov's study, and Polya and I handed

them tea. It was only on these occasions that I could gauge the full sweetness of a flunkey's life. Standing for

four or five hours at the door, watching that no one's glass should be empty, changing the ashtrays, running

to the table to pick up the chalk or a card when it was dropped, and, above all, standing, waiting, being

attentive without venturing to speak, to cough, to smile is harder, I assure you, is harder than the hardest

of field labour. I have stood on watch at sea for four hours at a stretch on stormy winter nights, and to my

They used to play cards till two, sometimes till three o'clock at night, and then, stretching, they would go into

the diningroom to supper, or, as Orlov said, for a snack of something. At supper there was conversation. It

usually began by Orlov's speaking with laughing eyes of some acquaintance, of some book he had lately been

reading, of a new appointment or Government scheme. Kukushkin, always ingratiating, would fall into his

tone, and what followed was to me, in my mood at that time, a revolting exhibition. The irony of Orlov and

his friends knew no bounds, and spared no one and nothing. If they spoke of religion, it was with irony; they

spoke of philosophy, of the significance and object of life irony again, if any one began about the

There is in Petersburg a species of men whose specialty it is to jeer at every aspect of life; they cannot even

pass by a starving man or a suicide without saying something vulgar. But Orlov and his friends did not jeer or

make jokes, they talked ironically. They used to say that there was no God, and personality was completely

lost at death; the immortals only existed in the French Academy. Real good did not and could not possibly

exist, as its existence was conditional upon human perfection, which was a logical absurdity. Russia was a

country as poor and dull as Persia. The intellectual class was hopeless; in Pekarsky's opinion the

overwhelming majority in it were incompetent persons, good for nothing. The people were drunken, lazy,

thievish, and degenerate. We had no science, our literature was uncouth, our commerce rested on swindling

"No selling without cheating." And everything was in that style, and everything was a subject for laughter.

Towards the end of supper the wine made them more goodhumoured, and they passed to more lively

conversation. They laughed over Gruzin's family life, over Kukushkin's conquests, or at Pekarsky, who had,

they said, in his account book one page headed Charity and another Physiological Necessities. They said that

no wife was faithful; that there was no wife from whom one could not, with practice, obtain caresses without

leaving her drawingroom while her husband was sitting in his study close by; that girls in their teens were

perverted and knew everything. Orlov had preserved a letter of a schoolgirl of fourteen: on her way home

from school she had "hooked an officer on the Nevsky," who had, it appears, taken her home with him, and

had only let her go late in the evening; and she hastened to write about this to her school friend to share her

joy with her. They maintained that there was not and never had been such a thing as moral purity, and that

evidently it was unnecessary; mankind had so far done very well without it. The harm done by socalled vice

was undoubtedly exaggerated. Vices which are punished by our legal code had not prevented Diogenes from

being a philosopher and a teacher. C�sar and Cicero were profligates and at the same time great men. Cato in

his old age married a young girl, and yet he was regarded as a great ascetic and a pillar of morality.

At three or four o'clock the party broke up or they went off together out of town, or to Officers' Street, to the

house of a certain Varvara Ossipovna, while I retired to my quarters, and was kept awake a long while by

Three weeks after I entered Orlov's service it was Sunday morning, I remember somebody rang the

bell. It was not yet eleven, and Orlov was still asleep. I went to open the door. You can imagine my

From her voice I recognised Zinaida Fyodorovna, to whom I had taken letters in Znamensky Street. I don't

remember whether I had time or selfpossession to answer her I was taken aback at seeing her. And,

indeed, she did not need my answer. In a flash she had darted by me, and, filling the hall with the fragrance of

her perfume, which I remember to this day, she went on, and her footsteps died away. For at least half an

hour afterwards I heard nothing. But again some one rang. This time it was a smartly dressed girl, who

looked like a maid in a wealthy family, accompanied by our house porter. Both were out of breath, carrying

And she went down without saying another word. All this was mysterious, and made Polya, who had a deep

admiration for the pranks of her betters, smile slyly to herself; she looked as though she would like to say,

"So that's what we're up to," and she walked about the whole time on tiptoe. At last we heard footsteps;

Zinaida Fyodorovna came quickly into the hall, and seeing me at the door of my room, said:

When I went in to Orlov with his clothes and his boots, he was sitting on the bed with his feet on the bearskin

rug. There was an air of embarrassment about his whole figure. He did not notice me, and my menial opinion

did not interest him; he was evidently perturbed and embarrassed before himself, before his inner eye. He

dressed, washed, and used his combs and brushes silently and deliberately, as though allowing himself time

to think over his position and to reflect, and even from his back one could see he was troubled and

They drank coffee together. Zinaida Fyodorovna poured out coffee for herself and for Orlov, then she put her

"I still can't believe it," she said. "When one has been a long while on one's travels and reaches a hotel at last,

it's difficult to believe that one hasn't to go on. It is pleasant to breathe freely."

With the expression of a child who very much wants to be mischievous, she sighed with relief and laughed

"You will excuse me," said Orlov, nodding towards the coffee. "Reading at breakfast is a habit I can't get

"Read away. . . . You shall keep your habits and your freedom. But why do you look so solemn? Are you

"Why? You had plenty of time to prepare yourself for my descent upon you. I've been threatening to come

"I didn't expect it myself, but that's all the better. It's all the better, my dear. It's best to have an aching tooth

"Oh, my dear," she said, closing her eyes, "all is well that ends well; but before this happy ending, what

suffering there has been! My laughing means nothing; I am glad, I am happy, but I feel more like crying than

laughing. Yesterday I had to fight a regular battle," she went on in French. "God alone knows how wretched I

was. But I laugh because I can't believe in it. I keep fancying that my sitting here drinking coffee with you is

Then, still speaking French, she described how she had broken with her husband the day before and her eyes

were alternately full of tears and of laughter while she gazed with rapture at Orlov. She told him her husband

had long suspected her, but had avoided explanations; they had frequent quarrels, and usually at the most

heated moment he would suddenly subside into silence and depart to his study for fear that in his

exasperation he might give utterance to his suspicions or she might herself begin to speak openly. And she

had felt guilty, worthless, incapable of taking a bold and serious step, and that had made her hate herself and

her husband more every day, and she had suffered the torments of hell. But the day before, when during a

quarrel he had cried out in a tearful voice, "My God, when will it end?" and had walked off to his study, she

had run after him like a cat after a mouse, and, preventing him from shutting the door, she had cried that she

hated him with her whole soul. Then he let her come into the study and she had told him everything, had

confessed that she loved some one else, that that some one else was her real, most lawful husband, and that

she thought it her true duty to go away to him that very day, whatever might happen, if she were to be shot

"There's a very romantic streak in you," Orlov interrupted, keeping his eyes fixed on the newspaper.

She laughed and went on talking without touching her coffee. Her cheeks glowed and she was a little

embarrassed by it, and she looked in confusion at Polya and me. From what she went on to say I learnt that

her husband had answered her with threats, reproaches, and finally tears, and that it would have been more

"Yes, my dear, so long as I was worked up, everything went all right," she told Orlov; "but as night came on,

my spirits sank. You don't believe in God, George, but I do believe a little, and I fear retribution. God

requires of us patience, magnanimity, selfsacrifice, and here I am refusing to be patient and want to remodel

my life to suit myself. Is that right? What if from the point of view of God it's wrong? At two o'clock in the

night my husband came to me and said: 'You dare not go away. I'll fetch you back through the police and

make a scandal.' And soon afterwards I saw him like a shadow at my door. 'Have mercy on me! Your

elopement may injure me in the service. Those words had a coarse effect upon me and made me feel stiff all

over. I felt as though the retribution were beginning already; I began crying and trembling with terror. I felt as

though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I should be dragged off to the policestation at once, that you

would grow cold to me all sorts of things, in fact! I thought I would go into a nunnery or become a nurse,

and give up all thought of happiness, but then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right to

dispose of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my mind was in a tangle I was in despair

and did not know what to do or think. But the sun rose and I grew happier. As soon as it was morning I

dashed off to you. Ah, what I've been through, dear one! I haven't slept for two nights!

She was tired out and excited. She was sleepy, and at the same time she wanted to talk endlessly, to laugh and

"You have a cosy flat, but I am afraid it may be small for the two of us," she said, walking rapidly through all

the rooms when they had finished breakfast. "What room will you give me? I like this one because it is next

At one o'clock she changed her dress in the room next to the study, which from that time she called hers, and

she went off with Orlov to lunch. They dined, too, at a restaurant, and spent the long interval between lunch

and dinner in shopping. Till late at night I was opening the door to messengers and errandboys from the

shops. They bought, among other things, a splendid pierglass, a dressingtable, a bedstead, and a gorgeous

tea service which we did not need. They bought a regular collection of copper saucepans, which we set in a

row on the shelf in our cold, empty kitchen. As we were unpacking the tea service Polya's eyes gleamed, and

she looked at me two or three times with hatred and fear that I, not she, would be the first to steal one of these

charming cups. A lady's writingtable, very expensive and inconvenient, came too. It was evident that

Zinaida Fyodorovna contemplated settling with us for good, and meant to make the flat her home.

She came back with Orlov between nine and ten. Full of proud consciousness that she had done something

bold and out of the common, passionately in love, and, as she imagined, passionately loved, exhausted,

looking forward to a sweet sound sleep, Zinaida Fyodorovna was revelling in her new life. She squeezed her

hands together in the excess of her joy, declared that everything was delightful, and swore that she would

love Orlov for ever; and these vows, and the na�ve, almost childish confidence that she too was deeply loved

and would be loved forever, made her at least five years younger. She talked charming nonsense and laughed

"There's no other blessing greater than freedom!" she said, forcing herself to say something serious and

edifying. "How absurd it is when you think of it! We attach no value to our own opinion even when it is wise,

but tremble before the opinion of all sorts of stupid people. Up to the last minute I was afraid of what other

people would say, but as soon as I followed my own instinct and made up my mind to go my own way, my

eyes were opened, I overcame my silly fears, and now I am happy and wish every one could be as happy!"

But her thoughts immediately took another turn, and she began talking of another flat, of wallpapers, horses,

a trip to Switzerland and Italy. Orlov was tired by the restaurants and the shops, and was still suffering from

the same uneasiness that I had noticed in the morning. He smiled, but more from politeness than pleasure, and

"There's no need to be in a hurry over the kitchen arrangements," said Orlov, looking at me coldly. "We must

We had never had cooking done at home nor kept horses, because, as he said, "he did not like disorder about

him," and only put up with having Polya and me in his flat from necessity. The socalled domestic hearth

with its everyday joys and its petty cares offended his taste as vulgarity; to be with child, or to have children

and talk about them, was bad form, like a petty bourgeois. And I began to feel very curious to see how these

two creatures would get on together in one flat she, domestic and homeloving with her copper saucepans

and her dreams of a good cook and horses; and he, fond of saying to his friends that a decent and orderly

man's flat ought, like a warship, to have nothing in it superfluous no women, no children, no rags, no

Then I will tell you what happened the following Thursday. That day Zinaida Fyodorovna dined at Content's

or Donon's. Orlov returned home alone, and Zinaida Fyodorovna, as I learnt afterwards, went to the

Petersburg Side to spend with her old governess the time visitors were with us. Orlov did not care to show

her to his friends. I realised that at breakfast, when he began assuring her that for the sake of her peace of

He went in with a sly, oily look in his eyes, smiling mysteriously, rubbing his hands, which were cold from

"I have the honour to congratulate you," he said to Orlov, shaking all over with ingratiating, obsequious

The visitors went into the bedroom, and were extremely jocose on the subject of a pair of feminine slippers,

the rug that had been put down between the two beds, and a grey dressingjacket that hung at the foot of the

bedstead. They were amused that the obstinate man who despised all the common place details of love had

"He who pointed the finger of scorn is bowing the knee in homage," Kukushkin repeated several times. He

had, I may say in parenthesis, an unpleasant habit of adorning his conversation with texts in Church Slavonic.

"Shsh!" he said as they went from the bedroom into the room next to the study. "Shsh! Here Gretchen is

He went off into a peal of laughter as though he had said something very amusing. I watched Gruzin,

expecting that his musical soul would not endure this laughter, but I was mistaken. His thin, goodnatured

face beamed with pleasure. When they sat down to play cards, he, lisping and choking with laughter, said that

all that "dear George" wanted to complete his domestic felicity was a cherrywood pipe and a guitar.

Pekarsky laughed sedately, but from his serious expression one could see that Orlov's new love affair was

"But how about the husband?" he asked in perplexity, after they had played three rubbers.

Pekarsky combed his big beard with his fingers and sank into thought, and he did not speak again till

suppertime. When they were seated at supper, he began deliberately, drawling every word:

"Altogether, excuse my saying so, I don't understand either of you. You might love each other and break the

seventh commandment to your heart's content that I understand. Yes, that's comprehensible. But why

"Hm! . . . ." Pekarsky mused. "Well, then, let me tell you this, my friend," he went on, evidently thinking

hard: "if I ever marry again and you take it into your head to seduce my wife, please do it so that I don't

notice it. It's much more honest to deceive a man than to break up his family life and injure his reputation. I

understand. You both imagine that in living together openly you are doing something exceptionally

honourable and advanced, but I can't agree with that . . . what shall I call it? . . . romantic attitude?"

Orlov made no reply. He was out of humour and disinclined to talk. Pekarsky, still perplexed, drummed on

"I don't understand you, all the same. You are not a student and she is not a dressmaker. You are both of you

people with means. I should have thought you might have arranged a separate flat for her."

