The Snake’s Tail had a quarrel with the Snake’s Head about who was to walk in front. The Head said:

“You cannot walk in front, because you have no eyes and no ears.”

The Tail said:

“Yes, but I have strength, I move you; if I want to, I can wind myself around a tree, and you cannot get off the spot.”

The Head said:

“Let us separate!”

And the Tail tore himself loose from the Head, and crept on; but the moment he got away from the Head, he fell into a hole and was lost.

A Man ordered some fine thread from a Spinner. The Spinner spun it for him, but the Man said that the thread was not good, and that he wanted the finest thread he could get. The Spinner said:

“If this is not fine enough, take this!” and she pointed to an empty space.

He said that he did not see any. The Spinner said:

“You do not see it, because it is so fine. I do not see it myself.”

The Fool was glad, and ordered some more thread of this kind, and paid her for what he got.

A Father had two Sons. He said to them: “When I die, divide everything into two equal parts.”

When the Father died, the Sons could not divide without quarrelling. They went to a Neighbour to have him settle the matter. The Neighbour asked them how their Father had told them to divide. They said:

“He ordered us to divide everything into two equal parts.”

The Neighbour said:

“If so, tear all your garments into two halves, break your dishes into two halves, and cut all your cattle into two halves!”

The Brothers obeyed their Neighbour, and lost everything.

A Man went into the woods, cut down a tree, and began to saw it. He raised the end of the tree on a stump, sat astride over it, and began to saw. Then he drove a wedge into the split that he had sawed, and went on sawing; then he took out the wedge and drove it in farther down.

A Monkey was sitting on a tree and watching him. When the Man lay down to sleep, the Monkey seated herself astride the tree, and wanted to do the same; but when she took out the wedge, the tree sprang back and caught her tail. She began to tug and to cry. The Man woke up, beat the Monkey, and tied a rope to her.

A Monkey was carrying both her hands full of peas. A pea dropped on the ground; the Monkey wanted to pick it up, and dropped twenty peas. She rushed to pick them up and lost all the rest. Then she flew into a rage, swept away all the peas and ran off.

A Man had a Cow; she gave each day a pot full of milk. The Man invited a number of guests. To have as much milk as possible, he did not milk the Cow for ten days. He thought that on the tenth day the Cow would give him ten pitchers of milk.

But the Cow’s milk went back, and she gave less milk than before.

A Duck was swimming in the pond, trying to find some fish, but she did not find one in a whole day. When night came, she saw the Moon in the water; she thought that it was a fish, and plunged in to catch the Moon. The other ducks saw her do it and laughed at her.

That made the Duck feel so ashamed and bashful that when she saw a fish under the Water, she did not try to catch it, and so died of hunger.

A Wolf wanted to pick a sheep out of a flock, and stepped into the wind, so that the dust of the flock might blow on him.

The Sheep Dog saw him, and said:

“There is no sense, Wolf, in your walking in the dust: it will make your eyes ache.”

But the Wolf said:

“The trouble is, Doggy, that my eyes have been aching for quite awhile, and I have been told that the dust from a flock of sheep will cure the eyes.”

A Mouse was living under the granary. In the floor of the granary there was a little hole, and the grain fell down through it. The Mouse had an easy life of it, but she wanted to brag of her ease: she gnawed a larger hole in the floor, and invited other mice.

“Come to a feast with me,” said she; “there will be plenty to eat for everybody.”

When she brought the mice, she saw there was no hole. The peasant had noticed the big hole in the floor, and had stopped it up.

A master sent his Servant to buy the best-tasting pears. The Servant came to the shop and asked for pears. The dealer gave him some; but the Servant said:

“No, give me the best!”

The dealer said:

“Try one; you will see that they taste good.”

“How shall I know,” said the Servant, “that they all taste good, if I try one only?”

He bit off a piece from each pear, and brought them to his master. Then his master sent him away.

The Falcon was used to the master, and came to his hand when he was called; the Cock ran away from his master and cried when people went up to him. So the Falcon said to the Cock:

“In you Cocks there is no gratitude; one can see that you are of a common breed. You go to your masters only when you are hungry. It is different with us wild birds. We have much strength, and we can fly faster than anybody; still we do not fly away from people, but of our own accord go to their hands when we are called. We remember that they feed us.”

Then the Cock said:

“You do not run away from people because you have never seen a roast Falcon, but we, you know, see roast Cocks.”

The Jackals had eaten up all the carrion in the woods, and had nothing to eat. So an old Jackal was thinking how to find something to feed on. He went to an Elephant, and said:

“We had a king, but he became overweening: he told us to do things that nobody could do; we want to choose another king, and my people have sent me to ask you to be our king. You will have an easy life with us. Whatever you will order us to do, we will do, and we will honour you in everything. Come to our kingdom!”

The Elephant consented, and followed the Jackal. The Jackal brought him to a swamp. When the Elephant stuck fast in it, the Jackal said:

“Now command! Whatever you command, we will do.”

The Elephant said:

“I command you to pull me out from here.”

The Jackal began to laugh, and said:

“Take hold of my tail with your trunk, and I will pull you out at once.”

The Elephant said:

“Can I be pulled out by a tail?”

But the Jackal said to him:

“Why, then, do you command us to do what is impossible? Did we not drive away our first king for telling us to do what could not be done?”

When the Elephant died in the swamp the Jackals came and ate him up.

A Heron was living near a pond. She grew old, and had no strength left with which to catch the fish. She began to contrive how to live by cunning. So she said to the Fishes:

“You Fishes do not know that a calamity is in store for you: I have heard the people say that they are going to let off the pond, and catch every one of you. I know of a nice little pond back of the mountain. I should like to help you, but I am old, and it is hard for me to fly.”

The Fishes begged the Heron to help them. So the Heron said:

“All right, I will do what I can for you, and will carry you over: only I cannot do it at once⁠—I will take you there one after another.”

And the Fishes were happy; they kept begging her: “Carry me over! Carry me over!”

And the Heron started carrying them. She would take one up, would carry her into the field, and would eat her up. And thus she ate a large number of Fishes.

In the pond there lived an old Crab. When the Heron began to take out the Fishes, he saw what was up, and said:

“Now, Heron, take me to the new abode!”

The Heron took the Crab and carried him off. When she flew out on the field, she wanted to throw the Crab down. But the Crab saw the fish-bones on the ground, and so squeezed the Heron’s neck with his claws, and choked her to death. Then he crawled back to the pond, and told the Fishes.

A Man was rowing in a boat, and dropped a costly pearl into the sea. The Man returned to the shore, took a pail, and began to draw up the water and to pour it out on the land. He drew the water and poured it out for three days without stopping.

On the fourth day the Water-sprite came out of the sea, and asked:

“Why are you drawing the water?”

The Man said:

“I am drawing it because I have dropped a pearl into it.”

The Water-sprite asked him:

“Will you stop soon?”

The Man said:

“I will stop when I dry up the sea.”

Then the Water-sprite returned to the sea, brought back that pearl, and gave it to the Man.

A Man born blind asked a Seeing Man:

“Of what colour is milk?”

The Seeing Man said: “The colour of milk is the same as that of white paper.”

The Blind Man asked: “Well, does that colour rustle in your hands like paper?”

The Seeing Man said: “No, it is as white as white flour.”

The Blind Man asked: “Well, is it as soft and as powdery as flour?”

The Seeing Man said: “No, it is simply as white as a white hare.”

The Blind Man asked: “Well, is it as fluffy and soft as a hare?”

The Seeing Man said: “No, it is as white as snow.”

The Blind Man asked: “Well, is it as cold as snow?”

And no matter how many examples the Seeing Man gave, the Blind Man was unable to understand what the white colour of milk was like.

A hunter went out to hunt with bow and arrows. He killed a goat. He threw her on his shoulders and carried her along. On his way he saw a boar. He threw down the goat, and shot at the boar and wounded him. The boar rushed against the hunter and butted him to death, and himself died on the spot. A Wolf scented the blood, and came to the place where lay the goat, the boar, the man, and his bow. The Wolf was glad, and said:

“Now I shall have enough to eat for a long time; only I will not eat everything at once, but little by little, so that nothing may be lost: first I will eat the tougher things, and then I will lunch on what is soft and sweet.”

The Wolf sniffed at the goat, the boar, and the man, and said:

“This is all soft food, so I will eat it later; let me first start on these sinews of the bow.”

And he began to gnaw the sinews of the bow. When he bit through the string, the bow sprang back and hit him on his belly. He died on the spot, and other wolves ate up the man, the goat, the boar, and the Wolf.

A Hunter set out a net near a lake and caught a number of birds. The birds were large, and they raised the net and flew away with it. The Hunter ran after them. A Peasant saw the Hunter running, and said:

“Where are you running? How can you catch up with the birds, while you are on foot?”

The Hunter said:

“If it were one bird, I should not catch it, but now I shall.”

And so it happened. When evening came, the birds began to pull for the night each in a different direction: one to the woods, another to the swamp, a third to the field; and all fell with the net to the ground, and the Hunter caught them.

A certain King let his favourite Falcon loose on a hare, and galloped after him.

The Falcon caught the hare. The King took him away, and began to look for some water to drink. The King found it on a knoll, but it came only drop by drop. The King fetched his cup from the saddle, and placed it under the water. The Water flowed in drops, and when the cup was filled, the King raised it to his mouth and wanted to drink it. Suddenly the Falcon fluttered on the King’s arm and spilled the water. The King placed the cup once more under the drops. He waited for a long time for the cup to be filled even with the brim, and again, as he carried it to his mouth, the Falcon flapped his wings and spilled the water.

When the King filled his cup for the third time and began to carry it to his mouth, the Falcon again spilled it. The King flew into a rage and killed him by flinging him against a stone with all his force. Just then the King’s servants rode up, and one of them ran uphill to the spring, to find as much water as possible, and to fill the cup. But the servant did not bring the water; he returned with the empty cup, and said:

“You cannot drink that water; there is a snake in the spring, and she has let her venom into the water. It is fortunate that the Falcon has spilled the water. If you had drunk it, you would have died.”

The King said:

“How badly I have repaid the Falcon! He has saved my life, and I killed him.”

An Indian King ordered all the Blind People to be assembled, and when they came, he ordered that all the Elephants be shown to them. The Blind Men went to the stable and began to feel the Elephants. One felt a leg, another a tail, a third the stump of a tail, a fourth a belly, a fifth a back, a sixth the ears, a seventh the tusks, and an eighth a trunk.

Then the King called the Blind Men, and asked them: “What are my Elephants like?”

One Blind Man said: “Your Elephants are like posts.” He had felt the legs.

Another Blind Man said: “They are like bath brooms.” He had felt the end of the tail.

A third said: “They are like branches.” He had felt the tail stump.

The one who had touched a belly said: “The Elephants are like a clod of earth.”

The one who had touched the sides said: “They are like a wall.”

The one who had touched a back said: “They are like a mound.”

The one who had touched the ears said: “They are like a mortar.”

The one who had touched the tusks said: “They are like horns.”

The one who had touched the trunk said that they were like a stout rope.

And all the Blind Men began to dispute and to quarrel.

A Hermit was living in the forest, and the animals were not afraid of him. He and the animals talked together and understood each other.

Once the Hermit lay down under a tree, and a Raven, a Dove, a Stag, and a Snake gathered in the same place, to pass the night. The animals began to discuss why there was evil in the world.

The Raven said:

“All the evil in the world comes from hunger. When I eat my fill, I sit down on a branch and croak a little, and it is all jolly and good, and everything gives me pleasure; but let me just go without eating a day or two, and everything palls on me so that I do not feel like looking at God’s world. And something draws me on, and I fly from place to place, and have no rest. When I catch a glimpse of some meat, it makes me only feel sicker than ever, and I make for it without much thinking. At times they throw sticks and stones at me, and the wolves and dogs grab me, but I do not give in. Oh, how many of my brothers are perishing through hunger! All evil comes from hunger.”

The Dove said:

“According to my opinion, the evil does not come from hunger, but from love. If we lived singly, the trouble would not be so bad. One head is not poor, and if it is, it is only one. But here we live in pairs. And you come to like your mate so much that you have no rest: you keep thinking of her all the time, wondering whether she has had enough to eat, and whether she is warm. And when your mate flies away from you, you feel entirely lost, and you keep thinking that a hawk may have carried her off, or men may have caught her; and you start out to find her, and fly to your ruin⁠—either into the hawk’s claws, or into a snare. And when your mate is lost, nothing gives you any joy. You do not eat or drink, and all the time search and weep. Oh, so many of us perish in this way! All the evil is not from hunger, but from love.”

The Snake said:

“No, the evil is not from hunger, nor from love, but from rage. If we lived peacefully, without getting into a rage, everything would be nice for us. But, as it is, whenever a thing does not go exactly right, we get angry, and then nothing pleases us. All we think about is how to revenge ourselves on someone. Then we forget ourselves, and only hiss, and creep, and try to find someone to bite. And we do not spare a soul⁠—we even bite our own father and mother. We feel as though we could eat ourselves up. And we rage until we perish. All the evil in the World comes from rage.”

The Stag said:

“No, not from rage, or from love, or from hunger does all the evil in the world come, but from terror. If it were possible not to be afraid, everything would be well. We have swift feet and much strength: against a small animal we defend ourselves with our horns, and from a large one we flee. But how can I help becoming frightened? Let a branch crackle in the forest, or a leaf rustle, and I am all atremble with fear, and my heart flutters as though it wanted to jump out, and I fly as fast as I can. Again, let a hare run by, or a bird flap its wings, or a dry twig break off, and you think that it is a beast, and you run straight up against him. Or you run away from a dog and run into the hands of a man. Frequently you get frightened and run, not knowing whither, and at full speed rush down a steep hill, and get killed. We have no rest. All the evil comes from terror.”

Then the Hermit said:

“Not from hunger, not from love, not from rage, not from terror are all our sufferings, but from our bodies comes all the evil in the world. From them come hunger, and love, and rage, and terror.”

A Wolf devoured a sheep. The Hunters caught the Wolf and began to beat him. The Wolf said:

“In vain do you beat me: it is not my fault that I am gray⁠—God has made me so.”

But the Hunters said:

“We do not beat the Wolf for being gray, but for eating the sheep.”

Once upon a time two Peasants drove toward each other and caught in each other’s sleighs. One cried:

“Get out of my way⁠—I am hurrying to town.”

But the other said:

“Get out of my way, I am hurrying home.”

They quarrelled for some time. A third Peasant saw them and said:

“If you are in a hurry, back up!”

A Peasant went to town to fetch some oats for his Horse. He had barely left the village, when the Horse began to turn around, toward the house. The Peasant struck the Horse with his whip. She went on, and kept thinking about the Peasant:

“Whither is that fool driving me? He had better go home.”

Before reaching town, the Peasant saw that the Horse trudged along through the mud with difficulty, so he turned her on the pavement; but the Horse began to turn back from the street. The Peasant gave the Horse the whip, and jerked at the reins; she went on the pavement, and thought:

“Why has he turned me on the pavement? It will only break my hoofs. It is rough underfoot.”

The Peasant went to the shop, bought the oats, and drove home. When he came home, he gave the Horse some oats. The Horse ate them and thought:

“How stupid men are! They are fond of exercising their wits on us, but they have less sense than we. What did he trouble himself about? He drove me somewhere. No matter how far we went, we came home in the end. So it would have been better if we had remained at home from the start: he could have been sitting on the oven, and I eating oats.”

Two Horses were drawing their carts. The Front Horse pulled well, but the Hind Horse kept stopping all the time. The load of the Hind Horse was transferred to the front cart; when all was transferred, the Hind Horse went along with ease, and said to the Front Horse:

“Work hard and sweat! The more you try, the harder they will make you work.”

When they arrived at the tavern, their master said:

“Why should I feed two Horses, and haul with one only? I shall do better to give one plenty to eat, and to kill the other: I shall at least have her hide.”

So he did.

Two Peasants went to the forest to cut wood. One of them had an axe, and the other a saw. They picked out a tree, and began to dispute. One said that the tree had to be chopped, while the other said that it had to be sawed down.

A third Peasant said:

“I will easily make peace between you: if the axe is sharp, you had better chop it; but if the saw is sharp you had better saw it.”

He took the axe, and began to chop it; but the axe was so dull that it was not possible to cut with it. Then he took the saw; the saw was worthless, and did not saw. So he said:

“Stop quarrelling awhile; the axe does not chop, and the saw does not saw. First grind your axe and file your saw, and then quarrel.”

But the Peasants grew angrier still at one another, because one had a dull axe, and the other a dull saw. And they came to blows.

A Cook was preparing a dinner. The Dogs were lying at the kitchen door. The Cook killed a calf and threw the guts out into the yard. The Dogs picked them up and ate them, and said:

“He is a good Cook: he cooks well.”

After awhile the Cook began to clean peas, turnips, and onions, and threw out the refuse. The Dogs made for it; but they turned their noses up, and said:

“Our Cook has grown worse: he used to cook well, but now he is no longer any good.”

But the Cook paid no attention to the Dogs, and continued to fix the dinner in his own way. The family, and not the Dogs, ate the dinner, and praised it.

A Hare once said to a Harrier:

“Why do you bark when you run after us? You would catch us easier, if you ran after us in silence. With your bark you only drive us against the hunter: he hears where we are running; and he rushes out with his gun and kills us, and does not give you anything.”

The Harrier said:

“That is not the reason why I bark. I bark because, when I scent your odour, I am angry, and happy because I am about to catch you; I do not know why, but I cannot keep from barking.”

An old Oak dropped an acorn under a Hazelbush. The Hazelbush said to the Oak:

“Have you not enough space under your own branches? Drop your acorns in an open space. Here I am myself crowded by my shoots, and I do not drop my nuts to the ground, but give them to men.”

“I have lived for two hundred years,” said the Oak, “and the Oakling which will sprout from that acorn will live just as long.”

Then the Hazelbush flew into a rage, and said:

“If so, I will choke your Oakling, and he will not live for three days.”

The Oak made no reply, but told his son to sprout out of that acorn. The acorn got wet and burst, and clung to the ground with his crooked rootlet, and sent up a sprout.

The Hazelbush tried to choke him, and gave him no sun. But the Oakling spread upwards and grew stronger in the shade of the Hazelbush. A hundred years passed. The Hazelbush had long ago dried up, but the Oak from that acorn towered to the sky and spread his tent in all directions.

A Hen hatched some Chicks, but did not know how to take care of them. So she said to them:

“Creep back into your shells! When you are inside your shells, I will sit on you as before, and will take care of you.”

The Chicks did as they were ordered and tried to creep into their shells, but were unable to do so, and only crushed their wings. Then one of the Chicks said to his mother:

“If we are to stay all the time in our shells, you ought never to have hatched us.”

A Corncrake had made a nest in the meadow late in the year, and at mowing time his Mate was still sitting on her eggs. Early in the morning the peasants came to the meadow, took off the coats, whetted their scythes, and started one after another to mow down the grass and to put it down in rows. The Corncrake flew up to see what the mowers were doing. When he saw a peasant swing his scythe and cut a snake in two, he rejoiced and flew back to his Mate and said:

“Don’t fear the peasants! They have come to cut the snakes to pieces; they have given us no rest for quite awhile.”

But his Mate said:

“The peasants are cutting the grass, and with the grass they are cutting everything which is in their way⁠—the snakes, and the Corncrake’s nest, and the Corncrake’s head. My heart forebodes nothing good: but I cannot carry away the eggs, nor fly from the nest, for fear of chilling them.”

When the mowers came to the nest of the Corncrake, one of the peasants swung his scythe and cut off the head of the Corncrake’s Mate, and put the eggs in his bosom and gave them to his children to play with.

An old woman had a Cow and a Billy Goat. The two pastured together. At milking the Cow was restless. The old woman brought out some bread and salt, and gave it to the Cow, and said:

“Stand still, motherkin; take it, take it! I will bring you some more, only stand still.”

On the next evening the Goat came home from the field before the Cow, and spread his legs, and stood in front of the old woman. The old woman wanted to strike him with the towel, but he stood still, and did not stir. He remembered that the woman had promised the Cow some bread if she would stand still. When the woman saw that he would not budge, she picked up a stick, and beat him with it.

When the Goat went away, the woman began once more to feed the Cow with bread, and to talk to her.

“There is no honesty in men,” thought the Goat. “I stood still better than the Cow, and was beaten for it.”

He stepped aside, took a run, hit against the milk-pail, spilled the milk, and hurt the old woman.

A Man caught a Fox, and asked her:

“Who has taught you Foxes to cheat the dogs with your tails?”

The Fox asked: “How do you mean, to cheat? We do not cheat the dogs, but simply run from them as fast as we can.”

The Man said:

“Yes, you do cheat them with your tails. When the dogs catch up with you and are about to clutch you, you turn your tails to one side; the dogs turn sharply after the tail, and then you run in the opposite direction.”

The Fox laughed, and said:

“We do not do so in order to cheat the dogs, but in order to turn around; when a dog is after us, and we see that we cannot get away straight ahead, we turn to one side, and in order to do that suddenly, we have to swing the tail to the other side, just as you do with your arms, when you have to turn around. That is not our invention; God himself invented it when He created us, so that the dogs might not be able to catch all the Foxes.”

A Goat was going to the field after provender, and she shut up her Kids in the barn, with injunctions not to let anyone in. Said she:⁠—

“But when you hear my voice then open the door.”

A Wolf overheard, crept up to the barn, and sang after the manner of the Goat:⁠—

“Little children, open the door; your mother has come with some food for you.”

The Kids peered out of the window, and said:⁠—

“The voice is our mamma’s, but the legs are those of a wolf. We cannot let you in.”

A farmer’s wife was annoyed by mice eating up the tallow in her cellar. She shut the cat into the cellar, so that the cat might catch the mice.

But the cat ate up, not only the tallow, but the milk and the meat also.

The sheep went out to pasture.

Suddenly an Eagle appeared, swooped down from the sky, caught a little lamb with its claws, and bore him away.

A Crow saw it, and felt also an inclination to dine on meat. She said:⁠—

“That was not a very bright performance. Now I am going to do it, but in better style. The Eagle was stupid; he carried off a little lamb, but I am going to take that fat ram yonder.”

The Crow buried her claws deep in the ram’s fleece, and tried to fly off with him; but all in vain. And she was not able to extricate her claws from the wool.

The shepherd came along, freed the ram from the Crow’s claws, and killed the Crow, and flung it away.

A Mouse went to visit a Frog. The Frog met the Mouse on the bank, and urged him to visit his chamber under the water.

The Mouse climbed down to the water’s edge, took a taste of it, and then climbed back again.

“Never,” said he, “will I make visits to people of alien race.”

Two Cockerels fought on a dungheap.

One Cockerel was the stronger: he vanquished the other and drove him from the dungheap.

All the Hens gathered around the Cockerel, and began to laud him. The Cockerel wanted his strength and glory to be known in the next yard. He flew on top of the barn, flapped his wings, and crowed in a loud voice:⁠—

“Look at me, all of you. I am a victorious Cockerel. No other Cockerel in the world has such strength as I.”

The Cockerel had not finished his paean, when an Eagle killed him, seized him in his claws, and carried him to his nest.

Once upon a time a Lion went out to hunt, and he took with him an Ass. And he said to him:⁠—

“Ass, now you go into the woods, and roar as loud as you can; you have a capacious throat. The prey that run away from your roaring will fall into my clutches.”

And so he did. The Ass brayed, and the timid creatures of the wood fled in all directions, and the Lion caught them.

After the hunting was over, the Lion said to the Ass:⁠—

“Now I will praise you. You roared splendidly.”

And since that time the Ass is always braying, and always expects to be praised.

A fool had an excellent knife.

With this knife the fool tried to cut a nail. The knife would not cut the nail. Then the fool said:⁠—

“My knife is mean,” and he tried to cut some soft kisel jelly with his knife. Wherever the knife went through the jelly the liquid closed together again.

The fool said, “Miserable knife! it won’t cut kisel, either,” and he threw away his good knife.

A peasant was returning from market with his son Vanka.215 The peasant went to sleep in his cart, and Vanka held the reins and cracked the whip. They happened to meet another team. Vanka shouted:⁠—

“Turn out to the right! I shall run over you!”

And the peasant with the team said:⁠—

“It is not a big cricket, but it chirps so as to be heard!”

In the upper part of a house lived a rich barin, and on the floor below lived a poor tailor. The tailor was always singing songs at his work, and prevented the barin from sleeping.

The barin gave the tailor a purse full of money not to sing. The tailor became rich, and took good care of his money, and refrained from singing.

But it grew tiresome to him; he took the money and returned it to the barin, saying:⁠—

“Take back your money and let me sing my songs again, or I shall die of melancholy.”

A Squirrel was leaping from limb to limb, and fell directly upon a sleeping Wolf. The Wolf jumped up, and was going to devour him. But the Squirrel begged the Wolf to let him go.

The Wolf said:⁠—

“All right; I will let you go on condition that you tell me why it is that you squirrels are always so happy. I am always melancholy; but I see you playing and leaping all the time in the trees.”

The Squirrel said:⁠—

“Let me go first, and then I will tell you; but now I am afraid of you.”

The Wolf let him go, and the Squirrel leaped up into a tree, and from there it said:⁠—

“You are melancholy because you are bad. Wickedness consumes your heart. But we are happy because we are good, and do no one any harm.”

Uncle Mitya had a very fine bay horse.

Some thieves heard about the bay horse, and laid their plans to steal it. They came after it was dark, and crept into the yard.

Now it happened that a peasant who had a bear with him came to spend the night at Uncle Mitya’s. Uncle Mitya took the peasant into the cottage, let out the bay horse into the yard, and put the bear into the inclosure where the bay horse was.

The thieves came in the dark into the inclosure, and began to grope around. The bear got on his hind legs, and seized one of the thieves, who was so frightened that he bawled with all his might.

Uncle Mitya came out and caught the thieves.

Two men together found a book in the street, and began to dispute as to the ownership of it.

A third happened along, and asked:⁠—

“Which of you can read?”

“Neither of us.”

“Then why do you want the book? Your quarrel reminds me of two bald men who fought for possession of a comb, when neither had any hair on his head.”

A Wolf was running from the dogs, and wanted to hide in a cleft. But a Fox was lying in the cleft; she showed her teeth at the Wolf, and said:⁠—

“You cannot come in here; this is my place.”

The Wolf did not stop to dispute the matter, but merely said:⁠—

“If the dogs were not so near, I would teach you whose place it is; but now the right is on your side.”

Some soldiers made a foray into hostile territory. A peasant ran out into the field where his horse was, and tried to catch it. But the horse would not come to the peasant.

And the peasant said to him:⁠—

“Stupid, if you don’t let me catch you, the enemy will carry you off.”

The Horse asked:⁠—

“What would the enemy do with me?”

The peasant replied:⁠—

“Of course they would make you carry burdens.”

And the Horse rejoined:⁠—

“Well, don’t I carry burdens for you? So then it is all the same to me whether I work for you or your enemies.”

An Eagle built a nest on a tree, and hatched out some eaglets. And a wild Sow brought her litter under the tree.

The Eagle used to fly off after her prey, and bring it back to her young. And the Sow rooted around the tree and hunted in the woods, and when night came she would bring her young something to eat.

And the Eagle and the Sow lived in neighborly fashion.

And a Grimalkin laid his plans to destroy the eaglets and the little sucking pigs. He went to the Eagle, and said:⁠—

“Eagle, you had better not fly very far away. Beware of the Sow; she is planning an evil design. She is going to undermine the roots of the tree. You see she is rooting all the time.”

Then the Grimalkin went to the Sow and said:⁠—

“Sow, you have not a good neighbor. Last evening I heard the Eagle saying to her eaglets: ‘My dear little eaglets, I am going to treat you to a nice little pig. Just as soon as the Sow is gone, I will bring you a little young sucking pig.’ ”

From that time the Eagle ceased to fly out after prey, and the Sow did not go any more into the forest. The eaglets and the young pigs perished of starvation, and Grimalkin feasted on them.

After the French had left Moscow, two peasants went out to search for treasures. One was wise, the other stupid.

They went together to the burnt part of the city, and found some scorched wool. They said, “That will be useful at home.”

They gathered up as much as they could carry, and started home with it.

On the way they saw lying in the street a lot of cloth. The wise peasant threw down the wool, seized as much of the cloth as he could carry, and put it on his shoulders. The stupid one said:⁠—

“Why throw away the wool? It is nicely tied up, and nicely fastened on.” And so he did not take any of the cloth.

They went farther, and saw lying in the street some ready-made clothes that had been thrown away. The wise peasant unloaded the cloth, picked up the clothes, and put them on his shoulders. The stupid one said:⁠—

“Why should I throw away the wool? It is nicely tied up and securely fastened on my back.”

They went on their way, and saw silver plate scattered about. The wise peasant threw down the clothes, and gathered up as much of the silver as he could, and started off with it; but the stupid one did not give up his wool, because it was nicely tied up and securely tied on.

Going still farther, they saw gold lying on the road. The wise peasant threw down his silver and picked up the gold; but the stupid one said:⁠—

“What is the good of taking off the wool? It is nicely tied up and securely fastened to my back.”

And they went home. On the way a rain set in, and the wool became water-soaked, so that the stupid man had to throw it away, and thus reached home empty-handed; but the wise peasant kept his gold and became rich.

Once upon a time a man had a big house, and in the house there was a big oven; but this man’s family was small⁠—only himself and his wife.

When winter came, the man tried to keep his oven going; and in one month he burnt up all his firewood. He had nothing to feed the fire, and it was cold.

Then the man began to break up his fences, and use the boards for fuel. When he had burnt up all of his fences, the house, now without any protection against the wind, was colder than ever, and still they had no firewood.

Then the man began to tear down the ceiling of his house, and burn that in the oven.

A neighbor noticed that he was tearing down his ceiling, and said to him:⁠—

“Why, neighbor, have you lost your mind?⁠—pulling down your ceiling in winter. You and your wife will freeze to death!”

But the man said:⁠—

“No, brother; you see I am pulling down my ceiling so as to have something to heat my oven with. We have such a curious one; the more I heat it up, the colder we are!”

The neighbor laughed, and said:⁠—

“Well, then, after you have burnt up your ceiling, then you will be tearing down your house. You won’t have anywhere to live; only the oven will be left, and even that will be cold!”

“Well, that is my misfortune,” said the man. “All my neighbors have firewood enough for all winter; but I have already burnt up my fences and the ceiling of my house, and have nothing left.”

The neighbor replied:⁠—

“All you need is to have your oven rebuilt.”

But the man said:⁠—

“I know well that you are jealous of my house and my oven because they are larger than yours, and so you advise me to rebuild it.”

And he turned a deaf ear to his neighbor’s advice, and burnt up his ceiling, and burnt up his whole house, and had to go and live with strangers.

A son was born to a poor peasant. He was glad, and went to his neighbour to ask him to stand godfather to the boy. The neighbour refused⁠—he did not like standing godfather to a poor man’s child. The peasant asked another neighbour, but he too refused, and after that the poor father went to every house in the village, but found no one willing to be godfather to his son. So he set off to another village, and on the way he met a man who stopped and said:

“Good day, my good man; where are you off to?”

“God has given me a child,” said the peasant, “to rejoice my eyes in youth, to comfort my old age, and to pray for my soul after death. But I am poor, and no one in our village will stand godfather to him, so I am now on my way to seek a godfather for him elsewhere.”

“Let me be godfather,” said the stranger.

The peasant was glad, and thanked him, but added:

“And whom shall I ask to be godmother?”

“Go to the town,” replied the stranger, “and, in the square, you will see a stone house with shopwindows in the front. At the entrance you will find the tradesman to whom it belongs. Ask him to let his daughter stand godmother to your child.”

The peasant hesitated.

“How can I ask a rich tradesman?” said he. “He will despise me, and will not let his daughter come.”

“Don’t trouble about that. Go and ask. Get everything ready by tomorrow morning, and I will come to the christening.”

The poor peasant returned home, and then drove to the town to find the tradesman. He had hardly taken his horse into the yard, when the tradesman himself came out.

“What do you want?” said he.

“Why, sir,” said the peasant, “you see God has given me a son to rejoice my eyes in youth, to comfort my old age, and to pray for my soul after death. Be so kind as to let your daughter stand godmother to him.”

“And when is the christening?” said the tradesman.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Very well. Go in peace. She shall be with you at Mass tomorrow morning.”

The next day the godmother came, and the godfather also, and the infant was baptized. Immediately after the christening the godfather went away. They did not know who he was, and never saw him again.

The child grew up to be a joy to his parents. He was strong, willing to work, clever and obedient. When he was ten years old his parents sent him to school to learn to read and write. What others learnt in five years, he learnt in one, and soon there was nothing more they could teach him.

Easter came round, and the boy went to see his godmother, to give her his Easter greeting.

“Father and mother,” said he when he got home again, “where does my godfather live? I should like to give him my Easter greeting, too.”

And his father answered:

“We know nothing about your godfather, dear son. We often regret it ourselves. Since the day you were christened we have never seen him, nor had any news of him. We do not know where he lives, or even whether he is still alive.”

The son bowed to his parents.

“Father and mother,” said he, “let me go and look for my godfather. I must find him and give him my Easter greeting.”

So his father and mother let him go, and the boy set off to find his godfather.

The boy left the house and set out along the road. He had been walking for several hours when he met a stranger who stopped him and said:

“Good day to you, my boy. Where are you going?”

And the boy answered:

“I went to see my godmother and to give her my Easter greeting, and when I got home I asked my parents where my godfather lives, that I might go and greet him also. They told me they did not know. They said he went away as soon as I was christened, and they know nothing about him, not even if he be still alive. But I wished to see my godfather, and so I have set out to look for him.”

Then the stranger said: “I am your godfather.”

The boy was glad to hear this. After kissing his godfather three times for an Easter greeting, he asked him:

“Which way are you going now, godfather? If you are coming our way, please come to our house; but if you are going home, I will go with you.”

“I have no time now,” replied his godfather, “to come to your house. I have business in several villages; but I shall return home again tomorrow. Come and see me then.”

“But how shall I find you, godfather?”

“When you leave home, go straight towards the rising sun, and you will come to a forest; going through the forest you will come to a glade. When you reach this glade sit down and rest awhile, and look around you and see what happens. On the further side of the forest you will find a garden, and in it a house with a golden roof. That is my home. Go up to the gate, and I will myself be there to meet you.”

And having said this the godfather disappeared from his godson’s sight.

The boy did as his godfather had told him. He walked eastward until he reached a forest, and there he came to a glade, and in the midst of the glade he saw a pine tree to a branch of which was tied a rope supporting a heavy log of oak. Close under this log stood a wooden trough filled with honey. Hardly had the boy had time to wonder why the honey was placed there, and why the log hung above it, when he heard a crackling in the wood, and saw some bears approaching; a she-bear, followed by a yearling and three tiny cubs. The she-bear, sniffing the air, went straight to the trough, the cubs following her. She thrust her muzzle into the honey, and called the cubs to do the same. They scampered up and began to eat. As they did so, the log, which the she-bear had moved aside with her head, swung away a little and, returning, gave the cubs a push. Seeing this the she-bear shoved the log away with her paw. It swung further out and returned more forcibly, striking one cub on the back and another on the head. The cubs ran away howling with pain, and the mother, with a growl, caught the log in her forepaws and, raising it above her head, flung it away. The log flew high in the air, and the yearling, rushing to the trough, pushed his muzzle into the honey and began to suck noisily. The others also drew near, but they had not reached the trough when the log, flying back, struck the yearling on the head and killed him. The mother growled louder than before and, seizing the log, flung it from her with all her might. It flew higher than the branch it was tied to; so high that the rope slackened; and the she-bear returned to the trough, and the little cubs after her. The log flew higher and higher, then stopped, and began to fall. The nearer it came the faster it swung, and at last, at full speed, it crashed down on her head. The she-bear rolled over, her legs jerked, and she died! The cubs ran away into the forest.

The boy watched all this in surprise, and then continued his way. Leaving the forest, he came upon a large garden in the midst of which stood a lofty palace with a golden roof. At the gate stood his godfather, smiling. He welcomed his godson, and led him through the gateway into the garden. The boy had never dreamed of such beauty and delight as surrounded him in that place.

Then his godfather led him into the palace, which was even more beautiful inside than outside. The godfather showed the boy through all the rooms: each brighter and finer than the other, but at last they came to one door that was sealed up.

“You see this door,” said he. “It is not locked, but only sealed. It can be opened, but I forbid you to open it. You may live here, and go where you please, and enjoy all the delights of the place. My only command is⁠—do not open that door! But should you ever do so, remember what you saw in the forest.”

Having said this the godfather went away. The godson remained in the palace, and life there was so bright and joyful that he thought he had only been there three hours, when he had really lived there thirty years. When thirty years had gone by, the godson happened to be passing the sealed door one day, and he wondered why his godfather had forbidden him to enter that room.

“I’ll just look in and see what is there,” thought he, and he gave the door a push. The seals gave way, the door opened, and the godson entering saw a hall more lofty and beautiful than all the others, and in the midst of it a throne. He wandered about the hall for a while, and then mounted the steps and seated himself upon the throne. As he sat there he noticed a sceptre leaning against the throne, and took it in his hand. Hardly had he done so when the four walls of the hall suddenly disappeared. The godson looked around, and saw the whole world, and all that men were doing in it. He looked in front, and saw the sea with ships sailing on it. He looked to the right, and saw where strange heathen people lived. He looked to the left, and saw where men who were Christians, but not Russians, lived. He looked round, and on the fourth side, he saw Russian people, like himself.

“I will look,” said he, “and see what is happening at home, and whether the harvest is good.”

He looked towards his father’s fields and saw the sheaves standing in stooks. He began counting them to see whether there was much corn, when he noticed a peasant driving in a cart. It was night, and the godson thought it was his father coming to cart the corn by night. But as he looked he recognized Vasíly Koudryashóf, the thief, driving into the field and beginning to load the sheaves onto his cart. This made the godson angry, and he called out:

“Father, the sheaves are being stolen from our field!”

His father, who was out with the horses in the night-pasture, woke up.

“I dreamt the sheaves were being stolen,” said he. “I will just ride down and see.”

So he got on a horse and rode out to the field. Finding Vasíly there, he called together other peasants to help him, and Vasíly was beaten, bound, and taken to prison.

Then the godson looked at the town, where his godmother lived. He saw that she was now married to a tradesman. She lay asleep, and her husband rose and went to his mistress. The godson shouted to her:

“Get up, get up, your husband has taken to evil ways.”

The godmother jumped up and dressed, and finding out where her husband was, she shamed and beat his mistress, and drove him away.

Then the godson looked for his mother, and saw her lying asleep in her cottage. And a thief crept into the cottage and began to break open the chest in which she kept her things. The mother awoke and screamed, and the robber seizing an axe, swung it over his head to kill her.

The godson could not refrain from hurling the sceptre at the robber. It struck him upon the temple, and killed him on the spot.

As soon as the godson had killed the robber, the walls closed and the hall became just as it had been before.

Then the door opened and the godfather entered, and coming up to his godson he took him by the hand and led him down from the throne.

“You have not obeyed my command,” said he. “You did one wrong thing, when you opened the forbidden door; another, when you mounted the throne and took my sceptre into your hands; and you have now done a third wrong, which has much increased the evil in the world. Had you sat here an hour longer, you would have ruined half mankind.”

Then the godfather led his godson back to the throne, and took the sceptre in his hand; and again the walls fell asunder and all things became visible. And the godfather said:

“See what you have done to your father. Vasíly has now been a year in prison, and has come out having learnt every kind of wickedness, and has become quite incorrigible. See, he has stolen two of your father’s horses, and he is now setting fire to his barn. All this you have brought upon your father.”

The godson saw his father’s barn breaking into flames, but his godfather shut off the sight from him, and told him to look another way.

“Here is your godmother’s husband,” he said. “It is a year since he left his wife, and now he goes after other women. His former mistress has sunk to still lower depths. Sorrow has driven his wife to drink. That’s what you have done to your godmother.”

The godfather shut off this also, and showed the godson his father’s house. There he saw his mother weeping for her sins, repenting, and saying:

“It would have been better had the robber killed me that night. I should not have sinned so heavily.”

“That,” said the godfather, “is what you have done to your mother.”

He shut this off also, and pointed downwards; and the godson saw two warders holding the robber in front of a prison-house.

And the godfather said:

“This man had murdered ten men. He should have expiated his sins himself, but by killing him you have taken his sins on yourself. Now you must answer for all his sins. That is what you have done to yourself. The she-bear pushed the log aside once, and disturbed her cubs; she pushed it again, and killed her yearling; she pushed it a third time, and was killed herself. You have done the same. Now I give you thirty years to go into the world and atone for the robber’s sins. If you do not atone for them, you will have to take his place.”

“How am I to atone for his sins?” asked the godson.

And the godfather answered:

“When you have rid the world of as much evil as you have brought into it, you will have atoned both for your own sins and for those of the robber.”

“How can I destroy evil in the world?” the godson asked.

“Go out,” replied the godfather, “and walk straight towards the rising sun. After a time you will come to a field with some men in it. Notice what they are doing, and teach them what you know. Then go on and note what you see. On the fourth day you will come to a forest. In the midst of the forest is a cell, and in the cell lives a hermit. Tell him all that has happened. He will teach you what to do. When you have done all he tells you, you will have atoned for your own and the robber’s sins.”

And, having said this, the godfather led his godson out of the gate.

The godson went his way, and as he went he thought:

“How am I to destroy evil in the world? Evil is destroyed by banishing evil men, keeping them in prison, or putting them to death. How then am I to destroy evil without taking the sins of others upon myself?”

The godson pondered over it for a long time, but could come to no conclusion. He went on until he came to a field where corn was growing thick and good and ready for the reapers. The godson saw that a little calf had got in among the corn. Some men who were at hand saw it, and mounting their horses they chased it backwards and forwards through the corn. Each time the calf was about to come out of the corn, someone rode up and the calf got frightened and turned back again, and they all galloped after it, trampling down the corn. On the road stood a woman crying.

“They will chase my calf to death,” she said.

And the godson said to the peasants:

“What are you doing? Come out of the cornfield, all of you, and let the woman call her calf.”

The men did so; and the woman came to the edge of the cornfield and called to the calf. “Come along browney, come along,” said she. The calf pricked up its ears, listened awhile, and then ran towards the woman of its own accord, and hid its head in her skirts, almost knocking her over. The men were glad, the woman was glad, and so was the little calf.

The godson went on, and he thought:

“Now I see that evil spreads evil. The more people try to drive away evil, the more the evil grows. Evil, it seems, cannot be destroyed by evil; but in what way it can be destroyed, I do not know. The calf obeyed its mistress and so all went well; but if it had not obeyed her, how could we have got it out of the field?”

The godson pondered again, but came to no conclusion, and continued his way.

He went on until he came to a village. At the furthest end he stopped and asked leave to stay the night. The woman of the house was there alone, housecleaning, and she let him in. The godson entered, and taking his seat upon the brick oven he watched what the woman was doing. He saw her finish scrubbing the room and begin scrubbing the table. Having done this, she began wiping the table with a dirty cloth. She wiped it from side to side⁠—but it did not come clean. The soiled cloth left streaks of dirt. Then she wiped it the other way. The first streaks disappeared, but others came in their place. Then she wiped it from one end to the other, but again the same thing happened. The soiled cloth messed the table; when one streak was wiped off another was left on. The godson watched for awhile in silence, and then said:

“What are you doing, mistress?”

“Don’t you see I’m cleaning up for the holiday. Only I can’t manage this table, it won’t come clean. I’m quite tired out.”

“You should rinse your cloth,” said the godson, “before you wipe the table with it.”

The woman did so, and soon had the table clean.

“Thank you for telling me,” said she.

In the morning he took leave of the woman and went on his way. After walking a good while, he came to the edge of a forest. There he saw some peasants who were making wheel-rims of bent wood. Coming nearer, the godson saw that the men were going round and round, but could not bend the wood.

He stood and looked on, and noticed that the block, to which the piece of wood was fastened, was not fixed, but as the men moved round it went round too. Then the godson said:

“What are you doing, friends?”

“Why, don’t you see, we are making wheel-rims. We have twice steamed the wood, and are quite tired out, but the wood will not bend.”

“You should fix the block, friends,” said the godson, “or else it goes round when you do.”

The peasants took his advice and fixed the block, and then the work went on merrily.

The godson spent the night with them, and then went on. He walked all day and all night, and just before dawn he came upon some drovers encamped for the night, and lay down beside them. He saw that they had got all their cattle settled, and were trying to light a fire. They had taken dry twigs and lighted them, but before the twigs had time to burn up, they smothered them with damp brushwood. The brushwood hissed, and the fire smouldered and went out. Then the drovers brought more dry wood, lit it, and again put on the brushwood⁠—and again the fire went out. They struggled with it for a long time, but could not get the fire to burn. Then the godson said:

“Do not be in such a hurry to put on the brushwood. Let the dry wood burn up properly before you put any on. When the fire is well alight you can put on as much as you please.”

The drovers followed his advice. They let the fire burn up fiercely before adding the brushwood, which then flared up so that they soon had a roaring fire.

The godson remained with them for a while, and then continued his way. He went on, wondering what the three things he had seen might mean; but he could not fathom them.

The godson walked the whole of that day, and in the evening came to another forest. There he found a hermit’s cell, at which he knocked.

“Who is there?” asked a voice from within.

“A great sinner,” replied the godson. “I must atone for another’s sins as well as for my own.”

The hermit hearing this came out.

“What sins are those that you have to bear for another?”

The godson told him everything: about his godfather; about the she-bear with the cubs; about the throne in the sealed room; about the commands his godfather had given him, as well as about the peasants he had seen trampling down the corn, and the calf that ran out when its mistress called it.

“I have seen that one cannot destroy evil by evil,” said he, “but I cannot understand how it is to be destroyed. Teach me how it can be done.”

“Tell me,” replied the hermit, “what else you have seen on your way.”

The godson told him about the woman washing the table, and the men making cartwheels, and the drovers fighting their fire.

The hermit listened to it all, and then went back to his cell and brought out an old jagged axe.

“Come with me,” said he.

When they had gone some way, the hermit pointed to a tree.

“Cut it down,” he said.

The godson felled the tree.

“Now chop it into three,” said the hermit.

The godson chopped the tree into three pieces. Then the hermit went back to his cell, and brought out some blazing sticks.

“Burn those three logs,” said he.

So the godson made a fire, and burnt the three logs till only three charred stumps remained.

“Now plant them half in the ground, like this.”

The godson did so.

“You see that river at the foot of the hill. Bring water from there in your mouth, and water these stumps. Water this stump, as you taught the woman: this one, as you taught the wheelwrights: and this one, as you taught the drovers. When all three have taken root and from these charred stumps apple-trees have sprung, you will know how to destroy evil in men, and will have atoned for all your sins.”

Having said this, the hermit returned to his cell. The godson pondered for a long time, but could not understand what the hermit meant. Nevertheless he set to work to do as he had been told.

The godson went down to the river, filled his mouth with water, and returning, emptied it onto one of the charred stumps. This he did again and again, and watered all three stumps. When he was hungry and quite tired out, he went to the cell to ask the old hermit for some food. He opened the door, and there upon a bench he saw the old man lying dead. The godson looked round for food, and he found some dried bread and ate a little of it. Then he took a spade and set to work to dig the hermit’s grave. During the night he carried water and watered the stumps, and in the day he dug the grave. He had hardly finished the grave, and was about to bury the corpse, when some people from the village came, bringing food for the old man.

The people heard that the old hermit was dead, and that he had given the godson his blessing, and left him in his place. So they buried the old man, gave the bread they had brought to the godson, and promising to bring him some more, they went away.

The godson remained in the old man’s place. There he lived, eating the food people brought him, and doing as he had been told: carrying water from the river in his mouth and watering the charred stumps.

He lived thus for a year, and many people visited him. His fame spread abroad, as a holy man who lived in the forest and brought water from the bottom of a hill in his mouth to water charred stumps for the salvation of his soul. People flocked to see him. Rich merchants drove up bringing him presents, but he kept only the barest necessaries for himself, and gave the rest away to the poor.

And so the godson lived: carrying water in his mouth and watering the stumps half the day, and resting and receiving people the other half. And he began to think that this was the way he had been told to live, in order to destroy evil and atone for his sins.

He spent two years in this manner, not omitting for a single day to water the stumps. But still not one of them sprouted.

One day, as he sat in his cell, he heard a man ride past, singing as he went. The godson came out to see what sort of a man it was. He saw a strong young fellow, well dressed, and mounted on a handsome, well-saddled horse.

The godson stopped him, and asked him who he was, and where he was going.

“I am a robber,” the man answered, drawing rein. “I ride about the highways killing people; and the more I kill, the merrier are the songs I sing.”

The godson was horror-struck, and thought:

“How can the evil be destroyed in such a man as this? It is easy to speak to those who come to me of their own accord and confess their sins. But this one boasts of the evil he does.”

So he said nothing, and turned away, thinking: “What am I to do now? This robber may take to riding about here, and he will frighten away the people. They will leave off coming to me. It will be a loss to them, and I shall not know how to live.”

So the godson turned back, and said to the robber:

“People come to me here, not to boast of their sins, but to repent, and to pray for forgiveness. Repent of your sins, if you fear God; but if there is no repentance in your heart, then go away and never come here again. Do not trouble me, and do not frighten people away from me. If you do not hearken, God will punish you.”

The robber laughed:

“I am not afraid of God, and I will not listen to you. You are not my master,” said he. “You live by your piety, and I by my robbery. We all must live. You may teach the old women who come to you, but you have nothing to teach me. And because you have reminded me of God, I will kill two more men tomorrow. I would kill you, but I do not want to soil my hands just now. See that in future you keep out of my way!”

Having uttered this threat, the robber rode away. He did not come again, and the godson lived in peace, as before, for eight more years.

One night the godson watered his stumps, and, after returning to his cell, he sat down to rest, and watched the footpath, wondering if someone would soon come. But no one came at all that day. He sat alone till evening, feeling lonely and dull, and he thought about his past life. He remembered how the robber had reproached him for living by his piety; and he reflected on his way of life. “I am not living as the hermit commanded me to,” thought he. “The hermit laid a penance upon me, and I have made both a living and fame out of it; and have been so tempted by it, that now I feel dull when people do not come to me; and when they do come, I only rejoice because they praise my holiness. That is not how one should live. I have been led astray by love of praise. I have not atoned for my past sins, but have added fresh ones. I will go to another part of the forest where people will not find me; and I will live so as to atone for my old sins and commit no fresh ones.”

Having come to this conclusion the godson filled a bag with dried bread and, taking a spade, left the cell and started for a ravine he knew of in a lonely spot, where he could dig himself a cave and hide from the people.

As he was going along with his bag and his spade he saw the robber riding towards him. The godson was frightened, and started to run away, but the robber overtook him.

“Where are you going?” asked the robber.

The godson told him he wished to get away from the people and live somewhere where no one would come to him. This surprised the robber.

“What will you live on, if people do not come to see you?” asked he.

The godson had not even thought of this, but the robber’s question reminded him that food would be necessary.

“On what God pleases to give me,” he replied.

The robber said nothing, and rode away.

“Why did I not say anything to him about his way of life?” thought the godson. “He might repent now. Today he seems in a gentler mood, and has not threatened to kill me.” And he shouted to the robber:

“You have still to repent of your sins. You cannot escape from God.”

The robber turned his horse, and drawing a knife from his girdle threatened the hermit with it. The latter was alarmed, and ran away further into the forest.

The robber did not follow him, but only shouted:

“Twice I have let you off, old man, but next time you come in my way I will kill you!”

Having said this, he rode away. In the evening when the godson went to water his stumps⁠—one of them was sprouting! A little apple tree was growing out of it.

After hiding himself from everybody, the godson lived all alone. When his supply of bread was exhausted, he thought: “Now I must go and look for some roots to eat.” He had not gone far, however, before he saw a bag of dried bread hanging on a branch. He took it down, and as long as it lasted he lived upon that.

When he had eaten it all, he found another bagful on the same branch. So he lived on, his only trouble being his fear of the robber. Whenever he heard the robber passing, he hid, thinking:

“He may kill me before I have had time to atone for my sins.”

In this way he lived for ten more years. The one apple-tree continued to grow, but the other two stumps remained exactly as they were.

One morning the godson rose early and went to his work. By the time he had thoroughly moistened the ground round the stumps, he was tired out and sat down to rest. As he sat there he thought to himself:

“I have sinned, and have become afraid of death. It may be God’s will that I should redeem my sins by death.”

Hardly had this thought crossed his mind when he heard the robber riding up, swearing at something. When the godson heard this, he thought:

“No evil and no good can befall me from anyone but from God.”

And he went to meet the robber. He saw the robber was not alone, but behind him on the saddle sat another man, gagged, and bound hand and foot. The man was doing nothing, but the robber was abusing him violently. The godson went up and stood in front of the horse.

“Where are you taking this man?” he asked.

“Into the forest,” replied the robber. “He is a merchant’s son, and will not tell me where his father’s money is hidden. I am going to flog him till he tells me.”

And the robber spurred on his horse, but the godson caught hold of his bridle, and would not let him pass.

“Let this man go!” he said.

The robber grew angry, and raised his arm to strike.

“Would you like a taste of what I am going to give this man? Have I not promised to kill you? Let go!”

The godson was not afraid.

“You shall not go,” said he. “I do not fear you. I fear no one but God, and He wills that I should not let you pass. Set this man free!”

The robber frowned, and snatching out his knife, cut the ropes with which the merchant’s son was bound, and set him free.

“Get away both of you,” he said, “and beware how you cross my path again.”

The merchant’s son jumped down and ran away. The robber was about to ride on, but the godson stopped him again, and again spoke to him about giving up his evil life. The robber heard him to the end in silence, and then rode away without a word.

The next morning the godson went to water his stumps and lo! the second stump was sprouting. A second young apple-tree had begun to grow.

Another ten years had gone by. The godson was sitting quietly one day, desiring nothing, fearing nothing, and with a heart full of joy.

“What blessings God showers on men!” thought he. “Yet how needlessly they torment themselves. What prevents them from living happily?”

And remembering all the evil in men, and the troubles they bring upon themselves, his heart filled with pity.

“It is wrong of me to live as I do,” he said to himself. “I must go and teach others what I have myself learnt.”

Hardly had he thought this, when he heard the robber approaching. He let him pass, thinking:

“It is no good talking to him, he will not understand.”

That was his first thought, but he changed his mind and went out into the road. He saw that the robber was gloomy, and was riding with downcast eyes. The godson looked at him, pitied him, and running up to him laid his hand upon his knee.

“Brother, dear,” said he, “have some pity on your own soul! In you lives the spirit of God. You suffer, and torment others, and lay up more and more suffering for the future. Yet God loves you, and has prepared such blessings for you. Do not ruin yourself utterly. Change your life!”

The robber frowned and turned away.

“Leave me alone!” said he.

But the godson held the robber still faster, and began to weep.

Then the robber lifted his eyes and looked at the godson. He looked at him for a long time, and alighting from his horse, fell on his knees at the godson’s feet.

“You have overcome me, old man,” said he. “For twenty years I have resisted you, but now you have conquered me. Do what you will with me, for I have no more power over myself. When you first tried to persuade me, it only angered me more. Only when you hid yourself from men did I begin to consider your words: for I saw then that you asked nothing of them for yourself. Since that day I have brought food for you, hanging it upon the tree.”

Then the godson remembered that the woman got her table clean only after she had rinsed her cloth. In the same way, it was only when he ceased caring about himself, and cleansed his own heart, that he was able to cleanse the hearts of others.

The robber went on.

“When I saw that you did not fear death, my heart turned.”

Then the godson remembered that the wheelwrights could not bend the rims until they had fixed their block. So, not till he had cast away the fear of death and made his life fast in God, could he subdue this man’s unruly heart.

“But my heart did not quite melt,” continued the robber, “until you pitied me and wept for me.”

The godson, full of joy, led the robber to the place where the stumps were. And when they got there, they saw that from the third stump an apple-tree had begun to sprout. And the godson remembered that the drovers had not been able to light the damp wood until the fire had burnt up well. So it was only when his own heart burnt warmly, that another’s heart had been kindled by it.

And the godson was full of joy that he had at last atoned for his sins.

He told all this to the robber, and died. The robber buried him, and lived as the godson had commanded him, teaching to others what the godson had taught him.

1886.

Constantly higher and higher the sky lifted itself, wider and wider spread the dawn, whiter and whiter grew the unpolished silver of the dew, more and more lifeless the sickle of the moon, more vocal the forest. The men began to arise; and at the stables belonging to the bárin were heard with increasing frequency the whinnying of the horses, the stamping of hoofs on the straw, and also the angry, shrill neighing of the animals collecting together, and even disputing with each other over something.

“Noo! you got time enough; mighty hungry, ain’t you?” said the old drover, quickly opening the creaking gates. “Where you going?” he shouted, waving his hands at a mare which tried to run through the gate.

Nester, the drover, was dressed in a Cossack coat,243 with a decorated leather belt around his waist; his knout was slung over his shoulder, and a handkerchief, containing some bread, was tied into his belt. In his arms he carried a saddle and halter.

The horses were not in the least startled, nor did they show any resentment, at the drover’s sarcastic tone: they made believe that it was all the same to them, and leisurely moved back from the gate⁠—all except one old dark-bay mare, with a long flowing mane, who laid back her ears and quickly turned around. At this opportunity a young mare, who was standing behind, and had nothing at all to do with this, whinnied, and began to kick at the first horse that she fell in with.

“No!” shouted the drover still more loudly and angrily, and turned to the corner of the yard.244

Out of all the horses⁠—there must have been nearly a hundred⁠—that were moving off toward their breakfast, none manifested so little impatience as a piebald gelding, which stood alone in one corner under the shed, and gazed with half-shut eyes, and bit on the oaken lining of the shed.

It is hard to say what enjoyment the piebald gelding got from this, but his expression while doing so was solemn and thoughtful.

“Nonsense!” again cried the drover in the same tone, turning to him; and going up to him he laid the saddle and shiny blanket on a pile of manure near him.

The piebald gelding ceased biting, and looked long at Nester without moving. He did not manifest any sign of mirth or anger or sullenness, but only drew in his whole belly and sighed heavily, heavily, and then turned away. The drover took him by the neck, and gave him his breakfast.

“What are you sighing for?” asked Nester.

The horse switched his tail as though to say, “Well, it’s nothing, Nester.” Nester put on the blanket and saddle, whereupon the horse pricked up his ears, expressing as plainly as could be his disgust; but he received nothing but execrations for this “rot,” and then the saddle-girth was pulled tight.

At this the gelding tried to swell out; but his mouth was thrust open, and a knee was pressed into his side, so that he was forced to let out his breath. Notwithstanding this, when they got the bit between his teeth, he still pricked back his ears, and even turned round. Though he knew that this was of no avail, yet he seemed to reckon it essential to express his displeasure, and always showed it. When he was saddled, he pawed with his swollen right leg, and began to champ the bit⁠—here also for some special reason, because it was full time for him to know that there could be no taste in bits.

Nester mounted the gelding by the short stirrups, unwound his knout, freed his Cossack coat from under his knee, settled down in the saddle in that position peculiar to coachmen, hunters, and drivers, and twitched on the reins. The gelding lifted his head, showing a disposition to go where he should be directed, but he stirred not from the spot. He knew that before he went there would be much shouting on the part of him who sat on his back, and many orders to be given to Vaska, the other drover, and to the horses. In fact Nester began to shout, “Vaska! ha, Vaska! have you let out any of the mares⁠—hey? Where are you, you old devil? No-o! Are you asleep? Open the gate. Let the mares go first,” and so on.

The gates creaked. Vaska, morose, and still full of sleep, holding a horse by the bridle, stood at the gatepost and let the horses out. The horses, one after the other, gingerly stepping over the straw and sniffing it, began to pass out⁠—the young fillies, the yearlings, the little colts; while the mares with young stepped along needfully, one at a time, avoiding all contact. The young fillies sometimes crowded in two at once, three at once, throwing their heads across each other’s backs, and hitting their hoofs against the gates, each time receiving a volley of abuse from the drovers. The colts sometimes kicked the mares whom they did not know, and whinnied loudly in answer to the short neighing of their mothers.

A young filly, full of wantonness, as soon as she got outside the gate, tossed her head up and around, began to back, and whinnied, but nevertheless did not venture to dash ahead of the old gray, grain-bestrewed Zhuldiba, who, with a gentle but solid step, swinging her belly from side to side, was always the dignified leader of the other horses.

After a few moments the lively yard was left in melancholy loneliness; the posts stood out in sadness under the empty sheds, and only the sodden straw, soiled with dung, was to be seen.

Familiar as this picture of emptiness was to the piebald gelding, it seemed to have a melancholy effect upon him. He slowly, as though making a bow, lowered and lifted his head, sighed as deeply as the tightly drawn girth permitted, and dragging his somewhat bent and decrepit legs, he started off after the herd, carrying the old Nester on his bony back.

“I know now. As soon as we get out on the road, he will go to work to make a light, and smoke his wooden pipe with its copper mounting and chain,” thought the gelding. “I am glad of this, because it is early in the morning and the dew is on the grass, and this odor is agreeable to me, and brings up many pleasant recollections. I am sorry only that when the old man has his pipe in his mouth he always becomes excited, gets to imagining things, and sits on one side, far over on one side, and on that side it always hurts. However, God be with him. It’s no new thing for me to suffer for the sake of others. I have even come to find some equine satisfaction in this. Let him play that he’s cock of the walk, poor fellow; but it’s for his own pleasure that he looks so big, since no one sees him at all. Let him ride sidewise,” said the horse to himself; and, stepping gingerly on his crooked legs, he walked along the middle of the road.

After driving the herd down to the river, near which the horses were to graze, Nester dismounted and took off the saddle. Meantime the herd began slowly to scatter over the as yet untrodden field, covered with dew and with vapor rising alike from the damp meadow and the river that encircled it.

Taking off the blanket from the piebald gelding, Nester scratched him on his neck; and the horse in reply expressed his happiness and satisfaction by shutting his eyes.

“The old dog likes it,” said Nester.

The gelding really did not like this scratching very much, and only out of delicacy intimated that it was agreeable to him. He shook his head as a sign of assent. But suddenly, unexpectedly, and without any reason, Nester, imagining perhaps that too great familiarity might give the horse false ideas about what he meant⁠—Nester, without any warning, pushed away his head, and, lifting up the bridle, struck the horse very severely with the buckle on his bare leg, and, without saying anything, went up the hillock to a stump, near which he sat down as though nothing had happened.

Though this proceeding incensed the gelding, he did not manifest it; and leisurely switching his thin tail, and sniffing at something, and merely for recreation cropping at the grass, he wandered down toward the river.

Not paying any heed to the antics played around him by the young fillies, the colts, and the yearlings, and knowing that the health of everybody, and especially one who had attained his years, was subserved by getting a good drink of water on an empty stomach, and then eating, he turned his steps to where the bank was less steep and slippery; and wetting his hoofs and gambrels, he thrust his snout into the river, and began to suck the water through his lips drawn back, to puff with his distending sides, and out of pure satisfaction to switch his thin, piebald tail with its leathery stump.

A chestnut filly, always mischievous, always nagging the old horse, and causing him manifold unpleasantnesses, came down to the water as though for her own necessities, but really merely for the sake of roiling the water in front of his nose.

But the gelding had already drunk enough, and apparently giving no thought to the impudent mare, calmly put one miry leg before the other, shook his head, and, turning aside from the wanton youngster, began to eat. Dragging his legs in a peculiar manner, and not tramping down the abundant grass, the horse grazed for nearly three hours, scarcely stirring from the spot. Having eaten so much that his belly hung down like a bag from his thin, sharp ribs, he stood solidly on his four weak legs, so that as little strain as possible might come on any one of them⁠—at least on the right foreleg, which was weaker than all⁠—and went to sleep.

There is an honorable old age, there is a miserable old age, there is a pitiable old age; there is also an old age that is both honorable and miserable. The old age which the piebald gelding had reached was of this latter sort.

The old horse was of a great size⁠—more than seventeen hands high.245 His color was white, spotted with black; at least, it used to be so, but now the black spots had changed to a dirty brown. The regions of black spots were three in number: one on the head, including the mane, and side of the nose, the star on the forehead, and half of the neck; the long mane, tangled with burrs, was striped white and brownish; the second spotted place ran along the right side, and covered half the belly; the third was on the flank, including the upper part of the tail and half of the loins; the rest of the tail was whitish, variegated.

The huge, corrugated head, with deep hollows under the eyes, and with pendent black lips, somewhat lacerated, sat heavily and draggingly on the neck, which bent under its leanness, and seemed to be made of wood. From under the pendent lip could be seen the dark-red tongue protruding on one side, and the yellow, worn tusks of his lower teeth. His ears, one of which was slit, fell over sidewise, and only occasionally he twitched them a little to scare away the sticky flies. One long tuft still remaining of the forelock hung behind the ears; the broad forehead was hollowed and rough; the skin hung loose on the big cheekbones. On the neck and head the veins stood out in knots, trembling and twitching whenever a fly touched them. The expression of his face was sternly patient, deeply thoughtful, and expressive of pain.

His forelegs were crooked at the knees. On both hoofs were swellings; and on the one which was half covered by the marking, there was near the knee at the back a sore boil. The hind legs were in better condition, but there had been severe bruises long before on the haunches, and the hair did not grow on those places. His legs seemed disproportionately long, because his body was so emaciated. His ribs, though also thick, were so exposed and drawn that the hide seemed dried in the hollows between them.

The back and withers were variated with old scars, and behind was still a freshly galled and purulent slough. The black stump of the tail, where the vertebrae could be counted, stood out long and almost bare. On the brown flank near the tail, where it was overgrown with white hairs, was a scar as big as one’s hand, that must have been from a bite. Another cicatrice was to be seen on the off shoulder. The houghs of the hind legs and the tail were foul with excrement. The hair all over the body, though short, stood out straight.

But in spite of the filthy old age to which this horse had come, anyone looking at him would have involuntarily thought, and a connoisseur would have said immediately, that he must have been in his day a remarkably fine horse. The connoisseur would have said also that there was only one breed in Russia246 that could give such broad bones, such huge joints, such hoofs, such slender leg-bones, such an arched neck, and, most of all, such a skull⁠—eyes large, black, and brilliant, and such a thoroughbred network of nerves over his head and neck, and such delicate skin and hair.

In reality there was something noble in the form of this horse, and in the terrible union in him of the repulsive signs of decrepitude, the increased variegatedness of his hide, and his actions, and the expression of self-dependence, and the calm consciousness of beauty and strength.

Like a living ruin he stood in the middle of the dewy field, alone; while not far away from him were heard the galloping, the neighing, the lively whinnying, the snorting, of the scattered herd.

The sun was now risen above the forest, and shone brightly on the grass and the winding river. The dew dried away and fell off in drops. Like smoke the last of the morning mist rolled up. Curly clouds made their appearance, but as yet there was no wind. On the other side of the gleaming river stood the rye, bending on its stalks, and the air was fragrant with bright verdure and the flowers. The cuckoo cooed from the forest with echoing voice; and Nester, lying flat on his back, was reckoning up how many years of life lay before him. The larks arose from the rye and the field. The belated hare stood up among the horses and leaped without restraint, and sat down by the copse and pricked up his ears to listen.

Vaska went to sleep, burying his head in the grass; the mares, making wide circuits around him, scattered themselves on the field below. The older ones, neighing, picked out a shining track across the dewy grass, and constantly tried to find some place where they might be undisturbed. They no longer grazed, but only nibbled on the sweet grass-blades. The whole herd was imperceptibly moving in one direction.

And again the old Zhuldiba, stately stepping before the others, showed how far it was possible to go. The young Mushka, who had cast her first foal, constantly hinnying, and lifting her tail, was scolding her violet-colored colt. The young Atlásnaya, with smooth and shining skin, dropping her head so that her black and silken forelock hid her forehead and eyes, was gambolling in the grass, nipping and tossing and stamping her leg, with its hairy fetlock. One of the older little colts⁠—he must have been imagining, some kind of game⁠—lifting, for the twenty-sixth time, his rather short and tangled tail, like a plume, gambolled around his dam, who calmly picked at the herbage, having evidently had time to sum up her son’s character, and only occasionally stopping to look askance at him out of her big black eye.

One of these same young colts⁠—black as a coal, with a large head with a marvellous topknot rising above his ears, and his tail still inclining to the side on which he had laid in his mother’s belly⁠—pricking up his ears, and opening his stupid eyes, as he stood motionless in his place, looked steadily at the colt jumping and dancing, not at all understanding why he did it, whether out of jealousy or indignation.

Some suckle, butting with their noses; others, for some unknown reason, notwithstanding their mothers’ invitation, move along in a short, awkward trot, in a diametrically opposite direction, as though seeking something, and then, no one knows why, stop short and hinny in a desperately penetrating voice. Some lie on their sides in a row; some take lessons in grazing; some try to scratch themselves with their hind legs behind the ear.

Two mares, still with young, go off by themselves, and slowly moving their legs continue to graze. Evidently their condition is respected by the others, and none of the young colts ventures to go near or disturb them. If any saucy young steed takes it into his head to approach too near to them, then merely a motion of an ear or tail is sufficient to show him all the impropriety of his behavior.

The yearlings and the young fillies pretend to be full-grown and dignified, and rarely indulge in pranks, or join their gay companions. They ceremoniously nibble at the blades of grass, bending their swan-like, short-shorn necks, and, as though they also were blessed with tails, switch their little brushes. Just like the big horses, some of them lie down, roll over, and scratch each others’ backs.

A very jolly band consists of the two-year-old and the three-year-old mares who have never foaled. They almost all wander off by themselves, and make a specially jolly virgin throng. Among them is heard a great tramping and stamping, hinnying and whinnying. They gather together, lay their heads over each others’ shoulders, snuff the air, leap; and sometimes, lifting the tail like an oriflamme, proudly and coquettishly, in a half-trot, half-gallop, caracole in front of their companions.

Conspicuous for beauty and sprightly dashing ways, among all this young throng, was the wanton bay mare. Whatever she set on foot, the others also did; wherever she went, there in her track followed also the whole throng of beauties.

The wanton was in a specially playful frame of mind this morning. The spirit of mischief was in her, just as it sometimes comes upon men. Even at the riverside, playing her pranks upon the old gelding, she had galloped along in the water, pretending that something had scared her, snorting, and then dashed off at full speed across the field; so that Vaska was constrained to gallop after her, and after the others who were at her heels. Then, after grazing a little while, she began to roll, then to tease the old mares, by dashing in front of them. Then she separated a suckling colt from its dam, and began to chase after it, pretending that she wanted to bite it. The mother was frightened, and ceased to graze; the little colt squealed in piteous tones. But the wanton young mare did not touch it, but only scared it, and made a spectacle for her comrades, who looked with sympathy on her antics.

Then she set out to turn the head of the roan horse, which a muzhik, far away on the other side of the river, was driving with a plough in the rye-field. She stood proudly, somewhat on one side, lifting her head high, shook herself, and neighed in a sweet, significant, and alluring voice.

’Tis the time when the rail-bird, running from place to place among the thick reeds, passionately calls his mate; when also the cuckoo and the quail sing of love; and the flowers send to each other, on the breeze, their aromatic dust.

“And I am young and kind and strong,” said the jolly wanton’s neighing, “and till now it has not been given to me to experience the sweetness of this feeling, never yet to feel it; and no lover, no, not one, has yet come to woo me.”

And the significant neighing rang with youthful melancholy over lowland and field, and it came to the ears of the roan horse far away. He pricked up his ears, and stopped. The muzhik kicked him with his wooden shoe; but the roan was bewitched by the silver sound of the distant neighing, and whinnied in reply. The muzhik grew angry, twitched him with the reins, and again kicked him in the belly with his bast shoe, so that he did not have a chance to complete all that he had to say in his neighing, but was forced to go on his way. And the roan horse felt a sweet sadness in his heart; and the sounds from the far-off rye-field, of that unfinished and passionate neigh, and the angry voice of the muzhik, long echoed in the ears of the herd.

If through one sound of her voice the roan horse could become so captivated as to forget his duty, what would have become of him if he had had full view of the beautiful wanton, as she stood pricking up her ears, inflating her nostrils, breathing in the air, and filled with longing, while her young and beauteous body trembled as she called to him?

But the wanton did not long ponder over her novel sensations. When the voice of the roan was still, she whinnied scornfully, and, sinking her head, began to paw the ground; and then she trotted off to wake up and tease the piebald gelding. The piebald gelding was a long-suffering butt for the amusement of this happy young wanton. She made him suffer more than men did. But in neither case did he give way to wrath. He was indispensable to men, but why should these young horses torment him?

He was old, they were young; he was lean, they were fat; he was sad, they were happy. So he was thoroughly strange, alien, an absolutely different creature; and it was impossible for them to have compassion on him. Horses have pity only on themselves, and rarely on those whose places they may easily come themselves to fill. But, indeed, was not the piebald gelding himself to blame, that he was old and gaunt and crippled?⁠ ⁠…

One would think that he was not to blame. But in equine ethics he was, and only those were right who were strong, young, and happy; those who had all life before them; those whose every muscle was tense with superfluous energy, and curled their tails into a wheel.

Maybe the piebald gelding himself understood this, and in tranquil moments was agreed that he was to blame because he had lived out all his life, that he must pay for his life; but he was after all only a horse, and he could not restrain himself often from feeling hurt, melancholy, and discontented, when he looked on all these young horses who tormented him for the very thing to which they would be subjected when they came to the end of their lives.

The reason for the heartlessness of these horses was a peculiarly aristocratic feeling. Every one of them was related, either on the side of father or mother, to the celebrated Smetanka; but it was not known from what stock the piebald gelding sprang. The gelding was a chance comer, bought at market three years before for eighty paper rubles.

The young chestnut mare, as though accidentally wandering about, came up to the piebald gelding’s very nose, and brushed against him. He knew beforehand what it meant, and did not open his eyes, but laid back his ears and showed his teeth. The mare wheeled around, and made believe that she was going to let fly at him with her heels. He opened his eyes, and wandered off to another part. He had no desire to sleep, and began to crop the grass. Again the wanton young mare, accompanied by her confederates, went to the gelding. A two-year-old mare with a star on her forehead, very stupid, always in mischief, and always ready to imitate the chestnut mare, trotted along with her, and, as imitators always do, began to: play the same trick that the instigator had done.

The brown mare marched along at an ordinary gait, as though bent on her own affairs, and passed by the gelding’s very nose, not looking at him, so that he really did not know whether to be angry or not; and this was the very fun of the thing.

This was what she did; but the starred mare following in her steps, and feeling very gay, hit the gelding on the chest. He showed his teeth once more, whinnied, and, with a quickness of motion unexpected on his part, sprang at the mare, and bit her on the flank. The young mare with the star flew out with her bind legs, and kicked the old horse heavily on his thin bare ribs. The old horse uttered a hoarse noise, and was about to make another lunge, but thought better of it, and sighing deeply turned away.

It must have been that all the young horses of the drove regarded as a personal insult the boldness which the piebald gelding permitted himself to show toward the starred mare; for all the rest of the day they gave him no chance to graze, and left him not a moment of peace, so that the drover several times rebuked them, and could not comprehend what they were doing.

The gelding was so abused that he himself walked up to Nester when it was time for the old man to drive back the drove, and he showed greater happiness and content when Nester saddled him and mounted him.

God knows what the old gelding’s thoughts were as he bore on his back the old man Nester. Did he think with bitterness of these importunate and merciless youngsters? or, with a scornful and silent pride peculiar to old age, did he pardon his persecutors? At all events, he did not make manifest any of his thoughts till he reached home.

That evening some cronies had come to see Nester; and as the horses were driven by the huts of the domestics, he noticed a horse and telega standing at his doorstep. After he had driven in the horses, he was in such a hurry that he did not take the saddle off: he left the gelding at the yard,247 and shouted to Vaska to unsaddle the animal, then shut the gate, and hurried to his friends.

Perhaps owing to the affront put upon the starred mare, the descendant of Smetanka, by that “low trash” bought for a horse, and not knowing father or mother, and therefore offending the aristocratic sentiment of the whole community; or because the gelding with the high saddle without a rider presented a strangely fantastic spectacle for the horses⁠—at all events, that night something extraordinary took place in the paddock. All the horses, young and old, showing their teeth, tagged after the gelding, and drove him from one part of the yard to the other; the trampling of their hoofs echoed around him as he sighed and drew in his thin sides.

The gelding could not longer endure this, could not longer avoid their kicks. He halted in the middle of the field: his face expressed the repulsive, weak anger of helpless old age, and despair besides. He laid back his ears, and suddenly248 something happened that caused all the horses suddenly249 to become quiet. A very old mare, Viazopúrikha, came up and sniffed the gelding, and sighed. The gelding also sighed.

In the middle of the yard, flooded with the moonlight, stood the tall, gaunt figure of the gelding, still wearing the high saddle with its prominent pommel. The horses, motionless and in deep silence, stood around him, as though they were learning something new and extraordinary from him. And, indeed, something new and extraordinary they learned from him.

This is what they learned from him:⁠—

“Yes, I was sired by Liubeznuï I. Baba was my dam. According to the genealogy my name is Muzhik I. Muzhik I, I am according to my pedigree; but generally I am known as Kholstomír, on account of a long and glorious gallop, the like of which never took place in Russia. In lineage no horse in the world stands higher than I, for good blood. I would never have told you this. Why should I? You would never have known me as Viazopúrikha knew me when we used to be together at Khrénova, and who only just now recognized me. You would not have believed me had it not been for Viazopúrikha’s witness, and I would never have told you this. I do not need the pity of my kind. But you insisted upon it. Well, I am that Kholstomír whom the amateurs are seeking for and cannot find, that Kholstomír whom the count himself named, and whom he let go from his stud because I outran his favorite ‘Lebedi.’

“When I was born I did not know what they meant when they called me a piebald;250 I thought that I was a horse. The first remark made about my hide, I remember, deeply surprised me and my dam.

“I must have been foaled in the night. In the morning, licked clean by my dam’s tongue, I stood on my legs. I remember all my sensations, and that everything seemed to me perfectly wonderful, and, at the same time, perfectly simple. Our stalls were in a long, warm corridor, with latticed gates, through which nothing could be seen.

“My dam tempted me to suckle; but I was so innocent as yet that I bunted her with my nose, now under her forelegs, now in other places. Suddenly my dam gazed at the latticed gate, and, throwing her leg over me, stepped to one side. One of the grooms was looking in at us through the lattice.

“ ‘See, Baba has foaled!’ he exclaimed, and began to draw the bolt. He came in over the straw bed, and took me up in his arms. ‘Come and look, Taras!’ he cried; ‘see what a piebald colt, a perfect magpie!’

“I tore myself away from him, and fell on my knees.

“ ‘See, a perfect little devil!’ he said.

“My dam became disquieted; but she did not take my part, and merely drew a long, long breath, and stepped to one side. The grooms came, and began to look at me. One ran to tell the equerry.

“All laughed as they looked at my spotting, and gave me various odd names. I did not understand these names, nor did my dam either. Up to that time in all my family there had never been a single piebald known. We had no idea that there was anything disgraceful in it. And then all examined my structure and strength.

“See what a lively one!” said the hostler. ‘You can’t hold him.’

“In a little while came the equerry, and began to marvel at my coloring. He also seemed disgusted.

“ ‘What a nasty beast!’ he cried. ‘The general will not keep him in the stud. Ekh! Baba, you have caused me much trouble,’ he said, turning to my dam. ‘You ought to have foaled a colt with a star, but this is completely piebald.’

“My dam vouchsafed no answer, and, as always in such circumstances, merely sighed again.

“ ‘What kind of a devil was his sire? A regular muzhik!’ he went on to say. ‘It is impossible to keep him in the stud; it’s a shame! But we’ll see, we’ll see,’ said he; and all said the same as they looked at me.

“After a few days the general himself came. He took a look at me, and again all seemed horror-struck, and scolded me and my mother also on account of my hide. ‘But we’ll see, we’ll see,’ said everyone, as soon as they caught sight of me.

“Until spring we young colts lived in separate cells with our dams; only occasionally, when the snow on the roof of the sheds began to melt in the sun, they would let us out into the wide yard, spread with fresh straw. There for the first time I became acquainted with all my kin, near and remote. There I saw how from different doors issued all the famous mares of that time with their colts. There was the old Holland mare, Mushka, sired by Smetankin, Krasnukha, the saddle-horse Dobrokhotíkha, all celebrities at that time. All gathered together there with their colts, walked up and down in the sunshine, rolled over on the fresh straw, and sniffed of each other like ordinary horses.

“I cannot even now forget the sight of that paddock, full of the beauties of that day. It may seem strange to you to think of me as ever having been young and frisky, but I used to be. This very same Viazopúrikha was there then, a yearling, whose mane had just been cut,251⁠—a kind, jolly, frolicsome little horse. But let it not be taken as unkindly meant when I say, that, though she is now considered a rarity among you on account of her pedigree, then she was only one of the meanest horses of that stud. She herself will corroborate this.

“Though my coat of many colors had been displeasing to the men, it was exceedingly attractive to all the horses. They all stood round me, expressing their delight, and frisking with me. I even began to forget the words of the men about my hide, and felt happy. But I soon experienced the first sorrow of my life, and the cause of it was my dam. As soon as it began to thaw, and the swallows chirped on the roof, and the spring made itself felt more and more in the air, my dam began to change in her behavior toward me.

“Her whole character was transformed. Suddenly, without any reason, she began to frisk, galloping around the yard, which certainly did not accord with her dignified growth; then she would pause and consider, and begin to whinny; then she would bite and kick her sister mares; then she began to smell of me, and neigh with dissatisfaction; then trotting out into the sun she would lay her head across the shoulder of my two-year-old sister Kúpchika, and long and earnestly scratch her back, and push me away from nursing her. One time the equerry came, commanded the halter to be put on her, and they led her out of the paddock. She whinnied; I replied to her, and darted after her, but she would not even look at me. The groom Taras seized me in both arms, just as they shut the door on my mother’s retreating form.

“I struggled, threw the groom on the straw; but the door was closed, and I only heard my mother’s whinnying growing fainter and fainter. And in this whinnying I perceived that she called not for me, but I perceived a very different expression. In reply to her voice, there was heard in the distance a mighty voice.

“I don’t remember how Taras got out of my stall; it was too grievous for me. I felt that I had forever lost my mother’s love; and wholly because I was a piebald, I said to myself, remembering what the people said of my hide; and such passionate anger came over me, that I began to pound the sides of the stall with my head and feet, and I pounded them until the sweat poured from me, and I could not stand up from exhaustion.

“After some time my dam returned to me. I heard her as she came along the corridor in a prancing trot, wholly unusual to her, and entered our stall. The door was opened for her. I did not recognize her, so much younger and handsomer had she grown. She snuffed at me, neighed, and began to snort. But in her whole expression I could see that she did not love me.

“Soon they led us to pasture. I now began to experience new pleasures which consoled me for the loss of my mother’s love. I had friends and companions. We learned together to eat grass, to neigh like the old horses, and to lift our tails and gallop in wide circles around our dams. This was a happy time. Everything was forgiven to me; all loved me, and were loved by me, and looked indulgently on all that I did. This did not last long.

“Here something terrible happened to me.”

The gelding sighed deeply, deeply, and moved aside from the horses.

The dawn was already far advanced. The gates creaked. Nester came. The horses scattered. The drover straightened the saddle on the gelding’s back, and drove away the horses.

As soon as the horses were driven in, they once more gathered around the piebald.

“In the month of August,” continued the horse, “I was separated from my mother, and I did not experience any unusual grief. I saw that she was already suckling a small brother⁠—the famous Usan⁠—and I was not what I had been before. I was not jealous, but I felt that I had become more than ever cool toward her. Besides, I knew that in leaving my mother I should be transferred to the general division of young horses, where we were stalled in twos and threes, and every day all went out to exercise.

“I was in one stall with Milui. Milui was a saddle-horse, and afterwards belonged to the emperor himself, and was put into pictures and statuary. At that time he was a mere colt, with a shiny soft coat, a swan-like neck, and slender straight legs. He was always lively, good-natured, and lovable; was always ready to frisk, and be caressed, and sport with either horse or man. He and I could not help being good friends, living together as we did; and our friendship lasted till we grew up. He was gay, and inclined to be wanton. Even then he began to feel the tender passion to disport with the fillies, and he used to make sport of my guilelessness. To my unhappiness I myself, out of egotism, tried to follow his example, and very soon was in love. And this early inclination of mine was the cause, in great measure, of my fate.

“But I am not going to relate all the story of my unhappy first love; she herself remembers my stupid passion, which ended for me in the most important change in my life.

“The drovers came along, drove her away, and pounded me. In the evening they led me into a special stall. I whinnied the whole night long, as though with a presentiment of what was coming on the morrow.

“In the morning the general, the equerry, the under grooms, and the hostlers came into the corridor where my stall was, and set up a terrible screaming. The general screamed to the head groom; the groom justified himself, saying that he had not given orders to send me away, but that the under grooms had done it of their own free will. The general said that it had spoiled everything, but that it was impossible to keep young stallions. The head groom replied that he would have it attended to. They calmed down and went out, I did not understand it at all⁠—except that something concerning me was under consideration.

“On the next day I had ceased forever to whinny; I became what I am now. All the light of my eyes was quenched. Nothing seemed sweet to me; I became self-absorbed, and began to be pensive. At first I felt indifferent to everything. I ceased even to eat, to drink, and to run; and all thought of sprightly sport was gone. Then it nevermore came into my mind to kick up my heels, to roll over, to whinny, without bringing up the terrible question⁠—Why? for what purpose?’ And my vigor died away.

“Once they led me out at eventide, at the time when they were driving the stud home from the field. From afar I saw already the cloud of dust in which could be barely distinguished the familiar lineaments of all of our mothers. I heard the cheerful snorting, and the trampling of hoofs. I stopped short, though the halter-rope by which the groom held me cut my neck; and I gazed at the approaching drove as one gazes at happiness that is lost forever and will ne’er return again. They drew near, and my eyes fell upon forms so well known to me⁠—beautiful, grand, plump, full of life every one. Who among them all deigned to glance at me? I did not feel the pain that the groom in pulling the rope inflicted. I forgot myself, and involuntarily tried to whinny as of yore, and to gallop off; but my whinnying sounded melancholy, ridiculous, and unbecoming. There was no ribaldry among the stud, but I noticed that many of them from politeness turned away from me.

“It was evident that in their eyes I was despicable and pitiable, and worst of all ridiculous. My slender, weakly neck, my big head (I had become thin), my long, thick legs, and the awkward gait that I struck up, in my old fashion, around the groom, all must have seemed absurd to them. No one heeded my whinnying, all turned away from me.

“Suddenly I comprehended it all, comprehended how I was forever sundered from them, every one; and I know not how I stumbled home behind the groom.

“I had already shown a tendency toward gravity and thoughtfulness; but now a decided change came over me. My variegated coat, which occasioned such a strange prejudice in men, my terrible and unexpected unhappiness, and, moreover, my peculiarly isolated position in the stud⁠—which I felt, but could never explain to myself⁠—compelled me to turn my thoughts inward upon myself. I pondered on the disgust that people showed when they berated me for being a piebald; I pondered on the inconstancy of maternal and especially of female affection, and its dependence upon physical conditions; and, above all, I pondered on the characteristics of that strange race of mortals with whom we are so closely bound, and whom we call men⁠—those characteristics which were the source of the peculiarity of my position in the stud, felt by me but incomprehensible.

“The significance of this, peculiarity, and of the human characteristics on which it was based, was discovered to me by the following incident:⁠—

“It was winter, at Christmastide. All day long no fodder had been given to me, nor had I been led out to water. I afterwards learned that this arose from our groom being drunk. On this day the equerry came to me, saw that I had no food, and began to use hard language about the missing groom, and went away.