"Turgenev teaches us in his novels that every exalted, nobleminded girl should follow the man she loves to

the ends of the earth, and should serve his idea," said Orlov, screwing up his eyes ironically. "The ends of the

earth are poetic license; the earth and all its ends can be reduced to the flat of the man she loves. . . . And so

not to live in the same flat with the woman who loves you is to deny her her exalted vocation and to refuse to

share her ideals. Yes, my dear fellow, Turgenev wrote, and I have to suffer for it."

"What Turgenev has got to do with it I don't understand," said Gruzin softly, and he shrugged his shoulders.

"Do you remember, George, how in 'Three Meetings' he is walking late in the evening somewhere in Italy,

and suddenly hears, 'Vieni pensando a me segretamente,'" Gruzin hummed. "It's fine."

But she hasn't come to settle with you by force," said Pekarsky. "It was your own wish."

"What next! Far from wishing it, I never imagined that this would ever happen. When she said she was

"I couldn't have wished for such a thing," said Orlov in the tone of a man compelled to justify himself. "I am

not a Turgenev hero, and if I ever wanted to free Bulgaria I shouldn't need a lady's company. I look upon love

primarily as a necessity of my physical nature, degrading and antagonistic to my spirit; it must either be

satisfied with discretion or renounced altogether, otherwise it will bring into one's life elements as unclean as

itself. For it to be an enjoyment and not a torment, I will try to make it beautiful and to surround it with a

mass of illusions. I should never go and see a woman unless I were sure beforehand that she would be

beautiful and fascinating; and I should never go unless I were in the mood. And it is only in that way that we

succeed in deceiving one another, and fancying that we are in love and happy. But can I wish for copper

saucepans and untidy hair, or like to be seen myself when I am unwashed or out of humour? Zinaida

Fyodorovna in the simplicity of her heart wants me to love what I have been shunning all my life. She wants

my flat to smell of cooking and washing up; she wants all the fuss of moving into another flat, of driving

about with her own horses; she wants to count over my linen and to look after my health; she wants to

meddle in my personal life at every instant, and to watch over every step; and at the same time she assures me

genuinely that my habits and my freedom will be untouched. She is persuaded that, like a young couple, we

shall very soon go for a honeymoon that is, she wants to be with me all the time in trains and hotels, while

"What! Do you suppose she would understand me? Why, we think so differently. In her opinion, to leave

one's papa and mamma or one's husband for the sake of the man one loves is the height of civic virtue, while

I look upon it as childish. To fall in love and run away with a man to her means beginning a new life, while to

my mind it means nothing at all. Love and man constitute the chief interest of her life, and possibly it is the

philosophy of the unconscious at work in her. Try and make her believe that love is only a simple physical

need, like the need of food or clothes; that it doesn't mean the end of the world if wives and husbands are

unsatisfactory; that a man may be a profligate and a libertine, and yet a man of honour and a genius; and that,

on the other hand, one may abstain from the pleasures of love and at the same time be a stupid, vicious

animal! The civilised man of today, even among the lower classes for instance, the French workman

spends ten sous on dinner, five sous on his wine, and five or ten sous on woman, and devotes his brain and

nerves entirely to his work. But Zinaida Fyodorovna assigns to love not so many sous, but her whole soul. I

might give her a talking to, but she would raise a wail in answer, and declare in all sincerity that I had ruined

"Don't say anything to her," said Pekarsky, "but simply take a separate flat for her, that's all."

"But she is charming," said Kukushkin. "She is exquisite. Such women imagine that they will be in love for

"But one must keep a head on one's shoulders," said Orlov; "one must be reasonable. All experience gained

from everyday life and handed down in innumerable novels and plays, uniformly confirms the fact that

adultery and cohabitation of any sort between decent people never lasts longer than two or at most three

years, however great the love may have been at the beginning. That she ought to know. And so all this

business of moving, of saucepans, hopes of eternal love and harmony, are nothing but a desire to delude

herself and me. She is charming and exquisite who denies it? But she has turned my life upside down;

what I have regarded as trivial and nonsensical till now she has forced me to raise to the level of a serious

problem; I serve an idol whom I have never looked upon as God. She is charming exquisite, but for some

reason now when I am going home, I feel uneasy, as though I expected to meet with something inconvenient

at home, such as workmen pulling the stove to pieces and blocking up the place with heaps of bricks. In fact,

I am no longer giving up to love a sous, but part of my peace of mind and my nerves. And that's bad."

"And she doesn't hear this villain!" sighed Kukushkin. "My dear sir," he said theatrically, "I will relieve you

from the burdensome obligation to love that adorable creature! I will wrest Zinaida Fyodorovna from you!"

For half a minute Kukushkin laughed a shrill little laugh, shaking all over, then he said:

They all began talking of Kukushkin's indefatigable energy in love affairs, how irresistible he was to women,

and what a danger he was to husbands; and how the devil would roast him in the other world for his

immorality in this. He screwed up his eyes and remained silent, and when the names of ladies of their

acquaintance were mentioned, he held up his little finger as though to say they mustn't give away other

His friends understood, and began to take their leave. I remember that Gruzin, who was a little drunk, was

wearisomely long in getting off. He put on his coat, which was cut like children's coats in poor families,

pulled up the collar, and began telling some longwinded story; then, seeing he was not listened to, he flung

the rug that smelt of the nursery over one shoulder, and with a guilty and imploring face begged me to find

"George, my angel," he said tenderly. "Do as I ask you, dear boy; come out of town with us!"

"She is a dear, she won't be angry. My dear chief, come along! It's glorious weather; there's snow and frost. . .

. Upon my word, you want shaking up a bit; you are out of humour. I don't know what the devil is the matter

"Shall I get drunk? All right, I'll come," said Orlov after some hesitation. "Wait a minute; I'll get some

He went into the study, and Gruzin slouched in, too, dragging his rug after him. A minute later both came

back into the hall. Gruzin, a little drunk and very pleased, was crumpling a tenrouble note in his hands.

"We'll settle up tomorrow," he said. "And she is kind, she won't be cross. . . . She is my Lisotchka's

godmother; I am fond of her, poor thing! Ah, my dear fellow!" he laughed joyfully, and pressing his forehead

on Pekarsky's back. "Ah, Pekarsky, my dear soul! Advocatissimus as dry as a biscuit, but you bet he is

"Fat ones," said Orlov, putting on his fur coat. "But let us get off, or we shall be meeting her on the doorstep."

At last they drove off: Orlov did not sleep at home, and returned next day at dinnertime.

Zinaida Fyodorovna had lost her gold watch, a present from her father. This loss surprised and alarmed her.

She spent half a day going through the rooms, looking helplessly on all the tables and on all the windows. But

Only three days afterwards Zinaida Fyodorovna, on coming in, left her purse in the hall. Luckily for me, on

that occasion it was not I but Polya who helped her off with her coat. When the purse was missed, it could not

"Strange," said Zinaida Fyodorovna in bewilderment. "I distinctly remember taking it out of my pocket to pay

I had not stolen it, but I felt as though I had stolen it and had been caught in the theft. Tears actually came

into my eyes. When they were seated at dinner, Zinaida Fyodorovna said to Orlov in French:

"There seem to be spirits in the flat. I lost my purse in the hall today, and now, lo and behold, it is on my

table. But it's not quite a disinterested trick of the spirits. They took out a gold coin and twenty roubles in

"You are always losing something; first it's your watch and then it's your money . . ." said Orlov. "Why is it

A minute later Zinaida Fyodorovna had forgotten the trick played by the spirits, and was telling with a laugh

how the week before she had ordered some notepaper and had forgotten to give her new address, and the

shop had sent the paper to her old home at her husband's, who had to pay twelve roubles for it. And suddenly

she turned her eyes on Polya and looked at her intently. She blushed as she did so, and was so confused that

When I took in the coffee to the study, Orlov was standing with his back to the fire and she was sitting in an

"I am not in a bad temper at all," she was saying in French. "But I have been putting things together, and now

I see it clearly. I can give you the day and the hour when she stole my watch. And the purse? There can be no

doubt about it. Oh!" she laughed as she took the coffee from me. "Now I understand why I am always losing

my handkerchiefs and gloves. Whatever you say, I shall dismiss the magpie tomorrow and send Stepan for

"You are out of humour. Tomorrow you will feel differently, and will realise that you can't discharge people

"It's not suspicion; it's certainty," said Zinaida Fyodorovna. "So long as I suspected that unhappyfaced,

poorlooking valet of yours, I said nothing. It's too bad of you not to believe me, George."

"If we think differently about anything, it doesn't follow that I don't believe you. You may be right," said

Orlov, turning round and flinging his cigaretteend into the fire, "but there is no need to be excited about it,

anyway. In fact, I must say, I never expected my humble establishment would cause you so much serious

worry and agitation. You've lost a gold coin: never mind you may have a hundred of mine; but to change

my habits, to pick up a new housemaid, to wait till she is used to the place all that's a tedious, tiring

business and does not suit me. Our present maid certainly is fat, and has, perhaps, a weakness for gloves and

handkerchiefs, but she is perfectly well behaved, well trained, and does not shriek when Kukushkin pinches

"Yes, I am jealous," she repeated, and tears glistened in her eyes. "No, it's something worse . . . which I find it

difficult to find a name for." She pressed her hands on her temples, and went on impulsively. "You men are

"I've not seen it; I don't know; but they say that you men begin with housemaids as boys, and get so used to it

that you feel no repugnance. I don't know, I don't know, but I have actually read . . .George, of course you are

right," she said, going up to Orlov and changing to a caressing and imploring tone. "I really am out of humour

today. But, you must understand, I can't help it. She disgusts me and I am afraid of her. It makes me

"Surely you can rise above such paltriness?" said Orlov, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity, and walking

away from the fire. "Nothing could be simpler: take no notice of her, and then she won't disgust you, and you

I went out of the study, and I don't know what answer Orlov received. Whatever it was, Polya remained.

After that Zinaida Fyodorovna never applied to her for anything, and evidently tried to dispense with her

services. When Polya handed her anything or even passed by her, jingling her bangle and rustling her skirts,

I believe that if Gruzin or Pekarsky had asked Orlov to dismiss Polya he would have done so without the

slightest hesitation, without troubling about any explanations. He was easily persuaded, like all indifferent

people. But in his relations with Zinaida Fyodorovna he displayed for some reason, even in trifles, an

obstinacy which sometimes was almost irrational. I knew beforehand that if Zinaida Fyodorovna liked

anything, it would be certain not to please Orlov. When on coming in from shopping she made haste to show

him with pride some new purchase, he would glance at it and say coldly that the more unnecessary objects

they had in the flat, the less airy it would be. It sometimes happened that after putting on his dress clothes to

go out somewhere, and after saying goodbye to Zinaida Fyodorovna, he would suddenly change his mind

and remain at home from sheer perversity. I used to think that he remained at home then simply in order to

"Why are you staying?" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, with a show of vexation, though at the same time she was

radiant with delight. "Why do you? You are not accustomed to spending your evenings at home, and I don't

want you to alter your habits on my account. Do go out as usual, if you don't want me to feel guilty."

With the air of a victim he stretched himself in his easychair in the study, and shading his eyes with his

hand, took up a book. But soon the book dropped from his hand, he turned heavily in his chair, and again

screened his eyes as though from the sun. Now he felt annoyed that he had not gone out.

"May I come in?" Zinaida Fyodorovna would say, coming irresolutely into the study. "Are you reading? I felt

I remember one evening she went in like that, irresolutely and inappropriately, and sank on the rug at Orlov's

feet, and from her soft, timid movements one could see that she did not understand his mood and was afraid.

"You are always reading . . ." she said cajolingly, evidently wishing to flatter him. "Do you know, George,

what is one of the secrets of your success? You are very clever and wellread. What book have you there?"

Orlov answered. A silence followed for some minutes which seemed to me very long. I was standing in the

"There is something I wanted to tell you," said Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she laughed; "shall I? Very likely

you'll laugh and say that I flatter myself. You know I want, I want horribly to believe that you are staying at

home tonight for my sake . . . that we might spend the evening together. Yes? May I think so?"

"Do," he said, screening his eyes. "The really happy man is he who thinks not only of what is, but of what is

"That was a long sentence which I did not quite understand. You mean happy people live in their

imagination. Yes, that's true. I love to sit in your study in the evening and let my thoughts carry me far, far

"You are out of humour?" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, taking Orlov's hand. "Tell me why. When you are like

that, I'm afraid. I don't know whether your head aches or whether you are angry with me. . . ."

"Why have you changed?" she said softly. "Why are you never so tender or so gay as you used to be at

Znamensky Street? I've been with you almost a month, but it seems to me as though we had not yet begun to

live, and have not yet talked of anything as we ought to. You always answer me with jokes or else with a long

cold lecture like a teacher. And there is something cold in your jokes. . . . Why have you given up talking to

"Let us talk of our life, of our future," said Zinaida Fyodorovna dreamily. "I keep making plans for our life,

plans and plans and I enjoy doing it so! George, I'll begin with the question, when are you going to give

"My views?" Orlov repeated. "My views? In conviction and temperament I am an ordinary official, one of

Shtchedrin's heroes. You take me for something different, I venture to assure you."

"Not in the least. The service does not satisfy me, perhaps; but, anyway, it is better for me than anything else.

I am used to it, and in it I meet men of my own sort; I am in my place there and find it tolerable."

"Indeed? If I resign my post, take to dreaming aloud and letting myself be carried away into another world,

"You are ready to libel yourself in order to contradict me." Zinaida Fyodorovna was offended and got up. "I

"Why are you angry? I am not angry with you for not being an official. Every one lives as he likes best."

"Why, do you live as you like best? Are you free? To spend your life writing documents that are opposed to

your own ideas," Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, clasping her hands in despair: "to submit to authority,

congratulate your superiors at the New Year, and then cards and nothing but cards: worst of all, to be working

for a system which must be distasteful to you no, George, no! You should not make such horrid jokes. It's

dreadful. You are a man of ideas, and you ought to be working for your ideas and nothing else."

"Say simply that you don't want to talk to me. You dislike me, that's all," said Zinaida Fyodorovna through

"Look here, my dear," said Orlov admonishingly, sitting up in his chair. "You were pleased to observe

yourself that I am a clever, wellread man, and to teach one who knows does nothing but harm. I know very

well all the ideas, great and small, which you mean when you call me a man of ideas. So if I prefer the

service and cards to those ideas, you may be sure I have good grounds for it. That's one thing. Secondly, you

have, so far as I know, never been in the service, and can only have drawn your ideas of Government service

from anecdotes and indifferent novels. So it would not be amiss for us to make a compact, once for all, not to

talk of things we know already or of things about which we are not competent to speak."

"Why do you speak to me like that?" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, stepping back as though in horror. "What for?

Her voice quivered and broke; she was evidently trying to restrain her tears, but she suddenly broke into sobs.

"George, my darling, I am perishing!" she said in French, dropping down before Orlov, and laying her head

on his knees. "I am miserable, I am exhausted. I can't bear it, I can't bear it. . . . In my childhood my hateful,

depraved stepmother, then my husband, now you . . . you! . . . You meet my mad love with coldness and

irony. . . . And that horrible, insolent servant," she went on, sobbing. "Yes, yes, I see: I am not your wife nor

your friend, but a woman you don't respect because she has become your mistress. . . . I shall kill myself!"

I had not expected that her words and her tears would make such an impression on Orlov. He flushed, moved

uneasily in his chair, and instead of irony, his face wore a look of stupid, schoolboyish dismay.

"My darling, you misunderstood me," he muttered helplessly, touching her hair and her shoulders. "Forgive

"I insult you with my whining and complaints. You are a true, generous . . . rare man I am conscious of it

"As for the servant, she shall be gone tomorrow," he said, still moving uneasily in his chair.

"No, she must stay, George! Do you hear? I am not afraid of her now. . . . One must rise above trifles and not

She soon left off crying. With tears glistening on her eyelashes, sitting on Orlov's knee, she told him in a low

voice something touching, something like a reminiscence of childhood and youth. She stroked his face,

kissed him, and carefully examined his hands with the rings on them and the charms on his watchchain. She

was carried away by what she was saying, and by being near the man she loved, and probably because her

tears had cleared and refreshed her soul, there was a note of wonderful candour and sincerity in her voice.

And Orlov played with her chestnut hair and kissed her hands, noiselessly pressing them to his lips.

Then they had tea in the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna read aloud some letters. Soon after midnight they

went to bed. I had a fearful pain in my side that night, and I not get warm or go to sleep till morning. I could

hear Orlov go from the bedroom into his study. After sitting there about an hour, he rang the bell. In my pain

and exhaustion I forgot all the rules and conventions, and went to his study in my night attire, barefooted.

Orlov, in his dressinggown and cap, was standing in the doorway, waiting for me.

"When you are sent for you should come dressed," he said sternly. "Bring some fresh candles."

I was about to apologise, but suddenly broke into a violent cough, and clutched at the side of the door to save

I believe it was the first time of our acquaintance that he addressed me not in the singular goodness knows

why. Most likely, in my night clothes and with my face distorted by coughing, I played my part poorly, and

While hurriedly getting into my coat, I put up and lighted fresh candles. He was sitting at the table, with feet

I left him deeply engrossed, and the book did not drop out of his hands as it had done in the evening.

Now that I am writing these lines I am restrained by that dread of appearing sentimental and ridiculous, in

which I have been trained from childhood; when I want to be affectionate or to say anything tender, I don't

know how to be natural. And it is that dread, together with lack of practice, that prevents me from being able

I was not in love with Zinaida Fyodorovna, but in the ordinary human feeling I had for her, there was far

As I worked in the morning, cleaning boots or sweeping the rooms, I waited with a thrill at my heart for the

moment when I should hear her voice and her footsteps. To stand watching her as she drank her coffee in the

morning or ate her lunch, to hold her fur coat for her in the hall, and to put the goloshes on her little feet

while she rested her hand on my shoulder; then to wait till the hall porter rang up for me, to meet her at the

door, cold, and rosy, powdered with the snow, to listen to her brief exclamations about the frost or the

cabman if only you knew how much all that meant to me! I longed to be in love, to have a wife and child

of my own. I wanted my future wife to have just such a face, such a voice. I dreamed of it at dinner, and in

the street when I was sent on some errand, and when I lay awake at night. Orlov rejected with disgust

children, cooking, copper saucepans, and feminine knicknacks and I gathered them all up, tenderly cherished

them in my dreams, loved them, and begged them of destiny. I had visions of a wife, a nursery, a little house

I knew that if I did love her I could never dare hope for the miracle of her returning my love, but that

reflection did not worry me. In my quiet, modest feeling akin to ordinary affection, there was no jealousy of

Orlov or even envy of him, since I realised that for a wreck like me happiness was only to be found in

When Zinaida Fyodorovna sat up night after night for her George, looking immovably at a book of which she

never turned a page, or when she shuddered and turned pale at Polya's crossing the room, I suffered with her,

and the idea occurred to me to lance this festering wound as quickly as possible by letting her know what was

said here at supper on Thursdays; but how was it to be done? More and more often I saw her tears. For the

first weeks she laughed and sang to herself, even when Orlov was not at home, but by the second month there

She flattered Orlov, and to wring from him a counterfeit smile or kiss, was ready to go on her knees to him, to

fawn on him like a dog. Even when her heart was heaviest, she could not resist glancing into a lookingglass

if she passed one and straightening her hair. It seemed strange to me that she could still take an interest in

clothes and go into ecstasies over her purchases. It did not seem in keeping with her genuine grief. She paid

attention to the fashions and ordered expensive dresses. What for? On whose account? I particularly

remember one dress which cost four hundred roubles. To give four hundred roubles for an unnecessary,

useless dress while women for their hard day's work get only twenty kopecks a day without food, and the

makers of Venice and Brussels lace are only paid half a franc a day on the supposition that they can earn the

rest by immorality! And it seemed strange to me that Zinaida Fyodorovna was not conscious of it; it vexed

me. But she had only to go out of the house for me to find excuses and explanations for everything, and to be

She treated me as a flunkey, a being of a lower order. One may pat a dog, and yet not notice it; I was given

orders and asked questions, but my presence was not observed. My master and mistress thought it unseemly

to say more to me than is usually said to servants; if when waiting at dinner I had laughed or put in my word

in the conversation, they would certainly have thought I was mad and have dismissed me. Zinaida

Fyodorovna was favourably disposed to me, all the same. When she was sending me on some errand or

explaining to me the working of a new lamp or anything of that sort, her face was extraordinarily kind, frank,

and cordial, and her eyes looked me straight in the face. At such moments I always fancied she remembered

with gratitude how I used to bring her letters to Znamensky Street. When she rang the bell, Polya, who

considered me her favourite and hated me for it, used to say with a jeering smile:

Zinaida Fyodorovna considered me as a being of a lower order, and did not suspect that if any one in the

house were in a humiliating position it was she. She did not know that I, a footman, was unhappy on her

account, and used to ask myself twenty times a day what was in store for her and how it would all end.

Things were growing visibly worse day by day. After the evening on which they had talked of his official

work, Orlov, who could not endure tears, unmistakably began to avoid conversation with her; whenever

Zinaida Fyodorovna began to argue, or to beseech him, or seemed on the point of crying, he seized some

plausible excuse for retreating to his study or going out. He more and more rarely slept at home, and still

more rarely dined there: on Thursdays he was the one to suggest some expedition to his friends. Zinaida

Fyodorovna was still dreaming of having the cooking done at home, of moving to a new flat, of travelling

abroad, but her dreams remained dreams. Dinner was sent in from the restaurant. Orlov asked her not to

broach the question of moving until after they had come back from abroad, and apropos of their foreign tour,

declared that they could not go till his hair had grown long, as one could not go trailing from hotel to hotel

To crown it all, in Orlov's absence, Kukushkin began calling at the flat in the evening. There was nothing

exceptional in his behaviour, but I could never forget the conversation in which he had offered to cut Orlov

out. He was regaled with tea and red wine, and he used to titter and, anxious to say something pleasant,

would declare that a free union was superior in every respect to legal marriage, and that all decent people

Christmas was spent drearily in vague anticipations of calamity. On New Year's Eve Orlov unexpectedly

announced at breakfast that he was being sent to assist a senator who was on a revising commission in a

"I don't want to go, but I can't find an excuse to get off," he said with vexation. "I must go; there's nothing for

Such news instantly made Zinaida Fyodorovna's eyes look red. "Is it for long?" she asked.

"I am glad, really, you are going," she said after a moment's thought. "It will be a change for you. You will

At every opportunity she tried to make Orlov feel that she did not restrict his liberty in any way, and that he

could do exactly as he liked, and this artless, transparent strategy deceived no one, and only unnecessarily

Zinaida Fyodorovna wanted to see him off at the station, but he dissuaded her, saying that he was not going

to America, and not going to be away five years, but only five days possibly less.

The parting took place between seven and eight. He put one arm round her, and kissed her on the lips and on

"Be a good girl, and don't be depressed while I am away," he said in a warm, affectionate tone which touched

She looked greedily into his face, to stamp his dear features on her memory, then she put her arms gracefully

"Forgive me our misunderstandings," she said in French. "Husband and wife cannot help quarrelling if they

love each other, and I love you madly. Don't forget me. . . . Wire to me often and fully."

Orlov kissed her once more, and, without saying a word, went out in confusion. When he heard the click of

the lock as the door closed, he stood still in the middle of the staircase in hesitation and glanced upwards. It

seemed to me that if a sound had reached him at that moment from above, he would have turned back. But all

The sledges had been waiting a long while at the door. Orlov got into one, I got into the other with two

portmanteaus. It was a hard frost and there were fires smoking at the crossroads. The cold wind nipped my

face and hands, and took my breath away as we drove rapidly along; and, closing my eyes, I thought what a

splendid woman she was. How she loved him! Even useless rubbish is collected in the courtyards nowadays

and used for some purpose, even broken glass is considered a useful commodity, but something so precious,

so rare, as the love of a refined, young, intelligent, and good woman is utterly thrown away and wasted. One

of the early sociologists regarded every evil passion as a force which might by judicious management be

turned to good, while among us even a fine, noble passion springs up and dies away in impotence, turned to

The sledges stopped unexpectedly. I opened my eyes and I saw that we had come to a standstill in Sergievsky

Street, near a big house where Pekarsky lived. Orlov got out of the sledge and vanished into the entry. Five

minutes later Pekarsky's footman came out, bareheaded, and, angry with the frost, shouted to me:

At a complete loss, I went to the first storey. I had been to Pekarsky's flat before that is, I had stood in the

hall and looked into the drawingroom, and, after the damp, gloomy street, it always struck me by the

brilliance of its pictureframes, its bronzes and expensive furniture. Today in the midst of this splendour I

"Look here, Stepan," he said, coming up to me. "I shall be staying here till Friday or Saturday. If any letters

or telegrams come, you must bring them here every day. At home, of course you will say that I have gone,

When I reached home Zinaida Fyodorovna was lying on the sofa in the drawingroom, eating a pear. There

I went into my room and I, too, lay down. I had nothing to do, and I did not want to read. I was not surprised

and I was not indignant. I only racked my brains to think why this deception was necessary. It is only boys in

their teens who deceive their mistresses like that. How was it that a man who had thought and read so much

could not imagine anything more sensible? I must confess I had by no means a poor opinion of his

intelligence. I believe if he had had to deceive his minister or any other influential person he would have put a

great deal of skill and energy into doing so; but to deceive a woman, the first idea that occurred to him was

evidently good enough. If it succeeded well and good; if it did not, there would be no harm done he

At midnight when the people on the floor overhead were moving their chairs and shouting hurrah to welcome

the New Year, Zinaida Fyodorovna rang for me from the room next to the study. Languid from lying down so

"I must send a telegram," she said, with a smile. "Go to the station as quick as you can and ask them to send it

"May the New Year bring new happiness. Make haste and telegraph; I miss you dreadfully. It seems an

eternity. I am only sorry I can't send a thousand kisses and my very heart by telegraph. Enjoy yourself, my

The worst of it was that Orlov had thoughtlessly let Polya, too, into the secret of his deception, telling her to

bring his shirts to Sergievsky Street. After that, she looked at Zinaida Fyodorovna with a malignant joy and

hatred I could not understand, and was never tired of snorting with delight to herself in her own room and in

"She's outstayed her welcome; it's time she took herself off!" she would say with zest. "She ought to realise

She already divined by instinct that Zinaida Fyodorovna would not be with us much longer, and, not to let the

chance slip, carried off everything she set her eyes on smellingbottles, tortoiseshell hairpins,

handkerchiefs, shoes! On the day after New Year's Day, Zinaida Fyodorovna summoned me to her room and

told me in a low voice that she missed her black dress. And then she walked through all the rooms, with a

At dinner she tried to help herself to soup, but could not her hands were trembling. Her lips were

trembling, too. She looked helplessly at the soup and at the little pies, waiting for the trembling to pass off,

"There's no need for you to stay. You go away altogether," Zinaida Fyodorovna went on, getting up in great

"I can't go away without the master's orders. He engaged me. It must be as he orders."

"You can take orders from me, too! I am mistress here!" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she flushed crimson.

"You may be the mistress, but only the master can dismiss me. It was he engaged me."