“On the next day, the groom with his mates came out to our stalls to give us some hay. I noticed that he was especially pale and glum, and in the expression of his long back there was a something significant and demanding sympathy.

“He austerely flung the hay behind the grating. I laid my head over his shoulder; but he struck me such a hard blow with his fist on the nose, that I started back. Then he kicked me in the belly with his boot.

“ ‘If it hadn’t been for this scurvy beast,’ said he, ‘there wouldn’t have been any trouble.’

“ ‘Why?’ asked another groom.

“ ‘He doesn’t come to inquire about the count’s you bet! But twice a day he comes out to look after his own.’

“ ‘Have they given him the piebald?’ inquired another.

“ ‘Whether they’ve given it to him or sold it to him, the dog only knows! The count’s might die o’ starvation⁠—it wouldn’t make any difference; but see how it upset him when I didn’t give his horse his fodder! ‘Go to bed,’ says he, ‘and then you’ll get a basting.’ No Christianity in it. More pity on the cattle than on a man. I don’t believe he’s ever been christened, he himself counted the blows, the barbarian! The general did not use the whip so. He made my back all welts. There’s no soul of a Christian in him!’

“Now, what they said about whips and Christianity, I understood well enough; but it was perfectly dark to me as to the meaning of the words, my horse, his horse, by which I perceived that men understood some sort of bond between me and the groom. Wherein consisted this bond, I could not then understand at all. Only long after, when I was separated from the other horses, I came to learn what it meant. At that time I could not understand at all that it meant that they considered me the property of a man. To say my horse in reference to me, a live horse, seemed to me as strange as to say, my earth, my atmosphere, my water.

“But these words had a monstrous influence upon me. I pondered upon them ceaselessly; and only after long and varied relations with men did I come at last to comprehend the meaning that men find in these strange words.

“The meaning is this: Men rule in life, not by deeds, but by words. They love not so much the possibility of doing or not doing anything, as the possibility of talking about different objects in words agreed upon between them. Such words, considered very important among them, are the words, my, mine, ours, which they employ for various things, beings, and objects; even for the earth, people, and horses. In regard to any particular thing, they agree that only one person shall say ‘It is mine.’ And he who in this play, which they engage in, can say mine in regard to the greatest number of things, is considered the most fortunate among them. Why this is so, I know not; but it is so. Long before, I had tried to explain this to my satisfaction, by some direct advantage; but it seemed that I was wrong.

“Many of the men who, for instance, called me their horse, did not ride on me, but entirely different men rode on me. They themselves did not feed me, but entirely different people fed me. Again, it was not those who called me their horse who treated me kindly, but the coachman, the veterinary, and, as a general thing, outside men.

“Afterwards, as I widened the sphere of my experiences, I became convinced that the concept my, as applied not only to us horses, but to other things, has no other foundation than a low and animal, a human instinct, which they call the sentiment or right of property. Man says, my house, and never lives in it, but is only cumbered with the building and maintenance of it. The merchant says, my shop⁠—my clothing-shop, for example⁠—and he does not even wear clothes made of the best cloth in the shop.

“There are people who call land theirs, and have never seen their land, and have never been on it. There are men who call other people theirs, but have never seen these people; and the whole relationship of these owners, to these people, consists in doing them harm.

“There are men who call women theirs⁠—their wives or mistresses; but these women live with other men. And men struggle in life not to do what they consider good, but to be possessors of what they call their own.

“I am convinced now that herein lies the substantial difference between men and us. And, therefore, not speaking of other things, where we are superior to men, we are able boldly to say that in this one respect at least, we stand, in the scale of living beings, higher than men. The activity of men⁠—at all events, of those with whom I have had to do⁠—is guided by words; ours, by deeds.

“And here the head groom obtained this right to say about me, my horse; and hence he lashed the hostler. This discovery deeply disturbed me; and those thoughts and opinions which my variegated coat aroused in men, and the thoughtfulness aroused in me by the change in my mother, together subserved to make me into that solemn and contemplative gelding that I am.

“I was threefold unhappy: I was piebald; I was a gelding; and men imagined that I did not belong to God and myself, as is the prerogative of every living thing, but that I belonged to the equerry.

“The consequences of their imagining this about me were many. The first was, that they kept me apart from the others, fed me better, led me more often, and harnessed me up earlier. They harnessed me first when I was in my third year. I remember the first time, the equerry himself, who imagined that I was his, began, with a crowd of grooms, to harness me, expecting from me some ebullition of temper or contrariness. They put leather straps on me, and conducted me into the stalls. They laid on my back a wide leather cross, and attached it to the thills, so that I should not kick; but I was only waiting an opportunity to show my gait, and my love for work.

“They marvelled because I went like an old horse. They began to drive me, and I began to practise trotting. Every day I made greater and greater improvement, so that in three months the general himself, and many others, praised my gait. But this was a strange thing: for the very reason that they imagined that I was the equerry’s, and not theirs, my gait had for them an entirely different significance.

“The stallions, my brothers, were put through their paces; their time was reckoned; people came to see them; they were driven in gilded droshkies. Costly saddles were put upon them. But I was driven in the equerry’s simple droshkies, when he had business at Chesmenka and other manor-houses. All this resulted from the fact that I was piebald, but more than all from the fact that I was, according to their idea, not the property of the count, but of the equerry.

“Tomorrow, if we are alive, I will tell you what a serious influence upon me was exercised by this right of proprietorship which the equerry arrogated to himself.”

All that day the horses treated Kholstomír with great consideration; but Nester, from old custom, rode him into the field. But Nester’s ways were so rough! The muzhik’s gray stallion, coming toward the drove, whinnied: and again the chestnut filly coquettishly replied to him.

The moon had quartered; and her narrow band poured a mild light on Kholstomír, standing in the middle of the yard, with the horses clustered around him.

“The principal and most surprising consequence to me of the fact that I was not the property of the count nor of God, but of the equerry,” continued the piebald, “was that what constitutes our chief activity⁠—the eager race⁠—was made the cause of my banishment. They were driving Lebedi around the ring; and a jockey from Chesmenka was riding me, and entered the course. Lebedi dashed past us. He trotted well, but he seemed to want to show off. He had not that skill which I had cultivated in myself; that is, of compelling one leg instantly to follow on the motion of the other, and not to waste the least degree of energy, but use it all in pressing forward. Lebedi dashed by us. I entered the ring: the jockey did not hold me back.

“ ‘Say, will you time my piebald?’ he cried; and when Lebedi came abreast of us a second time, he let me out. He had the advantage of his momentum, and so I was left behind in the first heat; but in the second I began to gain on him; came up to him in the droshky, caught up with him, passed beyond him, and won the race. They tried it a second time⁠—the same thing. I was the swifter. And this filled them all with dismay. The general begged them to send me away as soon as possible, so that I might not be heard of again. ‘Otherwise the count will know about it, and there will be trouble,’ said he. And they sent me to the horse-dealer. I did not remain there long. A hussar, who came along to get a remount, bought me. All this had been so disagreeable, so cruel, that I was glad when they took me from Khrénova, and forever separated me from all that had been near and dear to me. It was too hard for me among them. Before them stood love, honor, freedom; before me labor, humiliation⁠—humiliation, labor, to the end of my days. Why? Because I was piebald, and because I was compelled to be somebody’s horse.”

The next evening when the gates were closed, and all was still, the piebald continued thus:⁠—

“I had many experiences, both among men and among my own kind, while changing about from hand to hand. I stayed with two masters the longest: with the prince, the officer of the hussars, and then with an old man who lived at Nikola Yavleonoï Church.

“I spent the happiest days of my life with the hussar.

“Though he was the cause of my destruction, though he loved nothing and nobody, yet I loved him, and still love him, for this very reason.

“He pleased me precisely, because he was handsome, fortunate, rich, and therefore loved no one.

“You are familiar with this lofty equine sentiment of ours. His coldness, and my dependence upon him, added greatly to the strength of my affection for him. Because he beat me, and drove me to death, I used to think in those happy days, for that very reason I was all the happier.

“He bought me of the horse-dealer to whom the equerry had sold me, for eight hundred rubles. He bought me because there was no demand for piebald horses. Those were my happiest days.

“He had a mistress. I knew it because every day I took him to her; and I took her out driving, and sometimes took them together.

“His mistress was a handsome woman, and he was handsome, and his coachman was handsome; and I loved them all because they were. And life was worth living then.

“This is the way that my life was spent: In the morning the man came to groom me⁠—not the coachman, but the groom. The groom was a young lad, taken from among the muzhiks. He would open the door, let the wind drive out the steam from the horses, shovel out the manure, take off the blanket, begin to flourish the brush over my body, and with the currycomb to brush out the scruff on the floor of the stall, marked by the stamping of hoofs. I would make believe bite his sleeves, would push him with my leg.

“Then we were led out, one after the other, to drink from a tub of cold water; and the youngster admired my sleek spotted coat, my legs straight as an arrow, my broad hoofs, my polished flank, and back wide enough to sleep on. Then he would throw the hay behind the broad rack, and pour the oats into the oaken cribs. Then Feofán and the old coachman would come.

“The master and the coachman were alike. Neither the one nor the other feared anyone or loved anyone except themselves, and therefore everybody loved them. Feofán came in a red shirt, plush breeches, and coat. I used to like to hear him when, all pomaded for a holiday, he would come to the stable in his coat, and cry⁠—

“ ‘Well, cattle, are you asleep?’ and poke me in the loin with the handle of his fork; but never so as to hurt, only in fun. I could instantly take a joke, and I would lay back my ears and show my teeth.

“We had a chestnut stallion that belonged to a pair. Sometimes they would harness us together. This Polkan could not understand a joke, and was simply ugly as the devil. I used to stand in the next stall to him, and feel seriously pained. Feofán was not afraid of him. He used to go straight up to him, shout to him⁠—it seemed as though he were going to kick him⁠—but no, straight by, and put on the halter.

“Once we ran away together, in a pair, over the Kuznetskoë. Neither the master nor the coachman was frightened; they laughed, they shouted to the people, and they sawed on the reins and pulled up, and so I did not run over anybody.

“In their service I expended my best qualities, and half of my life. Then I was given too much water to drink, and my legs gave out.⁠ ⁠… But in spite of everything, that was the best part of my life. At twelve they would come, harness us, oil my hoofs, moisten my forelock and mane, and put us between the thills.

“The sledge was of cane, plaited, upholstered in velvet. The harness had little silver buckles, the reins of silk, and once I wore a fly-net. The whole harness was such, that, when all the straps and belts were put on and drawn, it was impossible to make out where the harness ended and the horse began. They would finish harnessing in the shed. Feofán would come out, his middle wider than his shoulders, with his red girdle under his arms. He would inspect the harness, take his seat, straighten his kaftan, put his foot in the stirrup, get off some joke, always crack his whip, though he scarcely ever touched me with it⁠—merely for form’s sake⁠—and cry, ‘Now off with you!’252 And frisking at every step, I would prance out of the gate; and the cook, coming out to empty her slops, would pause in the road; and the muzhik, bringing in his firewood, would open his eyes. We would drive up and down, occasionally stopping. The lackeys come out, the coachmen drive up. There is constant conversation. Always kept waiting. Sometimes for three hours we were kept at the door; occasionally we take a turn around, and talk a while, and again we halt.

“At last there would be a tumult in the hallway; the gray-haired Tikhon, fat in paunch, comes out in his dress-coat. ‘Drive on;’ then there was none of that use of superfluous words that obtains now. Feofán clucks as if I did not know what ‘forward’ meant; comes up to the door, and drives away quickly, unconcernedly, as though there was nothing wonderful either in the sledge or the horses, or Feofán himself, as he bends his back and holds out his hands in such a way that it would seem impossible to keep it up long.

“The prince comes out in his shako and cloak, with a gray beaver collar concealing his handsome, ruddy, black-browed face, which ought never to be covered. He would come out with clanking sabre, jingling spurs, and copper-heeled boots; stepping over the carpet as though in a hurry, and not paying any heed to me or to Feofán, whom everybody except himself looked at and admired.

“Feofán clucks. I pull at the reins, and with a respectable rapid trot we are off and away. I glance round at the prince, and toss my aristocratic head and delicate topknot. The prince is in good spirits; he sometimes jests with Feofán. Feofán replies, half turning round to the prince his handsome face, and, not dropping his hands, makes some ridiculous motion with the reins which I understand; and on, on, on, with ever wider and wider strides, straining every muscle, and sending the muddy snow over the dasher, off I go! Then there was none of the absurd way that obtains today of crying, O! as though the coachman were in pain, and couldn’t speak. ‘G’long! Look out there!253 G’long! Look out there,’ shouts Feofán; and the people clear the way, and stand craning their necks to see the handsome gelding, the handsome coachman, and the handsome harm.⁠ ⁠…

“I loved especially to outstrip some racer. When Feofán and I would see in the distance some team worthy of our mettle, flying like a whirlwind, we would gradually come nearer and nearer to him. And soon tossing the mud over the dasher, I would be even with the passenger, and would snort over his head, then even with the saddle, with the bell-bow;254 then I would already see him and hear him behind me, gradually getting farther and farther away. But the prince and Feofán and I, we all kept silent, and made believe that we were merely out for a drive, and by our actions that we did not notice those with slow horses whom we overtook on our way. I loved to race, but I loved also to meet a good racer. One wink, sound, glance, and we would be off, and would fly along, each on his own side of the road.⁠ ⁠…”

Here the gates creaked, and the voices of Nester and Vaska were heard.

The weather began to change. The sky was overcast; and in the morning there was no dew, but it was warm, and the flies were sticky. As soon as the herd was driven in, the horses gathered around the piebald, and thus he finished his story:⁠—

“The happy days of my life were soon over. I lived so only two years. At the end of the second winter, there happened an event which was most delightful to me, and immediately after came my deepest sorrow. It was at Shrovetide. I took the prince to the races. Atlásnui and Buichók also ran in the race.

“I don’t know what they were doing in the summerhouse; but I know that he came, and ordered Feofán to enter the ring. I remember they drove me into the ring, stationed me and stationed Atlásnui. Atlásnui was in racing gear, but I was harnessed in a city sleigh. At the turning stake I left him behind. A laugh and a cry of victory greeted my achievement. When they began to lead me round, a crowd followed after, and a man offered the prince five thousand. He only laughed, showing his white teeth.

“ ‘No,’ said he, ‘this isn’t a horse, it’s a friend. I wouldn’t sell him for a mountain of gold. Good day, gentlemen!’255

“He threw open the fur robes, and got in.

“ ‘To Ostozhenka.’

“That was where his mistress lived. And we flew.⁠ ⁠…

“It was our last happy day. We reached her home. He called her his. But she loved someone else, and had gone off with him. The prince ascertained this at her room. It was five o’clock; and, not letting me be unharnessed, he started in pursuit of her, though she had never really been his. They applied the knout to me, and made me gallop. For the first time, I began to flag, and I am ashamed to say, I wanted to rest.

“But suddenly I heard the prince himself shouting in an unnatural voice, ‘Hurry up!’256 and the knout whistled and cut me; and I dashed ahead again, my leg hitting against the iron of the dasher. We overtook her, after going twenty-five versts. I got him there; but I trembled all night, and could not eat anything. In the morning they gave me water. I drank it, and forever ceased to be the horse that I was. I was sick. They tortured me and maimed me⁠—treated me as men are accustomed to do. My hoofs came off. I had abscesses, and my legs grew bent. I had no strength in my chest. Laziness and weakness were everywhere apparent. I was sent to the horse-dealer. He fed me on carrots and other things, and made me something quite unlike my old self, but yet capable of deceiving one who did not know. But there was no strength and no swiftness in me.

“Moreover, the horse-dealer tormented me, by coming to my stall when customers were on hand, and beginning to stir me up, and torture me with the knout, so that it drove me to madness. Then he would wipe the bloody foam off the whip, and lead me out.

“An old lady bought me of the dealer. She used to keep coming to Nikola Yavlennoï, and she used to whip the coachman. The coachman would come and weep in my stall. And I knew that his tears had an agreeable salt taste. Then the old woman chid her overseer,257 took me into the country, and sold me to a peddler; then I was fed on wheat, and grew sicker still. I was sold to a muzhik. There I had to plough, had almost nothing to eat, and I cut my leg with a ploughshare. I became sick again. A gypsy got possession of me. He tortured me horribly, and at last I was sold to the overseer here. And here I am.⁠ ⁠…” All were silent. The rain began to fall.

As the herd returned home the following evening, they met the master258 and a guest. Zhulduiba, leading the way, cast her eyes on two men’s figures: one was the young master in a straw hat; the other, a tall, stout, military man, with wrinkled face. The old mare gazed at the man, and swerving went near to him; the rest, the younger ones, were thrown into some confusion, huddled together, especially when the master and his guest came directly into the midst of the horses, making gestures to each other, and talking.

“Here’s this one. I bought it of Voyéïkof⁠—the dapple-gray horse,” said the master.

“And that young black mare, with the white legs⁠—where did you get her? Fine one,” said the guest. They examined many of the horses as they walked around, or stood on the field. They remarked also the chestnut mare.

“That’s one of the saddle-horses⁠—the breed of Khrenovsky.”

They quietly gazed at all the horses as they went by. The master shouted to Nester; and the old man, hastily digging his heels into the sides of the piebald, trotted out. The piebald horse hobbled along, limping on one leg; but his gait was such that it was evident that in other circumstances he would not have complained, even if he had been compelled to go in this way, as long as his strength held out, to the world’s end. He was ready even to go at full gallop, and at first even broke into one.

“I have no hesitation in saying that there isn’t a better horse in Russia than that one,” said the master, pointing to one of the mares. The guest corroborated this praise. The master, full of satisfaction, walked up and down, made observations, and told the story and pedigree of each of the horses.

It was apparently somewhat of a bore to the guest to listen to the master; but he devised questions, to make it seem as if he were interested in it.

“Yes, yes,” said he in some confusion.

“Look,” said the host, not replying to the questions, “look at those legs, look at the⁠ ⁠… She cost me dear, but I shall have a three-year-old from her that’ll go!”

“Does she trot well?” asked the guest.

Thus they scrutinized almost all the horses, and there was nothing more to show. And they were silent.

“Well, shall we go?”

“Yes, let us go.”

They went out through the gate. The guest was glad that the exhibition was over, and that he was going home where he would eat, drink, smoke, and have a good time. As they went by Nester, who was sitting on the piebald and waiting for further orders, the guest struck his big fat hand on the horse’s side.

“Here’s good blood,” said he. “He’s like the piebald horse, if you remember, that I told you about.”

The master perceived that it was not of his horses that the guest was speaking; and he did not listen, but, looking around, continued to gaze at his stud.

Suddenly, at his very ear, was heard a dull, weak, senile neigh. It was the piebald horse that began to neigh, but could not finish it. Becoming, as it were, confused, he broke short off.

Neither the guest nor the master paid any attention to this neigh, but went home. Kholstomír had recognized in the wrinkled old man his beloved former master, the once brilliant, handsome, and wealthy Sierpukhovskoï.

The rain continued to fall. In the paddock it was gloomy, but at the manor-house259 it was quite the reverse. The luxurious evening meal was spread in the luxurious dining-room. At the table sat master, mistress, and the guest who had just arrived.

The master held in his hand a box of specially fine ten-year-old cigars, such as no one else had, according to his story, and proceeded to offer them to the guest. The master was a handsome young man of twenty-five, fresh, neatly dressed, smoothly brushed. He was dressed in a fresh, loosely-fitting suit of clothes, made in London. On his watch-chain were big expensive charms. His cuff-buttons were of gold, large, even massive, set with turquoises. His beard was à la Napoleon III; and his moustaches were waxed, and stood out as though he had got them nowhere else than in Paris.

The lady wore a silk-muslin dress, brocaded with large variegated flowers; on her head, large gold hairpins in her thick auburn hair, which was beautiful, though not entirely her own. Her hands were adorned with bracelets and rings, all expensive.

The samovar was silver, the service exquisite. The lackey, magnificent in his dress-coat and white vest and necktie, stood like a statue at the door, awaiting orders. The furniture was of bent wood, and bright; the wallpapers dark, with large flowers. Around the table tinkled a cunning little dog, with a silver collar bearing an extremely hard English name, which neither of them could pronounce because they knew not English.

In the corner, among the flowers, stood the pianoforte, inlaid with mother-of-pearl.260 Everything breathed of newness, luxury, and rareness. Everything was extremely good; but it all bore a peculiar impress of profusion, wealth, and an absence of intellectual interests.

The master was a great lover of racing, strong and hotheaded; one of those whom one meets everywhere, who drive out in sable furs, send costly bouquets to actresses, drink the most expensive wine, of the very latest brand, at the most expensive restaurant, offer prizes in their own names, and entertain the most expensive.⁠ ⁠…

The newcomer, Nikíta Sierpukhovskoï, was a man of forty years, tall, stout, bald, with huge mustaches and side-whiskers. He ought to have been very handsome; but it was evident that he had wasted his forces⁠—physical and moral and pecuniary.

He was so deeply in debt that he was obliged to go into the service so as to escape the sponging-house. He had now come to the government city as chief of the imperial stud. His influential relations had obtained this for him.

He was dressed in an army kittel and blue trousers. His kittel and trousers were such as only those who are rich can afford to wear; so with his linen also. His watch was English. His boots had peculiar soles, as thick as a finger.

Nikíta Sierpukhovskoï had squandered a fortune of two millions, and was still in debt to the amount of one hundred and twenty thousand rubles. From such a course there always remains a certain momentum of life, giving credit, and the possibility of living almost luxuriously for another ten years.

The ten years had already passed, and the momentum was finished; and it had become hard for him to live. He had already begun to drink too much; that is, to get fuddled with wine, which had never been the case with him before. Properly speaking, he had never begun and never finished drinking.

More noticeable in him than all else was the restlessness of his eyes (they had begun to wander), and the uncertainty of his intonations and motions. This restlessness was surprising, from the fact that it was evidently a new thing in him, because it could be seen that he had been accustomed, all his life long, to fear nothing and nobody, and that now he endured severe sufferings from some dread that was thoroughly alien to his nature.

The host and hostess261 remarked this, exchanged glances, showing that they understood each other, postponed until they should get to bed the consideration of this subject; and, evidently, merely endured poor Sierpukhovskoï.

The sight of the young master’s happiness humiliated Nikíta, and compelled him to painful envy, as he remembered his own irrevocable past.

“You don’t object to cigars, Marie?” he asked, addressing the lady in that peculiar tone, acquired only by practice, full of urbanity and friendliness, but not wholly satisfactory⁠—such as men use who are familiar with the society of women not enjoying the dignity of wifehood. Not that he could have wished to insult her: on the contrary, he was much more anxious to gain her goodwill and that of the host, though he would not for anything have acknowledged it to himself. But he was already used to talking thus with such women. He knew that she would have been astonished, even affronted, if he had behaved to her as toward a lady. Moreover, it was necessary for him to preserve that peculiar shade of deference for the acknowledged wife of his friend. He treated such women always with consideration, not because he shared those so-called convictions that are promulgated in newspapers (he never read such trash), about esteem as the prerogative of every man, about the absurdity of marriage, etc., because all well-bred men act thus, and he was a well-bred man, though inclined to drink.

He took a cigar. But his host awkwardly seized a handful of cigars, and placed them before the guest.

“No, just see how good these are! try them.”

Nikíta pushed away the cigars with his hand, and in his eyes flashed something like injury and shame.

“Thanks,”⁠—he took out his cigar-case⁠—“try mine.”

The lady was on the watch. She perceived how it affected him. She began hastily to talk with him.

“I am very fond of cigars. I should smoke myself if everybody about did not smoke.”

And she gave him one of her bright, kindly smiles. He half-smiled in reply. Two of his teeth were gone.

“No, take this,” continued the host, not heeding. “Those others are not so strong. Fritz, bringen Sie noch eine Kasten,” he said, “dort zwei.”

The German lackey brought another box.

“Do you like these larger ones? They are stronger. This is a very good kind. Take them all,” he added, continuing to force them upon his guest.

He was evidently glad that there was someone on whom he could lavish his rarities, and he saw nothing out of the way in it. Sierpukhovskoï began to smoke, and hastened to take up the subject that had been dropped.

“How much did you have to go on Atlásnui?” he asked.

“He cost me dear⁠—not less than five thousand, but at all events I am secured. Plenty of colts, I tell you!”

“Do they trot?” inquired Sierpukhovskoï.

“First-rate. Today Atlásnui’s colt took three prizes: one at Tula, one at Moscow, and one at Petersburg. He raced with Voyéïkof’s Vorónui. The rascally jockey made four abatements, and almost put him out of the race.”

“He was rather raw; too much Dutch stock in him, I should say,” said Sierpukhovskoï.

“Well, but the mares are finer ones. I will show you tomorrow. I paid three thousand for Dobruina, two thousand for Laskovaya.”

And again the host began to enumerate his wealth. The mistress saw that this was hard for Sierpukhovskoï, and that he only pretended to listen.

“Won’t you have some more tea?” asked the hostess.

“I don’t care for any more,” said the host, and he went on with his story. She got up; the host detained her, took her in his arms, and kissed her.

Sierpukhovskoï smiled at first, as he looked at them; but his smile seemed to them unnatural. When his host got up, and took her in his arms, and went out with her as far as the portière, his face suddenly changed; he sighed deeply, and an expression of despair took possession of his wrinkled face. There was also wrath in it.

“Yes, you said that you bought him of Voyéïkof,” said Sierpukhovskoï, with assumed indifference.

The host returned, and smiled as he sat down opposite his guest. Neither of them spoke.

“Oh, yes! I was speaking of Atlásnui. I had a great mind to buy the mares of Dubovitsky. Nothing but rubbish was left.”

“He was burned out,” said Sierpukhovskoï, and suddenly stood up and looked around. He remembered that he owed this ruined man twenty thousand rubles; and that, if burned out were said of anyone, it might by good rights be said about himself. He began to laugh.

Both kept silence long. The master was revolving in his mind how he might boast a little before his guest. Sierpukhovskoï was cogitating how he might show that he did not consider himself burned out. But the thoughts of both moved with difficulty, in spite of the fact that they tried to enliven themselves with cigars.

“Well, when shall we have something to drink?” asked the guest of himself.

“At all events, we must have something to drink, else we shall die of the blues,” said the host to himself.

“How is it? are you going to stay here long?” asked Sierpukhovskoï.

“About a month yet. Shall we have a little lunch? What say you? Fritz, is everything ready?”

They went back to the dining-room. There, under a hanging lamp, stood the table loaded with candles and very extraordinary things: siphons, and bottles with fancy stoppers, extraordinary wine in decanters, extraordinary liqueurs and vodka. They drank, sat down, drank again, sat down, and tried to talk. Sierpukhovskoï grew flushed, and began to speak unreservedly.

They talked about women: who kept such and such an one; the gypsy, the ballet-girl, the soubrette.262

“Why, you left Mathieu, didn’t you?” asked the host.

This was the mistress who had caused Sierpukhovskoï such pain.

“No, she left me. O my friend,263 how one remembers what one has squandered in life! Now I am glad, fact, when I get a thousand rubles; glad, fact, when I get out of everybody’s way. I cannot in Moscow. Ah! what’s to be said!”

The host was bored to listen to Sierpukhovskoï. He wanted to talk about himself⁠—to brag. But Sierpukhovskoï also wanted to talk about himself⁠—about his glittering past. The host poured out some more wine, and waited till he had finished, so as to tell him about his affairs⁠—how he was going to arrange his stud as no one ever had before; and how Marie loved him, not for his money, but for himself.

“I was going to tell you that in my stud⁠ ⁠…” he began. But Sierpukhovskoï interrupted him.

“There was a time, I may say,” he began, “when I loved, and knew how to live. You were talking just now about racing; please tell me what is your best racer.”

The host was glad of the chance to tell some more about his stud, but Sierpukhovskoï again interrupted him.

“Yes, yes,” said he. “But the trouble with you breeders is, that you do it only for ostentation, and not for pleasure, for life. It wasn’t so with me. I was telling you this very day that I used to have a piebald racer, with just such spots as I saw among your colts. Okh! what a horse he was! You can’t imagine it: this was in ’42. I had just come to Moscow. I went to a dealer, and saw a piebald gelding. All in best form. He pleased me. Price? Thousand rubles. He pleased me. I took him, and began to ride him. I never had, and you never had and never will have, such a horse. I never knew a better horse, either for gait, or strength, or beauty. You were a lad then. You could not have known, but you may have heard, I suppose. All Moscow knew him.”

“Yes, I heard about him,” said the host reluctantly; “but I was going to tell you about my⁠ ⁠…”

So you heard about him. I bought him just as he was, without pedigree, without proof; but then I knew Voyéïkof, and I traced him. He was sired by Liubeznuï I. He was called Kholstomír.264 He’d measure linen for you! On account of his spotting, he was given to the equerry at the Khrenovski stud; and he had him gelded, and sold him to the dealer. Aren’t any horses like him anymore, friend! Akh! “What a time that was! Akh! vanished youth!” he said, quoting the words of a gypsy song. He began to get wild. “Ekh! that was a golden time! I was twenty-five. I had eighty thousand a year income; then I hadn’t a gray hair; all my teeth like pearls.⁠ ⁠… Whatever I undertook prospered. And yet all came to an end.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, you didn’t have such lively times then,” said the host, taking advantage of the interruption. “I tell you that my first horses began to run without⁠ ⁠…”

“Your horses! Horses were more mettlesome then⁠ ⁠…”

“How more mettlesome?”

“Yes, more mettlesome. I remember how one time I was at Moscow at the races. None of my horses were in it. I did not care for racing; but I had blooded horses, General Chaulet, Muhammad. I had my piebald with me. My coachman was a splendid young fellow. I liked him. But he was rather given to drink, so I drove.⁠—‘Sierpukhovskoï,’ said they, ‘when are you going to get some trotters?’⁠—‘I don’t care for your lowbred beasts,265 the devil take ’em! I have a hackdriver’s piebald that’s worth all of yours.’⁠—Yes, but he doesn’t race.’⁠—‘Bet you a thousand rubles.’ They took me up. He went round in five seconds, won the wager of a thousand rubles. But that was nothing. With my blooded horses I went in a troika a hundred versts in three hours. All Moscow knew about it.”

And Sierpukhovskoï began to brag so fluently and steadily that the host could not get in a word, and sat facing him with dejected countenance. Only, by way of diversion, he would fill up his glass and that of his companion.

It began already to grow light, but still they sat there. It became painfully tiresome to the host. He got up.

“Sleep⁠—let’s go to sleep, then,” said Sierpukhovskoï, as he got up, and went staggering and puffing to the room that had been assigned to him.

The master of the house rejoined his mistress.

“Oh, he’s unendurable. He got drunk, and lied faster than he could talk.”

“And he made love to me too.”

“I fear that he’s going to borrow of me.”

Sierpukhovskoï threw himself on the bed without undressing, and drew a long breath.

“I must have talked a good deal of nonsense,” he thought. “Well, it’s all the same. Good wine, but he’s a big hog. Something cheap about him.266 And I am a hog myself,” he remarked, and laughed aloud. “Well, I used to support others: now it’s my turn. I guess the Winkler girl will help me. I’ll borrow some money of her. He may come to it. Suppose I’ve got to undress. Can’t get my boot off. Hey, hey!” he cried; but the man who had been ordered to wait on him had long before gone to bed.

He sat up, took off his kittel and his vest, and somehow managed to crawl out of his trousers; but it was long before his boots would stir: with his stout belly it was hard work to stoop over. He got one off; he struggled and struggled with the other, got out of breath, and gave it up. And so with one leg in the boot he threw himself down, and began to snore, filling the whole room with the odor of wine, tobacco, and vile old age.

If Kholstomír remembered anything that night, it was the frolic that Vaska gave him. He threw over him a blanket, and galloped off. He was left till morning at the door of a tavern, with a muzhik’s horse. They licked each other. When it became light he went back to the herd, and itched all over.

“Something makes me itch fearfully,” he thought.

Five days passed. They brought a veterinary. He said cheerfully⁠—

“The mange. You’ll have to dispose of him to the gypsies.”

“Better have his throat cut; only have it done today.”

The morning was calm and clear. The herd had gone to pasture. Kholstomír remained behind. A strange man came along; thin, dark, dirty, in a kaftan spotted with something black. This was the scavenger. He took Kholstomír by the halter, and without looking at him started off. The horse followed quietly, not looking round, and, as always, dragging his legs and kicking up the straw with his hind-legs.

As he went out of the gate, he turned his head toward the well; but the scavenger twitched the halter, and said⁠—

“It’s not worthwhile.”

The scavenger, and Vaska who followed, proceeded to a depression behind the brick barn, and stopped, as though there were something peculiar in this most ordinary place; and the scavenger, handing the halter to Vaska, took off his kaftan, rolled up his sleeves, and produced a knife and whetstone from his bootleg.

The piebald pulled at the halter, and out of sheer ennui tried to bite it, but it was too far off. He sighed, and closed his eyes. He hung down his lip, showing his worn yellow teeth, and began to drowse, lulled by the sound of the knife on the stone. Only his sick and swollen leg trembled a little.

Suddenly he perceived that he was grasped by the lower jaw, and that his head was lifted up. He opened his eyes. Two dogs were in front of him. One was snuffing in the direction of the scavenger, the other sat looking at the gelding as though expecting something especially from him. The gelding looked at them, and began to rub his jaw against the hand that held him.

“Of course they want to cure me,” he said: “let it come!”

And the thought had hardly passed through his mind, before they did something to his throat. It hurt him; he started back, stamped his foot, but restrained himself, and waited for what was to follow.⁠ ⁠… What followed, was some liquid pouring in a stream down his neck and breast. He drew a deep breath, lifting his sides. And it seemed easier, much easier, to him.

The whole burden of his life was taken from him.

He closed his eyes, and began to droop his head⁠—no one held it. Then his legs quivered, his whole body swayed. He was not so much terrified as he was astonished.⁠ ⁠…

Everything was so new. He was astonished; he tried to run ahead, up the hill,⁠ ⁠… but instead of this, his legs, moving where he stood, interfered. He began to roll over on his side, and while expecting to make a step he fell forward, and on his left side.

The scavenger waited till the death-struggle was over, drove away the dogs that were creeping nearer, and then seized the horse by the legs, turned him over on the back, and, telling Vaska to hold his leg, began to take off the hide.

“That was a horse indeed!” said Vaska.

“If he’d been fatter, it would have been a fine hide,” said the scavenger.

That evening the herd passed by the hill; and those who were on the left wing saw a red object below them, and around it some dogs busily romping, and crows and hawks flying over it. One dog, with his paws on the carcass, and shaking his head, was growling over what he was tearing with his teeth. The brown filly stopped, lifted her head and neck, and long sniffed the air. It took force to drive her away.

At sunrise, in a ravine of the ancient forest, in the bottom of an overgrown glade, some wolf-whelps were beside themselves with joy. There were five of them⁠—four about of a size, and one little one with a head bigger than his body. A lean, hairless she-wolf, her belly with hanging dugs almost touching the ground, crept out of the bushes, and sat down in front of the wolves. The wolves sat in a semicircle in front of her. She went to the smallest, and lowering her stumpy tail, and bending her nose to the ground, made a few convulsive motions, and opening her jaws filled with teeth she struggled, and disgorged a great piece of horseflesh.

The larger whelps made a movement to seize it; but she restrained them with a threatening growl, and let the little one have it all. The little one, as though in anger, seized the morsel, hiding it under him, and began to devour it. Then the she-wolf disgorged for the second, and the third, and in the same way for all five, and finally lay down in front of them to rest.

At the end of a week there lay behind the brick barn only the great skull, and two shoulder-blades; all the rest had disappeared. In the summer a muzhik who gathered up the bones carried off also the skull and shoulder-blades, and put them to use.

The dead body of Sierpukhovskoï who had been about in the world, and had eaten and drunken, was buried long after. Neither his skin nor his flesh nor his bones were of any use.

And just as his dead body, which had been about in the world, had been a great burden to others for twenty years, so the disposal of this body became only an additional charge upon men. Long it had been useless to everyone, long it had been only a burden. But still the dead who bury their dead found it expedient to dress this soon-to-be-decaying, swollen body, in a fine uniform, in fine boots; to place it in a fine new coffin, with new tassels on the four corners; then to place this new coffin in another, made of lead, and carry it to Moscow; and there to dig up the bones of people long buried, and then to lay away this malodorous body devoured by worms, in its new uniform and polished boots, and to cover the whole with earth.

It was in the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan, a century after the birth of Christ. It was at the time when the disciples of Christ’s disciples were still living, and the Christians faithfully observed the laws of the Master as it is related in the Acts:⁠—

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the Apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the Apostles’ feet; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

(Acts 4:32⁠–⁠35.)

In these early times, a rich Syrian tradesman named Juvenal, a dealer in precious stones, was living in the province of Cilicia, in the city of Tarsus. He was of poor and simple origin; but, by dint of hard work and skill in his art, he had accumulated property and won the respect of his fellow-citizens. He had traveled widely in different lands; and though he was not a literate man, he had seen and learned much, and the city people regarded him highly for his intellect and his probity.

He held to the pagan faith of Rome, which was professed by all respectable people of the Roman Empire⁠—that faith burdened with ceremonies which the emperors since the days of Augustus had so strenuously inculcated, and which the reigning Emperor Trajan so strictly maintained.

The province of Cilicia was far from Rome, but it was administered by a Roman proconsul, and everything that took place in Rome found its echo in Cilicia, and the rulers were mimic emperors.

Juvenal remembered all that had been told him in his childhood about the actions of Nero in Rome. As time went on, he had seen how one emperor after another perished; and, like a clever man, he came to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about the Roman religion, but that it was all the work of human hands. The senselessness of all the life which went on around him, especially that in Rome, where his business often took him, bewildered him. He had his doubts, he could not comprehend everything; and he attributed this to his lack of cultivation.

He was married, and four children had been born to him; but three had died young, and only one, a son named Julius, survived. Juvenal lavished on this son Julius all his affection and all his care. He especially wished so to educate his son that he might not be tortured by such doubts regarding life as had bewildered him. When Julius had passed the age of fifteen, his father entrusted his education to a philosopher who had settled in their city and devoted himself to the instruction of youth. Juvenal entrusted him to this philosopher, together with a comrade of his, Pamphilius, the son of a former slave whom Juvenal had freed.

The two boys were of the same age, both handsome, and good friends. They studied diligently, and both of them were of good morals. Julius distinguished himself more in the study of the poets and in mathematics; Pamphilius, in the study of philosophy.

About a year before the completion of their course of study, Pamphilius, coming to school one day, explained to the teacher that his widowed mother was going to the city of Daphne, and that he would be obliged to give up his studies.

The teacher was sorry to lose a pupil who had reflected credit on him; Juvenal also was sorry, but sorriest of all was Julius. But in spite of all their entreaties that he should stay and finish his studies, Pamphilius remained obdurate, and after thanking his friends for their love toward him and their solicitude for him, he took his departure.

Two years passed: Julius completed his studies; and during all that time he did not once see his friend.

One day, however, he met him in the street, invited him home, and began to ask him how and where he lived.

Pamphilius told him he still lived in the same place with his mother.

“We do not live alone,” said he, “but many friends live with us, and we have all things in common.”

“What do you mean ‘in common’?” asked Julius.

“In such a way that none of us considers anything his private property.”

“Why do you do that way?”

“We are Christians,” said Pamphilius.

“Is it possible!” cried Julius. “Why, I have been told that Christians kill children and eat them. Can it be that you take part in doing such things?”

“Come and see,” replied Pamphilius. “We do nothing of the sort; we live simply, trying to do nothing wrong.”

“But how can you live, if you have no property of your own?”

“We support each other. If we give our brethren our labors, then they give us theirs.”

“But if your brethren take your labors and don’t reciprocate, then what?”

“We don’t have such persons,” said Pamphilius; “such persons prefer to live luxuriously, and they don’t join us; life among us is simple, and without luxury.”

“But are there not many lazy ones who would delight in being fed for nothing?”

“Yes, there are some such, and we willingly receive them. Not long ago a man of that character came to us⁠—a runaway slave; at first, it is true, he was lazy, and led a bad life, but soon he changed his life, and has now become one of the good brethren.”

“But supposing he had not ordered his life aright?”

“Well, there are some such. The old man Cyril says that we must treat such as if they were the very best of the brethren, and love them all the more.”

“Can one love good-for-nothings?”

“It is impossible to help loving a human being.”

“But how can you give all men whatever they ask of you?” asked Julius. “If my father gave all persons whatever they asked him for, very soon he wouldn’t have anything left.”

“I don’t know,” replied Pamphilius. “We always have enough left for our necessities. Even if it came about that we had nothing to eat or nothing to wear, then we ask the others and they give to us. Yes, it sometimes happens so. Only once did I ever have to go to bed without my supper, and that was because I was very tired and did not feel like going to ask any of the brethren.”

“I don’t know how you do,” said Julius, “only what my father says: if he didn’t have his own property, and if he gave to everyone who asked him, he would die of starvation.”

“We don’t! Come and see. We live, and not only do not lack, but we have even more than we need.”

“How can that be?”

“This is the way of it: We all profess one law, but our powers of fulfilling it vary in each individual; some have greater, some have less. One has already made great improvement in the good life, while another has only just begun in it. At the head of us all stands Christ, with His life, and we all try to imitate Him, and in this only we see our well-being. Certain of us, like the old man Cyril and his wife Pelagia, are our leaders; others stand next to them, and still others in a third rank, but all of us are traveling along the same path. Those in advance are already near to the law of Christ⁠—self-renunciation⁠—and they are willing to lose their life in order to save it. These need nothing; they have no regret for themselves, and to those that ask they give their last possession according to the law of Christ. There are others, feebler, who cannot give all they have, who have some pity on themselves, who grow weak if they don’t have their usual dress and food, and cannot give everything away. Then there are others still weaker⁠—such as have only just started on the path; these still live in the old way, keeping much for themselves and giving away only what is superfluous. Even these that linger in the rear give aid to those in the van. Moreover, all of us are entangled by our relationships with pagans. One man’s father is a pagan and has a property, and gives to his son. The son gives to those that ask, but the father still continues to provide. The mother of another is a pagan, and has pity on her son, and helps him. A third has heathen children, while a mother is a Christian, and the children obey her, give to her, and beg her not to give her possessions away, while she, out of love to them, takes what they give her, and gives to others. Then, again, a fourth will have a pagan wife, and a fifth a pagan husband. Thus all are perplexed, and those in the van would be glad to give their all, but they cannot. In this way the feeble in faith are confirmed, and thus much of the superfluous is collected together.”

In reply to this Julius said:⁠—

“Well, if this is so, then it means you fail to observe the teaching of Christ, and only pretend to observe it. For if you don’t give away your all, then there is no distinction between us and you. In my mind, if you are going to be a Christian, then you must fulfil the whole law; give everything away and remain a beggar.”

“That is the best way of all,” said Pamphilius. “Do so!”

“Yes, I will do so when I see that you do.”

“We do not wish to set an example. And I don’t advise you to join us and renounce your present life for a mere display; we act as we do, not for show, but as a part of our religion.”

“What do you mean⁠—your ‘religion’?”

“Why, it means that salvation from the evils of the world, from death, is to be found only in life according to the teaching of Christ. And it makes no difference to us what men say about us. We are not doing this in the eyes of men, but because in this alone do we see life and welfare.”

“It is impossible not to live for self,” said Julius. “The gods instilled in us our instinct to love ourselves better than others and to seek happiness for ourselves. And you do the same thing. You confess that some of you have pity on yourselves; more and more they will look out for their own pleasures, and be ever more willing to give up your faith and do just what we are doing.”

“No,” replied Pamphilius; “our brethren will go in another path and will never weaken, but will become more and more confirmed in it: just as a fire will never go out when wood is added to it. In this is our faith.”

“I don’t find in what this faith consists.”

“Our faith is this: that we understand life as Christ has interpreted it to us.”

“How is that?”

“Christ uttered some such parable as this: Certain vine-dressers cultivated a vineyard, and they were obliged to pay tribute to the owner of the vineyard. We are the vine-dressers who live in the world and have to pay tribute to God and fulfil His will. But those that held to the worldly faith fancied that the vineyard was theirs, that they had nothing to pay for it, but only to enjoy the fruits of it. The Lord of the vineyard sent a messenger to these men to receive His tribute, but they drove him away. The Lord of the vineyard sent His Son after the tribute, but they killed Him, thinking that after that no one would interfere with them. This is the belief of the world, whereby all men live who do not acknowledge that life is given only for God’s service. But Christ has taught us how false is the worldly belief that it would be better for man if he drove out of the vineyard the Master’s messenger and His Son and avoided paying tribute, for He showed us that we must either pay tribute or be expelled from the vineyard. He taught us that all pleasures which we call pleasures⁠—eating, drinking, amusements⁠—cannot be pleasures if our life is devoted to them, that they are pleasures only when we seek another⁠—the fulfilment of the will of God; that only then these are pleasures, as a present reward following the fulfilment of the will of God. To wish to have pleasure without the labor of fulfilling the will of God, to separate pleasure from work, is the same as to tear off the stalks of flowers and plant them without seeds. We have this belief, and therefore we cannot seek for deception in place of truth. Our faith consists in this: that the welfare of life is not in its pleasures, but in the fulfilment of the will of God without a thought of its pleasures, or hoping for them. And thus we live, and the longer we live the more we see that pleasure and well-being, like a wheel behind the shafts, follow on the fulfilment of the will of God. Our Lord has said: ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest! Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ ”

Thus said Pamphilius.

Julius listened, and his heart was stirred within him; but what Pamphilius said was not clear to him: at one moment it seemed to him that Pamphilius was deceiving him, but when he looked into his friend’s kindly eyes and remembered his goodness, it seemed to him that Pamphilius was deceiving himself.

Pamphilius invited Julius to visit him so as to examine into the life they led, and if it pleased him to remain and live with them.

And Julius promised, but he did not go to Pamphilius; and being drawn into his own life, he forgot about him.

Julius’ father was rich, and as he loved his only son and was proud of him, he never stinted him for money. Julius lived the life of rich young men; in idleness, luxury, and dissipated amusements, which have always been, and are still, the same⁠—wine, gambling, and fast women.

But the pleasures to which Julius gave himself up kept demanding more and more money, and after a time he found he had not enough. Once he asked for more than his father generally gave him. His father gave it to him, but accompanied it with a rebuke. The son, conscious that he was to blame, and yet unwilling to acknowledge his fault, became angry, behaved rudely to his father, as those that are aware of their guilt, and are unwilling to confess it, are apt to do.

The money he obtained from his father was very quickly spent, and moreover, about the same time Julius and a companion happened to get into a drunken quarrel, and killed a man. The prefect of the city heard about it, and was desirous of subjecting Julius to punishment, but his father succeeded in bringing about his pardon. At this time, Julius, by his irregular life, required still more money. He borrowed it of a boon companion and agreed to repay it. Moreover his mistress asked him to give her a present; she desired a pearl necklace, and he knew that if he did not accede to her request, she would throw him over and take up with a rich man, who had already for some time been trying to entice her away from Julius.

Julius went to his mother and told her he had got to have some money; that if he did not succeed in raising as much as he needed, he should kill himself. For the fact that he had got into such a scrape he blamed his father, not himself. He said:⁠—

“My father has accustomed me to a luxurious life, and then he began to blame me for wanting money. If at first he had given me what I needed without scolding, then with what he gave me afterward I should have regulated my life, and should not have needed much, but as he has always given me too little, I have had to apply to usurers, and they have extorted from me everything I had, and so nothing is left for me to live on, as a rich young man should, and I am put to shame before my companions; and yet my father can’t seem to understand this at all. He has forgotten that he was young once himself. He got me into this position, and now, if he does not give me what I ask for, I shall kill myself.”

The mother, who spoiled her son, went to his father. The father called the young man, and began to upbraid both him and his mother. The son answered the father rudely. The father struck him. The son seized his father’s arm. The father called to his slaves and ordered them to take the young man and lock him up.

When he was left alone, Julius cursed his father and the day he was born. His own death or his father’s presented itself before him as the only way of escape from the position in which he found himself.

Julius’ mother suffered more than he did. She did not comprehend who was really to blame in all this. She felt nothing but pity for her beloved child. She went to her husband and begged him to forgive the youth, but he refused to listen to her, and began to reproach her for having spoiled her son; she blamed him, and the upshot of it was the husband beat his wife. But the wife made no account of the beating. She went to the son and persuaded him to go and beg his father’s forgiveness and yield to his wishes. She promised him, if he would do so, she would give him the money he needed, and not let his father know.

The son consented, and then the mother went to her husband and urged him to pardon the young man. The father for a long time stormed at his wife and son, but at last decided to pardon him, but only on the condition that he should abandon his dissipated life and marry a rich tradesman’s daughter, whose father wished her to enter into an engagement with him.

“He shall have money from me and his wife’s dowry,” said the young man’s father, “and then let him enter upon a regular life. If he will agree to fulfil my wishes I will pardon him. But otherwise I will give him nothing, and at his first offense I will deliver him over into the hands of the prefect.”

Julius agreed to everything, and was released. He promised to marry and to abandon his wicked ways, but he had no intention of doing so; and life at home now became a perfect hell for him: his father did not speak to him, and was quarreling about him with his mother, who wept.

On the next day his mother called him to her room and secretly gave him a precious stone which she had got from her husband.

“Go, sell it; not here, but in another city, and with the money do what you need, and I will manage to conceal the loss for a time, and if it is discovered I will blame it on one of the slaves.”

Julius’ heart was touched by his mother’s words. He was horror-struck at what she had done; and he left home, but did not take the precious stone with him. He himself did not know where or wherefore he was going. He kept going on and on, away from the city, feeling the necessity of remaining alone, and thinking over all that had happened to him and was before him. As he kept going farther and farther away, he came entirely beyond the city limits and entered a grove sacred to the goddess Diana. Coming to a solitary spot, he began to think.

The first thought that occurred to him was to ask help of the goddess. But he no longer believed in his gods, and so he knew that no help was to be expected from them. But if no help came from them, then who would help him? As he thought over his position, it seemed to him too terrible. His soul was all confusion and gloom. But there was help for it. He had to appeal to his conscience, and he began to examine into his life and his acts. And both seemed to him wicked, and, more than all, stupid. Why was he tormenting himself so? He had few pleasures, and many trials and tribulations!

The principal thing was that he felt himself all alone. Hitherto he had had a beloved mother, a father; he certainly had friends; now he had no one. No one loved him. He was a burden to everyone. He had succeeded in bringing trouble into all their lives: he had caused his mother to quarrel with his father; he had wasted his father’s substance, gathered with so much labor all his life long; he had been a dangerous and disagreeable rival to his friends. There could be no doubt about it⁠—all would find it a relief if he were dead.

As he reviewed his life, he remembered Pamphilius, and his last meeting with him, and how Pamphilius had invited him to come there, to the Christians. And it occurred to him not to return home, but to go straight to the Christians, and remain with them.

“But was his position so desperate?” he asked himself, and again he proceeded to review what had happened, and again he was horror-struck because no one seemed to love him, and he loved no one. His mother, father, friends, did not love him, and must wish he were dead; but whom did he himself love? His friends? He was conscious that he did not love anyone. All were rivals of his, all were pitiless toward him, now that he was in disgrace. “His father?” he asked himself, and horror seized him when at this question he looked into his heart. Not only did he not love him, but he hated him for his stinginess, for the affront he had put on him. He hated him, and, moreover, he saw plainly that for his own happiness his father’s death was essential.

“Yes,” Julius asked to himself, “and supposing I knew that no one would see it or ever find it out, what would I do if I could with one blow, once and for all, deprive him of life and set myself free?”

And Julius replied to this question:⁠—

“Yes, I should kill him!”

He replied to this question, and was horror-struck at himself.

“My mother? Yes, I pity her, but I do not love her; It makes no difference to me what happens to her⁠—all I need is her help.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I am a wild beast! and a wild beast beaten and tracked to its lair, and the only distinction is that I am able, if I choose, to quit this false, wicked life; I can do what the wild beast cannot⁠—I can kill myself. I hate my father, there is no one I love⁠ ⁠… neither my mother, nor my friends⁠—but how about Pamphilius?”

And again he remembered his one friend. He began to recall the last interview, and their conversation, and Pamphilius’ words, how, according to their teaching, Christ had said: “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Can that be true?

As he went on with his thoughts and recollections, he recalled Pamphilius’ sweet, joyous, passionless face, and he felt inclined to believe in what Pamphilius said.

“What am I, in reality?” he asked himself. “Who am I? A man seeking well-being. I have sought for it in animal pleasures, and have not found it. And all living beings, like myself, also failed to find it. All are evil, and suffer. If any man is always happy, it is because he is seeking for nothing. He says that there are many such, and that all men will be such if they obey their Master’s teachings. What if this is the truth? Whether it is the truth or not, it attracts me to it, and I am going.”

Thus said Julius to himself, and he left the grove resolved never again to return home, and he bent his steps to the town where the Christians lived.

Julius went on boldly and cheerfully, and the farther he went and the more vividly he represented to himself the life of the Christians, remembering all to himself that Pamphilius had said, the more joyous he became in spirit.

The sun was already descending toward the west, and he felt the need of rest, when he fell in with a man who was resting and taking his nooning. This man was of middle age, and had an intellectual face. He was sitting and eating olives and cakes. When he saw Julius, he smiled and said:⁠—

“How are you, young man? The way is still long. Sit down and rest.”

Julius thanked him, and sat down.

“Where are you going?” asked the stranger.

“To the Christians,” said Julius; and he gave a truthful account of his life and his decision.

The stranger listened attentively, and though he asked him about certain details, he did not express his opinion; but when Julius had finished, the stranger stowed away in his wallet the remains of his luncheon, arranged his attire, and said:⁠—

“Young man, do not carry out your intention; you are making a mistake. I know life, and you do not. I know the Christians, and you do not know them. Listen, and I will explain your whole life and your ideas; and when you hear me you shall adopt the decision that seems to you the wiser. You are young, rich, handsome, strong; your passions are boiling in you. You wish to find a quiet refuge in which your passions would not disturb you, and you would not suffer from their consequences; and it seems to you that you might find such a refuge among the Christians.

“There is no such place, my dear young man, because what troubles you is not peculiar to Cilicia or to Rome, but to yourself. In the quiet of a village solitude the same passions will torment you⁠—only a hundred times more violently. The fraud of the Christians, or their mistake⁠—for I don’t care to judge them⁠—consists simply in this⁠—that they don’t wish to understand the nature of man. The only person who can perfectly carry out their teachings is an old man who has outlived all his passions. A man in his prime, or a youth like you who has not yet learned life or himself, cannot submit to their law, because this law has for its basis, not the nature of man, but an idle philosophy. If you go to them, you will suffer what you suffer now, only in a far higher degree. Now, your passions entice you along false paths; but having once made a mistake in your direction, you can rectify it. Now, you still have the satisfaction of passion freed⁠—in other words⁠—of life.

“But, in their midst, controlling your passions by main force, you will make precisely the same mistakes, if not worse ones; and, besides that suffering, you will also have the incessant anguish of the unsatisfied human longings. Let the water out of a dam, and it will irrigate the soil and the meadows, and quench the thirst of animals; but if you keep it back it will tear away the earth and trickle away in mud. It is the same with the passions. The teachings of the Christians⁠—beyond those doctrines from which they get consolation, and which I will not speak of⁠—their teachings, I say, for life, consist in the following: They do not recognize violence, they do not recognize war or courts of justice, they do not recognize private property, they do not recognize the sciences, the arts, or anything which makes life cheerful and pleasant.

“All this would be good if all men were such as they describe their teacher to have been. But you see this is not so, and cannot be. Men are bad, and given over to their passions. It is this play of passions, and the collisions resulting from them, that keep men in those conditions of life in which they live. The barbarians know no restraint, and one savage, for the satisfaction of his own desires, would destroy the whole world, if all men submitted as these Christians submit. If the gods lodged in the human heart the sentiments of anger, of vengeance, even of evil against evildoers, they must have done it because these sentiments are necessary for the life of men. The Christians teach that these feelings are wicked, and that men would be happy if they did not have them; there would be no murders, no punishments, no want. That is true; but one might as well take the position that men ought to refrain from eating for the sake of their happiness. In reality, it would put an end to greediness, hunger, and all the misfortunes that come from it. But this supposition could not change the nature of man. Even if two or three dozen people, believing in this, and actually refraining from food, should die of starvation, it would not change the nature of man. The same, exactly, with the other passions of men: indignation, wrath, vengeance, even love for women, for luxury, for splendor and pomp, are characteristic of the gods, and consequently they are the ineradicable characteristics of man.

“Annihilate man’s nutrition, and you annihilate man. In exactly the same way annihilate the passions characteristic of man, and you annihilate humanity.

“The same is true also of private property, which the Christian would do away with. Look around you: every vineyard, every inclosure, every house, every ass⁠—everything has been produced by men under the conditions of private property. Abolish the right of private property, and not a vineyard would be planted, not a creature would be trained and pastured. The Christians assure you that they have no rights of private property; but they enjoy its fruits. They say they have all things in common, and everything they have is brought to one place; but what they bring together they receive from men who have private property. They merely deceive men, or in the very best light, deceive themselves. You say they themselves work in order to support life, but the work they do would not support them if they did not take advantage of what men possessing private property produced. Even if they could support themselves, it would be a mere existence, and there would be no place among them for the arts and sciences. (And indeed it is impossible for them to do otherwise. They do not even acknowledge the advantage of our arts and sciences.) All their doctrine tends to reduce them to a primitive condition, to barbarism, to the animal. They cannot serve humanity by arts and sciences, and as they do not know them, they renounce them; they cannot take advantage of the qualities which are the peculiar prerogative of man and ally him to the gods. They will not have temples, or statues, or theaters, or museums. They say these things are not necessary for them. The easiest way not to be ashamed of one’s own baseness is to scorn nobility; and this they do. They are atheists. They do not recognize the gods, or their interference in the affairs of men. They acknowledge only the father of their teacher, whom they also call their father, and their teacher himself, who, according to their notions, has revealed to them all the mysteries of life. Their doctrine is a wretched deception.

“Notice one thing⁠—our doctrine asserts that the world depends on the gods; the gods afford protection to men. In order that men may live well, they must reverence the gods, must search and think, and then our lives are regulated on the one hand by the will of the gods, on the other by the collective wisdom of all mankind. We live, think, search, and consequently approve the truth.

“But they have neither the gods nor their wills, nor the wisdom of humanity, but only one thing⁠—a blind faith in their crucified teacher, and in all he said to them.

“Now consider well: which is the more hopeful guide⁠—the will of the gods and the collective, free activity of human wisdom, or the compulsory blind belief in the words of one man?”

Julius was struck by what the stranger said to him, and especially by his last words. Not only was his purpose of going to the Christians shaken, but it now seemed to him strange enough that he, under the influence of his misfortunes, could ever have come to such a foolish decision. But the question still remained, What was he to do now, and how was he to escape from the difficult circumstances in which he was placed, and so, after he had related his situation, he asked the stranger’s advice.

“That is the very thing that I wanted to speak about,” continued the stranger. “What are you to do? Your way, as far as human wisdom is given me, is clear to me. All your misfortunes are the results of the passions peculiar to men. Passion has seduced you, has led you so far that you have suffered. Such are the ordinary lessons of life. These lessons must be turned to your advantage. You have learned much, and you know what is bitter and what is sweet; you cannot repeat the mistakes you have made. Profit by your experience. What has hurt you more than all is your quarrel with your father; this quarrel is the outcome of your position. Take another, and the quarrel will either cease, or at least it will not be so painfully apparent. All your tribulations have arisen from the irregularity of your position. You have yielded to the gaieties of youth; this was natural, and therefore it was certainly good. It was good while it was appropriate to your age. But that time has passed; you, with the powers of manhood, have yielded to the friskiness of youth, and it was bad. You have now reached the time when you must become a man, a citizen, and serve the state, and work for its welfare. Your father proposes to you to marry. His advice is wise. You have outlived one period of life⁠—your youth⁠—and have reached another. All your tribulations are the indications of a period of transition. Recognize that the period of youth is passed, and having boldly renounced all that belonged to it, and that is not appropriate to manhood, start on your new way. Marry, give up the amusements of youth, occupy yourself with trade, with social affairs, with arts and sciences, and you will find peace and joy as well as reconciliation with your father. The main thing that has disturbed you has been the unnaturalness of your position. Now you have reached manhood, and you must enter into matrimony, and be a man.

“And therefore my chief advice is: Fulfil your father’s wishes, and marry. If you are attracted by that solitude which you expected to find among the Christians, if you are inclined toward philosophy and not to the activities of life, you can with profit devote yourself to this only after you have had experience of life in its actuality. But you will know this only as an independent citizen and head of a family. If then you feel drawn to a solitude, yield to it; then it will be a genuine inclination, and not a whim of discontent, as it is now. Then go.”

These last words, more than anything else, persuaded Julius. He thanked the stranger, and returned home.

His mother received him joyfully. The father, also, on learning his intention to submit to his will and marry the girl whom he had chosen for him, was reconciled to him.

In three months Julius’ wedding with the beautiful Eulampia was celebrated, and the young man, having changed his manner of life, began to live with his wife in their own house and to conduct a part of the business which his father entrusted to him.

Once upon a time he went on business to a not very distant city, and there, as he was sitting in a merchant’s shop, he saw Pamphilius passing by with a girl whom he did not know. Both were walking, laden with heavy bunches of grapes, which they were selling. Julius, when he recognized his friend, went out to him and asked him to go into the shop and have a talk with him. The young girl, seeing Pamphilius’ desire to go with his friend, and his reluctance to leave her alone, hastened to say that she did not need him, and that she would sit down with the grapes and wait for customers. Pamphilius thanked her, and went with Julius into the shop.

Julius asked his acquaintance, the merchant, permission to go with his friend into his private room, and, having received this permission, he went with Pamphilius into the apartment in the rear of the shop.

The friends inquired of each about the circumstances of their lives. Pamphilius’ life had not changed since they had last seen each other: he had continued to live in the Christian community, he was not married, and he assured his friend that his life each year, day, and hour had been growing happier and happier.

Julius told his friend all that had happened to him, and how he had started to join the Christians, when his meeting with the stranger had opened his eyes to the mistakes of the Christians, and to his great obligation to marry, and how he had followed his advice and married.

“Well, tell me, are you happy now?” asked Pamphilius. “Have you found in marriage what the stranger promised you?”

“Happy?” repeated Julius. “What is being happy? If you mean by that word full satisfaction of my desires, then of course I am not happy. I am conducting my trade with success, men are beginning to respect me, and in both of these respects I find some satisfaction. Although I see many men who are richer and more regarded than I, yet I foresee the possibility of equaling them and even of excelling them. This side of my life is full; but my marriage, I will say frankly, does not satisfy me. I will say more: I am conscious that this same marriage, which ought to have given me joy, has not done so, and that the joy I experienced at first has kept growing less and less, and has at last vanished, and in its place, where joy had been, out of marriage arose sorrow. My wife is beautiful, intellectual, well educated, and good. At first I was perfectly happy. But now⁠—this you can’t know, having no wife⁠—there have arisen causes of discord between us, at one time because she seeks my caresses when I am indifferent toward her, at another time the case is reversed. Moreover, for love, novelty is necessary. A woman less fascinating than my wife fascinates me more at first, but afterward becomes still less fascinating than my wife. I have already experienced this. No, I have not found satisfaction in matrimony. Yes, my friend,” said Julius, in conclusion, “the philosophers are right; life does not give what the soul desires. This I have experienced in my marriage. But the fact that life does not give that happiness which the soul desires does not prove that your fraudulent practices can give it,” he added with a smile.

“In what do you see we are fraudulent?” asked Pamphilius.

“Your fraud consists in this: that in order to free men from the evils connected with the facts of life, you repudiate all the facts of life⁠—life itself. In order to free yourselves from disenchantment, you repudiate enchantment, you repudiate marriage itself.”

“We do not repudiate marriage,” said Pamphilius.

“If not marriage, then you repudiate love.”

“On the contrary, we repudiate everything except love. For us it is the chief cornerstone of everything.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Julius. “As far as I have heard from others and from yourself, and from the fact that you are not married yet, though you are as old as I am, I conclude that you don’t have marriages among you. Those of you who are already married continue married, but the rest of you do not enter into new relations. You do not take pains to perpetuate the human race. And if there were no other people besides you, the human race would have long ago perished,” said Julius, repeating what he had many times heard.

“That is unjust,” said Pamphilius. “It is true we do not make it our aim to perpetuate the human race, and we take no anxious care about this, as I have many times heard from your wise men. We take for granted that our Heavenly Father has already provided for this: our aim is simply to live in accordance with His will. If the perpetuation of the race is consonant with His will, then it will be perpetuated; if not, then it will come to an end; this is not our business or our care; our care is to live in accordance with His will. His will is expressed both in our sermons and in our revelation, where it is said that the husband shall cleave unto the wife, and they twain shall be one flesh. Marriage amongst us is not only not forbidden, but is encouraged by our elders and teachers. The difference between marriage amongst us and marriage amongst you consists solely in this: that our law has revealed to us that everyone who looks lustfully on a woman commits a sin; and therefore we and our women, instead of adorning ourselves and stimulating lust, try to avoid it as much as possible, so that the feeling of love, like that between brothers and sisters, may be stronger than that of lust, for one woman, which you call love.”

“But still you cannot suppress the feeling for beauty,” said Julius. “I am convinced, for example, that the beautiful young girl with whom you were carrying grapes, in spite of her garb, which concealed her charming figure, must awaken in you the feeling of love to a woman.”

“I do not know as yet,” said Pamphilius, reddening. “I have not thought about her beauty. You are the first person that has spoken of it. She is to me only as a sister. But I will continue what I was just going to say to you concerning the difference between our form of marriage and yours. The variance arises from the fact that, among you, lust, under the name of beauty and love and the service of the goddess Venus, is maintained and expressed in men. With us it is the contrary; carnal desire is not regarded as an evil⁠—for God has created no evil⁠—but a good, which becomes an evil when it is not in its place⁠—a temptation, as we call it; and we try to avoid it by all the means in our power. And that is why I am not married as yet, though very possibly I might marry tomorrow.”

“But what decides this?”

“The will of God.”

“How do you find it out?”

“If one never seeks for its indications, one will never see them; but if one is all the time on the lookout for them, they become clear, as to you omens by sacrifices and birds are clear. And as you have your wise men who interpret for you the will of the gods by their wisdom, and by the vitals of the sacrificed victim, and by the flight of birds, so have we our wise men who explain to us the will of the Father by the revelation of Christ, by the promptings of their hearts, and the thoughts of other men, and chiefly by love to them.”

“But all this is very indefinite,” objected Julius. “What shows you, for example, when and whom you ought to marry? When I was about to marry, I had a choice between three girls. These girls were selected from the rest because they were beautiful and rich, and my father was satisfied whichever one of them I chose. Out of the three I chose my Eulampia because she was more beautiful and more attractive than the others. But what will govern you in your choice?”

“In order to answer you,” said Pamphilius, “I must inform you, first of all, that as according to our doctrine all men are equal before our Father, so likewise they are equal before us both in their station and in their spiritual and physical qualities, and consequently our choice (if I may use this word so meaningless to us) cannot be in any way circumscribed. Any one of all the men and women of the world may be the wife of a Christian man or the husband of a Christian woman.”

“That would make it still more impossible to decide,” said Julius.

“I will tell you what our elder told me as to the difference between a Christian and a pagan marriage. The pagan⁠—you, for example⁠—chooses a wife who, according to his idea, will cause him, personally, more delight than anyone else. In this choice his eyes wander about, and it is hard to decide; the more, because the enjoyment is before him. But the Christian has no such choice; or rather the choice for his personal enjoyment occupies not the first, but a subordinate place. For the Christian the question is whether by his marriage he is going contrary to God’s will.”

“But in what respect can there be in marriage anything contrary to God’s will?”

“I might forget the Iliad, which you and I read together, but you who live amid poets and sages cannot forget it. What is the whole Iliad? It is a story of violations of the will of God in relation to marriage. Menelaus and Paris and Helen and Achilles and Agamemnon and Chreseis⁠—it is all a description of the terrible tribulations that have ensued and are all the time coming from this violation.”

“In what consists this violation?”

“It consists in this: that a man loves a woman for the personal enjoyment he gets from connection with her, and not because she is a human being like himself, and so he enters into matrimony for the sake of his pleasure. Christian marriage is possible only when a man has love for his fellow-men, and when the object of his carnal love has already been the object of fraternal love of man to man. As a house can be built satisfactorily and lastingly only when there is a foundation; as a picture can be painted only when there is something prepared to paint it on; so carnal love is lawful, reasonable, and lasting only when it is based on the respect and love of man to man. On this foundation only can a reasonable Christian family life be established.”

“But still,” said Julius, “I do not see why Christian love, as you call it, excludes such love for a woman as Paris experienced.”

“I don’t say that Christian marriage did not permit exclusive love for a woman; on the contrary, only then is it reasonable and holy; but exclusive love for a woman can take its rise only when the existent love to all men has not been previously violated. The exclusive love for a woman which the poets sing, calling it good, though it is not founded on love to men, has no right to be called love at all. It is animal passion, and very frequently passes over into hate. The best proof of this is how this so-called love, or eros, if it be not founded on brotherly love to all men, becomes brutal; this is shown in the cases where violence is offered to the very woman whom a man professes to love, and in so doing compels her to suffer, and ruins her. In violence it is manifest that there is no love to man⁠—no, not if he torments the one he loves. But in unchristian marriage violence is often concealed when the man that weds a girl who does not love him, or who loves someone else, compels her to suffer and does not pity her, provided only he satisfies his passion.”

“Let us admit that this is so,” said Julius, “but if a girl loves him, then there is no injustice, and I don’t see any difference between Christian and pagan marriage.”

“I do not know the details of your marriage,” replied Pamphilius; “but I know that every marriage having for its basis personal advantage only cannot help being the cause of discord, just exactly as the mere act of feeding cannot take place among animals and men without quarrels and brawls. Everyone wants the sweet morsel, and since there is an insufficiency of sweet morsels for all, the quarrel breaks out. Even if there is no outward quarrel, there is a secret one. The weak one desires the sweet morsel, but he knows that the strong one will not give it to him, and though he is aware of the impossibility of taking it directly away from the strong one, he looks at him with secret hatred and envy, and seizes the first opportunity of getting it away from him. The same is true of pagan marriages, only it is twice as bad, because the object of the hatred is a man, so that enmity is produced even between husband and wife.”

“But how manage so that the married couple love no one but each other? Always the man or the girl is found loving this person or another. And then in your system the marriage is impossible. This is the very reason I see the justice of what is said about you, that you do not marry at all. It is for this reason you are not married, and apparently will not marry. How can it possibly be that a man should marry a single woman never having before kindled the feelings of love in some other woman, or that a girl should reach maturity without having awakened the feelings of some man? How must Helen have acted?”

“The elder Cyril thus speaks in regard to this: in the pagan world, men having no thought of love to their brethren, never having trained that feeling, think about one thing⁠—about the awakening of passionate love toward some woman, and they foster this passion in their hearts. And therefore in their world every Helen, and every woman like Helen, stimulates the love of many. Rivals fight with one another, and strive to supplant one another as animals do to possess the female. And to a greater or less degree their marriage is a constraint. In our community we not only do not think of the personal fascination of beauty, but we avoid all temptations which lead to that, and which in the heathen world are highly regarded as a merit and an object of adoration.

“We, on the contrary, think about those obligations of reverence and love to our neighbors which we have without distinction for all men, for the greatest beauty and the greatest ugliness. We use all our endeavors to educate this feeling, and so in us the feeling of love toward men gets the upper hand of the seduction of beauty, and conquers it, and annihilates the discords arising from sexual relations. The Christian marries only when he knows that his union with a woman causes no one any grief.”

“But is this possible?” interrupted Julius. “Can men regulate their inclinations?”

“It is impossible if they have given them free course, but we can keep them from spreading and rising. Take, for example, the relations of a father to his daughter, of a mother to her sons, of brothers and sisters. The mother is to her son, the daughter to her father, the sister to her brother, not an object of personal enjoyment, but of pure love, and the passions are not awakened. They would be awakened only when the father should discover that she whom he had accounted his daughter was not his daughter, or the mother that her son was not her son, or that brother and sister were not brother and sister; but even then this passion would be very feeble and humble, and it would be in a man’s power to repress it. The lustful feeling would be feeble, for it would be based on that of maternal, paternal, or fraternal love. Why then can’t you believe that the feeling toward all women might be trained and controlled so that they would regard them in the same light as mothers, sisters, and daughters, and that the feeling of conjugal love might grow out of the basis of such an affection? As a brother permits the feeling of love toward the woman whom he has considered his sister to arise only when he has learned that she is not his sister, so when the Christian feels that his love does not injure anyone, he permits this passion to arise in his soul.”

“Well, but suppose two men love the same girl?”

“Then one sacrifices his happiness to the happiness of the other.”

“But supposing she loves one of them?”

“Then the one whom she loves least sacrifices his feelings for the sake of her happiness.”

“Well, supposing she loves both, and both sacrifice themselves, whom would she take?”

“In that case the elders would decide the matter, and advise in such a way that the greatest happiness would come to all, with the greatest amount of love.”

“But it can’t be done in such a way; and the reason is because it is contrary to human nature.”

“Contrary to human nature! What is the nature of man? Man, besides being an animal, is a man, and it is true that such a relation to a woman is not consonant with man’s animal nature, but is consonant with his rational nature. And when he employs his reason in the service of his animal nature, he does worse than a beast⁠—he descends to violence, to incest⁠—a level to which no brute ever sinks. But when he employs his rational nature to the suppression of the animal, when the animal nature serves, then only he attains the well-being which satisfies him.”

“But tell me about yourself personally,” said Julius. “I see you with that pretty girl; you apparently live near her and serve her; can it be that you do not desire to be her husband?”

“I have not thought about it,” said Pamphilius. “She is the daughter of a Christian widow. I serve them just as others do. You ask me if I love her in a way to unite my life with hers. This question is hard for me. But I will answer frankly. This idea has occurred to me; but there is a young man who loves her, and therefore I do not dare as yet to think about it. This young man is a Christian, and loves us both, and I cannot take a step which would hurt him. I live, not thinking about this. I try to do one thing: to fulfil the law of love to men⁠—this is the only thing I demand; I shall marry when I see that it is proper.”

“But it cannot be a matter of indifference to the mother whether she has a good industrious son-in-law or not. She would want you, and not anyone else.”

“No, it is a matter of indifference to her, because she knows that, besides me, all of us are ready to serve her as well as everyone else, and I should serve her neither more nor less whether I were her son-in-law or not. If my marriage to her daughter results, I shall enter upon it with joy, and so I should rejoice even if she married someone else.”

“That is impossible!” exclaimed Julius. “This is a horrible thing of you⁠—that you deceive yourselves! And thus you deceive others. That stranger told me correctly about you. When I listen to you I cannot help yielding to the beauty of the life which you describe for me; but as I think it over, I see that it is all deception, leading to savagery, brutality, of life approaching that of brutes.”

“Wherein do you see this savagery?”

“In this: that as you subject your own lives to labors, you have no leisure or chance to occupy yourselves with arts and sciences. Here you are in ragged dress, with hardened hands and feet; your fair friend, who might be a goddess of beauty, is like a slave. You have no hymns of Apollo, or temples, or poetry, or games⁠—none of those things which the gods have given for beautifying the life of man. To work, work like slaves or like oxen merely for a coarse existence⁠—isn’t this a voluntary and impious renunciation of the will and nature of man.”

“The nature of man again!” said Pamphilius. “But in what does this nature consist? Is it in this, that you torment your slaves with unbearable labors, that you kill your brothers and reduce them to slavery, and make your women an object of enjoyment? All this is essential for that beauty of life which you consider a part of human nature. Or does it consist in this, that you must live in love and concord with all men, feeling yourself a member of one universal brotherhood?”

“You are also greatly mistaken if you think that we scorn the arts and sciences. We highly prize all the qualities with which human nature is endowed. But we look on all the qualities belonging to man as the means for the attainment of one single aim to which we devote our whole lives, and that is to fulfil the will of God. In art and science we do not see an amusement suitable only to while away the time of idle people; we demand from art and science what we demand from all human occupations⁠—that they hold the same activity of love to God and one’s neighbor as permeates all the acts of a Christian. We call real science only those occupations which help us to live better, and art we regard only when it purifies our thoughts, elevates our souls, increases the force which we need for a loving, laborious life. Such science, as far as possible, we develop in ourselves and in our children, and such art we gladly cultivate in our free time. We read and study the writings bequeathed to us; we sing songs, we paint pictures, and our songs and paintings encourage our souls and cheer us up in moments of depression. And this is why we cannot approve of the application which you make of the arts and sciences. Your learned men employ their aptitudes and acquirements to the invention of new means of causing evil to men; they perfect the methods of war, in other words, of murder; they contrive new ways of moneymaking, that is to say, of enriching some at the expense of others. Your art serves for the erection and decoration of temples in honor of your gods, in whom the more cultivated of you have long ago ceased to believe, but belief in whom you inculcate in others, considering that, by such a deception, you keep them under your power. You erect statues in honor of the most powerful and cruel of your tyrants, whom no one respects, but all fear. In your theaters representations are permitted which hold criminal love up to admiration. Music serves for the delectation of your rich men who have eaten and drunken at their luxurious feasts. Pictorial art is employed in representing in houses of debauchery such scenes as no sober man unvitiated by animal passions could look at without blushing. No, not for this was man endowed with these lofty qualities which differentiate him from the beasts! It is impossible to use them for the mere gratification of your bodies. Consecrating our whole lives to the accomplishment of the will of God, we all the more employ our highest faculties in the same service.”

“Yes,” said Julius, “all this would be admirable if life in such conditions was possible; but it is not possible to live so. You deceive yourselves. You do not acknowledge our protection. But if it were not for the Roman legions, could you live in any comfort? You profit by our protection, though you do not acknowledge it. Some among you, as you yourself say, protect yourselves. You do not acknowledge private property, but take advantage of it; we have it and give it to you. You yourselves do not give away your grapes, but sell them and then make purchases. All this is a cheat. If you did what you say, then it would be so; but now you deceive others as yourselves.”

Julius was indignant, and he spoke out what he had in his mind. Pamphilius was silent and waited his turn. When Julius had finished, Pamphilius said:⁠—

“You are wrong in thinking that we do not acknowledge your protection, and yet take advantage of it. Our well-being consists in our not requiring protection, and this cannot be taken away from us. Even if material objects, which constitute property in your eyes, pass through our hands, we do not call them ours, and we give them to whoever needs them for subsistence. We sell goods to those that wish to buy them; yet it is not for the sake of increasing our private means, but solely that those that need may acquire what is required for supporting life. If anyone desired to take these grapes away from us we should give them up without resistance. This is the precise reason why we have no fear, even of an invasion of the barbarians. If they proceeded to take from us the products of our toil, we should let them go; if they insisted on our working for them, we should joyfully comply with their demands, and not only would they have no reason to kill us or torture us, but it would be contrary to their interest to do so. The barbarians would speedily understand and like us, and we should have far less to endure at their hands than from the enlightened people that surround us now and persecute us.

“Your accusation against us consists in this⁠—that we do not wholly attain what we are striving for; that is, that we do not recognize violence and private property, and at the same time we take advantage of them. If we are deceivers, then it is no use to talk with us, and we are worthy neither of anger nor of being exposed, but only of scorn, and we should willingly accept your scorn, since one of our rules is the recognition of our insignificance. But if we are genuine in our striving toward what we profess, then your blaming us for deception would be unjust. If we strive, as I and my brethren strive, to fulfil our Teacher’s law, then we strive for it, not for external ends⁠—for riches and honors, for you see all these things we do not recognize⁠—but for something else. You are seeking your best advantage, and so are we; the only difference is that we see our advantage in different things. You believe that your well-being consists in riches and honors; we believe in something else. Our belief shows us that our advantage is not in violence, but in submissiveness; not in wrath, but in giving everything away. And we, like plants in the light, cannot help striving in the direction where we see our advantage. It is true we do not accomplish all we wish for our own advantage; but how can it be otherwise? You strive to have the most beautiful woman for a wife, to have the largest property⁠—but have you, or has anyone else succeeded in doing this? If the arrow does not hit the bull’s-eye, does the bowman any the less cease to aim at it, because he fails many times to hit it? It is the same with us. Our well-being, according to the teaching of Christ, is in love. We search for our advantage, but each one in his own way falls more or less short of attaining it.”

“Yes, but why don’t you believe in all human wisdom, and why do you turn your back on it, and put your faith in your one crucified Teacher? Your thraldom, your submissiveness before Him, is what repels me.”

“Again you make a mistake, and anyone makes a mistake who thinks that we, in fulfilling our doctrine, pin our faith to anything because the man we believe in commanded it. On the contrary, those that seek with all their soul for the instructions of Truth, for Communion with the Father, those that seek for true happiness, cannot help hitting upon that path which Christ traversed, and, therefore, cannot help following Him, seeing Him as their leader. All who love God meet on this path, and there you will be also! He is the Son of God and the mediator between God and men, and this is so, not because anyone has told us this, and we blindly believe it, but because all those that seek God find His Son before them, and only through Him can they understand, see, and know God.”

Julius made no reply to this, and sat for a long while silent.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“I have nothing better to desire. But although, for the most part, I experience a sense of perplexity, a consciousness of some vague injustice, yet that is the very reason I am so tremendously happy,” said Pamphilius, smiling.

“Yes,” said Julius; “maybe I should have been happier if I had not met that stranger, and if I had joined you.”

“Why! if you think so, what prevents your doing so even now?”

“How about my wife?”

“You say she has an inclination to Christianity, then she will come with you.”

“Yes, but we have already begun a different kind of life; how can we break it off? We have begun; we must live it out,” said Julius, picturing to himself the dissatisfaction which his father and mother and friends would feel, and, above all, the energy which it would require to make this change.

At this moment there appeared at the door of the shop this young girl, Pamphilius’ friend, accompanied by a young man. Pamphilius joined them, and the young man said loud enough for Julius to hear that he had been sent by Cyril to buy leather. The grapes had been sold and wheat had been bought. Pamphilius proposed to the young man to go home with Magdalina while he himself should buy and bring home the leather. “It will be pleasanter for you,” said he.

“No, it would be pleasanter for Magdalina to go with you,” said the young man, and he took his departure. Julius introduced Pamphilius in the shop to a tradesman whom he knew. Pamphilius put the wheat into bags, and bestowing the smaller share on Magdalina, took up his own heavy load, said goodbye to Julius, and left the city with the young girl. As he turned into a side street he looked round and nodded his head to Julius, and then still more joyously smiling said something to Magdalina, and thus they vanished from sight.

“Yes, I should have done better if I had gone to them,” said Julius to himself, and in his imagination, commingling, arose two pictures: that of the lusty Pamphilius with the tall robust maiden carrying the baskets on their heads and their kindly radiant faces; then that of his own home which he had left that morning, and to which he should return, and then his pampered beautiful wife, of whom he had grown so tired, lying in her finery and bracelets on rugs and cushions.

But Julius had no time to think long; his acquaintances, the tradesmen, came, and they entered upon their usual proceedings, finishing up with a dinner with liquors and the night with women.⁠ ⁠…

Ten years passed. Julius saw nothing more of Pamphilius, and his interviews gradually faded from his remembrance, and his impressions of him and the Christian life grew dim.

Julius’ life ran in the usual course. About that time his father died, and he was obliged to take the head of the whole business, which was complicated; there were old customers, there were salesmen in Africa, there were clerks, there were debts to be collected and to be paid. Julius, in spite of himself, was drawn into business and gave all his time to it. Moreover, new cares came upon him. He was selected for some civic function. And this new occupation, flattering to his pride, was attractive to him. Besides his commercial affairs, he was also interested in public matters, and having brains and the gift of eloquence, he proceeded to use his influence among his fellow-citizens, so as to acquire a high public position.

In the course of these ten years, a serious and, to him, unpleasant change had also taken place in his family life. Three children had been born to him, and this had estranged him from his wife. In the first place, his wife had lost a large part of her beauty and freshness; in the second place, she paid less attention to her husband. All her affection and tenderness were lavished on the children. Though the children were handed over to nurses and attendants, after the manner of the pagans, Julius often found them in their mother’s rooms or found her in theirs. But the children for the most part were a burden to Julius, occasioning him more annoyance than pleasure.

Engrossed in his commercial and public affairs, Julius had abandoned his former dissipated life, but he took it for granted that he needed some refined recreation after his labors, and he did not find it with his wife. At this time she was more and more occupied with a Christian slave-woman, was more and more carried away by the new doctrine, and had renounced everything external and pagan which had constituted a charm for Julius. As he did not find this in his wife, he took up with a woman of frivolous character, and enjoyed with her those leisure moments which remained to him above his duties.

If Julius had been asked whether he was happy or unhappy in these years of his life, he could not have replied.

He was so busy! He hurried from affair to affair, from pleasure to pleasure, but there was not one so satisfying to him that he would have it last. Everything he did was of such a kind that the quicker he got through with it the better he liked it; and none of his pleasures was so sweet as not to be poisoned by something, not to have mingled with it the weariness of satiety.

This kind of existence Julius was leading when an event happened which very nearly revolutionized the whole nature of his life. At the Olympic games he was taking part in the races, and as he was driving his chariot successfully near the goal, he suddenly collided with another which he was just outstripping: the wheel was broken, he was thrown out, and two of his ribs and an arm were fractured. His injuries were serious, but not fatal; he was taken home, and had to lie in bed for three months.

In the course of these three months, in the midst of severe physical sufferings, his thought began to ferment, and he had leisure to review his life as if it were the life of a stranger, and his life presented itself before him in a gloomy light, the more because during this time three unpleasant events, deeply mortifying to him, occurred.

The first was that a slave in whom his father had reposed implicit trust, having gone to Africa for him to purchase precious stones, had run away, causing great loss and confusion in Julius’ business.

The second was that his concubine had deserted him, and accepted a new protector.

The third and most unpleasant blow was that during his illness the election for the position of administrator which he had been ambitious to fill, took place, and his rival was chosen. All this, it seemed to Julius, resulted from the fact that his chariot-wheel had swerved to the left the width of a finger.

As he lay alone on his couch, he began involuntarily to think how from such insignificant circumstances his happiness depended, and these ideas led him to still others, and to a recollection of his former misfortunes, of his attempt to join the Christians, and of Pamphilius, whom he had not seen for ten years.

These recollections were still further strengthened by conversations with his wife, who, during his illness, was frequently with him, and told him everything she could learn about Christianity from her slave-woman. This slave-woman had lived for a time in the same community where Pamphilius lived, and knew him. Julius wanted to see this slave-woman, and when she came to his bedside she gave him a circumstantial account of everything, and particularly about Pamphilius.

“Pamphilius,” the slave-woman said, “was one of the best of the brethren, and was loved and regarded by them all. He was married to that same Magdalina whom Julius had seen ten years previous. They already had several children. Any man who did not believe that God had created men for their good should go and observe the lives of these,” said the slave-woman in conclusion.

Julius dismissed the slave-woman and remained alone, thinking over what he had heard. It made him envious to compare Pamphilius’ life with his own, and he tried not to think about it.

In order to divert his mind, he took the Greek manuscript which his wife had put into his hands, and began to read it. In the manuscript he reads as follows:⁠—

There are two paths: one of life and one of death. The path of life consists in this: first, thou must love God, who created thee; secondly, thy neighbor as thyself; and do not unto another that which thou wouldst not have done unto thee. The doctrine included in these words is this:⁠—

Bless those that curse you;

Pray for your enemies and for your persecutors; for what thanks have you if you love those that love you. Do not even the heathen the same?

Do you love them that hate you and you will not have enemies.

Abstain from sensual and worldly lusts.

If anyone smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and thou shalt be perfect. If anyone compel thee to go one mile with him go with him twain;

If anyone take what is thine, ask it not back, since this thou canst not do;

If anyone take away thy outer garment, give also thy shirt;

Give to everyone that asketh of thee and demand it not back, since the Father desires that His beneficent gifts be given unto all.