"You dare not stay here another minute!" cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, and she struck the plate with her knife.

Zinaida Fyodorovna flung her dinnernapkin on the table, and with a pitiful, suffering face, went quickly out

of the room. Loudly sobbing and wailing something indistinct, Polya, too, went away. The soup and the

grouse got cold. And for some reason all the restaurant dainties on the table struck me as poor, thievish, like

Polya. Two pies on a plate had a particularly miserable and guilty air. "We shall be taken back to the

restaurant today," they seemed to be saying, "and tomorrow we shall be put on the table again for some

"She is a fine lady, indeed," I heard uttered in Polya's room. "I could have been a lady like that long ago, but I

Zinaida Fyodorovna rang the bell. She was sitting in her room, in the corner, looking as though she had been

"Ask the porter; perhaps there is a telegram. And don't leave the house," she called after me. "I am afraid to

After that I had to run down almost every hour to ask the porter whether a telegram had come. I must own it

was a dreadful time! To avoid seeing Polya, Zinaida Fyodorovna dined and had tea in her own room; it was

here that she slept, too, on a short sofa like a halfmoon, and she made her own bed. For the first days I took

the telegrams; but, getting no answer, she lost her faith in me and began telegraphing herself. Looking at her,

I, too, began impatiently hoping for a telegram. I hoped he would contrive some deception, would make

arrangements, for instance, that a telegram should be sent to her from some station. If he were too much

engrossed with cards or had been attracted by some other woman, I thought that both Gruzin and Kukushkin

would remind him of us. But our expectations were vain. Five times a day I would go in to Zinaida

Fyodorovna, intending to tell her the truth, But her eyes looked piteous as a fawn's, her shoulders seemed to

droop, her lips were moving, and I went away again without saying a word. Pity and sympathy seemed to rob

me of all manliness. Polya, as cheerful and well satisfied with herself as though nothing had happened, was

tidying the master's study and the bedroom, rummaging in the cupboards, and making the crockery jingle,

and when she passed Zinaida Fyodorovna's door, she hummed something and coughed. She was pleased that

her mistress was hiding from her. In the evening she would go out somewhere, and rang at two or three

o'clock in the morning, and I had to open the door to her and listen to remarks about my cough. Immediately

afterwards I would hear another ring; I would run to the room next to the study, and Zinaida Fyodorovna,

putting her head out of the door, would ask, "Who was it rung?" while she looked at my hands to see whether

When at last on Saturday the bell rang below and she heard the familiar voice on the stairs, she was so

delighted that she broke into sobs. She rushed to meet him, embraced him, kissed him on the breast and

sleeves, said something one could not understand. The hall porter brought up the portmanteaus; Polya's

cheerful voice was heard. It was as though some one had come home for the holidays.

"Why didn't you wire?" asked Zinaida Fyodorovna, breathless with joy. "Why was it? I have been in misery;

"It was very simple! I returned with the senator to Moscow the very first day, and didn't get your telegrams,"

said Orlov. "After dinner, my love, I'll give you a full account of my doings, but now I must sleep and sleep. .

It was evident that he had not slept all night; he had probably been playing cards and drinking freely. Zinaida

Fyodorovna put him to bed, and we all walked about on tiptoe all that day. The dinner went off quite

satisfactorily, but when they went into the study and had coffee the explanation began. Zinaida Fyodorovna

began talking of something rapidly in a low voice; she spoke in French, and her words flowed like a stream.

"My God!" he said in French. "Have you really nothing fresher to tell me than this everlasting tale of your

"But why is it she doesn't rob me or say insulting things to me? Why is it I never notice the maids nor the

porters nor the footmen? My dear, you are simply capricious and refuse to know your own mind. . . . I really

begin to suspect that you must be in a certain condition. When I offered to let her go, you insisted on her

remaining, and now you want me to turn her away. I can be obstinate, too, in such cases. You want her to go,

"Oh, very well, very well," said Zinaida Fyodorovna in alarm. "Let us say no more about that. . . . Let us put

it off till tomorrow. . . . Now tell me about Moscow. . . . What is going on in Moscow?"

After lunch next day it was the seventh of January, St. John the Baptist's Day Orlov put on his black

dress coat and his decoration to go to visit his father and congratulate him on his name day. He had to go at

two o'clock, and it was only halfpast one when he had finished dressing. What was he to do for that

halfhour? He walked about the drawingroom, declaiming some congratulatory verses which he had recited

Zinaida Fyodorovna, who was just going out to a dressmaker's or to the shops, was sitting, listening to him

with a smile. I don't know how their conversation began, but when I took Orlov his gloves, he was standing

"For God's sake, in the name of everything that's holy, don't talk of things that everybody knows! What an

unfortunate gift our intellectual thoughtful ladies have for talking with enthusiasm and an air of profundity of

things that every schoolboy is sick to death of! Ah, if only you would exclude from our conjugal programme

"I give you full liberty to be as liberal as you like, and quote from any authors you choose, but make me one

concession: don't hold forth in my presence on either of two subjects: the corruption of the upper classes and

the evils of the marriage system. Do understand me, at last. The upper class is always abused in contrast with

the world of tradesmen, priests, workmen and peasants, Sidors and Nikitas of all sorts. I detest both classes,

but if I had honestly to choose between the two, I should without hesitation, prefer the upper class, and there

would be no falsity or affectation about it, since all my tastes are in that direction. Our world is trivial and

empty, but at any rate we speak French decently, read something, and don't punch each other in the ribs even

in our most violent quarrels, while the Sidors and the Nikitas and their worships in trade talk about 'being

quite agreeable,' 'in a jiffy,' 'blast your eyes,' and display the utmost license of pothouse manners and the most

"Yes, but what of it? That's not only to my discredit, but to theirs too. They feed me and take off their caps to

me, so it seems they have not the intelligence and honesty to do otherwise. I don't blame or praise any one: I

only mean that the upper class and the lower are as bad as one another. My feelings and my intelligence are

opposed to both, but my tastes lie more in the direction of the former. Well, now for the evils of marriage,"

Orlov went on, glancing at his watch. "It's high time for you to understand that there are no evils in the

system itself; what is the matter is that you don't know yourselves what you want from marriage. What is it

you want? In legal and illegal cohabitation, in every sort of union and cohabitation, good or bad, the

underlying reality is the same. You ladies live for that underlying reality alone: for you it's everything; your

existence would have no meaning for you without it. You want nothing but that, and you get it; but since

you've taken to reading novels you are ashamed of it: you rush from pillar to post, you recklessly change your

men, and to justify this turmoil you have begun talking of the evils of marriage. So long as you can't and

won't renounce what underlies it all, your chief foe, your devil so long as you serve that slavishly, what

use is there in discussing the matter seriously? Everything you may say to me will be falsity and affectation. I

I went to find out from the hall porter whether the sledge was at the door, and when I came back I found it

"I see you want to shock me by your cynicism today," said Zinaida Fyodorovna, walking about the

drawingroom in great emotion. "It revolts me to listen to you. I am pure before God and man, and have

nothing to repent of. I left my husband and came to you, and am proud of it. I swear, on my honour, I am

"If you are a decent, honest man, you, too, ought to be proud of what I did. It raises you and me above

thousands of people who would like to do as we have done, but do not venture through cowardice or petty

prudence. But you are not a decent man. You are afraid of freedom, and you mock the promptings of genuine

feeling, from fear that some ignoramus may suspect you of being sincere. You are afraid to show me to your

friends; there's no greater infliction for you than to go about with me in the street. . . . Isn't that true? Why

haven't you introduced me to your father or your cousin all this time? Why is it? No, I am sick of it at last,"

cried Zinaida Fyodorovna, stamping. "I demand what is mine by right. You must present me to your father."

"If you want to know him, go and present yourself. He receives visitors every morning from ten till

"How base you are!" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, wringing her hands in despair. "Even if you are not sincere,

and are not saying what you think, I might hate you for your cruelty. Oh, how base you are!"

"We keep going round and round and never reach the real point. The real point is that you made a mistake,

and you won't acknowledge it aloud. You imagined that I was a hero, and that I had some extraordinary ideas

and ideals, and it has turned out that I am a most ordinary official, a cardplayer, and have no partiality for

ideas of any sort. I am a worthy representative of the rotten world from which you have run away because

you were revolted with its triviality and emptiness. Recognise it and be just: don't be indignant with me, but

"Well, that's all right, then. We've reached that point at last, thank God. Now hear something more, if you

please: I can't rise to your level I am too depraved; you can't descend to my level, either, for you are too

"What?" Zinaida Fyodorovna asked quickly, holding her breath and turning suddenly as white as a sheet of

"Georgy, why are you torturing me?" Zinaida Fyodorovna said suddenly in Russian in a breaking voice.

Orlov, afraid of tears, went quickly into his study, and I don't know why whether it was that he wished to

cause her extra pain, or whether he remembered it was usually done in such cases he locked the door after

"What does this mean?" she cried, knocking at his door. "What . . . what does this mean?" she repeated in a

shrill voice breaking with indignation. "Ah, so this is what you do! Then let me tell you I hate you, I despise

I heard hysterical weeping mingled with laughter. Something small in the drawingroom fell off the table and

was broken. Orlov went out into the hall by another door, and, looking round him nervously, he hurriedly put

Half an hour passed, an hour, and she was still weeping. I remembered that she had no father or mother, no

relations, and here she was living between a man who hated her and Polya, who robbed her and how

desolate her life seemed to me! I do not know why, but I went into the drawingroom to her. Weak and

helpless, looking with her lovely hair like an embodiment of tenderness and grace, she was in anguish, as

though she were ill; she was lying on a couch, hiding her face, and quivering all over.

"No, there's no need . . . it's nothing," she said, and she looked at me with her tearstained eyes. "I have a

I went out, and in the evening she was writing letter after letter, and sent me out first to Pekarsky, then to

Gruzin, then to Kukushkin, and finally anywhere I chose, if only I could find Orlov and give him the letter.

Every time I came back with the letter she scolded me, entreated me, thrust money into my hand as

though she were in a fever. And all the night she did not sleep, but sat in the drawingroom, talking to

The first Thursday afterwards Orlov complained to his friends of the intolerable life he led; he smoked a great

"It is no life at all; it's the rack. Tears, wailing, intellectual conversations, begging for forgiveness, again tears

and wailing; and the long and the short of it is that I have no flat of my own now. I am wretched, and I make

her wretched. Surely I haven't to live another month or two like this? How can I? But yet I may have to."

"I've tried, but I can't. One can boldly tell the truth, whatever it may be, to an independent, rational man; but

in this case one has to do with a creature who has no will, no strength of character, and no logic. I cannot

endure tears; they disarm me. When she cries, I am ready to swear eternal love and cry myself."

Pekarsky did not understand; he scratched his broad forehead in perplexity and said:

"She wants me, not the flat. But what's the good of talking?" sighed Orlov. "I only hear endless

conversations, but no way out of my position. It certainly is a case of 'being guilty without guilt.' I don't claim

to be a mushroom, but it seems I've got to go into the basket. The last thing I've ever set out to be is a hero. I

never could endure Turgenev's novels; and now, all of a sudden, as though to spite me, I've heroism forced

upon me. I assure her on my honour that I'm not a hero at all, I adduce irrefutable proofs of the same, but she

doesn't believe me. Why doesn't she believe me? I suppose I really must have something of the appearance of

"You go off on a tour of inspection in the provinces," said Kukushkin, laughing.

A week after this conversation Orlov announced that he was again ordered to attend the senator, and the same

An old man of sixty, in a long fur coat reaching to the ground, and a beaver cap, was standing at the door.

At first I thought it was one of the moneylenders, Gruzin's creditors, who sometimes used to come to Orlov

for small payments on account; but when he came into the hall and flung open his coat, I saw the thick brows

and the characteristically compressed lips which I knew so well from the photographs, and two rows of stars

on the uniform. I recognised him: it was Orlov's father, the distinguished statesman.

I answered that Georgy Ivanitch was not at home. The old man pursed up his lips tightly and looked into

He left his goloshes in the hall, and, without taking off his long, heavy fur coat, went into the study. There he

sat down before the table, and, before taking up the pen, for three minutes he pondered, shading his eyes with

his hand as though from the sun exactly as his son did when he was out of humour. His face was sad,

thoughtful, with that look of resignation which I have only seen on the faces of the old and religious. I stood

behind him, gazed at his bald head and at the hollow at the nape of his neck, and it was clear as daylight to

me that this weak old man was now in my power. There was not a soul in the flat except my enemy and me. I

had only to use a little physical violence, then snatch his watch to disguise the object of the crime, and to get

off by the back way, and I should have gained infinitely more than I could have imagined possible when I

took up the part of a footman. I thought that I could hardly get a better opportunity. But instead of acting, I

looked quite unconcernedly, first at his bald patch and then at his fur, and calmly meditated on this man's

relation to his only son, and on the fact that people spoiled by power and wealth probably don't want to die. . .

"Have you been long in my son's service?" he asked, writing a large hand on the paper.

He finished the letter and stood up. I still had time. I urged myself on and clenched my fists, trying to wring

out of my soul some trace of my former hatred; I recalled what a passionate, implacable, obstinate hate I had

felt for him only a little while before. . . . But it is difficult to strike a match against a crumbling stone. The

sad old face and the cold glitter of his stars roused in me nothing but petty, cheap, unnecessary thoughts of

There could be no doubt about it: I had undergone a change; I had become different. To convince myself, I

began to recall the past, but at once I felt uneasy, as though I had accidentally peeped into a dark, damp

corner. I remembered my comrades and friends, and my first thought was how I should blush in confusion if

ever I met any of them. What was I now? What had I to think of and to do? Where was I to go? What was I

I could make nothing of it. I only knew one thing that I must make haste to pack my things and be off.