Blessed is he that giveth according to the Commandments.

My child! shun all evil and all appearance of evil. Be not given to wrath, since wrath leadeth to murder; nor to jealousy, nor to quarrelsomeness, since the outcome of all these is murder.

My child! be not lustful, since lust leadeth to fornication; be not obscene, for from obscenity proceedeth adultery.

My child! be not deceitful, because falsehood leadeth to theft; be not mercenary, be not ostentatious, since from all this proceedeth theft.

My child! be not a murmurer, since this leadeth to blasphemy; be not insolent or evil-minded, since from all this cometh blasphemy.

But be meek, for the meek shall inherit the earth.

Be long-suffering and gentle and mild and humble and good, and always beware of the words to which thou lendest thine ear.

Be not puffed up with pride and give not thy soul to insolence.

Yea, verily, let not thy soul cleave to the proud, but treat the just and the peaceful as thy friends.

All things that happen unto thee accept as for thy good, knowing that nothing can befall thee without God.

My child! be not the cause of discord, but act as a peacemaker when men are quarreling.

Widen not thy hands to receive, and make them not narrow when thou givest. Hesitate not about giving; and when thou hast given, do not repine, for thou knowest who is the beneficent giver of rewards.

Turn not from the needy but share all things with thy brother, and call nothing thine own property, for if you are all sharers in the imperishable, then how much more in that which perisheth.

Teach thy children from early youth the fear of God.

Correct not thy manservant nor thy maidservant in anger, lest they cease to fear God, who is above you both; for He cometh not to call men, judging by whom they are, but He calleth those whom the Spirit hath prepared.

But the path of Death is this: first of all it is evil and full of curses, here are murder, adultery, lust, fornication, robbery, idolatry, sorcery, poison, rape, false evidence, hypocrisy, duplicity, slyness, pride, wrath, arrogance, greediness, obscenity, hatred, insolence, presumption, vanity; here are the persecutors of the good, haters of the truth, lovers of falsehood, those that do not recognize rewards for justice, that do not cling to the good nor to just judgment, those that are vigilant, not for what is right but for what is wrong, from whom gentleness and patience hold aloof; here are those that love vanity and yearn for rewards, that have no sympathy with their neighbors, that work not for the overworked, that know not their Creator, slaughterers of children, breakers of God’s images, who turn from the needy, persecutors of the oppressed, defenders of the rich, lawless judges of the poor, sinners in all things!

Children, beware of all such persons!

Long before he had read the manuscript to the end, Julius had the experience which men always have when they read books⁠—that is to say, the thoughts of others⁠—with a genuine desire for the Truth; he felt that he had entered with his whole soul into communion with the one that had inspired them. He read on and on, his mind foreseeing what was coming; and he not only agreed with the thoughts of the book, but he imagined that he himself had uttered them.

There happened to him that ordinary phenomenon, not noticed by many persons and yet most mysterious and significant, consisting in this, that the so-called living man becomes alive when he enters into communion⁠—unites⁠—with the so-called dead, and lives one life with them.

Julius’ soul merged with the one who had written and composed these thoughts, and after this union had taken place he contemplated himself and his life. And he himself and his whole life seemed to him one horrible mistake. He had not lived, but by all his labors in regard to life, and by his temptations, he had only destroyed in himself the possibility of a true life.

“I do not wish to destroy life; I wish to live, to go on the path of life,” he said to himself.

He remembered all that Pamphilius had said to him in their former interviews, and it seemed to him now so clear and indubitable that he was amazed that he could ever have believed in the stranger, and have renounced his intention of going to the Christians. He remembered also what the stranger had said to him:⁠—

“Go when you have had experience of life.”

“Well, I have had experience of life, and found nothing in it.”

He also remembered how Pamphilius had said to him that whenever he should come to them they would be glad to receive him.

“No, I have erred and suffered enough,” he said to himself. “I will renounce everything, and I will go to them and live as it says here.”

He communicated his plan to his wife, and she was delighted with his intention. She was ready for everything. The only thing left was to decide how to carry it into execution. What should they do with the children? Should they take them along or leave them with their grandmother? How could they take them? How, after the tenderness of their nurture, subject them to all the trials of an austere life? The slave-woman proposed to accompany them. But the mother was troubled about her children, and declared that it would be better to leave them with their grandmother, and go alone. And they both decided to do this.

All was determined, and nothing but Julius’ illness prevented its fulfilment.

In this condition of mind Julius fell asleep. The next morning he was told that a skilful physician traveling through the city desired to see him, and promised to give him speedy relief. Julius with joy received the physician. He proved to be none other than the stranger whom Julius had met when he started to join the Christians.

After he had examined his wounds, the physician prescribed certain simples for renewing his strength.

“Shall I be able to work with my arm?” asked Julius.

“Oh, yes, to drive a chariot, or to write; yes.”

“But I mean hard work⁠—to dig?”

“I was not thinking about that,” said the physician, “because such work is not necessary to one in your position.”

“On the contrary, it is very necessary to me,” said Julius; and he told the physician that since the time he had last seen him he had followed his advice, had made trial of life, but life had not given him what it had promised him, but, on the contrary, had disillusioned him, and that he now was going to carry out the plan of which he had spoken to him at that time.

“Yes, evidently they have put into effect all their powers of deception and entangled you, if in your position, with your responsibilities, especially in regard to your children, cannot see their fallacies.”

“Read this,” was all that Julius said, producing the manuscript he had been reading. The physician took the manuscript and glanced at it.

“I know this,” said he; “I know this fraud, and I am surprised that such a clever man as you are can fall into such a snare.”

“I do not understand you. Where lies the snare?”

“The whole thing is in life; and here these sophists and rebels against men and the gods propose a happy path of life in which all men would be happy; there would be no wars, no executions, no poverty, no licentiousness, no quarrels, no evil. And they insist that such a condition of men would come about when men should fulfil the precepts of Christ; not to quarrel, not to commit fornication, not to blaspheme, not to use violence, not to bear ill-will against one another. But they make a mistake in taking the end for the means. Their aim is to keep from quarreling, from blasphemy, from fornication, and the like, and this aim is attained only by means of social life. And in speaking thus they say almost what a teacher of archery should say, if he said, ‘You will hit the target when your arrow flies in a straight line directly to the target.’

“But the problem is, how to make it fly in a straight line. And this problem is solved in archery by the string being tightly stretched, the bow being elastic, the arrow straight. The same with the life of men;⁠—the very best life for men⁠—that in which they need not quarrel, or commit adultery, or do murder⁠—is attained by the bowstring⁠—the rulers; the elasticity of the bow⁠—the force of the authorities; and the straight arrow⁠—the equity of the law.267

“Not only this,” continued the physician, “let us admit what is senseless, what is impossible⁠—let us admit that the foundations of this Christian doctrine may be communicated to all men, like a dose of certain drops, and that suddenly all men should fulfil Christ’s teachings, love God and their fellows, and fulfil the precepts. Let us admit this, and yet the way of life, according to their teaching, would not bear examination. There would be no life, and life would be cut short. Now the living live out their lives, but their children will not live their full time, or not one in ten will. According to their teaching all children must be the same to all mothers and fathers, theirs and others’. How will their children protect themselves when we see that all the passion, all the love, which the mother feels for these children scarcely protects them from destruction? What then will it be when this mother-passion is translated into a general commiseration, the same for all children? Who will take and protect the child? Who will spend sleepless nights watching with sick, ill-smelling children, unless it be the mother? Nature made a protective armor for the child in the mother’s love; they take it away, giving nothing in its place. Who will educate the boy? Who will penetrate into his soul, if not his father? Who will ward off danger? All this is put aside! All life that is the perpetuation of the human race is put aside.”

“That seems correct,” said Julius, carried away by the physician’s eloquence.

“No, my friend, have nothing to do with this nonsense, and live rationally; especially now, when such great, serious, and pressing responsibilities rest upon you. To fulfil them is a matter of honor. You have lived to reach your second period of doubt, but go onward, and your doubts will vanish. Your first and indubitable obligation is to educate your children, whom you have neglected; your obligation toward them is to make them worthy servants of their country. The existent form of government has given you all you have: you ought to serve it yourself and to give it capable servants in your children, and by so doing you confer a blessing on your children. The second obligation upon you is to serve the public. Your lack of success has mortified and discouraged you⁠—this circumstance is temporary. Nothing is given to us without effort and struggle. And the joy of triumph is mighty only when the battle was hard. Begin a life with a recognition of your duty, and all your doubts will vanish. They were caused by your feeble state of health. Fulfil your obligations to the country by serving it, and by educating your children for this service. Put them on their feet so that they may take your place, and then calmly devote yourself to that life which attracts you; till then you have no right to do so, and if you did, you would find nothing but disappointment.”

Either the learned physician’s simples or his advice had their effect on Julius: he very speedily recovered his spirits, and his notions concerning the Christian life seemed to him idle vaporings.

The physician, after a visit of a few days, took his departure. Soon after, Julius got up, and, profiting by his advice, began a new life. He engaged tutors for his children, and he himself superintended their instruction. His time was wholly spent in public duties, and very soon he acquired great consideration in the city.

Thus Julius lived a year, and during this year not once did he remember the Christians. But during this time a tribunal was appointed to try the Christians in their city. An emissary of the Roman Empire had come to Cilicia to stamp out the Christian faith. Julius heard of the measures taken against the Christians, and though he supposed that it concerned the Christian community in which Pamphilius lived, he did not think of him. But one day as he was walking along the square in the place where his official duties called him, he was accosted by a poorly dressed, elderly man, whom he did not recognize at first. It was Pamphilius. He came up to Julius, leading a child by the hand.

“How are you, friend?” said Pamphilius. “I have a great favor to ask of you, but I don’t know as you will be willing to recognize me as your friend, now that we Christians are being persecuted; you might be in danger of losing your place if you had any relations with me.”

“I am not in the least afraid of it,” replied Julius, “and as a proof of it I will ask you to come home with me. I will even postpone my business in the market so as to talk with you and be of service to you. Let us go home together. Whose child is this?”

“It is my son.”

“Really, I need not have asked. I recognize your features in him. I recognize also those blue eyes, and I should not have to ask who your wife is: she is the beautiful woman whom I saw with you some years ago.”

“You have surmised correctly,” replied Pamphilius. “Shortly after we met, she became my wife.”

The friends went to Julius’ home. Julius summoned his wife and gave the boy to her, and brought Pamphilius to his luxurious private room.

“Here you can say anything; no one will hear us,” said Julius.

“I am not afraid of being heard,” replied Pamphilius; “since my request is not that the Christians, who have been arrested, may not be sentenced and executed, but only that they may be permitted publicly to confess their faith.”

And Pamphilius told how the Christians arrested by the authorities had sent word to the community from the dungeons where they were confined. The elder Cyril, knowing of Pamphilius’ relations with Julius, commissioned him to go and plead for the Christians. The Christians did not ask for mercy. They considered it their mission to bear witness to the truth of Christ’s teaching. They could bear witness to this in the course of a long life of eighty years, and they could bear witness to the same by enduring tortures. Either way was immaterial to them; and physical death, unavoidable as it was, for them was alike free from terror and full of joy, whether it came immediately or at the end of half a century: but they wished their lives to be useful to men, and therefore they had sent Pamphilius to labor in their behalf, that their trial and punishment might be public.

Julius was dumbfounded at Pamphilius’ request, but he promised to do all in his power.

“I have promised you my intercession,” said Julius, “but I have promised it to you on account of my friendship for you, and on account of the peculiarly pleasant feeling of tenderness which you have always awakened in me; but I must confess that I consider your doctrine most senseless and harmful. I can judge in regard to this, because not very long ago, in a moment of disappointment and illness, in a state of depression of spirits, I once more shared your views, and once more almost abandoned everything and went to you. I understand on what your error is based, for I have been through it; it is based on selfishness, on weakness of spirit, and the feebleness caused by ill health; it is a creed for women, but not for men.”

“Why so?”

“Because, out of pride, instead of taking part by your labors in the affairs of the empire, and in proportion to your services rising higher and higher in the estimation of men,268 you forthwith, by your pride, I say, regard all men equal, so that you consider no one higher than yourselves, and consider yourselves equal to Caesar.

“You yourself think so, and teach others to think so. And for the weak and the lazy this is a great temptation. Instead of laboring, every slave immediately counts himself equal to Caesar. If men listened to you, society would be dissolved, and we should return to primitive savagery. You in the empire preach the dissolution of empire. But your very existence is dependent on the empire. If it was not for that, you would not be. You would all be slaves of the Scythians or the barbarians, the first who knew of your condition. You are like a tumor destroying the body, but able to make a show, and to feed on the body and nothing else. And the living body struggles with it and suppresses it! Thus do we act in regard to you, and we cannot do otherwise. And notwithstanding my promise to help you, and to comply with your request, I look on your doctrine as most harmful and low: low, because dishonorably and unjustly you devour the breast that nourishes you: take advantage of the blessings of the imperial order without sharing in its support, and yet trying to destroy it!”

“What you say would be just,” said Pamphilius, “if we really lived as you think. But you do not know about our life, and you have formed a false conception of it. For you, with your habitual luxury, it is hard to imagine how little a man requires when he exists without superfluities. A man is so constituted that, when he is well, he can produce with his hands far more than he needs for the support of his life. Living in a community as we do, we are able by our labor to support without effort our children, and the aged and the sick and the feeble. You assert that we Christians arouse in the slave the desire to be the Caesar; on the contrary, both by word and deed we fulfil one thing: patient submissiveness and work, the most humble work of all⁠—the work of the workingman. We know nothing and we care nothing about affairs of state. We know one thing, but we know it beyond question⁠—that our well-being is only when the well-being of others is found, and we strive after this well-being; the well-being of all men is in their union.”269

“But tell me, Pamphilius, why men hold aloof from you in hostility, persecute you, hunt you down, kill you? How does your doctrine of love give rise to such discord?”

“The source of this is not in us, but outside of us. We regard as higher than anything the law of God, which controls by our conscience and by reason. We can obey only such laws of the State as are not contrary to God’s: ‘Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.’ And that is why men persecute us. We have not the power of stopping this hostility, which does not have its source in us, because we cannot cease to realize that truth which we have accepted, because we cannot live contrary to our conscience and reason. In regard to this very hostility which our faith should arouse in others against us, our Teacher said, ‘Think not that I am come to send peace into the world; I came not to send peace, but a sword.’

“Christ experienced this hostility in His own lifetime and more than once he warned us, His disciples, in regard to it. ‘Me,’ He said, ‘the world hateth because its deeds are evil. If ye were of the world the world would love you, but since ye are not of this world therefore the world hateth you, and the time will come when he who killeth you will think he is serving God.’ But we, like Christ, ‘fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul. And this is their condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.’

“In this there is nothing to worry over, because the truth will prevail. The sheep hear the shepherd’s voice, and follow him because they know his voice. And Christ’s flock will not perish but will increase, attracting to it new sheep from all the lands of the earth, for ‘The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.⁠ ⁠…’ ”

“Yes,” Julius said, interrupting him, “but are there many sincere ones among you? You are often blamed for only pretending to be martyrs and glad to lay down your lives for the truth, but the truth is not on your side. You are proud madmen, destroying the foundations of social life.”

Pamphilius made no reply, and looked at Julius with melancholy.

Just as Julius was saying this, Pamphilius’ little son came running into the room, and clung to his father. In spite of all the blandishments of Julius’ wife, he would not stay with her, but ran to his father. Pamphilius sighed, caressed his son, and stood up; but Julius detained him, begging him to stay and talk some more, and have dinner with them.

“It surprises me that you are married and have children,” exclaimed Julius. “I cannot comprehend how Christians can bring up children when you have no private property. How can the mothers live in any peace of mind knowing the precariousness of their children’s position?”

“Wherein are our children more precariously placed than yours?”

“Why, because you have no slaves, no property. My wife was greatly inclined to Christianity; she was at one time desirous of abandoning this life, and I had made up my mind to go with her. But what chiefly prevented was the fear she felt at the insecurity, the poverty, which threatened her children, and I could not help agreeing with her. This was at the time of my illness. All my life seemed repulsive to me, and I wanted to abandon everything. But then my wife’s anxiety, and, on the other hand, the explanation of the physician who cured me, convinced me that the Christian life, as led by you, is impossible, and not good for families; but that there is no place in it for married people, for mothers with children; that in life as you understand it, life⁠—that is the human race⁠—would be annihilated. And this is perfectly correct. Consequently the sight of you with a child especially surprised me.”

“Not one child only. At home I left one at the breast and a three-year-old girl.”

“Explain to me how this happens. I don’t understand. I was ready to abandon everything and join you. But I had children, and I came to the conclusion that, however pleasant it might be for me, I had no right to sacrifice my children, and for their sake I continued to live as before, in order to bring them up in the same conditions as I myself had grown up and lived.”

“Strange,” said Pamphilius; “we take diametrically opposite views. We say: ‘If grown people live a worldly life it can be forgiven them, because they are already corrupted; but children! That is horrible! To live with them in the world and tempt them! “Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that by whom the offense cometh.” ’270

“So spake our Teacher, and I do not say this to you as a refutation, but because it is actually so. The chiefest obligation that we have to live as we do arises from the fact that amongst us are children⁠—those beings of whom it is said, ‘Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ”

“But how can a Christian family do without definite means of subsistence?”

“According to our faith there is only one means of subsistence⁠—loving labor for men. For your means of livelihood you depend on violence. It can be destroyed as wealth is destroyed, and then all that is left is the labor and love of men. We consider that we must hold fast by that which is the basis of everything, and that we must increase it. And when this is done, then the family lives and prospers.

“No,” continued Pamphilius; “if I were in doubt as to the truth of Christ’s teaching, and if I were hesitating as to the fulfilling of it, then my doubts and hesitations would instantly come to an end if I thought about the fate of children brought up among the heathen in those conditions in which you grew up, and are educating your children. Whatever we, a few people, should do for the arrangement of our lives, with palaces, slaves, and the imported products of foreign lands, the life of the majority of men would still remain what it must be. The only security of that life will remain, love of mankind and labor. We wish to free ourselves and our children from these conditions, not by love, but by violence. We compel men to serve us, and⁠—wonder of wonders!⁠—the more we secure, as it were, our lives by this, the more we deprive ourselves of the only true, natural, and lasting security⁠—love. The same with the other guarantee⁠—labor.271 The more a man rids himself of labor and accustoms himself to luxury, the less he becomes fitted for work, the more he deprives himself of the true and lasting security. And these conditions in which men place their children they call security! Take your son and mine and send them now to find a path, to transmit an order, or to do any needful business, and see which of the two would do it most successfully; or try to give them to be educated, which of the two would be most willingly received? No, don’t utter those horrible words that the Christian life is possible only for the childless. On the contrary, it might be said: to live the pagan life is excusable only in those who are childless. ‘But woe to him who offendeth272 one of these little ones.’ ”

Julius remained silent.

“Yes,” said he, “maybe you are right, but the education of my children is begun, the best teachers are teaching them. Let them know all that we know. There can be no harm in that. But for me and for them there is still time. They may come to you when they reach their maturity, if they find it necessary. I also can do this, when I set them on their feet and am free.”

“Know the Truth and you shall be free,” said Pamphilius. “Christ gives full freedom instantly; earthly teaching never will give it. Goodbye.”

And Pamphilius went away with his son.

The trial was public, and Julius saw Pamphilius there as he and other Christians carried away the bodies of the martyrs. He saw him, but as he stood in fear of the authorities he did not go to him, and did not invite him home.

Twenty years more passed. Julius’ wife died. His life flowed on in the labors of his public office, in efforts to secure power, which sometimes fell to his share, sometimes slipped out of his grasp. His wealth was large, and kept increasing.

His sons had grown up, and his second son, especially, began to lead a luxurious life. He made holes in the bottom of the bucket in which the wealth was held, and in proportion as the wealth increased, increased also the rapidity of its escape through these holes.

Julius began to have just such a struggle with his sons as he had had with his father⁠—wrath, hatred, jealousy.

About this time a new prefect deprived Julius of his favor.

Julius was forsaken by his former flatterers, and banishment threatened him. He went to Rome to offer explanations. He was not received, and was ordered to depart.

On reaching home he found his son carousing with boon companions. The report had spread through Cilicia that Julius was dead, and his son was celebrating his father’s death! Julius lost control of himself, struck his son so that he fell, apparently lifeless, and he went to his wife’s room. In his wife’s room he found a copy of the gospel, and read:⁠—

Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

“Yes,” said Julius, to himself, “He has been calling me long. I did not believe in Him, and I was disobedient and wicked; and my yoke was heavy and my burden was grievous.”

Julius long sat with the gospel opened on his knee, thinking over his past life and recalling what Pamphilius had said to him at various times.

Then Julius arose and went to his son. He found his son on his feet, and was inexpressibly rejoiced to find he had suffered no injury from the blow he had given him. Without saying a word to his son, Julius went into the street and bent his steps in the direction of the Christian settlement. He went all day, and at eventide stopped at a countryman’s for the night. In the room which he entered lay a man. At the noise of steps the man roused himself. It was the physician.

“No, this time you do not dissuade me!” cried Julius. “This is the third time I have started thither, and I know that there only shall I find peace of mind.”

“Where?” asked the physician.

“Among the Christians.”

“Yes, maybe you will find peace of mind, but you will not have fulfilled your obligations. You have no courage. Misfortunes have conquered you. True philosophers do not act thus. Misfortune is only the fire in which the gold is tried. You have passed through the furnace, and now you are needed, you are running away. Now test others and yourself. You have gained true wisdom, and you ought to employ it for the good of your country. What would become of the citizens if those that knew men, their passions and conditions of life, instead of devoting their knowledge and experience to the service of their country, should hide them away, in their search for peace of mind. Your experience of life has been gained in society, and so you ought to devote it to the same society.”

“But I have no wisdom at all. I am wholly in error. My errors are ancient, but no wisdom has grown out of them. Like water, however old and stale it is, it never becomes wine.”

Thus spake Julius; and seizing his cloak, he left the house and, without resting, walked on and on. At the end of the second day he reached the Christians.

They received him joyfully, though they did not know that he was a friend of Pamphilius, whom everyone loved and respected. At the refectory Pamphilius recognized his friend, and with joy ran to him, and embraced him.

“Well, at last I have come,” said Julius. “What is there for me to do? I will obey you.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Pamphilius. “You and I will go together.”

And Pamphilius led Julius into the house where visitors were entertained, and showing him a bed, said:⁠—

“In what way you can serve the people you yourself will see after you have had time to examine into the way we live; but in order that you may know where immediately to lend a hand, I will show you something tomorrow. In our vineyards the grape harvest is taking place. Go and help there. You yourself will see where there is a place for you.”

The next morning Julius went to the vineyard. The first was a young vineyard hung with thick clusters. Young people were plucking and gathering them. All the places were occupied, and Julius, after going about for a long while, found no chance for himself.

He went farther. There he found an older plantation; there was less fruit, but here also Julius found nothing to do; all were working in pairs, and there was no place for him.

He went farther, and came to a superannuated vineyard. It was all empty. The vinestocks were gnarly and crooked, and, as it seemed to Julius, all empty.

“Just like my life,” he said to himself. “If I had come the first time it would have been like the fruit in the first vineyard. If I had come when the second time I started, it would have been like the fruit in the second vineyard; but now here is my life; like these useless superannuated vinestocks, it is good only for firewood.”

And Julius was terrified at what he had done; he was terrified at the punishment awaiting him because he had ruined his life. And Julius became melancholy, and he said: “I am good for nothing; there is no work I can do now.”

And he did not rise from where he sat, and he wept because he had wasted what could never more return to him. And suddenly he heard an old man’s voice⁠—a voice calling him. “Work, my brother,” said the voice. Julius looked around and saw a white-haired old man, bent with years, and scarcely able to walk. He was standing by a vinestock and gathering from it the few sweet bunches remaining. Julius went to him.

“Work, dear brother; work is joyous;” and he showed him how to find the bunches here and there.

Julius went and searched; he found a few, and brought them and laid them in the old man’s basket. And the old man said to him:⁠—

“Look, in what respect are these bunches worse than those gathered in yonder vineyards? ‘Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you,’ said our Teacher. ‘And this is the will of Him that sent me; that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him at the last day.’

“ ‘For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.’

“ ‘He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.’

“ ‘And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.’

“ ‘For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved.’

“ ‘But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.’

“Be not unhappy, my son. We are all the children of God and His servants. We all go to make up His one army! Do you think that He has no servants besides you? And that if you, in all your strength, had given yourself to His service, would you have done all that He required all that men ought to do to establish His kingdom? You say you would have done twice, ten times, a hundred times more than you did. But suppose you had done ten thousand times ten thousand more than all men, what would that have been in the work of God? Nothing! To God’s work, as to God Himself, there are no limits and no end. God’s work is in you. Come to Him, and be not a laborer but a son, and you become a copartner with the infinite God and in His work. With God there is neither small nor great, but there is straight and crooked. Enter into the straight path of life and you will be with God, and your work will be neither small nor great, but it will be God’s work. Remember that in heaven there is more joy over one sinner, than over a hundred just men. The world’s work, all that you have neglected to do, has only shown you your sin, and you have repented. And as you have repented, you have found the straight path; go forward in it with God, and think not of the past, or of great and small. Before God, all living men are equal. There is one God and one life.”

And Julius found peace of mind, and he began to live and to work for the brethren according to his strength. And he lived thus in joy twenty years longer, and he did not perceive how he died the physical death.

It was early spring, and the second day of our journey. Passengers going short distances entered and left our carriage, but three others, like myself, had come all the way with the train. One was a lady, plain and no longer young, who smoked, had a harassed look, and wore a mannish coat and cap; another was an acquaintance of hers, a talkative man of about forty, whose things looked neat and new; the third was a rather short man who kept himself apart. He was not old, but his curly hair had gone prematurely grey. His movements were abrupt and his unusually glittering eyes moved rapidly from one object to another. He wore an old overcoat, evidently from a first-rate tailor, with an astrakhan collar, and a tall astrakhan cap. When he unbuttoned his overcoat a sleeveless Russian coat and embroidered shirt showed beneath it. A peculiarity of this man was a strange sound he emitted, something like a clearing of his throat, or a laugh begun and sharply broken off.

All the way this man had carefully avoided making acquaintance or making any intercourse with his fellow passengers. When spoken to by those near him he gave short and abrupt answers, and at other times read, looked out of the window, smoked, or drank tea and ate something he took out of an old bag.

It seemed to me that his loneliness depressed him, and I made several attempts to converse with him, but whenever our eyes met, which happened often as he sat nearly opposite me, he turned away and took up his book or looked out of the window.

Towards the second evening, when our train stopped at a large station, this nervous man fetched himself some boiling water and made tea. The man with the neat new things⁠—a lawyer as I found out later⁠—and his neighbor, the smoking lady with the mannish coat, went to the refreshment room to drink tea.

During their absence several new passengers entered the carriage, among them a tall, shaven, wrinkled old man, evidently a tradesman, in a coat lined with skunk fur, and a cloth cap with an enormous peak. The tradesman sat down opposite the seats of the lady and the lawyer, and immediately started a conversation with a young man who had also entered at that station and, judging by his appearance, was a tradesman’s clerk.

I was sitting the other side of the gangway and as the train was standing still I could hear snatches of their conversation when nobody was passing between us. The tradesman began by saying that he was going to his estate which was only one station farther on; then as usual the conversation turned to prices and trade, and they spoke of the state of business in Moscow and then of the Nízhni-Nóvgorod Fair. The clerk began to relate how a wealthy merchant, known to both of them, had gone on the spree at the fair, but the old man interrupted him by telling of the orgies he had been at in former times at Kunávin Fair. He evidently prided himself on the part he had played in them, and recounted with pleasure how he and some acquaintances, together with the merchant they had been speaking of, had once got drunk at Kunávin and played such a trick that he had to tell of it in a whisper. The clerk’s roar of laughter filled the whole carriage; the old man laughed also, exposing two yellow teeth.

Not expecting to hear anything interesting, I got up to stroll about the platform till the train should start. At the carriage door I met the lawyer and the lady who were talking with animation as they approached.

“You won’t have time,” said the sociable lawyer, “the second bell will ring in a moment.”273

And the bell did ring before I had gone the length of the train. When I returned, the animated conversation between the lady and the lawyer was proceeding. The old tradesman sat silent opposite to them, looking sternly before him, and occasionally mumbled disapprovingly as if chewing something.

“Then she plainly informed her husband,” the lawyer was smilingly saying as I passed him, “that she was not able, and did not wish, to live with him since⁠ ⁠…”

He went on to say something I could not hear. Several other passengers came in after me. The guard passed, a porter hurried in, and for some time the noise made their voices inaudible. When all was quiet again the conversation had evidently turned from the particular case to general considerations.

The lawyer was saying that public opinion in Europe was occupied with the question of divorce, and that cases of “that kind” were occurring more and more often in Russia. Noticing that his was the only voice audible, he stopped his discourse and turned to the old man.

“Those things did not happen in the old days, did they?” he said, smiling pleasantly.

The old man was about to reply, but the train moved and he took off his cap, crossed himself, and whispered a prayer. The lawyer turned away his eyes and waited politely. Having finished his prayer and crossed himself three times the old man set his cap straight, pulled it well down over his forehead, changed his position, and began to speak.

“They used to happen even then, sir, but less often,” he said. “As times are now they can’t help happening. People have got too educated.”

The train moved faster and faster and jolted over the joints of the rails, making it difficult to hear, but being interested I moved nearer. The nervous man with the glittering eyes opposite me, evidently also interested, listened without changing his place.

“What is wrong with education?” said the lady, with a scarcely perceptible smile. “Surely it can’t be better to marry as they used to in the old days when the bride and bridegroom did not even see one another before the wedding,” she continued, answering not what her interlocutor had said but what she thought he would say, in the way many ladies have. “Without knowing whether they loved, or whether they could love, they married just anybody, and were wretched all their lives. And you think that this was better?” she said, evidently addressing me and the lawyer chiefly and least of all the old man with whom she was talking.

“They’ve got so very educated,” the tradesman reiterated, looking contemptuously at the lady and leaving her question unanswered.

“It would be interesting to know how you explain the connection between education and matrimonial discord,” said the lawyer, with a scarcely perceptible smile.

The tradesman was about to speak, but the lady interrupted him.

“No,” she said, “those times have passed.” But the lawyer stopped her.

“Yes, but allow the gentleman to express his views.”

“Foolishness comes from education,” the old man said categorically.

“They make people who don’t love one another marry, and then wonder that they live in discord,” the lady hastened to say, turning to look at the lawyer, at me, and even at the clerk, who had got up and, leaning on the back of the seat, was smilingly listening to the conversation. “It’s only animals, you know, that can be paired off as their master likes; but human beings have their own inclinations and attachments,” said the lady, with an evident desire to annoy the tradesman.

“You should not talk like that, madam,” said the old man, “animals are cattle, but human beings have a law given them.”

“Yes, but how is one to live with a man when there is no love?” the lady again hastened to express her argument, which had probably seemed very new to her.

“They used not to go into that,” said the old man in an impressive tone. “It is only now that all this has sprung up. The least thing makes them say: ‘I will leave you!’ The fashion has spread even to the peasants. ‘Here you are!’ she says. ‘Here, take your shirts and trousers and I will go with Vánka; his head is curlier than yours.’ What can you say? the first thing that should be required of a woman is fear!”

The clerk glanced at the lawyer, at the lady, and at me, apparently suppressing a smile and prepared to ridicule or to approve of the tradesman’s words according to the reception they met with.

“Fear of what?” asked the lady.

“Why this: Let her fear her husband! That fear!”

“Oh, the time for that, sir, has passed,” said the lady with a certain viciousness.

“No, madam, that time cannot pass. As she, Eve, was made from the rib of a man, so it will remain to the end of time,” said the old man, jerking his head with such sternness and such a victorious look that the clerk at once concluded that victory was on his side, and laughed loudly.

“Ah yes, that’s the way you men argue,” said the lady unyieldingly, and turned to us. “You have given yourselves freedom but want to shut women up in a tower.274 You no doubt permit yourselves everything.”

“No one is permitting anything, but a man does not bring offspring into the home; while a woman⁠—a wife⁠—is a leaky vessel,” the tradesman continued insistently. His tone was so impressive that it evidently vanquished his hearers, and even the lady felt crushed but still did not give in.

“Yes, but I think you will agree that a woman is a human being and has feelings as a man has. What is she to do then, if she does not love her husband?”

“Does not love!” said the tradesman severely, moving his brows and lips. “She’ll love, no fear!” this unexpected argument particularly pleased the clerk, and he emitted a sound of approval.

“Oh, no, she won’t!” the lady began. “And when there is no love you can’t enforce it.”

“Well, and supposing the wife is unfaithful, what then?” asked the lawyer.

“That is not admissible,” said the old man. “One has to see to that.”

“But if it happens, what then? You know it does occur.”

“It happens among some, but not among us,” said the old man.

All were silent. The clerk moved, came still nearer, and, evidently unwilling to be behind hand, began with a smile.

“Yes, a young fellow of ours had a scandal. It was a difficult case to deal with. It too was a case of a woman who was a bad lot. She began to play the devil, and the young fellow is respectable and cultured. At first it was with one of the office clerks. The husband tried to persuade her with kindness. She would not stop, but played all sorts of dirty tricks. Then she began to steal his money. He beat her, but she only grew worse. Carried on intrigues, if I may mention it, with an unchristened Jew. What was he to do? He turned her out altogether and lives as a bachelor, while she gads about.”

“Because he is a fool,” said the old man. “If he’d pulled her up properly from the first and not let her have way, she’d be living with him, no fear! It’s giving way at first that counts. Don’t trust your horse in the field, or your wife in the house.”

At that moment the guard entered to collect the tickets for the next station. The old man gave up his. “Yes, the female sex must be curbed in time or else all is lost!”

“Yes, but you yourself just now were speaking about the way married men amuse themselves at the Kunávin Fair,” I could not help saying.

“That’s a different matter,” said the old man and relapsed into silence.

When the whistle sounded the tradesman rose, got out his bag from under the seat, buttoned up his coat, and slightly lifting his cap went out of the carriage.

As soon as the old man had gone several voices were raised.

“A daddy of the old style!” remarked the clerk.

“A living Domostróy!”275 said the lady. “What barbarous views of women and marriage!”

“Yes, we are far from the European understanding of marriage,” said the lawyer.276

“The chief thing such people do not understand,” continued the lady, “is that marriage without love is not marriage; that love sanctifies marriage, and that real marriage is only such as is sanctified by love.”

The clerk listened smilingly, trying to store up for future use all he could of the clever conversation.

In the midst of the lady’s remarks we heard, behind me, a sound like that of a broken laugh or sob; and on turning round we saw my neighbor, the lonely grey-haired man with the glittering eyes, who had approached unnoticed during our conversation, which evidently interested him. He stood with his arms on the back of the seat, evidently much excited; his face was red and a muscle twitched in his cheek.

“What kind of love⁠ ⁠… love⁠ ⁠… is it that sanctifies marriage?” he asked hesitatingly.

Noticing the speaker’s agitation, the lady tried to answer him as gently and fully as possible.

“True love⁠ ⁠… When such love exists between a man and a woman, then marriage is possible,” she said.

“Yes, but how is one to understand what is meant by ‘true love’?” said the gentleman with the glittering eyes timidly and with an awkward smile.

“Everybody knows what love is,” replied the lady, evidently wishing to break off her conversation with him.

“But I don’t,” said the man. “You must define what you understand⁠ ⁠…”

“Why? It’s very simple,” she said, but stopped to consider. “Love? Love is an exclusive preference for one above everybody else,” said the lady.

“Preference for how long? A month, two days, or half an hour?” said the grey-haired man and began to laugh.

“Excuse me, we are evidently not speaking of the same thing.”

“Oh, yes! Exactly the same.”

“She means,” interposed the lawyer, pointing to the lady, “that in the first place marriage must be the outcome of attachment⁠—or love, if you please⁠—and only where that exists is marriage sacred, so to speak. Secondly, that marriage when not based on natural attachment⁠—love, if you prefer the word⁠—lacks the element that makes it morally binding. Do I understand you rightly?” He added, addressing the lady.

The lady indicated her approval of his explanation by a nod of her head.

“It follows⁠ ⁠…” the lawyer continued⁠—but the nervous man whose eyes now glowed as if aflame and who had evidently restrained himself with difficulty, began without letting the lawyer finish: “Yes, I mean exactly the same thing, a preference for one person over everybody else, and I am only asking: a preference for how long?”

“For how long? For a long time; for life sometimes,” replied the lady, shrugging her shoulders.

“Oh, but that happens only in novels and never in real life. In real life this preference for one may last for years (that happens very rarely), more often for months, or perhaps for weeks, days, or hours,” he said, evidently aware that he was astonishing everybody by his views and pleased that it was so.

“Oh, what are you saying?” “But no⁠ ⁠…” “No, allow me⁠ ⁠…” we all three began at once. Even the clerk uttered an indefinite sound of disapproval.

“Yes, I know,” the grey-haired man shouted above our voices, “you are talking about what is supposed to be, but I am speaking of what is. Every man experiences what you call love for every pretty woman.”

“Oh, what you say is awful! But the feeling that is called love does exist among people, and is given not for months or years, but for a lifetime!”

“No, it does not! Even if we should grant that a man might prefer a certain woman all his life, the woman in all probability would prefer someone else; and so it always has been and still is in the world,” he said, and taking out his cigarette case he began to smoke.

“But the feeling may be reciprocal,” said the lawyer.

“No sir, it can’t!” rejoined the other. “Just as it cannot be that in a cartload of peas, two marked peas will lie side by side. Besides, it is not merely this impossibility, but the inevitable satiety. To love one person for a whole lifetime is like saying that one candle will burn a whole life,” he said, greedily inhaling the smoke.

“But you are talking all the time about physical love. Don’t you acknowledge love based on identity of ideals, on spiritual affinity?” asked the lady.

“Spiritual affinity! Identity of ideals!” he repeated, emitting his peculiar sound. “But in that case why go to bed together? (Excuse my coarseness!) Or do people go to bed together because of the identity of their ideals?” he said, bursting into a nervous laugh.

“But permit me,” said the lawyer. “Facts contradict you. We do see that matrimony exists, that all mankind, or the greater part of it, lives in wedlock, and many people honourably live long married lives.”

The grey-haired man again laughed.

“First you say that marriage is based on love, and when I express a doubt as to the existence of a love other than sensual, you prove the existence of love by the fact that marriages exist. But marriages in our days are mere deception!”

“No, allow me!” said the lawyer. “I only say that marriages have existed and do exist.”

“They do! But why? They have existed and do exist among people who see in marriage something sacramental, a mystery binding them in the sight of God. Among them marriages do exist. Among us, people marry regarding marriage as nothing but copulation, and the result is either deception or coercion. When it is deception it is easier to bear. The husband and wife merely deceive people by pretending to be monogamists, while living polygamously. That is bad, but still bearable. But when, as most frequently happens, the husband and wife have undertaken the external duty of living together all their lives, and begin to hate each other after a month, and wish to part but still continue to live together, it leads to that terrible hell which makes people take to drink, shoot themselves, or kill or poison themselves or one another,” he went on, speaking more and more rapidly, not allowing anyone to put in a word and becoming more and more excited. We all felt embarrassed.

“Yes, undoubtedly there are critical episodes in married life,” said the lawyer, wishing to end this disturbingly heated conversation.

“I see you have found out who I am!” said the grey-haired man softly, and with apparent calm.

“No, I have not that pleasure.”

“It is no great pleasure. I am that Pózdnyshev in whose life that critical episode occurred to which you alluded; the episode when he killed his wife,” he said, rapidly glancing at each of us.

No one knew what to say and all remained silent.

“Well, never mind,” he said with that peculiar sound of his. “However, pardon me. Ah!⁠ ⁠… I won’t intrude on you.”

“Oh, no, if you please⁠ ⁠…” said the lawyer, himself not knowing “if you please” what.

But Pózdnyshev, without listening to him, rapidly turned away and went back to his seat. The lawyer and the lady whispered together. I sat down beside Pózdnyshev in silence, unable to think of anything to say. It was too dark to read, so I shut my eyes pretending that I wished to go to sleep. So we travelled in silence to the next station.

At that station the lawyer and the lady moved into another car, having some time previously consulted the guard about it. The clerk lay down on the seat and fell asleep. Pózdnyshev kept smoking and drinking tea which he had made at the last station.

When I opened my eyes and looked at him he suddenly addressed me resolutely and irritably:

“Perhaps it is unpleasant for you to sit with me, knowing who I am? In that case I will go away.”

“Oh no, not at all.”

“Well then, won’t you have some? Only it’s very strong.”

He poured out some tea for me.

“They talk⁠ ⁠… and they always lie⁠ ⁠…” he remarked.

“What are you speaking about?” I asked.

“Always about the same thing. About that love of theirs and what it is! Don’t you want to sleep?”

“Not at all.”

“Then would you like me to tell you how that love led to what happened to me?”

“Yes, if it will not be painful for you.”

“No, it is painful for me to be silent. Drink the tea⁠ ⁠… or is it too strong?”

The tea was really like beer, but I drank a glass of it.277 Just then the guard entered. Pózdnyshev followed him with angry eyes, and only began to speak after he had left.

“Well then, I’ll tell you. But do you really want to hear it?”

I repeated that I wished it very much. He paused, rubbed his face with his hands, and began:

“If I am to tell it, I must tell everything from the beginning: I must tell how and why I married, and the kind of man I was before my marriage.

“Till my marriage I lived as everybody does, that is, everybody in our class. I am a landowner and a graduate of the university, and was a marshal of the gentry. Before my marriage I lived as everyone does, that is, dissolutely; and while living dissolutely I was convinced, like everyone else in our class, that I was living as one has to. I thought I was a charming fellow and quite a moral man. I was not a seducer, had no unnatural tastes, did not make that the chief purpose of my life as many of my associates did, but I practiced debauchery in a steady, decent way for health’s sake. I avoided women who might tie my hands by having a child or by attachment for me. However, there may have been children and attachments, but I acted as if there were not. And this I not only considered moral, but I was even proud of it.”

He paused and gave vent to his peculiar sound, as he evidently did whenever a new idea occurred to him.

“And you know, that is the chief abomination!” he exclaimed. “dissoluteness does not lie in anything physical⁠—no kind of physical misconduct is debauchery; real debauchery lies precisely in freeing oneself from moral relations with a woman with whom you have physical intimacy. And such emancipation I regarded as a merit. I remember how I once worried because I had not had an opportunity to pay a woman who gave herself to me (having probably taken a fancy to me) and how I only became tranquil after having sent her some money⁠—thereby intimating that I did not consider myself in any way morally bound to her⁠ ⁠… Don’t nod as if you agreed with me,” he suddenly shouted at me. “Don’t I know these things? We all, and you too unless you are a rare exception, hold those same views, just as I used to. Never mind, I beg your pardon, but the fact is that it’s terrible, terrible, terrible!”

“What is terrible?” I asked.

“That abyss of error in which we live regarding women and our relations with them. No, I can’t speak calmly about it, not because of that ‘episode,’ as he called it, in my life, but because since that ‘episode’ occurred my eyes have been opened and I have seen everything in quite a different light. Everything reversed, everything reversed!”

He lit a cigarette and began to speak, leaning his elbows on his knees.

It was too dark to see his face, but, above the jolting of the train, I could hear his impressive and pleasant voice.

“Yes, only after such torments as I have endured, only by their means, have I understood where the root of the matter lies⁠—understood what ought to be, and therefore seen all the horror of what is.