Before the old man's visit my position as a flunkey had a meaning; now it was absurd. Tears dropped into my

open portmanteau; I felt insufferably sad; but how I longed to live! I was ready to embrace and include in my

short life every possibility open to man. I wanted to speak, to read, and to hammer in some big factory, and to

stand on watch, and to plough. I yearned for the Nevsky Prospect, for the sea and the fields for every

place to which my imagination travelled. When Zinaida Fyodorovna came in, I rushed to open the door for

We had two other visitors that day besides the old man. In the evening when it was quite dark, Gruzin came

to fetch some papers for Orlov. He opened the tabledrawer, took the necessary papers, and, rolling them up,

told me to put them in the hall beside his cap while he went in to see Zinaida Fyodorovna. She was lying on

the sofa in the drawingroom, with her arms behind her head. Five or six days had already passed since

Orlov went on his tour of inspection, and no one knew when he would be back, but this time she did not send

telegrams and did not expect them. She did not seem to notice the presence of Polya, who was still living

with us. "So be it, then," was what I read on her passionless and very pale face. Like Orlov, she wanted to be

unhappy out of obstinacy. To spite herself and everything in the world, she lay for days together on the sofa,

desiring and expecting nothing but evil for herself. Probably she was picturing to herself Orlov's return and

the inevitable quarrels with him; then his growing indifference to her, his infidelities; then how they would

separate; and perhaps these agonising thoughts gave her satisfaction. But what would she have said if she

"I love you, Godmother," said Gruzin, greeting her and kissing her hand. "You are so kind! And so dear

"Let me spend an hour with you, my dear," he said. "I don't want to go home, and it's too early to go to the

Birshovs'. The Birshovs are keeping their Katya's birthday today. She is a nice child!"

I brought him a glass of tea and a decanter of brandy. He slowly and with obvious reluctance drank the tea,

We had nothing in the flat. I went to the restaurant and brought him the ordinary rouble dinner.

"To your health, my dear," he said to Zinaida Fyodorovna, and he tossed off a glass of vodka. "My little girl,

your godchild, sends you her love. Poor child! she's rickety. Ah, children, children!" he sighed. "Whatever

you may say, Godmother, it is nice to be a father. Dear George can't understand that feeling."

He drank some more. Pale and lean, with his dinnernapkin over his chest like a little pinafore, he ate

greedily, and raising his eyebrows, kept looking guiltily, like a little boy, first at Zinaida Fyodorovna and

then at me. It seemed as though he would have begun crying if I had not given him the grouse or the jelly.

When he had satisfied his hunger he grew more lively, and began laughingly telling some story about the

Birshov household, but perceiving that it was tiresome and that Zinaida Fyodorovna was not laughing, he

ceased. And there was a sudden feeling of dreariness. After he had finished his dinner they sat in the

drawingroom by the light of a single lamp, and did not speak; it was painful to him to lie to her, and she

wanted to ask him something, but could not make up her mind to. So passed half an hour. Gruzin glanced at

Again they were silent. He sat down to the piano, struck one chord, then began playing, and sang softly,

"What does the coming day bring me?" but as usual he got up suddenly and tossed his head.

"What shall I play?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders. "I have forgotten everything. I've given it up long

Looking at the ceiling as though trying to remember, he played two pieces of Tchaikovsky with exquisite

expression, with such warmth, such insight! His face was just as usual neither stupid nor intelligent

and it seemed to me a perfect marvel that a man whom I was accustomed to see in the midst of the most

degrading, impure surroundings, was capable of such purity, of rising to a feeling so lofty, so far beyond my

reach. Zinaida Fyodorovna's face glowed, and she walked about the drawingroom in emotion.

"Wait a bit, Godmother; if I can remember it, I will play you something," he said; "I heard it played on the

Beginning timidly and picking out the notes, and then gathering confidence, he played SaintSa�ns's "Swan

"What am I to say?" he said, raising his eyebrows. "I love you and think nothing but good of you. But if you

wish that I should speak generally about the question that interests you," he went on, rubbing his sleeve near

the elbow and frowning, "then, my dear, you know. . . . To follow freely the promptings of the heart does not

always give good people happiness. To feel free and at the same time to be happy, it seems to me, one must

not conceal from oneself that life is coarse, cruel, and merciless in its conservatism, and one must retaliate

with what it deserves that is, be as coarse and as merciless in one's striving for freedom. That's what I

"That's beyond me," said Zinaida Fyodorovna, with a mournful smile. "I am exhausted already. I am so

He said this in jest, but after he had said it, tears glistened in Zinaida Fyodorovna's eyes and then in his.

"Well," he said, "we've been sitting and sitting, and now we must go. Goodbye, dear Godmother. God give

He kissed both her hands, and stroking them tenderly, said that he should certainly come to see her again in a

day or two. In the hall, as he was putting on his overcoat, that was so like a child's pelisse, he fumbled long in

Zinaida Fyodorovna still walked about the room in her excitement. That she was walking about and not still

lying down was so much to the good. I wanted to take advantage of this mood to speak to her openly and then

to go away, but I had hardly seen Gruzin out when I heard a ring. It was Kukushkin.

"Is Georgy Ivanitch at home?" he said. "Has he come back? You say no? What a pity! In that case, I'll go in

and kiss your mistress's hand, and so away. Zinaida Fyodorovna, may I come in?" he cried. "I want to kiss

He was not long in the drawingroom, not more than ten minutes, but I felt as though he were staying a long

while and would never go away. I bit my lips from indignation and annoyance, and already hated Zinaida

Fyodorovna. "Why does she not turn him out?" I thought indignantly, though it was evident that she was

When I held his fur coat for him he asked me, as a mark of special goodwill, how I managed to get on

"But I don't suppose you waste your time," he said, laughingly. "I've no doubt Polya and you are as thick as

In spite of my experience of life, I knew very little of mankind at that time, and it is very likely that I often

exaggerated what was of little consequence and failed to observe what was important. It seemed to me it was

not without motive that Kukushkin tittered and flattered me. Could it be that he was hoping that I, like a

flunkey, would gossip in other kitchens and servants' quarters of his coming to see us in the evenings when

Orlov was away, and staying with Zinaida Fyodorovna till late at night? And when my tittletattle came to

the ears of his acquaintance, he would drop his eyes in confusion and shake his little finger. And would not

he, I thought, looking at his little honeyed face, this very evening at cards pretend and perhaps declare that he

That hatred which failed me at midday when the old father had come, took possession of me now. Kukushkin

went away at last, and as I listened to the shuffle of his leather goloshes, I felt greatly tempted to fling after

him, as a parting shot, some coarse word of abuse, but I restrained myself. And when the steps had died away

on the stairs, I went back to the hall, and, hardly conscious of what I was doing, took up the roll of papers that

Gruzin had left behind, and ran headlong downstairs. Without cap or overcoat, I ran down into the street. It

He stopped under a lamppost and looked round with surprise. "Your Excellency!" I said breathless, "your

And not able to think of anything to say, I hit him two or three times on the face with the roll of paper.

Completely at a loss, and hardly wondering I had so completely taken him by surprise he leaned his

back against the lamppost and put up his hands to protect his face. At that moment an army doctor passed,

and saw how I was beating the man, but he merely looked at us in astonishment and went on. I felt ashamed

With my head wet from the snow, and gasping for breath, I ran to my room, and immediately flung off my

swallowtails, put on a reefer jacket and an overcoat, and carried my portmanteau out into the passage; I

must get away! But before going I hurriedly sat down and began writing to Orlov:

"I leave you my false passport," I began. "I beg you to keep it as a memento, you false man, you Petersburg

"To steal into another man's house under a false name, to watch under the mask of a flunkey this person's

intimate life, to hear everything, to see everything in order later on, unasked, to accuse a man of lying all

this, you will say, is on a level with theft. Yes, but I care nothing for fine feelings now. I have endured dozens

of your dinners and suppers when you said and did what you liked, and I had to hear, to look on, and be

silent. I don't want to make you a present of my silence. Besides, if there is not a living soul at hand who

dares to tell you the truth without flattery, let your flunkey Stepan wash your magnificent countenance for

I did not like this beginning, but I did not care to alter it. Besides, what did it matter?

The big windows with their dark curtains, the bed, the crumpled dress coat on the floor, and my wet

Possibly because I had run out into the street without my cap and goloshes I was in a high fever. My face

burned, my legs ached. . . . My heavy head drooped over the table, and there was that kind of division in my

"I am ill, weak, morally cast down," I went on; "I cannot write to you as I should like to. From the first

moment I desired to insult and humiliate you, but now I do not feel that I have the right to do so. You and I

have both fallen, and neither of us will ever rise up again; and even if my letter were eloquent, terrible, and

passionate, it would still seem like beating on the lid of a coffin: however one knocks upon it, one will not

wake up the dead! No efforts could warm your accursed cold blood, and you know that better than I do. Why

write? But my mind and heart are burning, and I go on writing; for some reason I am moved as though this

letter still might save you and me. I am so feverish that my thoughts are disconnected, and my pen scratches

the paper without meaning; but the question I want to put to you stands before me as clear as though in letters

"Why I am prematurely weak and fallen is not hard to explain. Like Samson of old, I have taken the gates of

Gaza on my shoulders to carry them to the top of the mountain, and only when I was exhausted, when youth

and health were quenched in me forever, I noticed that that burden was not for my shoulders, and that I had

deceived myself. I have been, moreover, in cruel and continual pain. I have endured cold, hunger, illness, and

loss of liberty. Of personal happiness I know and have known nothing. I have no home; my memories are

bitter, and my conscience is often in dread of them. But why have you fallen you? What fatal, diabolical

causes hindered your life from blossoming into full flower? Why, almost before beginning life, were you in

such haste to cast off the image and likeness of God, and to become a cowardly beast who backs and scares

others because he is afraid himself? You are afraid of life as afraid of it as an Oriental who sits all day on

a cushion smoking his hookah. Yes, you read a great deal, and a European coat fits you well, but yet with

what tender, purely Oriental, pashalike care you protect yourself from hunger, cold, physical effort, from

pain and uneasiness! How early your soul has taken to its dressinggown! What a cowardly part you have

played towards real life and nature, with which every healthy and normal man struggles! How soft, how snug,

how warm, how comfortable and how bored you are! Yes, it is deathly boredom, unrelieved by one ray of

light, as in solitary confinement; but you try to hide from that enemy, too, you play cards eight hours out of

"And your irony? Oh, but how well I understand it! Free, bold, living thought is searching and dominating;

for an indolent, sluggish mind it is intolerable. That it may not disturb your peace, like thousands of your

contemporaries, you made haste in youth to put it under bar and bolt. Your ironical attitude to life, or

whatever you like to call it, is your armour; and your thought, fettered and frightened, dare not leap over the

fence you have put round it; and when you jeer at ideas which you pretend to know all about, you are like the

deserter fleeing from the field of battle, and, to stifle his shame, sneering at war and at valour. Cynicism

stifles pain. In some novel of Dostoevsky's an old man tramples underfoot the portrait of his dearly loved

daughter because he had been unjust to her, and you vent your foul and vulgar jeers upon the ideas of

goodness and truth because you have not the strength to follow them. You are frightened of every honest and

truthful hint at your degradation, and you purposely surround yourself with people who do nothing but flatter

"By the way, your attitude to women. Shamelessness has been handed down to us in our flesh and blood, and

we are trained to shamelessness; but that is what we are men for to subdue the beast in us. When you

reached manhood and all ideas became known to you, you could not have failed to see the truth; you knew it,

but you did not follow it; you were afraid of it, and to deceive your conscience you began loudly assuring

yourself that it was not you but woman that was to blame, that she was as degraded as your attitude to her.

Your cold, scabrous anecdotes, your coarse laughter, all your innumerable theories concerning the underlying

reality of marriage and the definite demands made upon it, concerning the ten sous the French workman pays

his woman; your everlasting attacks on female logic, lying, weakness and so on doesn't it all look like a

desire at all costs to force woman down into the mud that she may be on the same level as your attitude to

Zinaida Fyodorovna began playing the piano in the drawingroom, trying to recall the song of Saint Sa�ns

that Gruzin had played. I went and lay on my bed, but remembering that it was time for me to go, I got up

"But this is the question," I went on. "Why are we worn out? Why are we, at first so passionate so bold, so

noble, and so full of faith, complete bankrupts at thirty or thirtyfive? Why does one waste in consumption,

another put a bullet through his brains, a third seeks forgetfulness in vodka and cards, while the fourth tries to

stifle his fear and misery by cynically trampling underfoot the pure image of his fair youth? Why is it that,

having once fallen, we do not try to rise up again, and, losing one thing, do not seek something else? Why is

"The thief hanging on the Cross could bring back the joy of life and the courage of confident hope, though

perhaps he had not more than an hour to live. You have long years before you, and I shall probably not die so

soon as one might suppose. What if by a miracle the present turned out to be a dream, a horrible nightmare,

and we should wake up renewed, pure, strong, proud of our righteousness? Sweet visions fire me, and I am

almost breathless with emotion. I have a terrible longing to live. I long for our life to be holy, lofty, and

majestic as the heavens above. Let us live! The sun doesn't rise twice a day, and life is not given us again

I did not write another word. I had a multitude of thoughts in my mind, but I could not connect them and get

them on to paper. Without finishing the letter, I signed it with my name and rank, and went into the study. It

was dark. I felt for the table and put the letter on it. I must have stumbled against the furniture in the dark and

For at least half a minute I fumbled at the door in the dark, feeling for the handle; then I slowly opened it and

walked into the drawingroom. Zinaida Fyodorovna was lying on the couch, and raising herself on her

elbow, she looked towards me. Unable to bring myself to speak, I walked slowly by, and she followed me

with her eyes. I stood for a little time in the diningroom and then walked by her again, and she looked at me

intently and with perplexity, even with alarm. At last I stood still and said with an effort:

"He is not coming back," I repeated, and my heart beat violently. "He will not come back, for he has not left

She understood and believed me I saw that from her sudden pallor, and from the way she laid her arms

upon her bosom in terror and entreaty. In one instant all that had happened of late flashed through her mind;

she reflected, and with pitiless clarity she saw the whole truth. But at the same time she remembered that I

was a flunkey, a being of a lower order. . . . A casual stranger, with hair ruffled, with face flushed with fever,

perhaps drunk, in a common overcoat, was coarsely intruding into her intimate life, and that offended her.