“So you will see how and when that which led up to my ‘episode’ began. It began when I was not quite sixteen. It happened when I still went to the grammar school and my elder brother was a first-year student at the university. I had not yet known any woman, but, like all the unfortunate children of our class, I was no longer an innocent boy. I had been depraved two years before that by other boys. Already woman, not some particular woman but woman as something to be desired, woman, every woman, woman’s nudity, tormented me. My solitude was not pure. I was tormented, as ninety-nine percent of our boys are. I was horrified, I suffered, I prayed, and I fell. I was already depraved in imagination and in fact, but I had not yet laid hands on another human being. But one day a comrade of my brother’s, a jolly student, a so-called good fellow, that is, the worst kind of good-for-nothing, who had taught us to drink and to play cards, persuaded us after a carousal to go there. We went. My brother was also still innocent, and he fell that same night. And I, a fifteen-year-old boy, defiled myself and took part in defiling a woman, without at all understanding what I was doing. I had never heard from any of my elders that what I was doing was wrong, you know. And indeed no one hears it now. It is true it is in the Commandments but then the Commandments are only needed to answer the priest at Scripture examination, and even then they are not very necessary, not nearly as necessary as the commandment about the use of ut in conditional sentences in Latin.

“And so I never heard those older persons whose opinions I respected say that it was an evil. On the contrary, I heard people I respected say it was good. I had heard that my struggles and sufferings would be eased after that. I heard this and read it, and heard my elders say it would be good for my health, while from my comrades I heard that it was rather a fine, spirited thing to do. So in general I expected nothing but good from it. The risk of disease? But that too had been foreseen. A paternal government saw to that. It sees to the correct working of brothels,278 and makes profligacy safe for schoolboys. Doctors too deal with it for a consideration. That is proper. They assert that debauchery is good for the health, and they organize proper well-regulated debauchery. I know some mothers who attend to their sons’ health in that sense. And science sends them to the brothels.”

“Why do you say ‘science’?” I asked.

“Why, who are the doctors? The priests of science. Who deprave youths by maintaining that this is necessary for their health? They do.

“Yet if a one-hundredth part of the efforts devoted to the cure of syphilis were devoted to the eradication of debauchery there would long ago not have been a trace of syphilis left. But as it is, efforts are made not to eradicate debauchery but to encourage it and to make debauchery safe. That is not the point however. The point is that with me⁠—and with nine-tenths, if not more, not of our class only but of all classes, even the peasants⁠—this terrible thing happens that happened to me; I fell not because I succumbed to the natural temptation of a particular woman’s charm⁠—no, I was not seduced by a woman⁠—but I fell because, in the set around me, what was really a fall was regarded by some as a most legitimate function good for one’s health, and by others as a very natural and not only excusable but even innocent amusement for a young man. I did not understand that it was a fall, but simply indulged in that half-pleasure, half-need, which, as was suggested to me, was natural at a certain age. I began to indulge in debauchery as I began to drink and to smoke. Yet in that first fall there was something special and pathetic. I remember that at once, on the spot before I left the room, I felt sad, so sad that I wanted to cry⁠—to cry for the loss of my innocence and for my relationship with women, now sullied forever. Yes, my natural, simple relationship with women was spoilt forever. From that time I have not had, and could not have, pure relations with women. I had become what is called a libertine. To be a libertine is a physical condition like that of a morphinist, a drunkard, or a smoker. As a morphinist, a drunkard, or a smoker is no longer normal, so too a man who has known several women for his pleasure is not normal but is a man perverted forever, a libertine. As a drunkard or a morphinist can be recognized at once by his face and manner, so it is with a libertine. A libertine may restrain himself, may struggle, but he will never have those pure, simple, clear, brotherly relations with a woman. By the way he looks at a young woman and examines, a libertine can always be recognized. And I had become and I remained a libertine, and it was this that brought me to ruin.”

“Ah, yes! After that things went from bad to worse, and there were all sorts of deviations. Oh, God! When I recall the abominations I committed in this respect I am seized with horror! And that is true of me, whom my companions, I remember, ridiculed for my so-called innocence. And when one hears of the ‘gilded youths,’ of officers, of the Parisians⁠ ⁠… ! And when all these gentlemen, and I⁠—who have on our souls hundreds of the most varied and horrible crimes against women⁠—when we thirty-year-old profligates, very carefully washed, shaved, perfumed, in clean linen and in evening dress or uniform, enter a drawing room or ballroom, we are emblems of purity, charming!

“Only think of what ought to be, and of what is! When in society such a gentleman comes up to my sister or daughter, I, knowing his life, ought to go up to him, take him aside, and say quietly, ‘My dear fellow, I know the life you lead, and how and with whom you pass your nights. This is no place for you. There are pure, innocent girls here. Be off!’ that is what ought to be; but what happens is that when such a gentleman comes and dances, embracing our sister or daughter, we are jubilant, if he is rich and well-connected. Maybe after Rigulboche279 he will honor my daughter! Even if traces of disease remain, no matter! They are clever at curing that nowadays. Oh, yes, I know several girls in the best society whom their parents enthusiastically gave in marriage to men suffering from a certain disease. Oh, oh⁠ ⁠… the abomination of it! But a time will come when this abomination and falsehood will be exposed!”

He made his strange noise several times and again drank tea. It was fearfully strong and there was no water with which to dilute it. I felt that I was much excited by the two glasses I had drunk.

Probably the tea affected him too, for he became more and more excited. His voice grew increasingly mellow and expressive. He continually changed his position, now taking off his cap and now putting it on again, and his face changed strangely in the semidarkness in which we were sitting.

“Well, so I lived till I was thirty, not abandoning for a moment the intention of marrying and arranging for myself a most elevated and pure family life. With that purpose I observed the girls suitable for that end,” he continued. “I weltered in a mire of debauchery and at the same time was on the lookout for a girl pure enough to be worthy of me.

“I rejected many just because they were not pure enough to suit me, but at last I found one whom I considered worthy. She was one of two daughters of a once wealthy Pénza landowner who had been ruined.

“One evening after we had been out in a boat and had returned by moonlight, and I was sitting beside her admiring her curls and her shapely figure in a tight-fitting jersey, I suddenly decided that it was she! It seemed to me that evening that she understood all that I felt and thought, and that what I felt and thought was very lofty. In reality it was only that the jersey and the curls were particularly becoming to her and that after a day spent near her I wanted to be still closer.

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.

“I returned home in rapture, decided that she was the acme of moral perfection, and that therefore she was worthy to be my wife, and I proposed to her next day.

“What a muddle it is! Out of a thousand men who marry (not only among us but unfortunately also among the masses) there is hardly one who has not already been married ten, a hundred, or even, like Don Juan, a thousand times, before his wedding.

“It is true as I have heard and have myself observed that there are nowadays some chaste young men who feel and know that this thing is not a joke but an important matter.

“God help them! But in my time there was not one such in ten thousand. And everybody knows this and pretends not to know it. In all the novels they describe in detail the heroes’ feelings and the ponds and bushes beside which they walk, but when their great love for some maiden is described, nothing is said about what has happened to these interesting heroes before: not a word about their frequenting certain houses, or about the servant girls, cooks, and other people’s wives! If there are such improper novels they are not put into the hands of those who most need this information⁠—the unmarried girls.

“We first pretend to these girls that the profligacy which fills half the life of our towns, and even of the villages, does not exist at all.

“Then we get so accustomed to this pretence that at last, like the English, we ourselves really begin to believe this quite seriously. So too did my unfortunate wife. I remember how, when we were engaged, I showed her my diary, from which she could learn something, if but a little, of my past, especially about my last liaison, of which she might hear from others, and about which I therefore felt it necessary to inform her. I remember her horror, despair, and confusion, when she learnt of it and understood it. I saw that she then wanted to give me up. And why did she not do so?⁠ ⁠…”

He again made that sound, swallowed another mouthful of tea, and remained silent for a while.

“No, after all, it is better, better so!” he exclaimed. “It serves me right! But that’s not to the point⁠—I meant to say that it is only the unfortunate girls who are deceived.

“The mothers know it, especially mothers educated by their own husbands⁠—they know it very well. While pretending to believe in the purity of men, they act quite differently. They know with what sort of bait to catch men for themselves and for their daughters.

“You see it is only we men who don’t know (because we don’t wish to know) what women know very well, that the most exalted poetic love, as we call it, depends not on moral qualities but on physical nearness and on the coiffure, and the colour and cut of the dress. Ask an expert coquette who has set herself the task of captivating a man, which she would prefer to risk: to be convicted in his presence of lying, of cruelty, or even of dissoluteness, or to appear before him in an ugly and badly made dress⁠—she will always prefer the first. She knows that we are continually lying about high sentiments, but really only want her body and will therefore forgive any abomination except an ugly tasteless costume that is in bad style.

“A coquette knows that consciously, and every innocent girl knows it unconsciously just as animals do.

“That is why there are those detestable jerseys, bustles, and naked shoulders, arms, almost breasts. A woman, especially if she has passed the male school, knows very well that all the talk about elevated subjects is just talk, but that what a man wants is her body and all that presents it in the most deceptive but alluring light; and she acts accordingly. If we only throw aside our familiarity with this indecency, which has become a second nature to us, and look at the life of our upper classes as it is, in all its shamelessness⁠—why, it is simply a brothel⁠ ⁠… You don’t agree? Allow me, I’ll prove it,” he said, interrupting me. “You say that the women of our society have other interests in life than prostitutes have, but I say no, and will prove it. If people differ in the aims of their lives, by the inner content of their lives, this difference will necessarily be reflected in externals and their externals will be different. But look at those unfortunate despised women and at the highest society ladies: the same costumes, the same fashions, the same perfumes, the exposure of arms, shoulders, and breasts, the same tight skirts over prominent bustles, the same passion for little stones, for costly, glittering objects, the same amusements, dances, music, and singing. As the former employ all means to allure, so do these others.”

“Well, so these jerseys and curls and bustles caught me!

“It was very easy to catch me for I was brought up in the conditions in which amorous young people are forced like cucumbers in a hotbed. You see our stimulating superabundance of food, together with complete physical idleness, is nothing but a systematic excitement of desire. Whether this astonishes you or not, it is so. Why, till quiet recently I did not see anything of this myself, but now I have seen it. That is why it torments me that nobody knows this, and people talk such nonsense as that lady did.

“Yes, last spring some peasants were working in our neighborhood on a railway embankment. The usual food of a young peasant is rye bread, kvass, and onions; he keeps alive and is vigorous and healthy; his work is light agricultural work. When he goes to railway work his rations are buckwheat porridge and a pound of meat a day. But he works off that pound of meat during his sixteen hours’ work wheeling barrow-loads of half-a-ton weight, so it is just enough for him. But we who every day consume two pounds of meat, and game, and fish and all sorts of heating foods and drinks⁠—where does that go to? Into excesses of sensuality. And if it goes there and the safety valve is open, all is well; but try and close the safety valve, as I closed it temporarily, and at once a stimulus arises which, passing through the prism of our artificial life, expresses itself in utter infatuation, sometimes even platonic. And I fell in love as they all do.

“Everything was there to hand: raptures, tenderness, and poetry. In reality that love of mine was the result, on the one hand of her mamma’s and the dressmakers’ activity, and on the other of the superabundance of food consumed by me while living an idle life. If on the one hand there had been no boating, no dressmaker with her waists and so forth, and had my wife been sitting at home in a shapeless dressing gown, and had I on the other hand been in circumstances normal to man⁠—consuming just enough food to suffice for the work I did, and had the safety valve been open⁠—it happened to be closed at the time⁠—I should not have fallen in love and nothing of all this would have happened.”

“Well, and now it so chanced that everything combined⁠—my condition, her becoming dress, and the satisfactory boating. It had failed twenty times but now it succeeded. Just like a trap! I am not joking. You see nowadays marriages are arranged that way⁠—like traps. What is the natural way? The lass is ripe, she must be given in marriage. It seems very simple if the girl is not a fright and there are men wanting to marry. That is how it was done in olden times. The lass was grown up and her parents arranged the marriage. So it was done, and is done, among all mankind⁠—Chinese, Hindus, Mohammedans, and among our own working classes; so it is done among at least ninety-nine percent of the human race. Only among one percent or less, among us libertines, has it been discovered that that is not right, and something new has been invented. And what is this novelty? It is that the maidens sit around and the men walk about, as at a bazaar, choosing. And the maidens wait and think, but dare not say: ‘Me, please!’ ‘No, me!’ ‘Not her, but me!’ ‘Look what shoulders and other things I have!’ And we men stroll around and look, and are very pleased. ‘Yes, I know! I won’t be caught!’ They stroll about and look and are very pleased that everything is arranged like that for them. And then in an unguarded moment⁠—snap! He is caught!”

“Then how ought it to be done?” I asked. “Should the woman propose?”

“Oh, I don’t know how; only if there’s to be equality, let it be equality. If they have discovered that prearranged matches are degrading, why this is a thousand times worse! Then the rights and chances were equal, but here the woman is a slave in a bazaar or the bait in a trap. Tell any mother, or the girl herself, the truth, that she is only occupied in catching a husband⁠ ⁠… oh dear! what an insult! Yet they all do it and have nothing else to do. What is so terrible is to see sometimes quite innocent poor young girls engaged on it. And again, if it were but done openly⁠—but it is always done deceitfully. ‘Ah, the origin of species, how interesting!’ ‘Oh, Lily takes such an interest in painting! And will you be going to the exhibition? How instructive!’ And the troika drives, and shows, and symphonies! ‘Oh! how remarkable! My Lily is mad on music.’ ‘And why don’t you share these convictions?’ and boating⁠ ⁠… but their one thought is: ‘take me, take me!’ ‘take my Lily!’ ‘Or try⁠—at least!’ Oh, what an abomination! What falsehood!’ he concluded, finishing his tea and beginning to put away the tea things.

“You know,” he began while packing the tea and sugar into his bag. “The domination of women from which the world suffers all arises from this.”

“What ‘domination of women’?” I asked. “The rights, the legal privileges, are on the man’s side.”

“Yes, yes! That’s just it,” he interrupted me. “That’s just what I want to say. It explains the extraordinary phenomenon that on the one hand woman is reduced to the lowest stage of humiliation, while on the other she dominates. Just like the Jews: as they pay us back for their oppression by a financial domination, so it is with women. ‘Ah, you want us to be traders only⁠—all right, as traders we will dominate you!’ say the Jews. ‘Ah, you want us to be merely objects of sensuality⁠—all right, as objects of sensuality we will enslave you,’ say the women. Woman’s lack of rights arises not from the fact that she must not vote or be a judge⁠—to be occupied with such affairs is no privilege⁠—but from the fact that she is not man’s equal in sexual intercourse and has not the right to use a man or abstain from him as she likes⁠—is not allowed to choose a man at her pleasure instead of being chosen by him. You say that is monstrous. Very well! Then a man must not have those rights either. As it is at present, a woman is deprived of that right while a man has it. And to make up for that right she acts on man’s sensuality, and through his sensuality subdues him so that he only chooses formally, while in reality it is she who chooses. And once she has obtained these means she abuses them and acquires a terrible power over people.”

“But where is this special power?” I inquired.

“Where is it? Why everywhere, in everything! Go round the shops in any big town. There are goods worth millions and you cannot estimate the human labour expended on them, and look whether in nine-tenths of these shops there is anything for the use of men. All the luxuries of life are demanded and maintained by women.

“Count all the factories. An enormous proportion of them produce useless ornaments, carriages, furniture, and trinkets, for women. Millions of people, generations of slaves, perish at hard labour in factories merely to satisfy woman’s caprice. Women, like queens, keep nine-tenths of mankind in bondage to heavy labour. And all because they have been abased and deprived of equal rights with men. And they revenge themselves by acting on our sensuality and catch us in their nets. Yes, it all comes of that.

“Women have made of themselves such an instrument for acting upon our sensuality that a man cannot quietly consort with a woman. As soon as a man approaches a woman he succumbs to her stupefying influence and becomes intoxicated and crazy. I used formerly to feel uncomfortable and uneasy when I saw a lady dressed up for a ball, but now I am simply frightened and plainly see her as something dangerous and illicit. I want to call a policeman and ask for protection from the peril, and demand that the dangerous object be removed and put away.

“Ah, you are laughing!” he shouted at me, “but it is not at all a joke. I am sure a time will come, and perhaps very soon, when people will understand this and will wonder how a society could exist in which actions were permitted which so disturb social tranquillity as those adornments of the body directly evoking sensuality, which we tolerate for women in our society. Why, it’s like setting all sorts of traps along the paths and promenades⁠—it is even worse! Why is gambling forbidden while women in costumes which evoke sensuality are not forbidden? They are a thousand times more dangerous!”

“Well, you see, I was caught that way. I was what is called in love. I not only imagined her to be the height of perfection, but during the time of our engagement I regarded myself also as the height of perfection. You know there is no rascal who cannot, if he tries, find rascals in some respects worse than himself, and who consequently cannot find reasons for pride and self-satisfaction. So it was with me: I was not marrying for money⁠—covetousness had nothing to do with it⁠—unlike the majority of my acquaintances who married for money or connections⁠—I was rich, she was poor. That was one thing. Another thing I prided myself on was that while others married intending to continue in future the same polygamous life they had lived before marriage, I was firmly resolved to be monogamous after marriage, and there was no limit to my pride on that score. Yes, I was a dreadful pig and imagined myself to be an angel.

“Our engagement did not last long. I cannot now think of that time without shame! What nastiness! Love is supposed to be spiritual and not sensual. Well, if the love is spiritual, a spiritual communion, then that spiritual communion should find expression in words, in conversations, in discourse. There was nothing of the kind. It used to be dreadfully difficult to talk when we were left alone. It was the labour of Sisyphus. As soon as we thought of something to say and said it, we had again to be silent, devising something else. There was nothing to talk about. All that could be said about the life that awaited us, our arrangements and plans, had been said, and what was there more? Now if we had been animals we should have known that speech was unnecessary; but here on the contrary it was necessary to speak, and there was nothing to say, because we were not occupied with what finds vent in speech. And moreover there was that ridiculous custom of giving sweets, of coarse gormandizing on sweets, and all those abominable preparations for the wedding: remarks about the house, the bedroom, beds, wraps, dressing gowns, underclothing, costumes. You must remember that if one married according to the injunctions of Domostróy, as that old fellow was saying, then the feather beds, the trousseau, and the bedstead are all but details appropriate to the sacrament. But among us, when of ten who marry there are certainly nine who not only do not believe in the sacrament, but do not even believe that what they are doing entails certain obligations⁠—where scarcely one man out of a hundred has not been married before, and of fifty scarcely one is not preparing in advance to be unfaithful to his wife at every convenient opportunity⁠—when the majority regard the going to church as only a special condition for obtaining possession of a certain woman⁠—think what a dreadful significance all these details acquire. They show that the whole business is only that; they show that it is a kind of sale. An innocent girl is sold to a profligate, and the sale is accompanied by certain formalities.”

“That is how everybody marries and that is how I married, and the much vaunted honeymoon began. Why, its very name is vile!” he hissed viciously. “In Paris I once went to see the sights, and noticing a bearded woman and a water-dog on a sign board, I entered the show. It turned out to be nothing but a man in a woman’s low-necked dress, and a dog done up in a walrus skin and swimming in a bath. It was very far from being interesting; but as I was leaving, the showman politely saw me out and, addressing the public at the entrance, pointed to me and said, ‘Ask the gentleman whether it is not worth seeing! Come in, come in, one franc apiece!’ I felt ashamed to say it was not worth seeing, and the showman had probably counted on that. It must be the same with those who have experienced the abomination of a honeymoon and who do not disillusion others. Neither did I disillusion anyone, but I do not now see why I should not tell the truth. Indeed, I think it needful to tell the truth about it. One felt awkward, ashamed, repelled, sorry, and above all dull, intolerably dull! It was something like what I felt when I learned to smoke⁠—when I felt sick and the saliva gathered in my mouth and I swallowed it and pretended that it was very pleasant. Pleasure from smoking, just as from that, if it comes at all, comes later. The husband must cultivate that vice in his wife in order to derive pleasure from it.”

“Why vice?” I said. “You are speaking of the most natural human functions.”

“Natural?” he said. “Natural? No, I may tell you that I have come to the conclusion that it is, on the contrary, unnatural. Yes, quite unnatural. As a child, as an unperverted girl.

“Natural, you say!

“It is natural to eat. And to eat is, from the very beginning enjoyable, easy, pleasant, and not shameful; but this is horrid, shameful, and painful. No, it is unnatural! And an unspoiled girl, as I have convinced myself, always hates it.”

“But how,” I asked, “would the human race continue?”

“Yes, would not the human race perish?” he said, irritably and ironically, as if he had expected this familiar and insincere objection. “Teach abstention from childbearing so that English lords may always gorge themselves⁠—that is all right. Preach it for the sake of greater pleasure⁠—that is all right; but just hint at abstention from childbearing in the name of morality⁠—and, my goodness, what a rumpus⁠ ⁠… ! Isn’t there a danger that the human race may die out because they want to cease to be swine? But forgive me! This light is unpleasant, may I shade it?” he said, pointing to the lamp. I said I did not mind; and with the haste with which he did everything, he got up on the seat and drew the woollen shade over the lamp.

“All the same,” I said, “if everyone thought this the right thing to do, the human race would cease to exist.”

He did not reply at once.

“You ask how the human race will continue to exist,” he said, having again sat down in front of me, and spreading his legs far apart he leant his elbows on his knees. “Why should it continue?”

“Why? If not, we should not exist.”

“And why should we exist?”

“Why? In order to live, of course.”

“But why live? If life has no aim, if life is given us for life’s sake, there is no reason for living. And if it is so, then the Schopenhauers, the Hartmanns, and all the Buddhists as well, are quite right. But if life has an aim, it is clear that it ought to come to an end when that aim is reached. And so it turns out,” he said with a noticeable agitation, evidently prizing his thought very highly. “So it turns out. Just think: if the aim of humanity is goodness, righteousness, love⁠—call it what you will⁠—if it is what the prophets have said, that all mankind should be united together in love, that the spears should be beaten into pruning hooks and so forth, what is it that hinders the attainment of this aim? The passions hinder it. Of all the passions the strongest, cruellest, and most stubborn is the sex passion, physical love; and therefore if the passions are destroyed, including the strongest of them⁠—physical love⁠—the prophecies will be fulfilled, mankind will be brought into a unity, the aim of human existence will be attained, and there will be nothing further to live for. As long as mankind exists the ideal is before it, and of course not the rabbits’ and pigs’ ideal of breeding as fast as possible, nor that of monkeys or Parisians⁠—to enjoy sex passion in the most refined manner, but the ideal of goodness attained by continence and purity. Towards that people have always striven and still strive. You see what follows.

“It follows that physical love is a safety valve. If the present generation has not attained its aim, it has not done so because of its passions, of which the sex passion is the strongest. And if the sex passion endures there will be a new generation and consequently the possibility of attaining the aim in the next generation. If the next one does not attain it, then the next after that may, and so on, till the aim is attained, the prophecies fulfilled, and mankind attains unity. If not, what would result? If one admits that God created men for the attainment of a certain aim, and created them mortal but sexless, or created them immortal, what would be the result? Why, if they were mortal but without the sex passion, and died without attaining the aim, God would have had to create new people to attain his aim. If they were immortal, let us grant that (though it would be more difficult for the same people to correct their mistakes and approach perfection than for those of another generation) they might attain that aim after many thousands of years, but then what use would they be afterwards? What could be done with them? It is best as it is.⁠ ⁠… But perhaps you don’t like that way of putting it? Perhaps you are an evolutionist? It comes to the same thing. The highest race of animals, the human race, in order to maintain itself in the struggle with other animals ought to unite into one whole like a swarm of bees, and not breed continually; it should bring up sexless members as the bees do; that is, again, it should strive towards continence and not towards inflaming desire⁠—to which the whole system of our life is now directed.” He paused. “The human race will cease? But can anyone doubt it, whatever his outlook on life may be? Why, it is as certain as death. According to all the teaching of the Church the end of the world will come, and according to all the teaching of science the same result is inevitable.”

“In our world it is just the reverse: even if a man does think of continence while he is a bachelor, once married he is sure to think continence no longer necessary. You know those wedding tours⁠—the seclusion into which, with their parents’ consent, the young couple go⁠—are nothing but licensed debauchery. But a moral law avenges itself when it is violated. Hard as I tried to make a success of my honeymoon, nothing came of it. It was horrid, shameful, and dull, the whole time. And very soon I began also to experience a painful, oppressive feeling. That began very quickly. I think it was on the third or fourth day that I found my wife depressed. I began asking her the reason and embracing her, which in my view was all she could want, but she removed my arm and began to cry. What about? She could not say. But she felt sad and distressed. Probably her exhausted nerves suggested to her the truth as to the vileness of our relation but she did not know how to express it. I began to question her, and she said something about feeling sad without her mother. It seemed to me that this was untrue, and I began comforting her without alluding to her mother. I did not understand that she was simply depressed and her mother was merely an excuse. But she immediately took offence because I had not mentioned her mother, as though I did not believe her. She told me she saw that I did not love her. I reproached her with being capricious, and suddenly her face changed entirely and instead of sadness it expressed irritation, and with the most venomous words she began accusing me of selfishness and cruelty. I gazed at her. Her whole face showed complete coldness and hostility, almost hatred. I remember how horror-struck I was when I saw this. ‘How? What?’ I thought. ‘Love is a union of souls⁠—and instead of that there is this! Impossible, this is not she!’ I tried to soften her, but encountered such an insuperable wall of cold virulent hostility that before I had time to turn round I too was seized with irritation and we said a great many unpleasant things to one another. The impression of that first quarrel was dreadful. I call it a quarrel, but it was not a quarrel but only the disclosure of the abyss that really existed between us. Amorousness was exhausted by the satisfaction of sensuality and we were left confronting one another in our true relation: that is, as two egotists quite alien to each other who wished to get as much pleasure as possible each from the other. I call what took place between us a quarrel, only the consequence of the cessation of sensuality⁠—revealing our real relations to one another. I did not understand that this cold and hostile relation was our normal state, I did not understand it because at first this hostile attitude was very soon concealed from us by a renewal of redistilled sensuality, that is by lovemaking.

“I thought we had quarrelled and made it up again, and that it would not recur. But during that same first month of honeymoon a period of satiety soon returned, we again ceased to need one another, and another quarrel supervened. This second quarrel struck me even more painfully than the first. ‘So the first one was not an accident but was bound to happen and will happen again,’ I thought. I was all the more staggered by that second quarrel because it arose from such an impossible pretext. It had something to do with money, which I never grudged and could certainly not have grudged to my wife. I only remember that she gave the matter such a twist that some remark of mine appeared to be an expression of a desire on my part to dominate over her by means of money, to which I was supposed to assert an exclusive right⁠—it was something impossibly stupid, mean, and not natural either to me or to her. I became exasperated, and upbraided her with lack of consideration for me. She accused me of the same thing, and it all began again. In her words and in the expression of her face and eyes I again noticed the cruel cold hostility that had so staggered me before. I had formerly quarrelled with my brother, my friends, and my father, but there had never, I remember, been the special venomous malice which there was here. But after a while this mutual hatred was screened by amorousness, that is sensuality, and I still consoled myself with the thought that these two quarrels had been mistakes and could be remedied. But then a third and a fourth quarrel followed and I realized that it was not accidental, but that it was bound to happen and would happen so, and I was horrified at the prospect before me. At the same time I was tormented by the terrible thought that I alone lived on such bad terms with my wife, so unlike what I had expected, whereas this did not happen between other married couples. I did not know then that it is our common fate, but that everybody imagines, just as I did, that is their peculiar misfortune, and everyone conceals this exceptional and shameful misfortune not only from others but even from himself and does not acknowledge it to himself.

“It began during the first days and continued all the time, ever increasing and growing more obdurate. In the depths of my soul I felt from the first weeks that I was lost, that things had not turned out as I expected, that marriage was not only no happiness but a very heavy burden; but like everybody else I did not wish to acknowledge this to myself (I should not have acknowledged it even now but for the end that followed) and I concealed it not only from others but from myself too. Now I am astonished that I failed to see my real position. It might have been seen from the fact that the quarrels began on pretexts it was impossible to remember when they were over. Our reason was not quick enough to devise sufficient excuses for the animosity that always existed between us. But more striking still was the insufficiency of the excuses for our reconciliations. Sometimes there were words, explanations, even tears, but sometimes⁠ ⁠… oh! it is disgusting even now to think of it⁠—after the most cruel words to one another, came sudden silent glances, smiles, kisses, embraces.⁠ ⁠… Faugh, how horrid! How is it I did not then see all the vileness of it?”

Two fresh passengers entered and settled down on the farthest seats. He was silent while they were seating themselves, but as soon as they had settled down continued, evidently not for a moment losing the thread of his idea.

“You know, what is vilest about it,” he began, “is that in theory love is something ideal and exalted, but in practice it is something abominable, swinish, which it is horrid and shameful to mention or remember. It is not for nothing that nature has made it disgusting and shameful. And if it is disgusting and shameful one must understand that it is so. But here, on the contrary, people pretend that what is disgusting and shameful is beautiful and lofty. What were the first symptoms of my love? Why, that I gave way to animal excesses, not only without shame but being somehow even proud of the possibility of these physical excesses, and without in the least considering either her spiritual or even her physical life. I wondered what embittered us against one another, yet it was perfectly simple: that animosity was nothing but the protest of our human nature against the animal nature that overpowered it.

“I was surprised at our enmity to one another; yet it could not have been otherwise. That hatred was nothing but the mutual hatred of accomplices in a crime⁠—both for the incitement to the crime and for the part taken in it. What was it but a crime when she, poor thing, became pregnant in the first month and our swinish connection continued? You think I am straying from my subject? Not at all! I am telling you how I killed my wife. They asked me at the trial with what and how I killed her. Fools! They thought I killed her with a knife, on the 5th of October. It was not then I killed her, but much earlier. Just as they are all now killing, all, all.⁠ ⁠…”

“But with what?” I asked.

“That is just what is so surprising, that nobody wants to see what is so clear and evident, what doctors ought to know and preach, but are silent about. Yet the matter is very simple. Men and women are created like the animals so that physical love is followed by pregnancy and then by suckling⁠—conditions under which physical love is bad for the woman and for her child. There are an equal number of men and women. What follows from this? It seems clear, and no great wisdom is needed to draw the conclusion that animals do, namely, the need of continence. But no. Science has been able to discover some kind of leukocytes that run about in the blood, and all sorts of useless nonsense, but cannot understand that. At least one does not hear of science teaching it!

“And so a woman has only two ways out: one is to make a monster of herself, to destroy and go on destroying within herself to such a degree as may be necessary the capacity of being a woman, that is, a mother, in order that a man may quietly and continuously get his enjoyment; the other way out⁠—and it is not even a way out but a simple, coarse, and direct violation of the laws of nature⁠—practiced in all so-called decent families⁠—is that, contrary to her nature, the woman must be her husband’s mistress even while she is pregnant or nursing⁠—must be what not even an animal descends to, and for which her strength is insufficient. That is what causes nerve troubles and hysteria in our class, and among the peasants causes what they call being ‘possessed by the devil’⁠—epilepsy. You will notice that no pure maidens are ever ‘possessed,’ but only married women living with their husbands. That is so here, and it is just the same in Europe. All the hospitals for hysterical women are full of those who have violated nature’s law. The epileptics and Charcot’s patients are complete wrecks, you know, but the world is full of half-crippled women. Just think of it, what a great work goes on within a woman when she conceives or when she is nursing an infant. That is growing which will continue us and replace us. And this sacred work is violated⁠—by what? It is terrible to think of it! And they prate about the freedom and the rights of women! It is as if cannibals fattened their captives to be eaten, and at the same time declared that they were concerned about their prisoners’ rights and freedom.”

All this was new to me and startled me.

“What is one to do? If that is so,” I said, “it means that one may love one’s wife once in two years, yet men⁠ ⁠…”

“Men must!” he interrupted me. “It is again those precious priests of science who have persuaded everybody of that. Imbue a man with the idea that he requires vodka, tobacco, or opium, and all these things will be indispensable to him. It seems that God did not understand what was necessary and therefore, omitting to consult those wizards, arranged things badly. You see matters do not tally. They have decided that it is essential for a man to satisfy his desires, and the bearing and nursing of children comes and interferes with it and hinders the satisfaction of that need. What is one to do then? Consult the wizards! They will arrange it. And they have devised something. Oh! when will those wizards with their deceptions be dethroned? It is high time. It has come to such a point that people go mad and shoot themselves and all because of this. How could it be otherwise? The animals seem to know that their progeny continue their race, and they keep it to a certain law in this matter. Man alone neither knows it nor wishes to know, but is concerned only to get all the pleasure he can. And who is doing that? The lord of nature⁠—man! Animals, you see, only come together at times when they are capable of producing progeny, but the filthy lord of nature is at it any time if only it pleases him! And as if that were not sufficient, he exalts this apish occupation into the most precious pearl of creation, into love. In the name of this love, that is, this filth, he destroys⁠—what? why, half the human race! All the women who might help the progress of mankind towards truth and goodness he converts, for the sake of his pleasure, into enemies instead of helpmates. See what it is that everywhere impedes the forward movement of mankind. Women! and why are they what they are? Only because of that. Yes, yes⁠ ⁠…” he repeated several times, and began to move about, and to get out his cigarettes and to smoke, evidently trying to calm himself.

“I too lived like a pig of that sort,” he continued in his former tone. “The worst thing about it was that while living that horrid life I imagined that, because I did not go after other women, I was living an honest family life, that I was a moral man and in no way blameworthy, and if quarrels occurred it was her fault and resulted from her character.

“Of course the fault was not hers. She was like everybody else⁠—like the majority of women. She had been brought up as the position of women in our society requires, and as therefore all women of the leisured classes without exception are brought up and cannot help being brought up. People talk about some new kind of education for women. It is all empty words: their education is exactly what it has to be in view of our unfeigned, real, general opinion about women.

“The education of women will always correspond to men’s opinion about them. Don’t we know how men regard women: Wein, Weib und Gesang, and what the poets say in their verses? Take all poetry, all pictures and sculpture, beginning with love poems and the nude Venuses and Phrynes, and you will see that woman is an instrument of enjoyment; she is so on the Trubá and the Grachévka,280 and also at the Court281 balls. And note the devil’s cunning: if they are here for enjoyment and pleasure, let it be known that it is pleasure and that woman is a sweet morsel. But no, first the knights-errant declare that they worship women (worship her, and yet regard her as an instrument of enjoyment), and now people assure us that they respect women. Some give up their places to her, pick up her handkerchief; others acknowledge her right to occupy all positions and to take part in the government, and so on. They do all that, but their outlook on her remains the same. She is a means of enjoyment. Her body is a means of enjoyment. And she knows this. It is just as it is with slavery. Slavery, you know, is nothing else than the exploitation by some of the unwilling labour of many. Therefore to get rid of slavery it is necessary that people should not wish to profit by the forced labour of others and should consider it a sin and a shame. But they go and abolish the external form of slavery and arrange so that one can no longer buy and sell slaves, and they imagine and assure themselves that slavery no longer exists, and do not see or wish to see that it does, because people still want and consider it good and right to exploit the labour of others. And as long as they consider that good, there will always be people stronger or more cunning than others who will succeed in doing it. So it is with the emancipation of woman: the enslavement of woman lies simply in the fact that people desire and think it good, to avail themselves of her as a tool of enjoyment. Well, and they liberate woman, give her all sorts of rights equal to man, but continue to regard her as an instrument of enjoyment, and so educate her in childhood and afterwards by public opinion. And there she is, still the same humiliated and depraved slave, and the man still a depraved slave owner.

“They emancipate women in universities and in law courts, but continue to regard her as an object of enjoyment. Teach her, as she is taught among us, to regard herself as such, and she will always remain an inferior being. Either with the help of those scoundrels the doctors she will prevent the conception of offspring⁠—that is, will be a complete prostitute, lowering herself not to the level of an animal but to the level of a thing⁠—or she will be what the majority of women are, mentally diseased, hysterical, unhappy, and lacking capacity for spiritual development. High schools and universities cannot alter that. It can only be changed by a change in men’s outlook on women and women’s way of regarding themselves. It will change only when woman regards virginity as the highest state, and does not, as at present, consider the highest state of a human being a shame and a disgrace. While that is not so, the ideal of every girl, whatever her education may be, will continue to be to attract as many men as possible, as many males as possible, so as to have the possibility of choosing.

“But the fact that one of them knows more mathematics, and another can play the harp, makes no difference. A woman is happy and attains all she can desire when she has bewitched a man. Therefore the chief aim of a woman is to be able to bewitch him. So it has been and will be. So it is in her maiden life in our society, and so it continues to be in her married life. For a maiden this is necessary in order to have a choice, for the married woman in order to have power over her husband.

“The one thing that stops this or at any rate suppresses it for a time, is children, and then only if the mother is not a monster, that is, if she nurses them herself. But here the doctors again come in.

“My wife, who wanted to nurse, and did nurse the four later children herself, happened to be unwell after the birth of her first child. And those doctors, who cynically undressed her and felt her all over⁠—for which I had to thank them and pay them money⁠—those dear doctors considered that she must not nurse the child; and that first time she was deprived of the only means which might have kept her from coquetry. We engaged a wet nurse, that is, we took advantage of the poverty, the need, and the ignorance of a woman, tempted her away from her own baby to ours, and in return gave her a fine headdress with gold lace.282 But that is not the point. The point is that during that time when my wife was free from pregnancy and suckling, the feminine coquetry which had lain dormant within her manifested itself with particular force. And coinciding with this the torments of jealousy rose up in me with a special force. They tortured me all my married life, as they cannot but torture all husbands who live with their wives and I did with mine, that is, immorally.”

“During the whole of my married life I never ceased to be tormented by jealousy, but there were periods when I specially suffered from it. One of these periods was when, after the birth of our first child, the doctors forbade my wife to nurse it. I was particularly jealous at that time, in the first place because my wife was experiencing that unrest natural to a mother which is sure to be aroused when the natural course of life is needlessly violated; and secondly, because seeing how easily she abandoned her moral obligations as a mother, I rightly though unconsciously concluded that it would be equally easy for her to disregard her duty as a wife, especially as she was quite well and in spite of the precious doctors’ prohibition was able to nurse her later children admirably.”

“I see you don’t like doctors,” I said, noticing a peculiarly malevolent tone in his voice whenever he alluded to them.

“It is not a case of liking or disliking. They have ruined my life as they have ruined and are ruining the lives of thousands and hundreds of thousands of human beings, and I cannot help connecting the effect with the cause. I understand that they want to earn money like lawyers and others, and I would willingly give them half my income, and all who realize what they are doing would willingly give them half of their possessions, if only they would not interfere with our family life and would never come near us. I have not collected evidence, but I know dozens of cases (there are any number of them!) where they have killed a child in its mother’s womb asserting that she could not give it birth, though she has had children quite safely later on; or they have killed the mother on the pretext of performing some operation. No one reckons these murders any more than they reckoned the murders of the Inquisition, because it is supposed that it is done for the good of mankind. It is impossible to number all the crimes they commit. But all those crimes are as nothing compared to the moral corruption of materialism they introduce into the world, especially through women.

“I don’t lay stress on the fact that if one is to follow their instructions, then on account of the infection which exists everywhere and in everything, people would not progress towards greater unity but towards separation; for according to their teaching we ought all to sit apart and not remove the carbolic atomizer from our mouths (though now they have discovered that even that is of no avail). But that does not matter either. The principal poison lies in the demoralization of the world, especially of women.

“Today one can no longer say: ‘You are not living rightly, live better.’ One can’t say that, either to oneself or to anyone else. If you live a bad life it is caused by the abnormal functioning of your nerves, etc. So you must go to them, and they will prescribe eight penn’orth of medicine from a chemist, which you must take!

“You get still worse: then more medicine and the doctor again. An excellent trick!

“That however is not the point. All I wish to say is that she nursed her babies perfectly well and that only her pregnancy and the nursing of her babies saved me from the torments of jealousy. Had it not been for that it would all have happened sooner. The children saved me and her. In eight years she had five children and nursed all except the first herself.”

“And where are your children now?” I asked.

“The children?” he repeated in a frightened voice.

“Forgive me, perhaps it is painful for you to be reminded of them.”

“No, it does not matter. My wife’s sister and brother have taken them. They would not let me have them. I gave them my estate, but they did not give them up to me. You know I am a sort of lunatic. I have left them now and am going away. I have seen them, but they won’t let me have them because I might bring them up so that they would not be like their parents, and they have to be just like them. Oh well, what is to be done? Of course they won’t let me have them and won’t trust me. Besides, I do not know whether I should be able to bring them up. I think not. I am a ruin, a cripple. Still I have one thing in me. I know! Yes, that is true, I know what others are far from knowing.

“Yes, my children are living and growing up just such savages as everybody around them. I saw them, saw them three times. I can do nothing for them, nothing. I am now going to my place in the south. I have a little house and a small garden there.

“Yes, it will be a long time before people learn what I know. How much of iron and other metal there is in the sun and the stars is easy to find out, but anything that exposes our swinishness is difficult, terribly difficult!

“You at least listen to me, and I am grateful for that.”

“You mentioned my children. There again, what terrible lies are told about children! Children a blessing from God, a joy! That is all a lie. It was so once upon a time, but now it is not so at all. Children are a torment and nothing else. Most mothers feel this quite plainly, and sometimes inadvertently say so. Ask most mothers of our propertied classes and they will tell you that they do not want to have children for fear of their falling ill and dying. They don’t want to nurse283 them if they do have them, for fear of becoming too much attached to them and having to suffer. The pleasure a baby gives them by its loveliness, its little hands and feet, and its whole body, is not as great as the suffering caused by the very fear of its possibly falling ill and dying, not to speak of its actual illness or death. After weighing the advantages and disadvantages it seems disadvantageous, and therefore undesirable, to have children. They say this quite frankly and boldly, imagining that these feelings of theirs arise from their love of children, a good and laudable feeling of which they are proud. They do not notice that by this reflection they plainly repudiate love, and only affirm their own selfishness. They get less pleasure from a baby’s loveliness than suffering from fear on its account, and therefore the baby they would love is not wanted. They do not sacrifice themselves for a beloved being, but sacrifice a being whom they might love, for their own sakes.

“It is clear that this is not love but selfishness. But one has not the heart to blame them⁠—the mothers in well-to-do families⁠—for that selfishness, when one remembers how dreadfully they suffer on account of their children’s health, again thanks to the influence of those same doctors among our well-to-do classes. Even now, when I do but remember my wife’s life and the condition she was in during the first years when we had three or four children and she was absorbed in them, I am seized with horror! We led no life at all, but were in a state of constant danger, of escape from it, recurring danger, again followed by a desperate struggle and another escape⁠—always as if we were on a sinking ship. Sometimes it seemed to me that this was done on purpose and that she pretended to be anxious about the children in order to subdue me. It solved all questions in her favour with such tempting simplicity. It sometimes seemed as if all she did and said on these occasions was pretence. But no! She herself suffered terribly, and continually tormented herself about the children and their health and illnesses. It was torture for her and for me too; and it was impossible for her not to suffer. After all, the attachment to her children, the animal need of feeding, caressing, and protecting them, was there as with most women, but there was not the lack of imagination and reason that there is in animals. A hen is not afraid of what may happen to her chick, does not know all the diseases that may befall it, and does not know all those remedies with which people imagine that they can save from illness and death. And for a hen her young are not a source of torment. She does for them what it is natural and pleasurable for her to do; her young ones are a pleasure to her. When a chick falls ill her duties are quite definite: she warms and feeds it. And doing this she knows that she is doing all that is necessary. If her chick dies she does not ask herself why it died, or where it has gone to; she cackles for a while, and then leaves off and goes on living as before. But for our unfortunate women, my wife among them, it was not so. Not to mention illnesses and how to cure them, she was always hearing and reading from all sides endless rules for the rearing and educating of children, which were continually being superseded by others. This is the way to feed a child: feed it in this way, on such a thing; no, not on such a thing, but in this way; clothes, drinks, baths, putting to bed, walking, fresh air⁠—for all these things we, especially she, heard of new rules every week, just as if children had only begun to be born into the world since yesterday. And if a child that had not been fed or bathed in the right way or at the right time fell ill, it appeared that we were to blame for not having done what we ought.

“That was so while they were well. It was a torment even then. But if one of them happened to fall ill, it was all up: a regular hell! It is supposed that illness can be cured and that there is a science about it, and people⁠—doctors⁠—who know about it. Ah, but not all of them know⁠—only the very best. When a child is ill one must get hold of the very best one, the one who saves, and then the child is saved; but if you don’t get that doctor, or if you don’t live in the place where that doctor lives, the child is lost. This was not a creed peculiar to her, it is the creed of all the women of our class, and she heard nothing else from all sides. Catherine Semënovna lost two children because Iván Zakhárych was not called in in time, but Iván Zakhárych saved Mary Ivánovna’s eldest girl, and the Petróvs moved in time to various hotels by the doctor’s advice, and the children remained alive; but if they had not been segregated the children would have died. Another who had a delicate child moved south by the doctor’s advice and saved the child. How can she help being tortured and agitated all the time, when the lives of the children for whom she has an animal attachment depend on her finding out in time that what Iván Zakhárych will say! But what Iván Zakhárych will say nobody knows, and he himself least of all, for he is well aware that he knows nothing and therefore cannot be of any use, but just shuffles about at random so that people should not cease to believe that he knows something or other. You see, had she been wholly an animal she would not have suffered so, and if she had been quite a human being she would have had faith in God and would have said and thought, as a believer does: ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. One can’t escape from God.’

“Our whole life with the children, for my wife and consequently for me, was not a joy but a torment. How could she help torturing herself? She tortured herself incessantly. Sometimes when we had just made peace after some scene of jealousy, or simply after a quarrel, and thought we should be able to live, to read, and to think a little, we had no sooner settled down to some occupation than the news came that Vásya was being sick, or Másha showed symptoms of dysentery, or Andrúsha had a rash, and there was an end to peace, it was not life anymore. Where was one to drive to? For what doctor? How isolate the child? And then it’s a case of enemas, temperatures, medicines, and doctors. Hardly is that over before something else begins. We had no regular settled family life but only, as I have already said, continual escapes from imaginary and real dangers. It is like that in most families nowadays, you know, but in my family it was especially acute. My wife was a child-loving and a credulous woman.

“So the presence of children not only failed to improve our life but poisoned it. Besides, the children were a new cause of dissension. As soon as we had children they became the means and the object of our discord, and more often the older they grew. They were not only the object of discord but the weapons of our strife. We used our children, as it were, to fight one another with. Each of us had a favourite weapon among them for our strife. I used to fight her chiefly through Vásya, the eldest boy, and she me through Lisa. Besides that, as they grew older and their characters became defined, it came about that they grew into allies whom each of us tried to draw to his or her side. They, poor things, suffered terribly from this, but we, with our incessant warfare, had no time to think of that. The girl was my ally, and the eldest boy, who resembled his mother and was her favourite, was often hateful to me.”

“Well, and so we lived. Our relations to one another grew more and more hostile and at last reached a stage where it was not disagreement that caused hostility but hostility that caused disagreement. Whatever she might say I disagreed with beforehand, and it was just the same with her.

“In the fourth year we both, it seemed, came to the conclusion that we could not understand one another. We no longer tried to bring any dispute to a conclusion. We invariably kept to our own opinions even about the most trivial questions, but especially about the children. As I now recall them the views I maintained were not at all so dear to me that I could not have given them up; but she was of the opposite opinion and to yield meant yielding to her, and that I could not do. It was the same with her. She probably considered herself quite in the right towards me, and as for me I always thought myself a saint towards her. When we were alone together we were doomed almost to silence, or to conversations such as I am convinced animals can carry on with one another: ‘What is the time? Time to go to bed. What is today’s dinner? Where shall we go? What is there in the papers? Send for the doctor; Másha has a sore throat.’ We only needed to go a hairsbreadth beyond this impossibly limited circle of conversation for irritation to flare up. We had collisions and acrimonious words about the coffee, a tablecloth, a trap, a lead at bridge,284 all of them things that could not be of any importance to either of us. In me at any rate there often raged a terrible hatred of her. Sometimes I watched her pouring out tea, swinging her leg, lifting a spoon to her mouth, smacking her lips and drawing in some liquid, and I hated her for these things as though they were the worst possible actions. I did not then notice that the periods of anger corresponded quite regularly and exactly to the periods of what we called love. A period of love⁠—then a period of animosity; an energetic period of love, then a long period of animosity; a weaker manifestation of love, and a shorter period of animosity. We did not then understand that this love and animosity were one and the same animal feeling only at opposite poles. To live like that would have been awful had we understood our position; but we neither understood nor saw it. Both salvation and punishment for man lie in the fact that if he lives wrongly he can befog himself so as not to see the misery of his position. And this we did. She tried to forget herself in intense and always hurried occupation with household affairs, busying herself with the arrangements of the house, her own and the children’s clothes, their lessons, and their health; while I had my own occupations: wine, my office duties, shooting, and cards. We were both continually occupied, and we both felt that the busier we were the nastier we might be to each other. ‘It’s all very well for you to grimace,’ I thought, ‘but you have harassed me all night with your scenes, and I have a meeting on.’ ‘It’s all very well for you,’ she not only thought but said, ‘but I have been awake all night with the baby.’ Those new theories of hypnotism, psychic diseases, and hysterics are not a simple folly, but a dangerous and repulsive one. Charcot would certainly have said that my wife was hysterical, and that I was abnormal, and he would no doubt have tried to cure me. But there was nothing to cure.

“Thus we lived in a perpetual fog, not seeing the condition we were in. And if what did happen had not happened, I should have gone on living so to old age and should have thought, when dying, that I had led a good life. I should not have realized the abyss of misery and horrible falsehood in which I wallowed.

“We were like two convicts hating each other and chained together, poisoning one another’s lives and trying not to see it. I did not then know that ninety-nine percent of married people live in a similar hell to the one I was in and that it cannot be otherwise. I did not then know this either about others or about myself.

“It is strange what coincidences there are in regular, or even in irregular, lives! Just when the parents find life together unendurable, it becomes necessary to move to town for the children’s education.”

He stopped, and once or twice gave vent to his strange sounds, which were now quite like suppressed sobs. We were approaching a station.

“What is the time?” he asked.

I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock.

“You are not tired?” he asked.

“No, but you are?”

“I am suffocating. Excuse me, I will walk up and down and drink some water.”

He went unsteadily through the carriage. I remained alone thinking over what he had said, and I was so engrossed in thought that I did not notice when he re-entered by the door at the other end of the carriage.

“Yes, I keep diverging,” he began. “I have thought much over it. I now see many things differently and I want to express it.

“Well, so we lived in town. In town a man can live for a hundred years without noticing that he has long been dead and has rotted away. He has no time to take account of himself, he is always occupied. Business affairs, social intercourse, health, art, the children’s health and their education. Now one has to receive so-and-so and so-and-so, go to see so-and-so and so-and-so; now one has to go and look at this, and hear this man or that woman. In town, you know, there are at any given moment one or two, or even three celebrities whom one must on no account miss seeing. Then one has to undergo a treatment oneself or get someone else attended to, then there are teachers, tutors, and governesses, but one’s own life is quite empty. Well, so we lived and felt less the painfulness of living together. Besides at first we had splendid occupations, arranging things in a new place, in new quarters; and we were also occupied in going from the town to the country and back to town again.

“We lived so through one winter, and the next there occurred, unnoticed by anyone, an apparently unimportant thing, but the cause of all that happened later.

“She was not well and the doctors told her not to have children, and taught her how to avoid it. To me it was disgusting. I struggled against it, but she with frivolous obstinacy insisted on having her own way and I submitted. The last excuse for our swinish life⁠—children⁠—was then taken away, and life became viler than ever.

“To a peasant, a labouring man, children are necessary; though it is hard for him to feed them, still he needs them, and therefore his marital relations have a justification. But to us who have children, more children are unnecessary; they are an additional care and expense, a further division of property, and a burden. So our swinish life has no justification. We either artificially deprive ourselves of children or regard them as a misfortune, the consequences of carelessness, and that is still worse.

“We have no justification. But we have fallen morally so low that we do not even feel the need of any justification.

“The majority of the present educated world devote themselves to this kind of debauchery without the least qualm of conscience.

“There is indeed nothing that can feel qualms, for conscience in our society is nonexistent, unless one can call public opinion and the criminal law a ‘conscience.’ In this case neither the one nor the other is infringed: there is no reason to be ashamed of public opinion for everybody acts in the same way⁠—Mary Pávlovna, Iván Zakhárych, and the rest. Why breed paupers or deprive oneself of the possibility of social life? There is no need to fear or be ashamed in face of the criminal law either. Those shameless hussies, or soldiers’ wives, throw their babies into ponds or wells, and they of course must be put into prison, but we do it all at the proper time and in a clean way.

“We lived like that for another two years. The means employed by those scoundrel-doctors evidently began to bear fruit; she became physically stouter and handsomer, like the late beauty of summer’s end. She felt this and paid attention to her appearance. She developed a provocative kind of beauty which made people restless. She was in the full vigour of a well fed and excited woman of thirty who is not bearing children. Her appearance disturbed people. When she passed men she attracted their notice. She was like a fresh, well fed harnessed horse, whose bridle has been removed. There was no bridle, as is the case with ninety-nine hundredths of our women. And I felt this⁠—and was frightened.”

He suddenly rose and sat down close to the window.

“Pardon me,” he muttered and, with his eyes fixed on the window, he remained silent for about three minutes. Then he sighed deeply and moved back to the seat opposite mine. His face was quite changed, his eyes looked pathetic, and his lips puckered strangely, almost as if he were smiling. “I am rather tired but I will go on with it. We have still plenty of time, it is not dawn yet. Ah, yes,” he began after lighting a cigarette, “She grew plumper after she stopped having babies, and her malady⁠—that everlasting worry about the children⁠—began to pass⁠ ⁠… at least not actually to pass, but she was it were woke up from an intoxication, came to herself, and saw that there was a whole divine world with its joys which she had forgotten, but a divine world she did not know how to live in and did not at all understand. ‘I must not miss it! Time is passing and won’t come back!’ So, I imagine, she thought, or rather felt, nor could she have thought or felt differently: she had been brought up in the belief that there was only one thing in the world worthy of attention⁠—love. She had married and received something of that love, but not nearly what had been promised and was expected. Even that had been accompanied by many disappointments and sufferings, and then this unexpected torment: so many children! The torments exhausted her. And then, thanks to the obliging doctors, she learned that it is possible to avoid having children. She was very glad, tried it, and became alive again for the one thing she knew⁠—for love. But love with a husband befouled by jealousy and all kinds of anger, was not longer the thing she wanted. She had visions of some other, clean, new love; at least I thought she had. And she began to look about her as if expecting something. I saw this and could not help feeling anxious. It happened again and again that while talking to me, as usual through other people⁠—that is, telling a third person what she meant for me⁠—she boldly, without remembering that she had expressed the opposite opinion an hour before, declared, though half-jokingly, that a mother’s cares are a fraud, and that it is not worthwhile to devote one’s life to children when one is young and can enjoy life. She gave less attention to the children, and less frenziedly than before, but gave more and more attention to herself, to her appearance (though she tried to conceal this), and to her pleasures, even to her accomplishments. She again enthusiastically took to the piano which she had quite abandoned, and it all began from that.”

He turned his weary eyes to the window again but, evidently making an effort, immediately continued once more.

“Yes, that man made his appearance⁠ ⁠…” he became confused and once or twice made that peculiar sound with his nose.

I could see that it was painful for him to name that man, to recall him, or speak about him. But he made an effort and, as if he had broken the obstacle that hindered him, continued resolutely.

“He was a worthless man in my opinion and according to my estimate. And not because of the significance he acquired in my life but because he really was so. However, the fact that he was a poor sort of fellow only served to show how irresponsible she was. If it had not been he then it would have been another. It had to be!”

Again he paused. “Yes, he was a musician, a violinist; not a professional, but a semiprofessional semi-society man.

“His father, a landowner, was a neighbor of my father’s. He had been ruined, and his children⁠—there were three boys⁠—had obtained settled positions; only this one, the youngest, had been handed over to his godmother in Paris. There he was sent to the Conservatoire because he had a talent for music, and he came out as a violinist and played at concerts. He was a man⁠ ⁠…” Having evidently intended to say something bad about him, Pózdnyshev restrained himself and rapidly said: “Well, I don’t really know how he lived, I only know that he returned to Russia that year and appeared in my house.

“With moist almond-shaped eyes, red smiling lips, a small waxed moustache, hair done in the latest fashion, and an insipidly pretty face, he was what women call “not bad looking.” His figure was weak though not misshapen, and he had a specially developed posterior, like a woman’s, or such as Hottentots are said to have. They too are reported to be musical. Pushing himself as far as possible into familiarity, but sensitive and always ready to yield at the slightest resistance, he maintained his dignity in externals, wore buttoned boots of a special Parisian fashion, bright-coloured ties, and other things foreigners acquire in Paris, which by their noticeable novelty always attract women. There was an affected external gaiety in his manner. That manner, you know, of speaking about everything in allusions and unfinished sentences, as if you knew it all, remembered it, and could complete it yourself.

“It was he with his music who was the cause of it all. You know at the trial the case was put as if it was all caused by jealousy. No such thing; that is, I don’t mean ‘no such thing,’ it was and yet it was not. At the trial it was decided that I was a wronged husband and that I had killed her while defending my outraged honour (that is the phrase they employ, you know). That is why I was acquitted. I tried to explain matters at the trial but they took it that I was trying to rehabilitate my wife’s honour.

“What my wife’s relations with that musician may have been has no meaning for me, or for her either. What has a meaning is what I have told you about⁠—my swinishness. The whole thing was an outcome of the terrible abyss between us of which I have told you⁠—that dreadful tension of mutual hatred which made the first excuse sufficient to produce a crisis. The quarrels between us had for some time past become frightful, and were all the more startling because they alternated with similarly intense animal passion.

“If he had not appeared there would have been someone else. If the occasion had not been jealousy it would have been something else. I maintain that all husbands who live as I did, must either live dissolutely, separate, or kill themselves or their wives as I have done. If there is anybody who has not done so, he is a rare exception. Before I ended as I did, I had several times been on the verge of suicide, and she too had repeatedly tried to poison herself.”

“Well, that is how things were going not long before it happened. We seemed to be living in a state of truce and had no reason to infringe it. Then we chanced to speak about a dog which I said had been awarded a medal at an exhibition. She remarked, ‘Not a medal, but an honourable mention.’ A dispute ensues. We jump from one subject to another, reproach one another, ‘Oh, that’s nothing new, it’s always been like that.’ ‘You said⁠ ⁠…’ ‘No, I didn’t say so.’ ‘Then I am telling lies!⁠ ⁠…’ You feel that at any moment that dreadful quarrelling which makes you wish to kill yourself or her will begin. You know it will begin immediately, and fear it like fire and therefore wish to restrain yourself, but your whole being is seized with fury. She being in the same or even a worse condition purposely misinterprets every word you say, giving it a wrong meaning. Her every word is venomous; where she alone knows that I am most sensitive, she stabs. It gets worse and worse. I shout: ‘Be quiet!’ or something of that kind.

“She rushes out of the room and into the nursery. I try to hold her back in order to finish what I was saying, to prove my point, and I seize her by the arm. She pretends that I have hurt her and screams: ‘Children, your father is striking me!’ I shout: ‘Don’t lie!’ ‘But it’s not the first time!’ she screams, or something like that. The children rush to her. She calms them down. I say, ‘Don’t sham!’ She says, ‘Everything is sham in your eyes, you would kill anyone and say they were shamming. Now I have understood you. That’s just what you want!’ ‘Oh, I wish you were dead as a dog!’ I shout. I remember how those dreadful words horrified me. I never thought I could utter such dreadful, coarse words, and am surprised that they escaped me. I shout them and rush away into my study and sit down and smoke. I hear her go out into the hall preparing to go away. I ask, ‘Where are you going to?’ She does not reply. ‘Well, devil take her,’ I say to myself, and go back to my study and lie down and smoke. A thousand different plans of how to revenge myself on her and get rid of her, and how to improve matters and go on as if nothing had happened, come into my head. I think all that and go on smoking and smoking. I think of running away from her, hiding myself, going to America. I get as far as dreaming of how I shall get rid of her, how splendid that will be, and how I shall unite with another woman⁠—quite different. I shall get rid of her either by her dying or by a divorce, and I plan how it is to be done. I notice that I am getting confused and not thinking of what is necessary, and to prevent myself from perceiving that my thoughts are not to the point I go on smoking.

“Life in the house goes on. The governess comes in and asks: ‘Where is madame? When will she be back?’ The footman asks whether he is to serve tea. I go to the dining room. The children, especially Lisa who already understands, gaze inquiringly and disapprovingly at me. We drink tea in silence. She has still not come back. The evening passes, she has not returned, and two different feelings alternate within me. Anger because she torments me and all the children by her absence which will end by her returning; and fear that she will not return but will do something to herself. I would go to fetch her, but where am I to look for her? At her sister’s? But it would be so stupid to go and ask. And it’s all the better: if she is bent on tormenting someone, let her torment herself. Besides, that is what she is waiting for; and next time it would be worse still. But suppose she is not with her sister but is doing something to herself, or has already done it! It’s past ten, past eleven! I don’t go to the bedroom⁠—it would be stupid to lie there alone waiting⁠—but I’ll not lie down here either. I wish to occupy my mind, to write a letter or to read, but I can’t do anything. I sit alone in my study, tortured, angry, and listening. It’s three o’clock, four o’clock, and she is not back. Towards morning I fall asleep. I wake up, she has still not come!

“Everything in the house goes on in the usual way, but all are perplexed and look at me inquiringly and reproachfully, considering me to be the cause of it all. And in me the same struggle still continues: anger that she is torturing me, and anxiety for her.

“At about eleven in the morning her sister arrives as her envoy. And the usual talk begins. ‘She is in a terrible state. What does it all mean?’ ‘After all, nothing has happened.’ I speak of her impossible character and say that I have not done anything.

“ ‘But, you know, it can’t go on like this,’ says her sister.

“ ‘It’s all her doing and not mine,’ I say. ‘I won’t take the first step. If it means separation, let it be separation.’

“My sister-in-law goes away having achieved nothing. I had boldly said that I would not take the first step; but after her departure, when I came out of my study and saw the children piteous and frightened, I was prepared to take the first step. I should be glad to do it, but I don’t know how. Again I pace up and down and smoke; at lunch I drink vodka and wine and attain what I unconsciously desire⁠—I no longer see the stupidity and humiliation of my position.

“At about three she comes. When she meets me she does not speak. I imagine that she has submitted, and begin to say that I had been provoked by her reproaches. She, with the same stern expression on her terribly harassed face, says that she has not come for explanations but to fetch the children, because we cannot live together. I begin telling her that the fault is not mine and that she provoked me beyond endurance. She looks severely and solemnly at me and says: ‘Do not say any more, you will repent it.’ I tell her that I cannot stand comedies. Then she cries out something I don’t catch, and rushes into her room. The key clicks behind her⁠—she has locked herself in. I try the door, but getting no answer, go away angrily. Half-an-hour later Lisa runs in crying. ‘What is it? Has anything happened?’ ‘We can’t hear mama.’ We go. I pull at the double doors with all my might. The bolt had not been firmly secured, and the two halves both open. I approach the bed, on which she is lying awkwardly in her petticoats and with a pair of high boots on. An empty opium bottle is on the table. She is brought to herself. Tears follow, and a reconciliation. No, not a reconciliation: in the heart of each there is still the old animosity, with the additional irritation produced by the pain of this quarrel which each attributes to the other. But one must of course finish it all somehow, and life goes on in the old way. And so the same kind of quarrel, and even worse ones, occurred continually: once a week, once a month, or at times every day. It was always the same. Once I had already procured a passport to go abroad⁠—the quarrel had continued for two days. But there was again a partial explanation, a partial reconciliation, and I did not go.

“So those were our relations when that man appeared. He arrived in Moscow⁠—his name is Trukhachévski⁠—and came to my house. It was in the morning. I received him. We had once been on familiar terms and he tried to maintain a familiar tone by using noncommittal expressions, but I definitely adopted a conventional tone and he at once submitted to it. I disliked him from the first glance. But curiously enough a strange and fatal force led me not to repulse him, not to keep him away, but on the contrary to invite him to the house. After all, what could have been simpler than to converse with him coldly, and say goodbye without introducing him to my wife? But no, as if purposely, I began talking about his playing, and said I had been told he had given up the violin. He replied that, on the contrary, he now played more than ever. He referred to the fact that there had been a time when I myself played. I said I had given it up but that my wife played well. It is an astonishing thing that from the first day, from the first hour of my meeting him, my relations with him were such as they might have been only after all that subsequently happened. There was something strained in them: I noticed every word, every expression he or I used, and attributed importance to them.

“I introduced him to my wife. The conversation immediately turned to music, and he offered to be of use to her by playing with her. My wife was, as usual of late, very elegant, attractive, and disquietingly beautiful. He evidently pleased her at first sight. Besides she was glad that she would have someone to accompany her on a violin, which she was so fond of that she used to engage a violinist from the theatre for the purpose; and her face reflected her pleasure. But catching sight of me she at once understood my feeling and changed her expression, and a game of mutual deception began. I smiled pleasantly to appear as if I liked it. He, looking at my wife as all immoral men look at pretty women, pretended that he was only interested in the subject of the conversation⁠—which no longer interested him at all; while she tried to seem indifferent, though my false smile of jealousy with which she was familiar, and his lustful gaze, evidently excited her. I saw that from their first encounter her eyes were particularly bright and, probably as a result of my jealousy, it seemed as if an electric current had been established between them, evoking as it were an identity of expressions, looks, and smiles. She blushed and he blushed. She smiled and he smiled. We spoke about music, Paris, and all sorts of trifles. Then he rose to go, and stood smilingly, holding his hat against his twitching thigh and looking now at her and now at me, as if in expectation of what we would do. I remember that instant just because at that moment I might not have invited him, and then nothing would have happened. But I glanced at him and at her and said silently to myself, ‘Don’t suppose that I am jealous, or that I am afraid of you,’ I added mentally addressing him, and I invited him to come some evening and bring his violin to play with my wife. She glanced at me with surprise, flushed, and as if frightened began to decline, saying that she did not play well enough. This refusal irritated me still more, and I insisted the more on his coming. I remember the curious feeling with which I looked at the back of his head, with the black hair parted in the middle contrasting with the white nape of his neck, as he went out with his peculiar springing gait suggestive of some kind of a bird. I could not conceal from myself that that man’s presence tormented me. ‘It depends on me,’ I reflected, ‘to act so as to see nothing more of him. But that would be to admit that I am afraid of him. No, I am not afraid of him; it would be too humiliating,’ I said to myself. And there in the anteroom, knowing that my wife heard me, I insisted that he should come that evening with his violin. He promised to do so, and left.

“In the evening he brought his violin and they played. But it took a long time to arrange matters⁠—they had not the music they wanted, and my wife could not without preparation play what they had. I was very fond of music and sympathized with their playing, arranging a music stand for him and turning over the pages. They played a few things, some songs without words, and a little sonata by Mozart. They played splendidly, and he had an exceptionally fine tone. Besides that, he had a refined and elevated taste not at all in correspondence with his character.

“He was of course a much better player than my wife, and he helped her, while at the same time politely praising her playing. He behaved himself very well. My wife seemed interested only in music and was very simple and natural. But though I pretended to be interested in the music I was tormented by jealousy all the evening.

“From the first moment his eyes met my wife’s I saw that the animal in each of them, regardless of all conditions of their position and of society, asked, ‘May I?’ and answered, ‘Oh yes, certainly.’ I saw that he had not at all expected to find my wife, a Moscow lady, so attractive, and that he was very pleased. For he had no doubt whatever that she was willing. The only crux was whether that unendurable husband could hinder them. Had I been pure I should not have understood this, but, like the majority of men, I had myself regarded women in that way before I married and therefore could read his mind like a manuscript. I was particularly tormented because I saw without doubt that she had no other feeling towards me than a continual irritation only occasionally interrupted by the habitual sensuality; but that this man⁠—by his external refinement and novelty and still more by his undoubtedly great talent for music, by the nearness that comes of playing together, and by the influence music, especially the violin, exercises on impressionable natures⁠—was sure not only to please but certainly and without the least hesitation to conquer, crush, bind her, twist her round his little finger and do whatever he like with her. I could not help seeing this and I suffered terribly. But for all that, or perhaps on account of it, some force obliged me against my will to be not merely polite but amiable to him. Whether I did it for my wife or for him, to show that I was not afraid of him, or whether I did it to deceive myself⁠—I don’t know, but I know that from the first I could not behave naturally with him. In order not to yield to my wish to kill him there and then, I had to make much of him. I gave him expensive wines at supper, went into raptures over his playing, spoke to him with a particularly amiable smile, and invited him to dine and play with my wife again the next Sunday. I told him I would ask a few friends who were fond of music to hear him. And so it ended.”

Greatly agitated, Pózdnyshev changed his position and emitted his peculiar sound.

“It is strange how the presence of that man acted on me,” he began again, with an evident effort to keep calm. “I come home from the Exhibition a day or two later, enter the anteroom, and suddenly feel something heavy, as if a stone had fallen on my heart, and I cannot understand what it is. It was that passing through the anteroom I noticed something which reminded me of him. I realized what it was only in my study, and went back to the anteroom to make sure. Yes, I was not mistaken, there was his overcoat. A fashionable coat, you know. (Though I did not realize it, I observed everything connected with him with extraordinary attention.) I inquire: sure enough he is there. I pass on to the dancing room, not through the drawing room but through the schoolroom. My daughter, Lisa, sits reading a book and the nurse sits with the youngest boy at the table, making a lid of some kind spin round. The door to the dancing room is shut but I hear the sound of a rhythmic arpeggio and his and her voices. I listen, but cannot make out anything.

“Evidently the sound of the piano is purposely made to drown the sound of their voices, their kisses⁠ ⁠… perhaps. My God! What was aroused in me! Even to think of the beast that then lived in me fills me with horror! My heart suddenly contracted, stopped, and then began to beat like a hammer. My chief feeling, a usual whenever I was enraged, was one of self pity. ‘In the presence of the children! of their nurse!’ thought I. Probably I looked awful, for Lisa gazed at me with strange eyes. ‘What am I to do?’ I asked myself. ‘Go in? I can’t: heaven only knows what I should do. But neither can I go away.’ The nurse looked at me as if she understood my position. ‘But it is impossible not to go in,’ I said to myself, and I quickly opened the door. He was sitting at the piano playing those arpeggios with his large white upturned fingers. She was standing in the curve of the piano, bending over some open music. She was the first to see or hear, and glanced at me. Whether she was frightened and pretended not to be, or whether she was really not frightened, anyway she did not start or move but only blushed, and that not at once.

“ ‘How glad I am that you have come: we have not decided what to play on Sunday,’ she said in a tone she would not have used to me had we been alone. This and her using the word ‘we’ of herself and him, filled me with indignation. I greeted him silently.

“He pressed my hand, and at once, with a smile which I thought distinctly ironic, began to explain that he had brought some music to practise for Sunday, but that they disagreed about what to play: a classical but more difficult piece, namely Beethoven’s sonata for the violin, or a few little pieces. It was all so simple and natural that there was nothing one could cavil at, yet I felt certain that it was all untrue and that they had agreed how to deceive me.

“One of the most distressing conditions of life for a jealous man (and everyone is jealous in our world) are certain society conventions which allow a man and a woman the greatest and most dangerous proximity. You would become a laughingstock to others if you tried to prevent such nearness at balls, or the nearness of doctors to their women patients, or of people occupied with art, sculpture, and especially music. A couple are occupied with the noblest of arts, music; this demands a certain nearness, and there is nothing reprehensible in that and only a stupid jealous husband can see anything undesirable in it. Yet everybody knows that it is by means of those very pursuits, especially of music, that the greater part of the adulteries in our society occur. I evidently confused them by the confusion I betrayed: for a long time I could not speak. I was like a bottle held upside down from which the water does not flow because it is too full. I wanted to abuse him and to turn him out, but again felt that I must treat him courteously and amiably. And I did so. I acted as though I approved of it all, and again because of the strange feeling which made me behave to him the more amiably the more his presence distressed me, I told him that I trusted his taste and advised her to do the same. He stayed as long as was necessary to efface the unpleasant impression caused by my sudden entrance⁠—looking frightened and remaining silent⁠—and then left, pretending that it was now decided what to play next day. I was however fully convinced that compared to what interested them the question of what to play was quite indifferent.

“I saw him out to the anteroom with special politeness. (How could one do less than accompany a man who had come to disturb the peace and destroy the happiness of a whole family?) And I pressed his soft white hand with particular warmth.”

“I did not speak to her all that day⁠—I could not. Nearness to her aroused in me such hatred of her that I was afraid of myself. At dinner in the presence of the children she asked me when I was going away. I had to go next week to the District Meetings of the Zemstvo. I told her the date. She asked whether I did not want anything for the journey. I did not answer but sat silent at table and then went in silence to my study. Latterly she used never to come to my room especially not at that time of day. I lay in my study filled with anger. Suddenly I heard her familiar step, and the terrible, monstrous idea entered my head that she, like Uriah’s wife, wished to conceal the sin she had already committed and that was why she was coming to me at such an unusual time. ‘Can she be coming to me?’ thought I, listening to her approaching footsteps. ‘If she is coming here, then I am right,’ and an expressible hatred of her took possession of me. Nearer and nearer came the steps. Is it possible that she won’t pass on to the dancing room? No, the door creaks and in the doorway appears her tall handsome figure, on her face and in her eyes a timid ingratiating look which she tries to hide, but which I see and the meaning of which I know. I almost choked, so long did I hold my breath, and still looking at her I grasped my cigarette case and began to smoke.

“ ‘Now how can you? One comes to sit with you for a bit, and you begin smoking’⁠—and she sat down close to me on the sofa, leaning against me. I moved away so as not to touch her.

“ ‘I see you are dissatisfied at my wanting to play on Sunday,’ she said.

“ ‘I am not at all dissatisfied,’ I said.

“ ‘As if I don’t see!’

“ ‘Well, I congratulate you on seeing. But I only see that you behave like a coquette.⁠ ⁠… You always find pleasure in all kinds of vileness, but to me it is terrible!’

“ ‘Oh, well, if you are going to scold like a cabman I’ll go away.’

“ ‘Go, but remember that if you don’t value the family honour, I value not you (devil take you) but the honour of the family!’

“ ‘But what is the matter? What?’

“ ‘Go away, for God’s sake be off!’

“Whether she pretended not to understand what it was about or really did not understand, at any rate she took offence, grew angry, and did not go away but stood in the middle of the room.

“ ‘You have really become impossible,’ she began. ‘You have a character that even an angel could not put up with.’ And as usual trying to sting me as painfully as possible, she reminded me of my conduct to my sister (an incident when, being exasperated, I said rude things to my sister); she knew I was distressed about it and she stung me just on that spot. ‘After that, nothing from you will surprise me,’ she said.

“ ‘Yes! Insult me, humiliate me, disgrace me, and then put the blame on me,’ I said to myself, and suddenly I was seized by such terrible rage as I had never before experienced.

“For the first time I wished to give physical expression to that rage. I jumped up and went towards her; but just as I jumped up I remembered becoming conscious of my rage and asking myself: ‘Is it right to give way to this feeling?’ and at once I answered that it was right, that it would frighten her, and instead of restraining my fury, I immediately began inflaming it still further, and was glad it burnt yet more fiercely within me.

“ ‘Be off, or I’ll kill you!’ I shouted, going up to her and seizing her by the arm. I consciously intensified the anger in my voice as I said this. And I suppose I was terrible for she was so frightened that she had not even the strength to go away, but only said: ‘Vásya, what is it? What is the matter with you?’

“ ‘Go!’ I roared louder still. ‘No one but you can drive me to fury. I do not answer for myself!’

“Having given reins to my rage, I revelled in it and wished to do something still more unusual to show the extreme degree of my anger. I felt a terrible desire to beat her, to kill her, but knew that this would not do, and so to give vent to my fury I seized a paperweight from my table, again shouting ‘Go!’ and hurled it to the floor near her. I aimed it very exactly past her. Then she left the room, but stopped at the doorway, and immediately, while she still saw it (I did it so that she might see), I began snatching things from the table⁠—candlesticks and inkstand⁠—and hurling them on the floor still shouting ‘Go! Get out! I don’t answer for myself!’ She went away⁠—and I immediately stopped.

“An hour later the nurse came to tell me that my wife was in hysterics. I went to her; she sobbed, laughed, could not speak, and her whole body was convulsed. She was not pretending, but was really ill.

“Towards morning she grew quiet, and we made peace under the influence of the feeling we called love.

“In the morning when, after our reconciliation, I confessed to her that I was jealous of Trukhachévski, she was not at all confused, but laughed most naturally; so strange did the very possibility of an infatuation for such a man seem to her, she said.

“ ‘Could a decent woman have any other feeling for such a man than the pleasure of his music? Why, if you like I am ready never to see him again⁠ ⁠… not even on Sunday, though everybody has been invited. Write and tell him that I am ill, and there’s an end of it! Only it is unpleasant that anyone, especially he himself, should imagine that he is dangerous. I am too proud to allow anyone to think that of me!’

“And you know, she was not lying, she believed what she was saying; she hoped by those words to evoke in herself contempt for him and so to defend herself from him, but she did not succeed in doing so. Everything was against her, especially that accursed music. So it all ended, and on the Sunday the guests assembled and they again played together.

“I suppose it is hardly necessary to say that I was very vain: if one is not vain there is nothing to live for in our usual way of life. So on that Sunday I arranged the dinner and the musical evening with much care. I bought the provisions myself and invited the guests.

“Towards six the visitors assembled. He came in evening dress with diamond studs that showed bad taste. He behaved in a free and easy manner, answered everything hurriedly with a smile of agreement and understanding, you know, with that peculiar expression which seems to say that all you may do or say is just what he expected. Everything that was not in good taste about him I noticed with particular pleasure, because it ought all to have had the effect of tranquilizing me and showing that he was so far beneath my wife that, as she had said, she could not lower herself to his level. I did not now allow myself to be jealous. In the first place I had worried through that torment and needed rest, and secondly I wanted to believe my wife’s assurances and did believe them. But though I was not jealous I was nevertheless not natural with either of them, and at dinner and during the first half of the evening before the music began I still followed their movements and looks.

“The dinner was, as dinners are, dull and pretentious. The music began pretty early. Oh, how I remember every detail of that evening! I remember how he brought in his violin, unlocked the case, took off the cover a lady had embroidered for him, drew out the violin, and began tuning it. I remember how my wife sat down at the piano with pretended unconcern, under which I saw that she was trying to conceal great timidity⁠—chiefly as to her own ability⁠—and then the usual A on the piano began, the pizzicato of the violin, and the arrangement of the music. Then I remember how they glanced at one another, turned to look at the audience who were seating themselves, said something to one another, and began. He took the first chords. His face grew serious, stern, and sympathetic, and listening to the sounds he produced, he touched the strings with careful fingers. The piano answered him. The music began.⁠ ⁠…”

Pózdnyshev paused and produced his strange sound several times in succession. He tried to speak, but sniffed, and stopped.

“They played Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata,” he continued. “Do you know the first presto? You do?” he cried. “Ugh! Ugh! It is a terrible thing, that sonata. And especially that part. And in general music is a dreadful thing! What is it? I don’t understand it. What is music? What does it do? And why does it do what it does? They say music exalts the soul. Nonsense, it is not true! It has an effect, an awful effect⁠—I am speaking of myself⁠—but not of an exalting kind. It has neither an exalting nor a debasing effect but it produces agitation. How can I put it? Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do. I explain it by the fact that music acts like yawning, like laughter: I am not sleepy, but I yawn when I see someone yawning; there is nothing for me to laugh at, but I laugh when I hear people laughing.

“Music carries me immediately and directly into the mental condition in which the man was who composed it. My soul merges with his and together with him I pass from one condition into another, but why this happens I don’t know. You see, he who wrote, let us say, the Kreutzer Sonata⁠—Beethoven⁠—knew of course why he was in that condition; that condition caused him to do certain actions and therefore that condition had a meaning for him, but for me⁠—none at all. That is why music only agitates and doesn’t lead to a conclusion. Well, when a military march is played the soldiers march to the music and the music has achieved its object. A dance is played, I dance and the music has achieved its object. Mass has been sung, I receive Communion, and that music too has reached a conclusion. Otherwise it is only agitating, and what ought to be done in that agitation is lacking. That is why music sometimes acts so dreadfully, so terribly. In China, music is a State affair. And that is as it should be. How can one allow anyone who pleases to hypnotize another, or many others, and do what he likes with them? And especially that this hypnotist should be the first immoral man who turns up?

“It is a terrible instrument in the hands of any chance user! Take that Kreutzer Sonata, for instance, how can that first presto be played in a drawing room among ladies in low-necked dresses? To hear that played, to clap a little, and then to eat ices and talk of the latest scandal? Such things should only be played on certain important significant occasions, and then only when certain actions answering to such music are wanted; play it then and do what the music has moved you to. Otherwise an awakening of energy and feeling unsuited both to the time and the place, to which no outlet is given, cannot but act harmfully. At any rate that piece had a terrible effect on me; it was as if quite new feelings, new possibilities, of which I had till then been unaware, had been revealed to me. ‘That’s how it is: not at all as I used to think and live, but that way,’ something seemed to say within me. What this new thing was that had been revealed to me I could not explain to myself, but the consciousness of this new condition was very joyous. All those same people, including my wife and him, appeared in a new light.

“After that allegro they played the beautiful, but common and unoriginal, andante with trite variations, and the very weak finale. Then, at the request of the visitors, they played Ernst’s Elegy and a few small pieces. They were all good, but they did not produce on me a one-hundredth part of the impression the first piece had. The effect of the first piece formed the background for them all.

“I felt lighthearted and cheerful the whole evening. I had never seen my wife as she was that evening. Those shining eyes, that severe, significant expression while she played, and her melting languor and feeble, pathetic, and blissful smile after they had finished. I saw all that but did not attribute any meaning to it except that she was feeling what I felt, and that to her as to me new feelings, never before experienced, were revealed or, as it were, recalled. The evening ended satisfactorily and the visitors departed.

“Knowing that I had to go away to attend the Zemstvo Meetings two days later, Trukhachévski on leaving said he hoped to repeat the pleasure of that evening when he next came to Moscow. From this I concluded that he did not consider it possible to come to my house during my absence, and this pleased me.

“It turned out that as I should not be back before he left town, we should not see one another again.

“For the first time I pressed his hand with real pleasure, and thanked him for the enjoyment he had given us. In the same way he bade a final farewell to my wife. Their leave-taking seemed to be most natural and proper. Everything was splendid. My wife and I were both very well satisfied with our evening party.

“Two days later I left for the Meetings, parting from my wife in the best and most tranquil of moods.

“In the district there was always an enormous amount to do and a quite special life, a special little world of its own. I spent two ten hour days at the Council. A letter from my wife was brought me on the second day and I read it there and then.

“She wrote about the children, about uncle, about the nurse, about shopping, and among other things she mentioned, as a most natural occurrence, that Trukhachévski had called, brought some music he had promised, and had offered to play again, but that she had refused.

“I did not remember his having promised any music, but thought he had taken leave for good, and I was therefore unpleasantly struck by this. I was however so busy that I had not time to think of it, and it was only in the evening when I had returned to my lodgings that I reread her letter.

“Besides the fact that Trukhachévski had called at my house during my absence, the whole tone of the letter seemed to me unnatural. The mad beast of jealousy began to growl in its kennel and wanted to leap out, but I was afraid of that beast and quickly fastened him in. ‘What an abominable feeling this jealousy is!’ I said to myself. ‘What could be more natural than what she writes?’

“I went to bed and began thinking about the affairs awaiting me next day. During those Meetings, sleeping in a new place, I usually slept badly, but now I fell asleep very quickly. And as sometimes happens, you know, you feel a kind of electric shock and wake up. So I awoke thinking of her, of my physical love for her, and of Trukhachévski, and of everything being accomplished between them. Horror and rage compressed my heart. But I began to reason with myself. ‘What nonsense!’ said I to myself. ‘There are no grounds to go on, there is nothing and there has been nothing. How can I so degrade her and myself as to imagine such horrors? He is a sort of hired violinist, known as a worthless fellow, and suddenly an honourable woman, the respected mother of a family, my wife.⁠ ⁠… What absurdity!’ So it seemed to me on the one hand. ‘How could it help being so?’ it seemed on the other. ‘How could that simplest and most intelligible thing help happening⁠—that for the sake of which I married her, for the sake of which I have been living with her, what alone I wanted of her, and which others including this musician must therefore also want? He is an unmarried man, healthy (I remember how he crunched the gristle of a cutlet and how greedily his red lips clung to the glass of wine), well fed, plump, and not merely unprincipled but evidently making it a principle to accept the pleasures that present themselves. And they have music, that most exquisite voluptuousness of the senses, as a link between them. What then could make him refrain? She? But who is she? She was, and still is, a mystery. I don’t know her. I only know her as an animal. And nothing can or should restrain an animal.’

“Only then did I remember their faces that evening when, after the Kreutzer Sonata, they played some impassioned little piece, I don’t remember by whom, impassioned to the point of obscenity. ‘How dared I go away?’ I asked myself, remembering their faces. Was it not clear that everything had happened between them that evening? Was it not evident already then that there was not only no barrier between them, but that they both, and she chiefly, felt a certain measure of shame after what had happened? I remember her weak, piteous, and beatific smile as she wiped the perspiration from her flushed face when I came up to the piano. Already then they avoided looking at one another, and only at supper when she was pouring out some water for her, they glanced at each other with the vestige of a smile. I now recalled with horror the glance and scarcely perceptible smile I had then caught. ‘Yes, it is all over,’ said one voice, and immediately the other voice said something entirely different. ‘Something has come over you, it can’t be that it is so,’ said the other voice. It felt uncanny lying in the dark and I struck a light, and felt a kind of terror in that little room with its yellow wallpaper. I lit a cigarette and, as always happens when one’s thought go round and round in a circle of insoluble contradictions, I smoked, taking one cigarette after another in order to befog myself so as not to see those contradictions.

“I did not sleep all night, and at five in the morning, having decided that I could not continue in such a state of tension, I rose, woke the caretaker who attended me and sent him to get horses. I sent a note to the Council saying that I had been recalled to Moscow on urgent business and asking that one of the members should take my place. At eight o’clock I got into my trap and started.”

The conductor entered and seeing that our candle had burnt down put it out, without supplying a fresh one. The day was dawning. Pózdnyshev was silent, but sighed deeply all the time the conductor was in the carriage. He continued his story only after the conductor had gone out, and in the semidarkness of the carriage only the rattle of the windows of the moving carriage and the rhythmic snoring of the clerk could be heard. In the half-light of dawn I could not see Posdnyshev’s face at all, but only heard his voice becoming ever more and more excited and full of suffering.

“I had to travel twenty-four miles by road and eight hours by rail. It was splendid driving. It was frosty autumn weather, bright and sunny. The roads were in that condition when the tyres leave their dark imprint on them, you know. They were smooth, the light brilliant and the air invigorating. It was pleasant driving in the tarantass. When it grew lighter and I had started I felt easier. Looking at the houses, the fields, and the passersby, I forgot where I was going. Sometimes I felt that I was simply taking a drive, and that nothing of what was calling me back had taken place. This oblivion was peculiarly enjoyable. When I remembered where I was going to, I said to myself, ‘We shall see when the time comes; I must not think about it.’ When we were halfway an incident occurred which detained me and still further distracted my thoughts. The tarantass broke down and had to be repaired. That breakdown had a very important effect, for it caused me to arrive in Moscow at midnight, instead of at seven o’clock as I had expected, and to reach home between twelve and one, as I missed the express and had to travel by an ordinary train. Going to fetch a cart, having the tarantass mended, settling up, tea at the inn, a talk with the innkeeper⁠—all this still further diverted my attention. It was twilight before all was ready and I started again. By night it was even pleasanter driving than during the day. There was a new moon, a slight frost, still good roads, good horses, and a jolly driver, and as I went on I enjoyed it, hardly thinking at all of what lay before me; or perhaps I enjoyed it just because I knew what awaited me and was saying goodbye to the joys of life. But that tranquil mood, that ability to suppress my feelings, ended with my drive. As soon as I entered the train something entirely different began. That eight-hour journey in a railway carriage was something dreadful, which I shall never forget all my life. Whether it was that having taken my seat in the carriage I vividly imagined myself as having already arrived, or that railway travelling has such an exciting effect on people, at any rate from the moment I sat down in the train I could no longer control my imagination, and with extraordinary vividness which inflamed my jealousy it painted incessantly, one after another, pictures of what had gone on in my absence, of how she had been false to me. I burnt with indignation, anger, and a peculiar feeling of intoxication with my own humiliation, as I gazed at those pictures, and I could not tear myself away from them; I could not help looking at them, could not efface them, and could not help evoking them.