"Oh, believe me!" I cried impetuously, holding out my hands to her. "I am not a footman; I am as free as

I mentioned my name, and, speaking very rapidly that she might not interrupt me or go away, explained to

her who I was and why I was living there. This new discovery struck her more than the first. Till then she had

hoped that her footman had lied or made a mistake or been silly, but now after my confession she had no

doubts left. From the expression of her unhappy eyes and face, which suddenly lost its softness and beauty

and looked old, I saw that she was insufferably miserable, and that the conversation would lead to no good;

"The senator and the tour of inspection were invented to deceive you. In January, just as now, he did not go

away, but stayed at Pekarsky's, and I saw him every day and took part in the deception. He was weary of you,

he hated your presence here, he mocked at you. . . . If you could have heard how he and his friends here

jeered at you and your love, you would not have remained here one minute! Go away from here! Go away."

"Well," she said in a shaking voice, and moved her hand over her hair. "Well, so be it."

Her eyes were full of tears, her lips were quivering, and her whole face was strikingly pale and distorted with

anger. Orlov's coarse, petty lying revolted her and seemed to her contemptible, ridiculous: she smiled and I

"Well," she repeated, passing her hand over her hair again, "so be it. He imagines that I shall die of

humiliation, and instead of that I am . . . amused by it. There's no need for him to hide." She walked away

from the piano and said, shrugging her shoulders: "There's no need. . . . It would have been simpler to have it

out with me instead of keeping in hiding in other people's flats. I have eyes; I saw it myself long ago. . . . I

Then she sat down on a low chair by the table, and, leaning her head on the arm of the sofa, wept bitterly. In

the drawingroom there was only one candle burning in the candelabra, and the chair where she was sitting

was in darkness; but I saw how her head and shoulders were quivering, and how her hair, escaping from her

combs, covered her neck, her face, her arms. . . . Her quiet, steady weeping, which was not hysterical but a

woman's ordinary weeping, expressed a sense of insult, of wounded pride, of injury, and of something

helpless, hopeless, which one could not set right and to which one could not get used. Her tears stirred an

echo in my troubled and suffering heart; I forgot my illness and everything else in the world; I walked about

"Is this life? . . . Oh, one can't go on living like this, one can't. . . . Oh, it's madness, wickedness, not life."

"What humiliation!" she said through her tears. "To live together, to smile at me at the very time when I was

She lifted up her head, and looking at me with tearstained eyes through her hair, wet with her tears, and

"To these men you were laughable you and your love and Turgenev; they said your head was full of him.

And if we both die at once in despair, that will amuse them, too; they will make a funny anecdote of it and

tell it at your requiem service. But why talk of them?" I said impatiently. "We must get away from here I

"Why do you talk like that? We had better consider together what we are to do. Neither you nor I can stay

Suddenly there was a ring at the bell. My heart stood still. Could it be Orlov, to whom perhaps Kukushkin

had complained of me? How should we meet? I went to open the door. It was Polya. She came in shaking the

snow off her pelisse, and went into her room without saying a word to me. When I went back to the

drawingroom, Zinaida Fyodorovna, pale as death, was standing in the middle of the room, looking towards

"I will go away at once," she said. "Will you be kind and take me to the Petersburg Side? What time is it

When, a little afterwards, we went out of the house, it was dark and deserted in the street. Wet snow was

falling and a damp wind lashed in one's face. I remember it was the beginning of March; a thaw had set in,

and for some days past the cabmen had been driving on wheels. Under the impression of the back stairs, of

the cold, of the midnight darkness, and the porter in his sheepskin who had questioned us before letting us out

of the gate, Zinaida Fyodorovna was utterly cast down and dispirited. When we got into the cab and the hood

was put up, trembling all over, she began hurriedly saying how grateful she was to me.

"I do not doubt your goodwill, but I am ashamed that you should be troubled," she muttered. "Oh, I

understand, I understand. . . . When Gruzin was here today, I felt that he was lying and concealing

something. Well, so be it. But I am ashamed, anyway, that you should be troubled."

She still had her doubts. To dispel them finally, I asked the cabman to drive through Sergievsky Street;

stopping him at Pekarsky's door, I got out of the cab and rang. When the porter came to the door, I asked

"Yes," was the answer, "he came in half an hour ago. He must be in bed by now. What do you want?"

"Tell him, early tomorrow," I said, "that his sister has arrived from Warsaw. Goodbye."

Then we drove on. The cab had no apron, the snow fell on us in big flakes, and the wind, especially on the

Neva, pierced us through and through. I began to feel as though we had been driving for a long time, that for

ages we had been suffering, and that for ages I had been listening to Zinaida Fyodorovna's shuddering breath.

In semidelirium, as though half asleep, I looked back upon my strange, incoherent life, and for some reason

recalled a melodrama, "The Parisian Beggars," which I had seen once or twice in my childhood. And when to

shake off that semidelirium I peeped out from the hood and saw the dawn, all the images of the past, all my

misty thoughts, for some reason, blended in me into one distinct, overpowering thought: everything was

irrevocably over for Zinaida Fyodorovna and for me. This was as certain a conviction as though the cold blue

sky contained a prophecy, but a minute later I was already thinking of something else and believed

"What am I now?" said Zinaida Fyodorovna, in a voice husky with the cold and the damp. "Where am I to

go? What am I to do? Gruzin told me to go into a nunnery. Oh, I would! I would change my dress, my face,

my name, my thoughts . . . everything everything, and would hide myself for ever. But they will not take

The cabman stopped at a wooden house of two storeys, painted a dark colour. I rang. Taking from me her

small light basket the only luggage we had brought with us Zinaida Fyodorovna gave a wry smile and

It was a long while before the door was opened. After the third or fourth ring a light gleamed in the windows,

and there was a sound of steps, coughing and whispering; at last the key grated in the lock, and a stout

peasant woman with a frightened red face appeared at the door. Some distance behind her stood a thin little

old woman with short grey hair, carrying a candle in her hand. Zinaida Fyodorovna ran into the passage and

"Nina, I've been deceived," she sobbed loudly. "I've been coarsely, foully deceived! Nina, Nina!"

I handed the basket to the peasant woman. The door was closed, but still I heard her sobs and the cry "Nina!"

I got into the cab and told the man to drive slowly to the Nevsky Prospect. I had to think of a night's lodging

Next day towards evening I went to see Zinaida Fyodorovna. She was terribly changed. There were no traces

of tears on her pale, terribly sunken face, and her expression was different. I don't know whether it was that I

saw her now in different surroundings, far from luxurious, and that our relations were by now different, or

perhaps that intense grief had already set its mark upon her; she did not strike me as so elegant and well

dressed as before. Her figure seemed smaller; there was an abruptness and excessive nervousness about her as

though she were in a hurry, and there was not the same softness even in her smile. I was dressed in an

expensive suit which I had bought during the day. She looked first of all at that suit and at the hat in my hand,

"Your transformation still seems to me a sort of miracle," she said. "Forgive me for looking at you with such

I told her again who I was, and why I was living at Orlov's, and I told her at greater length and in more detail

than the day before. She listened with great attention, and said without letting me finish:

"Everything there is over for me. You know, I could not refrain from writing a letter. Here is the answer."

"I am not going to justify myself. But you must own that it was your mistake, not mine. I wish you happiness,

The trunks and baskets despatched by Orlov were standing in the passage, and my poor little portmanteau

We were silent. She took the note and held it for a couple of minutes before her eyes, and during that time her

face wore the same haughty, contemptuous, proud, and harsh expression as the day before at the beginning of

our explanation; tears came into her eyes not timid, bitter tears, but proud, angry tears.

"Listen," she said, getting up abruptly and moving away to the window that I might not see her face. "I have

"Accept me as a recruit. Have you read Balzac?" she asked suddenly, turning round. "Have you? At the end

of his novel 'P�re Goriot' the hero looks down upon Paris from the top of a hill and threatens the town: 'Now

we shall settle our account,' and after this he begins a new life. So when I look out of the train window at

At Venice I had an attack of pleurisy. Probably I had caught cold in the evening when we were rowing from

the station to the Hotel Bauer. I had to take to my bed and stay there for a fortnight. Every morning while I

was ill Zinaida Fyodorovna came from her room to drink coffee with me, and afterwards read aloud to me

French and Russian books, of which we had bought a number at Vienna. These books were either long, long

familiar to me or else had no interest for me, but I had the sound of a sweet, kind voice beside me, so that the

meaning of all of them was summed up for me in the one thing I was not alone. She would go out for a

walk, come back in her light grey dress, her light straw hat, gay, warmed by the spring sun; and sitting by my

bed, bending low down over me, would tell me something about Venice or read me those books and I was

At night I was cold, ill, and dreary, but by day I revelled in life I can find no better expression for it. The

brilliant warm sunshine beating in at the open windows and at the door upon the balcony, the shouts below,

the splash of oars, the tinkle of bells, the prolonged boom of the cannon at midday, and the feeling of perfect,

perfect freedom, did wonders with me; I felt as though I were growing strong, broad wings which were

bearing me God knows whither. And what charm, what joy at times at the thought that another life was so

close to mine! that I was the servant, the guardian, the friend, the indispensable fellowtraveller of a creature,

young, beautiful, wealthy, but weak, lonely, and insulted! It is pleasant even to be ill when you know that

there are people who are looking forward to your convalescence as to a holiday. One day I heard her

whispering behind the door with my doctor, and then she came in to me with tearstained eyes. It was a bad

But at last they allowed me to go out on the balcony. The sunshine and the breeze from the sea caressed and

fondled my sick body. I looked down at the familiar gondolas, which glide with feminine grace smoothly and

majestically as though they were alive, and felt all the luxury of this original, fascinating civilisation. There

was a smell of the sea. Some one was playing a stringed instrument and two voices were singing. How

delightful it was! How unlike it was to that Petersburg night when the wet snow was falling and beating so

rudely on our faces. If one looks straight across the canal, one sees the sea, and on the wide expanse towards

the horizon the sun glittered on the water so dazzlingly that it hurt one's eyes to look at it. My soul yearned

towards that lovely sea, which was so akin to me and to which I had given up my youth. I longed to live to

A fortnight later I began walking freely. I loved to sit in the sun, and to listen to the gondoliers without

understanding them, and for hours together to gaze at the little house where, they said, Desdemona lived a

na�ve, mournful little house with a demure expression, as light as lace, so light that it looked as though one

could lift it from its place with one hand. I stood for a long time by the tomb of Canova, and could not take

my eyes off the melancholy lion. And in the Palace of the Doges I was always drawn to the corner where the

portrait of the unhappy Marino Faliero was painted over with black. "It is fine to be an artist, a poet, a

dramatist," I thought, "but since that is not vouchsafed to me, if only I could go in for mysticism! If only I

had a grain of some faith to add to the unruffled peace and serenity that fills the soul!"

In the evening we ate oysters, drank wine, and went out in a gondola. I remember our black gondola swayed

softly in the same place while the water faintly gurgled under it. Here and there the reflection of the stars and

the lights on the bank quivered and trembled. Not far from us in a gondola, hung with coloured lanterns

which were reflected in the water, there were people singing. The sounds of guitars, of violins, of mandolins,

of men's and women's voices, were audible in the dark. Zinaida Fyodorovna, pale, with a grave, almost stern

face, was sitting beside me, compressing her lips and clenching her hands. She was thinking about

something; she did not stir an eyelash, nor hear me. Her face, her attitude, and her fixed, expressionless gaze,

and her incredibly miserable, dreadful, and icycold memories, and around her the gondolas, the lights, the

music, the song with its vigorous passionate cry of "Jammo! Jammo!" what contrasts in life! When she

sat like that, with tightly clasped hands, stony, mournful, I used to feel as though we were both characters in

some novel in the oldfashioned style called "The Illfated," "The Abandoned," or something of the sort.

Both of us: she the illfated, the abandoned; and I the faithful, devoted friend, the dreamer, and, if you

like it, a superfluous man, a failure capable of nothing but coughing and dreaming, and perhaps sacrificing

When we came in in the evening we always drank tea in her room and talked. We did not shrink from

touching on old, unhealed wounds on the contrary, for some reason I felt a positive pleasure in telling her

about my life at Orlov's, or referring openly to relations which I knew and which could not have been

"At moments I hated you," I said to her. "When he was capricious, condescending, told you lies, I marvelled

how it was you did not see, did not understand, when it was all so clear! You kissed his hands, you knelt to

"When I . . . kissed his hands and knelt to him, I loved him . . ." she said, blushing crimson.

"Can it have been so difficult to see through him? A fine sphinx! A sphinx indeed a kammerjunker! I

reproach you for nothing, God forbid," I went on, feeling I was coarse, that I had not the tact, the delicacy

which are so essential when you have to do with a fellowcreature's soul; in early days before I knew her I

had not noticed this defect in myself. "But how could you fail to see what he was," I went on, speaking more

"You mean to say you despise my past, and you are right," she said, deeply stirred. " You belong to a special

class of men who cannot be judged by ordinary standards; your moral requirements are exceptionally

rigorous, and I understand you can't forgive things. I understand you, and if sometimes I say the opposite, it

doesn't mean that I look at things differently from you; I speak the same old nonsense simply because I

haven't had time yet to wear out my old clothes and prejudices. I, too, hate and despise my past, and Orlov

and my love. . . . What was that love? It's positively absurd now," she said, going to the window and looking

down at the canal. "All this love only clouds the conscience and confuses the mind. The meaning of life is to

be found only in one thing fighting. To get one's heel on the vile head of the serpent and to crush it! That's

I told her long stories of my past, and described my really astounding adventures. But of the change that had

taken place in me I did not say one word. She always listened to me with great attention, and at interesting

places she rubbed her hands as though vexed that it had not yet been her lot to experience such adventures,

such joys and terrors. Then she would suddenly fall to musing and retreat into herself, and I could see from

I closed the windows that looked out on the canal and asked whether we should not have the fire lighted.

"No, never mind. I am not cold," she said, smiling listlessly. "I only feel weak. Do you know, I fancy I have

grown much wiser lately. I have extraordinary, original ideas now. When I think of my past, of my life then .

. . people in general, in fact, it is all summed up for me in the image of my stepmother. Coarse, insolent,

soulless, false, depraved, and a morphia maniac too. My father, who was feeble and weakwilled, married

my mother for her money and drove her into consumption; but his second wife, my stepmother, he loved

passionately, insanely. . . . What I had to put up with! But what is the use of talking! And so, as I say, it is all

summed up in her image. . . . And it vexes me that my stepmother is dead. I should like to meet her now!"

"I don't know," she answered with a laugh and a graceful movement of her head. "Goodnight. You must get

And I went off to my room. So we spent a whole month. One grey morning when we both stood at my

window, looking at the clouds which were moving up from the sea, and at the darkening canal, expecting

every minute that it would pour with rain, and when a thick, narrow streak of rain covered the sea as though

with a muslin veil, we both felt suddenly dreary. The same day we both set off for Florence.

It was autumn, at Nice. One morning when I went into her room she was sitting on a low chair, bent together

and huddled up, with her legs crossed and her face hidden in her hands. She was weeping bitterly, with sobs,

and her long, unbrushed hair fell on her knees. The impression of the exquisite marvellous sea which I had

only just seen and of which I wanted to tell her, left me all at once, and my heart ached.

"What is it?" I asked; she took one hand from her face and motioned me to go away. "What is it?" I repeated,

"No, it's nothing, nothing," she said quickly. "Oh, it's nothing, nothing. . . . Go away. . . . You see, I am not

I went out overwhelmed. The calm and serene mood in which I had been for so long was poisoned by

compassion. I had a passionate longing to fall at her feet, to entreat her not to weep in solitude, but to share

her grief with me, and the monotonous murmur of the sea already sounded a gloomy prophecy in my ears,

and I foresaw fresh tears, fresh troubles, and fresh losses in the future. "What is she crying about? What is

it?" I wondered, recalling her face and her agonised look. I remembered she was with child. She tried to

conceal her condition from other people, and also from herself. At home she went about in a loose wrapper or

in a blouse with extremely full folds over the bosom, and when she went out anywhere she laced herself in so

tightly that on two occasions she fainted when we were out. She never spoke to me of her condition, and

when I hinted that it might be as well to see a doctor, she flushed crimson and said not a word.

"There, there," I said, seeing that she was ready to cry again. "We had better go to the sea and have a talk."

"I can't talk. Forgive me, I am in the mood now when one wants to be alone. And, if you please, Vladimir

Ivanitch, another time you want to come into my room, be so good as to give a knock at the door."

That "be so good" had a peculiar, unfeminine sound. I went away. My accursed Petersburg mood came back,

and all my dreams were crushed and crumpled up like leaves by the heat. I felt I was alone again and there

was no nearness between us. I was no more to her than that cobweb to that palmtree, which hangs on it by

chance and which will be torn off and carried away by the wind. I walked about the square where the band

was playing, went into the Casino; there I looked at overdressed and heavily perfumed women, and every one

of them glanced at me as though she would say: "You are alone; that's all right." Then I went out on the

terrace and looked for a long time at the sea. There was not one sail on the horizon. On the left bank, in the

lilaccoloured mist, there were mountains, gardens, towers, and houses, the sun was sparkling over it all, but

She used as before to come into my room in the morning to coffee, but we no longer dined together, as she

said she was not hungry; and she lived only on coffee, tea, and various trifles such as oranges and caramels.

And we no longer had conversations in the evening. I don't know why it was like this. Ever since the day

when I had found her in tears she had treated me somehow lightly, at times casually, even ironically, and for

some reason called me "My good sir." What had before seemed to her terrible, heroic, marvellous, and had

stirred her envy and enthusiasm, did not touch her now at all, and usually after listening to me, she stretched

It sometimes happened even that I did not see her for days together. I would knock timidly and guiltily at her

door and get no answer; I would knock again still silence. . . . I would stand near the door and listen; then

the chambermaid would pass and say coldly, "Madame est partie." Then I would walk about the passages of

the hotel, walk and walk. . . . English people, fullbosomed ladies, waiters in swallowtails. . . . And as I

keep gazing at the long striped rug that stretches the whole length of the corridor, the idea occurs to me that I

am playing in the life of this woman a strange, probably false part, and that it is beyond my power to alter

that part. I run to my room and fall on my bed, and think and think, and can come to no conclusion; and all

that is clear to me is that I want to live, and that the plainer and the colder and the harder her face grows, the

nearer she is to me, and the more intensely and painfully I feel our kinship. Never mind "My good sir," never

mind her light careless tone, never mind anything you like, only don't leave me, my treasure. I am afraid to be

Then I go out into the corridor again, listen in a tremor. . . . I have no dinner; I don't notice the approach of

evening. At last about eleven I hear the familiar footstep, and at the turn near the stairs Zinaida Fyodorovna

"Are you taking a walk?" she would ask as she passes me. "You had better go out into the air. . . .

"Where? To Monte Carlo." She took ten gold coins out of her pocket and said: "Look, my good sir; I have

I imagined her with a sick and morbid face, in her condition, tightly laced, standing near the gamingtable in

a crowd of cocottes, of old women in their dotage who swarm round the gold like flies round the honey. I

"It's not the question of what you lose," I said with annoyance. "Has it never occurred to you while you were

playing there that the glitter of gold, all these women, young and old, the croupiers, all the surroundings

that it is all a vile, loathsome mockery at the toiler's labour, at his bloody sweat?

"If one doesn't play, what is one to do here?" she asked. "The toiler's labour and his bloody sweat all that

eloquence you can put off till another time; but now, since you have begun, let me go on. Let me ask you

"What are you to do?" I said, shrugging my shoulders. "That's a question that can't be answered straight off."

"I beg you to answer me honestly, Vladimir Ivanitch," she said, and her face looked angry. "Once I have

brought myself to ask you this question, I am not going to listen to stock phrases. I am asking you," she went

on, beating her hand on the table, as though marking time, "what ought I to do here? And not only here at

I did not speak, but looked out of window to the sea. My heart was beating terribly.

"Vladimir Ivanitch," she said softly and breathlessly; it was hard for her to speak "Vladimir Ivanitch, if

you do not believe in the cause yourself, if you no longer think of going back to it, why . . . why did you drag

me out of Petersburg? Why did you make me promises, why did you rouse mad hopes? Your convictions

have changed; you have become a different man, and nobody blames you for it our convictions are not

always in our power. But . . . but, Vladimir Ivanitch, for God's sake, why are you not sincere?" she went on

softly, coming up to me. "All these months when I have been dreaming aloud, raving, going into raptures

over my plans, remodelling my life on a new pattern, why didn't you tell me the truth? Why were you silent

or encouraged me by your stories, and behaved as though you were in complete sympathy with me? Why was

"It's difficult to acknowledge one's bankruptcy," I said, turning round, but not looking at her. "Yes, I have no

faith; I am worn out. I have lost heart. . . . It is difficult to be truthful very difficult, and I held my tongue.

"Vladimir Ivanitch," she said, and took me by both hands, "you have been through so much and seen so much

of life, you know more than I do; think seriously, and tell me, what am I to do? Teach me! If you haven't the

strength to go forward yourself and take others with you, at least show me where to go. After all, I am a

living, feeling, thinking being. To sink into a false position . . . to play an absurd part . . . is painful to me. I

"There is more light in the world than you see through your window," I answered. "And there are other

"And I want to say, too, I went on, "one can serve an idea in more than one calling. If one has made a mistake

and lost faith in one, one may find another. The world of ideas is large and cannot be exhausted."

"The world of ideas!" she said, and she looked into my face sarcastically. "Then we had better leave off

"The world of ideas!" she repeated. She threw her dinnernapkin aside, and an expression of indignation and

contempt came into her face. "All your fine ideas, I see, lead up to one inevitable, essential step: I ought to

become your mistress. That's what's wanted. To be taken up with ideas without being the mistress of an

honourable, progressive man, is as good as not understanding the ideas. One has to begin with that . . . that is,

"I am in error?" she laughed. "Any one else might say that, but not you, my dear sir! I may seem to you

"Yes, shrug your shoulders!" she went on sarcastically. "When you were ill I heard you in your delirium, and

ever since these adoring eyes, these sighs, and edifying conversations about friendship, about spiritual

kinship. . . . But the point is, why haven't you been sincere? Why have you concealed what is and talked

about what isn't? Had you said from the beginning what ideas exactly led you to drag me from Petersburg, I

should have known. I should have poisoned myself then as I meant to, and there would have been none of

"You speak to me as though you suspected me of dishonourable intentions," I said, offended.

"Oh, very well. What's the use of talking! I don't suspect you of intentions, but of having no intentions. If you

had any, I should have known them by now. You had nothing but ideas and love. For the present ideas

and love, and in prospect me as your mistress. That's in the order of things both in life and in novels. . . .

Here you abused him," she said, and she slapped the table with her hand, "but one can't help agreeing with

"He does not despise ideas; he is afraid of them," I cried. "He is a coward and a liar."

"Oh, very well. He is a coward and a liar, and deceived me. And you? Excuse my frankness; what are you?

He deceived me and left me to take my chance in Petersburg, and you have deceived me and abandoned me

"For goodness' sake, why are you saying this?" I cried in horror, wringing my hands and going up to her

quickly. "No, Zinaida Fyodorovna, this is cynicism. You must not be so despairing; listen to me," I went on,

catching at a thought which flashed dimly upon me, and which seemed to me might still save us both.

"Listen. I have passed through so many experiences in my time that my head goes round at the thought of

them, and I have realised with my mind, with my racked soul, that man finds his true destiny in nothing if not

in selfsacrificing love for his neighbour. It is towards that we must strive, and that is our destination! That is

I wanted to go on to speak of mercy, of forgiveness, but there was an insincere note in my voice, and I was

"I want to live!" I said genuinely. "To live, to live! I want peace, tranquillity; I want warmth this sea here

to have you near. Oh, how I wish I could rouse in you the same thirst for life! You spoke just now of love,

but it would be enough for me to have you near, to hear your voice, to watch the look in your face . . . !"

She poured herself out some tea, but did not touch it, went into the bedroom, and lay down.

"I imagine it is better to cut short this conversation," she said to me from within. "Everything is over for me,

I got up, took a turn from one end of the room to the other, and went out into the corridor. When late at night

Next morning the waiter, handing me my clothes, informed me, with a smile, that the lady in number thirteen

was confined. I dressed somehow, and almost fainting with terror ran to Zinaida Fyodorovna. In her room I

found a doctor, a midwife, and an elderly Russian lady from Harkov, called Darya Milhailovna. There was a

smell of ether. I had scarcely crossed the threshold when from the room where she was lying I heard a low,

plaintive moan, and, as though it had been wafted me by the wind from Russia, I thought of Orlov, his irony,

Polya, the Neva, the drifting snow, then the cab without an apron, the prediction I had read in the cold

I went in to see Zinaida Fyodorovna, feeling as though I were the father of the child. She was lying with her

eyes closed, looking thin and pale, wearing a white cap edged with lace. I remember there were two

expressions on her face: one cold, indifferent, apathetic; the other a look of childish helplessness given

her by the white cap. She did not hear me come in, or heard, perhaps, but did not pay attention. I stood,

But her face was contorted with pain; she opened her eyes and gazed at the ceiling, as though wondering

"Zinaida Fyodorovna." I spoke her name softly. She looked at me indifferently, listlessly, and closed her

At night, Darya Mihailovna informed me that the child, a girl, was born, but that the mother was in a

dangerous condition. Then I heard noise and bustle in the passage. Darya Mihailovna came to me again and

"Oh, this is awful! The doctor suspects that she has taken poison! Oh, how badly Russians do behave here!"

Two years had passed. Circumstances had changed; I had come to Petersburg again and could live here

openly. I was no longer afraid of being and seeming sentimental, and gave myself up entirely to the fatherly,

or rather idolatrous feeling roused in me by Sonya, Zinaida Fyodorovna's child. I fed her with my own hands,

gave her her bath, put her to bed, never took my eyes off her for nights together, and screamed when it

seemed to me that the nurse was just going to drop her. My thirst for normal ordinary life became stronger

and more acute as time went on, but wider visions stopped short at Sonya, as though I had found in her at last

just what I needed. I loved the child madly. In her I saw the continuation of my life, and it was not exactly

that I fancied, but I felt, I almost believed, that when I had cast off at last my long, bony, bearded frame, I

should go on living in those little blue eyes, that silky flaxen hair, those dimpled pink hands which stroked

Sonya's future made me anxious. Orlov was her father; in her birth certificate she was called Krasnovsky, and

the only person who knew of her existence, and took interest in her that is, I was at death's door. I had

The day after I arrived in Petersburg I went to see Orlov. The door was opened to me by a stout old fellow

with red whiskers and no moustache, who looked like a German. Polya, who was tidying the drawingroom,

"Ah, Mr. Revolutionist!" he said, looking at me with curiosity, and laughing. "What fate has brought you?"

He was not changed in the least: the same wellgroomed, unpleasant face, the same irony. And a new book

was lying on the table just as of old, with an ivory paperknife thrust in it. He had evidently been reading

before I came in. He made me sit down, offered me a cigar, and with a delicacy only found in wellbred

people, concealing the unpleasant feeling aroused by my face and my wasted figure, observed casually that I

was not in the least changed, and that he would have known me anywhere in spite of my having grown a

beard. We talked of the weather, of Paris. To dispose as quickly as possible of the oppressive, inevitable

"Yes, in childbirth. The doctor suspected another cause of death, but . . . it is more comforting for you and for

He sighed decorously and was silent. The angel of silence passed over us, as they say.

"Yes. And here everything is as it used to be no changes," he said briskly, seeing that I was looking about

the room. "My father, as you know, has left the service and is living in retirement; I am still in the same

department. Do you remember Pekarsky? He is just the same as ever. Gruzin died of diphtheria a year ago. . .

. Kukushkin is alive, and often speaks of you. By the way," said Orlov, dropping his eyes with an air of

reserve, "when Kukushkin heard who you were, he began telling every one you had attacked him and tried to

"Old servants do not forget their masters. . . . It's very nice of you," said Orlov jocosely. "Will you have some

"No, thank you. I have come to see you about a very important matter, Georgy Ivanitch."

"I am not very fond of important matters, but I shall be glad to be of service to you. What do you want?"

"You see," I began, growing agitated, "I have here with me Zinaida Fyodorovna's daughter. . . . Hitherto I

have brought her up, but, as you see, before many days I shall be an empty sound. I should like to die with the

Orlov coloured a little, frowned a little, and took a cursory and sullen glance at me. He was unpleasantly

affected, not so much by the "important matter" as by my words about death, about becoming an empty

"Yes, it must be thought about," he said, screening his eyes as though from the sun. "Thank you. You say it's

"Yes. Of course, it's not a lapdog, but a human being. I understand we must consider it seriously. I am

"We must think about it," he said in a hollow voice, standing with his back to me. "I shall go to Pekarsky's

today and will ask him to go to Krasnovsky's. I don't think he will make much ado about consenting to take

"But, excuse me, I don't see what Krasnovsky has got to do with it," I said, also getting up and walking to a

"Yes, he may be legally obliged to accept the child I don't know; but I came to you, Georgy Ivanitch, not

"Yes, yes, you are right," he agreed briskly. "I believe I am talking nonsense. But don't excite yourself. We

will decide the matter to our mutual satisfaction. If one thing won't do, we'll try another; and if that won't do,

we'll try a third one way or another this delicate question shall be settled. Pekarsky will arrange it all. Be

so good as to leave me your address and I will let you know at once what we decide. Where are you living?"

"Oh, Lord, what a job it is to be the father of a little daughter! But Pekarsky will arrange it all. He is a

We were silent. Orlov was evidently afraid I should begin talking of the child again, and to turn my attention

"You have probably forgotten your letter by now. But I have kept it. I understand your mood at the time, and,

I must own, I respect that letter. 'Damnable cold blood,' 'Asiatic,' 'coarse laugh' that was charming and

characteristic," he went on with an ironical smile. "And the fundamental thought is perhaps near the truth,

though one might dispute the question endlessly. That is," he hesitated, "not dispute the thought itself, but

your attitude to the question your temperament, so to say. Yes, my life is abnormal, corrupted, of no use

to any one, and what prevents me from beginning a new life is cowardice there you are quite right. But

that you take it so much to heart, are troubled, and reduced to despair by it that's irrational; there you are

"A living man cannot help being troubled and reduced to despair when he sees that he himself is going to ruin

"Who doubts it! I am not advocating indifference; all I ask for is an objective attitude to life. The more

objective, the less danger of falling into error. One must look into the root of things, and try to see in every

phenomenon a cause of all the other causes. We have grown feeble, slack degraded, in fact. Our

generation is entirely composed of neurasthenics and whimperers; we do nothing but talk of fatigue and

exhaustion. But the fault is neither yours nor mine; we are of too little consequence to affect the destiny of a

whole generation. We must suppose for that larger, more general causes with a solid raison d'�tre from the

biological point of view. We are neurasthenics, flabby, renegades, but perhaps it's necessary and of service

for generations that will come after us. Not one hair falls from the head without the will of the Heavenly

Father in other words, nothing happens by chance in Nature and in human environment. Everything has

its cause and is inevitable. And if so, why should we worry and write despairing letters?"

"That's all very well," I said, thinking a little. "I believe it will be easier and clearer for the generations to

come; our experience will be at their service. But one wants to live apart from future generations and not only

for their sake. Life is only given us once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full consciousness and beauty.

One wants to play a striking, independent, noble part; one wants to make history so that those generations

may not have the right to say of each of us that we were nonentities or worse. . . . I believe what is going on

about us is inevitable and not without a purpose, but what have I to do with that inevitability? Why should

"Well, there's no help for it," sighed Orlov, getting up and, as it were, giving me to understand that our

"We've only been sitting here half an hour, and how many questions we have settled, when you come to think

of it!" said Orlov, seeing me into the hall. "So I will see to that matter. . . . I will see Pekarsky today. . . .

He stood waiting while I put on my coat, and was obviously relieved at the feeling that I was going away.

He went to his study, and a minute later returned with the letter. I thanked him and went away.

The next day I got a letter from him. He congratulated me on the satisfactory settlement of the question.

Pekarsky knew a lady, he wrote, who kept a school, something like a kindergarten, where she took quite little

children. The lady could be entirely depended upon, but before concluding anything with her it would be as

well to discuss the matter with Krasnovsky it was a matter of form. He advised me to see Pekarsky at once

and to take the birth certificate with me, if I had it. "Rest assured of the sincere respect and devotion of your

I read this letter, and Sonya sat on the table and gazed at me attentively without blinking, as though she knew

IN the course of the maneuvres the N cavalry regiment halted for a night at the district town of K.

Such an event as the visit of officers always has the most exciting and inspiring effect on the inhabitants of

provincial towns. The shopkeepers dream of getting rid of the rusty sausages and "best brand" sardines that

have been lying for ten years on their shelves; the inns and restaurants keep open all night; the Military

Commandant, his secretary, and the local garrison put on their best uniforms; the police flit to and fro like

The ladies of K, hearing the regiment approaching, forsook their pans of boiling jam and ran into the

street. Forgetting their morning deshabille and general untidiness, they rushed breathless with excitement to

meet the regiment, and listened greedily to the band playing the march. Looking at their pale, ecstatic faces,

one might have thought those strains came from some heavenly choir rather than from a military brass band.

What could this unknown regiment that came by chance today and would depart at dawn tomorrow mean

Afterwards, when the officers were standing in the middle of the square, and, with their hands behind them,

discussing the question of billets, all the ladies were gathered together at the examining magistrate's and

vying with one another in their criticisms of the regiment. They already knew, goodness knows how, that the

colonel was married, but not living with his wife; that the senior officer's wife had a baby born dead every

year; that the adjutant was hopelessly in love with some countess, and had even once attempted suicide. They

knew everything. When a pockmarked soldier in a red shirt darted past the windows, they knew for certain

that it was Lieutenant Rymzov's orderly running about the town, trying to get some English bitter ale on tick

for his master. They had only caught a passing glimpse of the officers' backs, but had already decided that

there was not one handsome or interesting man among them. . . . Having talked to their hearts' content, they

sent for the Military Commandant and the committee of the club, and instructed them at all costs to make

Their wishes were carried out. At nine o'clock in the evening the military band was playing in the street

before the club, while in the club itself the officers were dancing with the ladies of K. The ladies felt as

though they were on wings. Intoxicated by the dancing, the music, and the clank of spurs, they threw

themselves heart and soul into making the acquaintance of their new partners, and quite forgot their old

civilian friends. Their fathers and husbands, forced temporarily into the background, crowded round the

meagre refreshment table in the entrance hall. All these government cashiers, secretaries, clerks, and

superintendents stale, sicklylooking, clumsy figures were perfectly well aware of their inferiority.

They did not even enter the ballroom, but contented themselves with watching their wives and daughters in

Among the husbands was Shalikov, the taxcollector a narrow, spiteful soul, given to drink, with a big,

closely cropped head, and thick, protruding lips. He had had a university education; there had been a time

when he used to read progressive literature and sing students' songs, but now, as he said of himself, he was a

He stood leaning against the doorpost, his eyes fixed on his wife, Anna Pavlovna, a little brunette of thirty,

with a long nose and a pointed chin. Tightly laced, with her face carefully powdered, she danced without

pausing for breath danced till she was ready to drop exhausted. But though she was exhausted in body, her

spirit was inexhaustible. . . . One could see as she danced that her thoughts were with the past, that faraway

past when she used to dance at the "College for Young Ladies," dreaming of a life of luxury and gaiety, and

It was not jealousy he was feeling. He was illhumoured first, because the room was taken up with

dancing and there was nowhere he could play a game of cards; secondly, because he could not endure the

sound of wind instruments; and, thirdly, because he fancied the officers treated the civilians somewhat too

casually and disdainfully. But what above everything revolted him and moved him to indignation was the

"It makes me sick to look at her!" he muttered. "Going on for forty, and nothing to boast of at any time, and

she must powder her face and lace herself up! And frizzing her hair! Flirting and making faces, and fancying

Anna Pavlovna was so lost in the dance that she did not once glance at her husband.

"Of course not! Where do we poor country bumpkins come in!" sneered the taxcollector.

"We are at a discount now. . . . We're clumsy seals, unpolished provincial bears, and she's the queen of the

ball! She has kept enough of her looks to please even officers. . . They'd not object to making love to her, I

During the mazurka the taxcollector's face twitched with spite. A blackhaired officer with prominent eyes

and Tartar cheekbones danced the mazurka with Anna Pavlovna. Assuming a stern expression, he worked his

legs with gravity and feeling, and so crooked his knees that he looked like a jackadandy pulled by strings,

while Anna Pavlovna, pale and thrilled, bending her figure languidly and turning her eyes up, tried to look as

though she scarcely touched the floor, and evidently felt herself that she was not on earth, not at the local

club, but somewhere far, far away in the clouds. Not only her face but her whole figure was expressive of

beatitude. . . . The taxcollector could endure it no longer; he felt a desire to jeer at that beatitude, to make

Anna Pavlovna feel that she had forgotten herself, that life was by no means so delightful as she fancied now

"You wait; I'll teach you to smile so blissfully," he muttered. "You are not a boardingschool miss, you are

Petty feelings of envy, vexation, wounded vanity, of that small, provincial misanthropy engendered in petty

officials by vodka and a sedentary life, swarmed in his heart like mice. Waiting for the end of the mazurka, he

went into the hall and walked up to his wife. Anna Pavlovna was sitting with her partner, and, flirting her fan

and coquettishly dropping her eyelids, was describing how she used to dance in Petersburg (her lips were

Seeing her husband standing before her, Anna Pavlovna started as though recalling the fact that she had a

husband; then she flushed all over: she felt ashamed that she had such a sicklylooking, illhumoured,

"I beg you to come home!" said the taxcollector deliberately, with a spiteful expression.

"Nothing has happened, but I wish you to go home at once. . . . I wish it; that's enough, and without further

Anna Pavlovna was not afraid of her husband, but she felt ashamed on account of her partner, who was

looking at her husband with surprise and amusement. She got up and moved a little apart with her husband.

The taxcollector saw the look of beatitude gradually vanish from his wife's face, saw how ashamed and

At first Anna Pavlovna refused to hear of it, then she began entreating her husband to let her stay just another

halfhour; then, without knowing why, she began to apologise, to protest and all in a whisper, with a

smile, that the spectators might not suspect that she was having a tiff with her husband. She began assuring

him she would not stay long, only another ten minutes, only five minutes; but the taxcollector stuck

And as she talked to her husband Anna Pavlovna looked thinner, older, plainer. Pale, biting her lips, and

"You are not going?" asked the ladies in surprise. "Anna Pavlovna, you are not going, dear?"

Coming out of the club, the husband and wife walked all the way home in silence. The taxcollector walked

behind his wife, and watching her downcast, sorrowful, humiliated little figure, he recalled the look of

beatitude which had so irritated him at the club, and the consciousness that the beatitude was gone filled his

soul with triumph. He was pleased and satisfied, and at the same time he felt the lack of something; he would

have liked to go back to the club and make every one feel dreary and miserable, so that all might know how

stale and worthless life is when you walk along the streets in the dark and hear the slush of the mud under

your feet, and when you know that you will wake up next morning with nothing to look forward to but vodka

And Anna Pavlovna could scarcely walk. . . . She was still under the influence of the dancing, the music, the

talk, the lights, and the noise; she asked herself as she walked along why God had thus afflicted her. She felt

miserable, insulted, and choking with hate as she listened to her husband's heavy footsteps. She was silent,

trying to think of the most offensive, biting, and venomous word she could hurl at her husband, and at the

same time she was fully aware that no word could penetrate her taxcollector's hide. What did he care for

words? Her bitterest enemy could not have contrived for her a more helpless position.

And meanwhile the band was playing and the darkness was full of the most rousing, intoxicating