“That was not all. The more I gazed at those imaginary pictures the stronger grew my belief in their reality. The vividness with which they presented themselves to me seemed to serve as proof that what I imagined was real. It was as if some devil against my will invented and suggested to me the most terrible reflections. An old conversation I had had with Trukhachévski’s brother came to my mind, and in a kind of ecstasy I rent my heart with that conversation, making it refer to Trukhachévski and my wife.

“That had occurred long before, but I recalled it. Turkhachevski’s brother, I remember, in reply to a question whether he frequented houses of ill fame, had said that a decent man would not go to placed where there was danger of infection and it was dirty and nasty, since he could always find a decent woman. And now his brother had found my wife! ‘True, she is not in her first youth, has lost a side tooth, and there is a slight puffiness about her; but it can’t be helped, one has to take advantage of what one can get,’ I imagined him to be thinking. ‘Yes, it is condescending of him to take her for his mistress!’ I said to myself. ‘And she is safe.⁠ ⁠… No, it is impossible!’ I thought horror-struck. ‘There is nothing of the kind, nothing! There are not even any grounds for suspecting such things. Didn’t she tell me that the very thought that I could be jealous of him was degrading to her? Yes, but she is lying, she is always lying!’ I exclaimed and everything began anew.⁠ ⁠… There were only two other people in the carriage; an old woman and her husband, both very taciturn, and even they got out at one of the stations and I was quite alone. I was like a caged animal: now I jumped up and went to the window, now I began to walk up and down trying to speed the carriage up; but the carriage with all its seats and windows went jolting on in the same way, just as ours does.⁠ ⁠…”

Pózdnyshev jumped up, took a few steps, and sat down again.

“Oh, I am afraid, afraid of railway carriages, I am seized with horror. Yes, it is awful!” he continued. “I said to myself, ‘I will think of something else. Suppose I think of the innkeeper where I had tea,’ and there in my mind’s eye appears the innkeeper with his long beard and his grandson, a boy of the age of my Vásya! ‘He will see how the musician kisses his mother. What will happen in his poor soul? But what does she care? She loves⁠ ⁠…’ and again the same thing rose up in me. ‘No, no⁠ ⁠… I will think about the inspection of the District Hospital. Oh, yes, about the patient who complained of the doctor yesterday. The doctor has a moustache like Trukhachévski’s. And how impudent he is⁠ ⁠… they both deceived me when he said he was leaving Moscow,’ and it began afresh. Everything I thought of had some connection with them. I suffered dreadfully. The chief cause of the suffering was my ignorance, my doubt, and the contradictions within me: my not knowing whether I ought to love or hate her. My suffering was of a strange kind. I felt a hateful consciousness of my humiliation and of his victory, but a terrible hatred for her. ‘It will not do to put an end to myself and leave her; she must at least suffer to some extent, and at least understand that I have suffered,’ I said to myself. I got out at every station to divert my mind. At one station I saw some people drinking, and I immediately drank some vodka. Beside me stood a Jew who was also drinking. He began to talk, and to avoid being alone in my carriage I went with him into his dirty third class carriage reeking with smoke and bespattered with shells of sunflower seeds. There I sat down beside him and he chattered a great deal and told anecdotes. I listened to him, but could not take in what he was saying because I continued to think about my own affairs. He noticed this and demanded my attention. Then I rose and went back to my carriage. ‘I must think it over,’ I said to myself. ‘Is what I suspect true, and is there any reason for me to suffer?’ I sat down, wishing to think it over calmly, but immediately, instead of calm reflection, the same thing began again: Instead of reflection, pictures and fancies. ‘How often I have suffered like this,’ I said to myself (recalling former similar attacks of jealousy), ‘and afterwards it all ended in nothing. So it will be now perhaps, yes certainly it will. I shall find her calmly asleep, she will wake up, be pleased to see me, and by her words and looks I shall know that there has been nothing and that this is all nonsense. Oh, how good that would be! But no, that has happened too often and won’t happen again now,’ some voice seemed to say; and it began again. Yes, that was where the punishment lay! I wouldn’t take a young man to a lock-hospital to knock the hankering after women out of him, but into my soul, to see the devils that were rending it! What was terrible, you know, was that I considered myself to have a complete right to her body as if it were my own, and yet at the same time I felt I could not control that body, that it was not mine and she could dispose of it as she pleased, and that she wanted to dispose of it not as I wished her to. And I could do nothing either to her or to him. He, like Vánka the Steward,285 could sing a song before the gallows of how he kissed the sugared lips and so forth. And he would triumph. If she has not yet done it but wishes to⁠—and I know that she does wish to⁠—it is still worse; it would be better if she had done it and I knew it, so that there would be an end to this uncertainty. I could not have said what it was I wanted. I wanted her not to desire that which she was bound to desire. It was utter insanity.

“At the last station but one, when the conductor had been to collect the tickets, I gathered my things together and went out onto the brake platform, and the consciousness that the crisis was at hand still further increased my agitation. I felt cold, and my jaw trembled so that my teeth chattered. I automatically left the terminus with the crowd, took a cab, got in, and drove off. I rode looking at the few passersby, the night watchmen, and the shadows of my trap thrown by the street lamps, now in front and now behind me, and did not think of anything. When we had gone about half a mile my feet felt cold, and I remembered that I had taken off my woollen stockings in the train and put them in my satchel. ‘Where is the satchel? Is it here? Yes.’ And my wicker trunk? I remembered that I had entirely forgotten about my luggage, but finding that I had the luggage ticket I decided that it was not worthwhile going back for it, and so continued my way.

“Try now as I will, I cannot recall my state of mind at the time. What did I think? What did I want? I don’t know at all. All I remember is a consciousness that something dreadful and very important in my life was imminent. Whether that important event occurred because I thought it would, or whether I had a presentiment of what was to happen, I don’t know. It may even be that after what has happened all the foregoing moments have acquired a certain gloom in my mind. I drove up to the front porch. It was past midnight. Some cabmen were waiting in front of the porch expecting, from the fact that there were lights in the windows, to get fares. (The lights were in our flat, in the dancing room and drawing room.) Without considering why it was still light in our windows so late, I went upstairs in the same state of expectation of something dreadful, and rang. Egór, a kind, willing, but very stupid footman, opened the door. The first thing my eyes fell on in the hall was a man’s cloak hanging on the stand with other outdoor coats. I ought to have been surprised but was not, for I had expected it. ‘That’s it!’ I said to myself. When I asked Egór who the visitor was and he named Trukhachévski, I inquired whether there was anyone else. He replied, ‘Nobody, sir.’ I remember that he replied in a tone as if he wanted to cheer me and dissipate my doubts of there being anybody else there. ‘So it is, so it is,’ I seemed to be saying to myself. ‘And the children?’ ‘All well, heaven be praised. In bed, long ago.’

“I could not breathe, and could not check the trembling of my jaw. ‘Yes, so it is not as I thought: I used to expect a misfortune but things used to turn out all right and in the usual way. Now it is not as usual, but is all as I pictured to myself. I thought it was only fancy, but here it is, all real. Here it all is⁠ ⁠… !’

“I almost began to sob, but the devil immediately suggested to me: ‘Cry, be sentimental, and they will get away quietly. You will have no proof and will continue to suffer and doubt all your life.’ And my self-pity immediately vanished, and a strange sense of joy arose in me, that my torture would now be over, that now I could punish her, could get rid of her, and could vent my anger. And I gave vent to it⁠—I became a beast, a cruel and cunning beast.

“ ‘Don’t!’ I said to Egór, who was about to go to the drawing room. “Here is my luggage ticket, take a cab as quick as you can and go and get my luggage. Go!’ He went down the passage to fetch his overcoat. Afraid that he might alarm them, I went as far as his little room and waited while he put on his overcoat. From the drawing room, beyond another room, one could hear voices and the clatter of knives and plates. They were eating and had not heard the bell. ‘If only they don’t come out now,’ thought I. Egór put on his overcoat, which had an astrakhan collar, and went out. I locked the door after him and felt creepy when I knew I was alone and must act at once. How, I did not yet know. I only knew that all was now over, that there could be no doubt as to her guilt, and that I should punish her immediately and end my relations with her.

“Previously I had doubted and had thought: ‘Perhaps after all it’s not true, perhaps I am mistaken.’ But now it was so no longer. It was all irrevocably decided. ‘Without my knowledge she is alone with him at night! That is a complete disregard of everything! Or worse still: It is intentional boldness and impudence in crime, that the boldness may serve as a sign of innocence. All is clear. There is no doubt.’ I only feared one thing⁠—their parting hastily, inventing some fresh lie, and thus depriving me of clear evidence and of the possibility of proving the fact. So as to catch them more quickly I went on tiptoe to the dancing room where they were, not through the drawing room but through the passage and nurseries.

“In the first nursery slept the boys. In the second nursery the nurse moved and was about to wake, and I imagined to myself what she would think when she knew all; and such pity for myself seized me at that thought that I could not restrain my tears, and not to wake the children I ran on tiptoe into the passage and on into my study, where I fell sobbing on the sofa.

“ ‘I, an honest man, I, the son of my parent, I, who have all my life dreamt of the happiness of married life; I, a man who was never unfaithful to her.⁠ ⁠… And now! Five children, and she is embracing a musician because he has red lips!

“ ‘No, she is not a human being. She is a bitch, an abominable bitch! In the next room to her children whom she has all her life pretended to love. And writing to me as she did! Throwing herself so barefacedly on his neck! But what do I know? Perhaps she long ago carried on with the footmen, and so got the children who are considered mine!

“ ‘Tomorrow I should have come back and she would have met me with her fine coiffure, with her elegant waist and her indolent, graceful movements’ (I saw all her attractive, hateful face), ‘and that beast of jealousy would forever have sat in my heart lacerating it. What will the nurse think?⁠ ⁠… And Egór? And poor little Lisa! She already understands something. Ah, that imprudence, those lies! And that animal sensuality which I know so well,’ I said to myself.

“I tried to get up but could not. My heart was beating so that I could not stand on my feet. ‘Yes, I shall die of a stroke. She will kill me. That is just what she wants. What is killing to her? But no, that would be too advantageous for her and I will not give her that pleasure. Yes, here I sit while they eat and laugh and⁠ ⁠… Yes, though she was no longer in her first freshness he did not disdain her. For in spite of that she is not bad looking, and above all she is at any rate not dangerous to his precious health. And why did I not throttle her then?’ I said to myself, recalling the moment when, the week before, I drove her out of my study and hurled things about. I vividly recalled the state I had then been in; I not only recalled it, but again felt the need to strike and destroy that I had felt then. I remember how I wished to act, and how all considerations except those necessary for action went out of my head. I entered into that condition when an animal or a man, under the influence of physical excitement at a time of danger, acts with precision and deliberation but without losing a moment and always with a single definite aim in view.

“The first thing I did was to take off my boots and, in my socks, approach the sofa, on the wall above which guns and daggers were hung. I took down a curved Damascus dagger that had never been used and was very sharp. I drew it out of its scabbard. I remember the scabbard fell behind the sofa, and I remember thinking ‘I must find it afterwards or it will get lost.’ Then I took off my overcoat which was still wearing, and stepping softly in my socks I went there.

“Having crept up stealthily to the door, I suddenly opened it. I remember the expression of their faces. I remember that expression because it gave me a painful pleasure⁠—it was an expression of terror. That was just what I wanted. I shall never forget the look of desperate terror that appeared on both their faces the first instant they saw me. He I think was sitting at the table, but on seeing or hearing me he jumped to his feet and stood with his back to the cupboard. His face expressed nothing but quite unmistakable terror. Her face too expressed terror but there was something else besides. If it had expressed only terror, perhaps what happened might not have happened; but on her face there was, or at any rate so it seemed to me at the first moment, also an expression of regret and annoyance that love’s raptures and her happiness with him had been disturbed. It was as if she wanted nothing but that her present happiness should not be interfered with. These expressions remained on their faces but an instant. The look of terror on his changed immediately to one of inquiry; might he, or might he not, begin lying? If he might, he must begin at once; if not, something else would happen. But what?⁠ ⁠… He looked inquiringly at her face. On her face the look of vexation and regret changed as she looked at him (so it seemed to me) to one of solicitude for him.

“For an instant I stood in the doorway holding the dagger behind my back.

“At that moment he smiled, and in a ridiculously indifferent tone remarked: ‘And we have been having some music.’

“ ‘What a surprise!’ she began, falling into his tone. But neither of them finished; the same fury I had experienced the week before overcame me. Again I felt that need of destruction, violence, and a transport of rage, and yielded to it. Neither finished what they were saying. That something else began which he had feared and which immediately destroyed all they were saying. I rushed towards her, still hiding the dagger that he might not prevent my striking her in the side under her breast. I selected that spot from the first. Just as I rushed at her he saw it, and⁠—a thing I never expected of him⁠—seized me by the arm and shouted: ‘Think what you are doing!⁠ ⁠… Help, someone!⁠ ⁠…’

“I snatched my arm away and rushed at him in silence. His eyes met mine and he suddenly grew as pale as a sheet to his very lips. His eyes flashed in a peculiar way, and⁠—what again I had not expected⁠—he darted under the piano and out at the door. I was going to rush after him, but a weight hung on my left arm. It was she. I tried to free myself, but she hung on yet more heavily and would not let me go. This unexpected hindrance, the weight, and her touch which was loathsome to me, inflamed me still more. I felt that I was quite mad and that I must look frightful, and this delighted me. I swung my left arm with all my might, and my elbow hit her straight in the face. She cried out and let go my arm. I wanted to run after him, but remembered that it is ridiculous to run after one’s wife’s lover in one’s socks; and I did not wish to be ridiculous but terrible. In spite of the fearful frenzy I was in, I was all the time aware of the impression I might produce on others, and was even partly guided by that impression. I turned towards her. She fell on the couch, and holding her hand to her bruised eyes, looked at me. Her face showed fear and hatred of me, the enemy, as a rat’s does when one lifts the trap in which it has been caught. At any rate I saw nothing in her expression but this fear and hatred of me. It was just the fear and hatred of me which would be evoked by love for another. But still I might perhaps have restrained myself and not done what I did had she remained silent. But she suddenly began to speak and to catch hold of the hand in which I held the dagger.

“ ‘Come to yourself! What are you doing? What is the matter? There has been nothing, nothing, nothing.⁠ ⁠… I swear it!’

“I might still have hesitated, but those last words of hers, from which I concluded just the opposite⁠—that everything had happened⁠—called forth a reply. And the reply had to correspond to the temper to which I had brought myself, which continued to increase and had to go on increasing. Fury, too, has its laws.

“ ‘Don’t lie, you wretch!’ I howled, and seized her arm with my left hand, but she wrenched herself away. Then, still without letting go of the dagger, I seized her by the throat with my left hand, threw her backwards, and began throttling her. What a firm neck it was⁠ ⁠… ! She seized my hand with both hers trying to pull it away from her throat, and as if I had only waited for that, I struck her with all my might with the dagger in the side below the ribs.

“When people say they don’t remember what they do in a fit of fury, it is rubbish, falsehood. I remembered everything and did not for a moment lose consciousness of what I was doing. The more frenzied I became the more brightly the light of consciousness burnt in me, so that I could not help knowing everything I did. I knew what I was doing every second. I cannot say that I knew beforehand what I was going to do; but I knew what I was doing when I did it, and even I think a little before, as if to make repentance possible and to be able to tell myself that I could stop. I knew I was hitting below the ribs and that the dagger would enter. At the moment I did it I knew I was doing an awful thing such as I had never done before, which would have terrible consequences. But that consciousness passed like a flash of lightning and the deed immediately followed the consciousness. I realized the action with the extraordinary clearness. I felt, and remember, the momentary resistance of her corset and of something else, and then the plunging of the dagger into something soft. She seized the dagger with her hands, and cut them, but could not hold it back.

“For a long time afterwards, in prison when the moral change had taken place in me, I thought of that moment, recalled what I could of it, and considered it. I remembered that for an instant, only an instant, before the action I had a terrible consciousness that I was killing, had killed, a defenceless woman, my wife! I remember the horror of that consciousness and conclude from that, and even dimly remember, that having plunged the dagger in I pulled it out immediately, trying to remedy what had been done and to stop it. I stood for a second motionless waiting to see what would happen, and whether it could be remedied.

“She jumped to her feet and screamed: ‘Nurse! He has killed me.’

“Having heard the noise the nurse was standing by the door. I continued to stand waiting, and not believing the truth. But the blood rushed from under her corset. Only then did I understand that it could not be remedied, and I immediately decided that it was not necessary it should be, that I had done what I wanted and had to do. I waited till she fell down, and the nurse, crying ‘Good God!’ ran to her, and only then did I throw away the dagger and leave the room.

“ ‘I must not be excited; I must know what I am doing,’ I said to myself without looking at her and at the nurse. The nurse was screaming⁠—calling for the maid. I went down the passage, sent the maid, and went into my study. ‘What am I to do now?’ I asked myself, and immediately realized what it must be. On entering the study I went straight to the wall, took down a revolver and examined it⁠—it was loaded⁠—I put it on the table. Then I picked up the scabbard from behind the sofa and sat down there.

“I sat thus for a long time. I did not think of anything or call anything to mind. I heard the sounds of bustling outside. I heard someone drive up, then someone else. Then I heard and saw Egór bring into the room my wicker trunk he had fetched. As if anyone wanted that!

“ ‘Have you heard what has happened?’ I asked. ‘Tell the yard porter to inform the police.’ He did not reply, and went away. I rose, locked the door, got out my cigarettes and matches and began to smoke. I had not finished the cigarette before sleep overpowered me. I must have slept for a couple of hours. I remember dreaming that she and I were friendly together, that we had quarrelled but were making it up, there was something rather in the way, but we were friends. I was awakened by someone knocking at the door. ‘That is the police!’ I thought, waking up. ‘I have committed murder, I think. But perhaps it is she, and nothing has happened.’ There was again a knock at the door. I did not answer, but was trying to solve the question whether it had happened or not. Yet, it had! I remembered the resistance of the corset and the plunging in of the dagger, and a cold shiver ran down my back. ‘Yes, it has. Yes, and now I must do away with myself too,’ I thought. But I thought this knowing that I should not kill myself. Still I got up and took the revolver in my hand. But it is strange: I remember how I had many times been near suicide, how even that day on the railway it had seemed easy, only just because I thought how it would stagger her⁠—now I was not only unable to kill myself but even to think of it. ‘Why should I do it?’ I asked myself, and there was no reply. There was more knocking at the door. ‘First I must find out who is knocking. There will still be time for this.’ I put down the revolver and covered it with a newspaper. I went to the door and unlatched it. It was my wife’s sister, a kindly, stupid widow. ‘Vásya, what is this?’ and her ever ready tears began to flow.

“ ‘What do you want?’ I asked rudely. I knew I ought not to be rude to her and had no reason to be, but I could think of no other tone to adopt.

“ ‘Vásya, she is dying! Iván Zakhárych says so.’ Iván Zakhárych was her doctor and adviser.

“ ‘Is he here?’ I asked, and all my animosity against surged up again. ‘Well, what of it?’

“ ‘Vásya, go to her. Oh, how terrible it is!’ said she.

“ ‘Shall I go to her?’ I asked myself, and immediately decided that I must go to her. Probably it is always done, when a husband has killed his wife, as I had⁠—he must certainly go to her. ‘If that is what is done, then I must go,’ I said to myself. ‘If necessary I shall always have time,’ I reflected, referring to the shooting of myself, and I went to her. ‘Now we shall have phrases, grimaces, but I will not yield to them,’ I thought. ‘Wait,’ I said to her sister, ‘it is silly without boots, let me at least put on slippers.’

“Wonderful to say, when I left my study and went through the familiar rooms, the hope that nothing had happened again awoke in me; but the smell of that doctor’s nastiness⁠—iodoform and carbolic⁠—took me aback. ‘No, it had happened.’ Going down the passage past the nursery I saw little Lisa. She looked at me with frightened eyes. It even seemed to me that all the five children were there and all looked at me. I approached the door, and the maid opened it from inside for me and passed out. The first thing that caught my eye was her light-grey dress thrown on a chair and all stained black with blood. She was lying on one of the twin beds (on mine because it was easier to get at), with her knees raised. She say in a very sloping position supported by pillows, with her dressing jacket unfastened. Something had been put on the wound. There was a heavy smell of iodoform in the room. What struck me first and most of all was her swollen and bruised face, blue on part of the nose and under the eyes. This was the result of the blow with my elbow when she had tried to hold me back. There was nothing beautiful about her, but something repulsive as it seemed to me. I stopped on the threshold. ‘Go up to her, do,’ said her sister. ‘Yes, no doubt she wants to confess,’ I thought. ‘Shall I forgive her? Yes, she is dying and may be forgiven,’ I thought, trying to be magnanimous. I went up close to her. She raised her eyes to me with difficulty, one of them was black, and with an effort said falteringly:

“ ‘You’ve got your way, killed⁠ ⁠…’ and through the look of suffering and even the nearness of death her face had the old expression of cold animal hatred that I knew so well. ‘I shan’t⁠ ⁠… let you have⁠ ⁠… the children, all the same.⁠ ⁠… She’ (her sister) ‘will take⁠ ⁠…’

“Of what to me was the most important matter, her guilt, her faithlessness, she seemed to consider it beneath her to speak.

“ ‘Yes, look and admire what you have done,’ she said looking towards the door, and she sobbed. In the doorway stood her sister with the children. ‘Yes, see what you have done.’

“I looked at the children and at her bruised and disfigured face, and for the first time I forgot myself, my rights, my pride, and for the first time saw a human being in her. And so insignificant did all that had offended me, all my jealousy, appear, and so important what I had done, that I wished to fall with my face to her hand, and say: ‘Forgive me,’ but dared not do so.

“She lay silent with her eyes closed, evidently too weak to say more. Then her disfigured face trembled and puckered. She pushed me feebly away.

“ ‘Why did it all happen? Why?’

“ ‘Forgive me,’ I said.

“ ‘Forgive! That’s all rubbish!⁠ ⁠… only not to die!⁠ ⁠…’ she cried, raising herself, and her glittering eyes were bent on me. ‘Yes, you have had your way!⁠ ⁠… I hate you! Ah! Ah!’ she cried, evidently already in delirium and frightened at something. ‘Shoot! I’m not afraid!⁠ ⁠… Only kill everyone⁠ ⁠… ! He has gone⁠ ⁠… ! Gone⁠ ⁠… !’

“After that the delirium continued all the time. She did not recognize anyone. She died towards noon that same day. Before that they had taken me to the police station and from there to prison. There, during the eleven months I remained awaiting trial, I examined myself and my past, and understood it. I began to understand it on the third day: on the third day they took me there⁠ ⁠…”

He was going on but, unable to repress his sobs, he stopped. When he recovered himself he continued:

“I only began to understand when I saw her in her coffin⁠ ⁠…”

He gave a sob, but immediately continued hurriedly:

“Only when I saw her dead face did I understand all that I had done. I realized that I, I, had killed her; that it was my doing that she, living, moving, warm, had now become motionless, waxen, and cold, and that this could never, anywhere, or by any means, be remedied. He who has not lived through it cannot understand.⁠ ⁠… Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!⁠ ⁠…” he cried several times and then was silent.

We sat in silence a long while. He kept sobbing and trembling as he sat opposite me without speaking. His face had grown narrow and elongated and his mouth seemed to stretch right across it. “Yes,” he suddenly said. “Had I then known what I know now, everything would have been different. Nothing would have induced me to marry her.⁠ ⁠… I should not have married at all.”

Again we remained silent for a long time.

“Well, forgive me.⁠ ⁠…”286 He turned away from me and lay down on the seat, covering himself up with his plaid. At the station where I had to get out (it was at eight o’clock in the morning) I went up to him to say goodbye. Whether he was asleep or only pretended to be, at any rate he did not move. I touched him with my hand. He uncovered his face, and I could see he had not been asleep.

“Goodbye,” I said, holding out my hand. He gave me his and smiled slightly, but so piteously that I felt ready to weep.

“Yes, forgive me⁠ ⁠…” he said, repeating the same words with which he had concluded his story.

A brilliant career lay before Eugène Irténev. He had everything necessary to attain it: an admirable education at home, high honours when he graduated in law at Petersburg University, and connections in the highest society through his recently deceased father; he had also already begun service in one of the Ministries under the protection of the minister. Moreover he had a fortune; even a large one, though insecure. His father had lived abroad and in Petersburg, allowing his sons, Eugène and Andrew (who was older than Eugène and in the Horse Guards), six thousand rubles a year each, while he himself and his wife spent a great deal. He only used to visit his estate for a couple of months in summer and did not concern himself with its direction, entrusting it all to an unscrupulous manager who also failed to attend to it, but in whom he had complete confidence.

After the father’s death, when the brothers began to divide the property, so many debts were discovered that their lawyer even advised them to refuse the inheritance and retain only an estate left them by their grandmother, which was valued at a hundred thousand rubles. But a neighbouring landed-proprietor who had done business with old Irténev, that is to say, who had promissory notes from him and had come to Petersburg on that account, said that in spite of the debts they could straighten out affairs so as to retain a large fortune (it would only be necessary to sell the forest and some outlying land, retaining the rich Semënov estate with four thousand desyatins of black earth, the sugar factory, and two hundred desyatins of water-meadows) if one devoted oneself to the management of the estate, settled there, and farmed it wisely and economically.

And so, having visited the estate in spring (his father had died in Lent), Eugène looked into everything, resolved to retire from the Civil Service, settle in the country with his mother, and undertake the management with the object of preserving the main estate. He arranged with his brother, with whom he was very friendly, that he would pay him either four thousand rubles a year, or a lump sum of eighty thousand, for which Andrew would hand over to him his share of his inheritance.

So he arranged matters and, having settled down with his mother in the big house, began managing the estate eagerly, yet cautiously.

It is generally supposed the Conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favour of change are the young. That is not quite correct. Usually Conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen.

Thus it was with Eugène. Having settled in the village, his aim and ideal was to restore the form of life that had existed, not in his father’s time⁠—his father had been a bad manager⁠—but in his grandfather’s. And now he tried to resurrect the general spirit of his grandfather’s life⁠—in the house, the garden, and in the estate management⁠—of course with changes suited to the times⁠—everything on a large scale⁠—good order, method, and everybody satisfied. But to do this entailed much work. It was necessary to meet the demands of the creditors and the banks, and for that purpose to sell some land and arrange renewals of credit. It was also necessary to get money to carry on (partly by farming out land, and partly by hiring labour) the immense operations on the Semënov estate, with its four hundred desyatins of ploughland and its sugar factory, and to deal with the garden so that it should not seem to be neglected or in decay.

There was much work to do, but Eugène had plenty of strength⁠—physical and mental. He was twenty-six, of medium height, strongly built, with muscles developed by gymnastics. He was fullblooded and his whole neck was very red, his teeth and lips were bright, and his hair soft and curly though not thick. His only physical defect was shortsightedness, which he had himself developed by using spectacles, so that he could not now do without a pince-nez, which had already formed a line on the bridge of his nose.

Such was his physically. For his spiritual portrait it might be said that the better people knew him the better they liked him. His mother had always loved him more than anyone else, and now after her husband’s death she concentrated on him not only her whole affection but her whole life. Nor was it only his mother who so loved him. All his comrades at the high school and the university not merely liked him very much, but respected him. He had this effect on all who met him. It was impossible not to believe what he said, impossible to suspect any deception or falseness in one who had such an open, honest face and in particular such eyes.

In general his personality helped him much in his affairs. A creditor who would have refused another trusted him. The clerk, the village Elder, or a peasant, who would have played a dirty trick and cheated someone else, forgot to deceive under the pleasant impression of intercourse with this kindly, agreeable, and above all candid man.

It was the end of May. Eugène had somehow managed in town to get the vacant land freed from the mortgage, so as to sell it to a merchant, and had borrowed money from that same merchant to replenish his stock, that is to say, to procure horses, bulls, and carts, and in particular to begin to build a necessary farmhouse. The matter had been arranged. The timber was being carted, the carpenters were already at work, and manure for the estate was being brought on eighty carts, but everything still hung by a thread.

Amid these cares something came about which though unimportant tormented Eugène at the time. As a young man he had lived as all healthy young men live, that is, he had had relations with women of various kinds. He was not a libertine but neither, as he himself said, was he a monk. He only turned to this, however, in so far as was necessary for physical health and to have his mind free, as he used to say. This had begun when he was sixteen and had gone on satisfactorily⁠—in the sense that he had never given himself up to debauchery, never once been infatuated, and had never contracted a disease. At first he had a seamstress in Petersburg, then she got spoilt and he made other arrangements, and that side of his affairs was so well secured that it did not trouble him.

But now he was living in the country for the second month and did not at all know what he was to do. Compulsory self-restraint was beginning to have a bad effect on him.

Must he really go to town for that purpose? And where to? How? That was the only thing that disturbed him; but as he was convinced that the thing was necessary and that he needed it, it really became a necessity, and he felt that he was not free and that his eyes involuntarily followed every young woman.

He did not approve of having relations with a married woman or a maid in his own village. He knew by report that both his father and grandfather had been quite different in this matter from other landowners of that time. At home they had never had any entanglements with peasant-women, and he had decided that he would not do so either; but afterwards, feeling himself ever more and more under compulsion and imagining with horror what might happen to him in the neighbouring country town, and reflecting on the fact that the days of serfdom were now over, he decided that it might be done on the spot. Only it must be done so that no one should know of it, and not for the sake of debauchery but merely for health’s sake⁠—as he said to himself. And when he had decided this he became still more restless. When talking to the village Elder, the peasants, or the carpenters, he involuntarily brought the conversation round to women, and when it turned to women he kept it on that theme. He noticed the women more and more.

To settle the matter in his own mind was one thing but to carry it out was another. To approach a woman himself was impossible. Which one? Where? It must be done through someone else, but to whom should he speak about it?

He happened to go into a watchman’s hut in the forest to get a drink of water. The watchman had been his father’s huntsman, and Eugène Ivánich chatted with him, and the man began telling some strange tales of hunting sprees. It occurred to Eugène Ivánich that it would be convenient to arrange matters in this hut, or in the wood, only he did not know how to manage it and whether old Daniel would undertake the arrangement. “Perhaps he will be horrified at such a proposal and I shall have disgraced myself, but perhaps he will agree to it quite simply.” So he thought while listening to Daniel’s stories. Daniel was telling how once when they had been stopping at the hut of the sexton’s wife in an outlying field, he had brought a woman for Fëdor Zakhárich Pryánishnikov.

“It will be all right,” thought Eugène.

“Your father, may the kingdom of heaven be his, did not go in for nonsense of that kind.”

“It won’t do,” thought Eugène. But to test the matter he said: “How was it you engaged on such bad things?”

“But what was there bad in it? She was glad, and Fëdor Zakhárich was satisfied, very satisfied. I got a ruble. Why, what was he to do? He too is a lively limb apparently, and drinks wine.”

“Yes, I may speak,” thought Eugène, and at once proceeded to do so.

“And do you know, Daniel, I don’t know how to endure it,”⁠—he felt himself going scarlet.

Daniel smiled.

“I am not a monk⁠—I have been accustomed to it.”

He felt that what he was saying was stupid, but was glad to see that Daniel approved.

“Why of course, you should have told me long ago. It can all be arranged,” said he: “only tell me which one you want.”

“Oh, it is really all the same to me. Of course not an ugly one, and she must be healthy.”

“I understand!” said Daniel briefly. He reflected.

“Ah! There is a tasty morsel,” he began. Again Eugène went red. “A tasty morsel. See here, she was married last autumn.” Daniel whispered⁠—“and he hasn’t been able to do anything. Think what that is worth to one who wants it!”

Eugène even frowned with shame.

“No, no,” he said. “I don’t want that at all. I want, on the contrary (what could the contrary be?), on the contrary I only want that she should be healthy and that there should be as little fuss as possible⁠—a woman whose husband is away in the army or something of that kind.”

“I know. It’s Stepanída I must bring you. Her husband is away in town, just the same as a soldier. And she is a fine woman, and clean. You will be satisfied. As it is I was saying to her the other day⁠—you should go, but she⁠ ⁠…”

“Well then, when is it to be?”

“Tomorrow if you like. I shall be going to get some tobacco and I will call in, and at the dinner-hour come here, or to the bathhouse behind the kitchen garden. There will be nobody about. Besides after dinner everybody takes a nap.”

“All right then.”

A terrible excitement seized Eugène as he rode home. “What will happen? What is a peasant-woman like? Suppose it turns out that she is hideous, horrible? No, she is handsome,” he told himself, remembering some he had been noticing. “But what shall I say? What shall I do?”

He was not himself all that day. Next day at noon he went to the forester’s hut. Daniel stood at the door and silently and significantly nodded towards the wood. The blood rushed to Eugène’s heart, he was conscious of it and went to the kitchen garden. No one was there. He went to the bathhouse⁠—there was no one about, he looked in, came out, and suddenly heard the crackling of a breaking twig. He looked round⁠—and she was standing in the thicket beyond the little ravine. He rushed there across the ravine. There were nettles in it which he had not noticed. They stung him and, losing the pince-nez from his nose, he ran up the slope on the farther side. She stood there, in a white embroidered apron, a red-brown skirt, and a bright red kerchief, barefoot, fresh, firm, and handsome, and smiling shyly.

“There is a path leading round⁠—you should have gone round,” she said. “I came long ago, ever so long.”

He went up to her and, looking her over, touched her.

A quarter of an hour later they separated; he found his pince-nez, called in to see Daniel, and in reply to his question: “Are you satisfied, master?” gave him a ruble and went home.

He was satisfied. Only at first had he felt ashamed, then it had passed off. And everything had gone well. The best thing was that he now felt at ease, tranquil and vigorous. As for her, he had not even seen her thoroughly. He remembered that she was clean, fresh, not bad-looking, and simple, without any pretence. “Whose wife is she?” said he to himself. “Péchnikov’s, Daniel said. What Péchnikov is that? There are two households of that name. Probably she is old Michael’s daughter-in-law. Yes, that must be it. His son does live in Moscow. I’ll ask Daniel about it some time.”

From then onward that previously important drawback to country life⁠—enforced self-restraint⁠—was eliminated. Eugène’s freedom of mind was no longer disturbed and he was able to attend freely to his affairs.

And the matter Eugène had undertaken was far from easy: before he had time to stop up one hole a new one would unexpectedly show itself, and it sometimes seemed to him that he would not be able to go through with it and that it would end in his having to sell the estate after all, which would mean that all his efforts would be wasted and that he had failed to accomplish what he had undertaken. That prospect disturbed him most of all.

All this time more and more debts of his father’s unexpectedly came to light. It was evident that towards the end of his life he had borrowed right and left. At the time of the settlement in May, Eugène had thought he at least knew everything, but in the middle of the summer he suddenly received a letter from which it appeared that there was still a debt of twelve thousand rubles to the widow Esípova. There was no promissory note, but only an ordinary receipt which his lawyer told him could be disputed. But it did not enter Eugène’s head to refuse to pay a debt of his father’s merely because the document could be challenged. He only wanted to know for certain whether there had been such a debt.

“Mamma! Who is Kalériya Vladímirovna Esípova?” he asked his mother when they met as usual for dinner.

“Esípova? She was brought up by your grandfather. Why?”

Eugène told his mother about the letter.

“I wonder she is not ashamed to ask for it. Your father gave her so much!”

“But do we owe her this?”

“Well now, how shall I put it? It is not a debt. Papa, out of his unbounded kindness⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, but did Papa consider it a debt?”

“I cannot say. I don’t know. I only know it is hard enough for you without that.”

Eugène saw that Mary Pávlovna did not know what to say, and was as it were sounding him.

“I see from what you say that it must be paid,” said he. “I will go to see her tomorrow and have a chat, and see if it cannot be deferred.”

“Ah, how sorry I am for you, but you know that will be best. Tell her she must wait,” said Mary Pávlovna, evidently tranquillized and proud of her son’s decision.

Eugène’s position was particularly hard because his mother, who was living with him, did not at all realize his position. She had been accustomed all her life long to live extravagantly that she could not even imagine to herself the position her son was in, that is to say, that today or tomorrow matters might shape themselves so that they would have nothing left and he would have to sell everything and live and support his mother on what salary he could earn, which at the very most would be two thousand rubles. She did not understand that they could only save themselves from that position by cutting down expense in everything, and so she could not understand why Eugène was so careful about trifles, in expenditure on gardeners, coachmen, servants⁠—even on food. Also, like most widows, she nourished feelings of devotion to the memory of her departed spouse quite different from those she had felt for him while he lived, and she did not admit the thought that anything the departed had done or arranged could be wrong or could be altered.

Eugène by great efforts managed to keep up the garden and the conservatory with two gardeners, and the stables with two coachmen. And Mary Pávlovna naively thought that she was sacrificing herself for her son and doing all a mother could do, by not complaining of the food which the old man-cook prepared, of the fact that the paths in the park were not all swept clean, and that instead of footmen they had only a boy.

So, too, concerning this new debt, in which Eugène saw an almost crushing blow to all his undertakings, Mary Pávlovna only saw an incident displaying Eugène’s noble nature. Moreover she did not feel much anxiety about Eugène’s position, because she was confident that he would make a brilliant marriage which would put everything right. And he could make a very brilliant marriage: she knew a dozen families who would be glad to give their daughters to him. And she wished to arrange the matter as soon as possible.

Eugène himself dreamt of marriage, but not in the same way as his mother. The idea of using marriage as a means of putting his affairs in order was repulsive to him. He wished to marry honourably, for love. He observed the girls whom he met and those he knew, and compared himself with them, but no decision had yet been taken. Meanwhile, contrary to his expectations, his relations with Stepanída continued, and even acquired the character of a settled affair. Eugène was so far from debauchery, it was so hard for him secretly to do this thing which he felt to be bad, that he could not arrange these meetings himself and even after the first one hoped not to see Stepanída again; but it turned out that after some time the same restlessness (due he believed to that cause) again overcame him. And his restlessness this time was no longer impersonal, but suggested just those same bright, black eyes, and that deep voice, saying, “ever so long,” that same scent of something fresh and strong, and that same full breast lifting the bib of her apron, and all this in that hazel and maple thicket, bathed in bright sunlight.

Though he felt ashamed he again approached Daniel. And again a rendezvous was fixed for midday in the wood. This time Eugène looked her over more carefully and everything about her seemed attractive. He tried talking to her and asked about her husband. He really was Michael’s son and lived as a coachman in Moscow.

“Well, then, how is it you⁠ ⁠…” Eugène wanted to ask how it was she was untrue to him.

“What about ‘how is it’?” asked she. Evidently she was clever and quick-witted.

“Well, how is it you come to me?”

“There now,” said she merrily. “I bet he goes on the spree there. Why shouldn’t I?”

Evidently she was putting on an air of sauciness and assurance, and this seemed charming to Eugène. But all the same he did not himself fix a rendezvous with her. Even when she proposed that they should meet without the aid of Daniel, to whom she seemed not very well disposed, he did not consent. He hoped that this meeting would be the last. He liked her. He thought such intercourse was necessary for him and that there was nothing bad about it, but in the depth of his soul there was a stricter judge who did not approve of it and hoped that this would be the last time, or if he did not hope that, at any rate did not wish to participate in arrangements to repeat it another time.

So the whole summer passed, during which they met a dozen times and always by Daniel’s help. It happened once that she could not be there because her husband had come home, and Daniel proposed another woman, but Eugène refused with disgust. Then the husband went away and the meetings continued as before, at first through Daniel, but afterwards he simply fixed the time and she came with another woman, Prókhorova⁠—as it would not do for a peasant-woman to go about alone.

Once at the very time fixed for the rendezvous a family came to call on Mary Pávlovna, with the very girl she wished Eugène to marry, and it was impossible for Eugène to get away. As soon as he could do so, he went out as though to the thrashing-floor, and round by the path to their meeting place in the wood. She was not there, but at the accustomed spot everything within reach had been broken⁠—the black alder, the hazel-twigs, and even a young maple the thickness of a stake. She had waited, had become excited and angry, and had skittishly left him a remembrance. He waited and waited, and then went to Daniel to ask him to call her for tomorrow. She came and was just as usual.

So the summer passed. The meetings ere always arranged in the wood, and only once, when it grew towards autumn, in the shed that stood in her backyard.

It did not enter Eugène’s head that these relations of his had any importance for him. About her he did not even think. He gave her money and nothing more. At first he did not know and did not think that the affair was known and that she was envied throughout the village, or that her relations took money from her and encouraged her, and that her conception of any sin in the matter had been quite obliterated by the influence of the money and her family’s approval. It seemed to her that if people envied her, then what she was doing was good.

“It is simply necessary for my health,” thought Eugène. “I grant it is not right, and though no one says anything, everybody, or many people, know of it. The woman who comes with her knows. And once she knows she is sure to have told others. But what’s to be done? I am acting badly,” thought Eugène, “but what’s one to do? Anyhow it is not for long.”

What chiefly disturbed Eugène was the thought of the husband. At first for some reason it seemed to him that the husband must be a poor sort, and this as it were partly justified his conduct. But he saw the husband and was struck by his appearance: he was a fine fellow and smartly dressed, in no way a worse man than himself, but surely better. At their next meeting he told her he had seen her husband and had been surprised to see that he was such a fine fellow.

“There’s not another man like him in the village,” said she proudly.

This surprised Eugène, and the thought of the husband tormented him still more after that. He happened to be at Daniel’s one day and Daniel, having begun chatting said to him quite openly:

“And Michael asked me the other day: ‘Is it true that the master is living with my wife?’ I said I did not know. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘better with the master than with a peasant.’ ”

“Well, and what did he say?”

“He said: ‘Wait a bit. I’ll get to know and I’ll give it her all the same.’ ”

“Yes, if the husband returned to live here I would give her up,” thought Eugène.

But the husband lived in town and for the present their intercourse continued.

“When necessary I will break it off, and there will be nothing left of it,” thought he.

And this seemed to him certain, especially as during the whole summer many different things occupied him very fully: the erection of the new farmhouse, and the harvest and building, and above all meeting the debts and selling the wasteland. All these were affairs that completely absorbed him and on which he spent his thoughts when he lay down and when he got up. All that was real life. His intercourse⁠—he did not even call it connection⁠—with Stepanída he paid no attention to. It is true that when the wish to see her arose it came with such strength that he could think of nothing else. But this did not last long. A meeting was arranged, and he again forgot her for a week or even for a month.

In autumn Eugène often rode to town, and there became friendly with the Ánnenskis. They had a daughter who had just finished the Institute.287 And then, to Mary Pávlovna’s great grief, it happened that Eugène “cheapened himself,” as she expressed it, by falling in love with Liza Ánnenskaya and proposing to her.

From that time his relations with Stepanída ceased.

It is impossible to explain why Eugène chose Liza Ánnenskaya, as it is always impossible to explain why a man chooses this and not that woman. There were many reasons⁠—positive and negative. One reason was that she was not a very rich heiress such as his mother sought for him, another that she was naive and to be pitied in her relations with her mother, another that she was not a beauty who attracted general attention to herself, and yet she was not bad-looking. But the chief reason was that his acquaintance with her began at the time when he was ripe for marriage. He fell in love because he knew that he would marry.

Liza Ánnenskaya was at first merely pleasing to Eugène, but when he decided to make her his wife his feelings for her became much stronger. He felt that he was in love.

Liza was tall, slender, and long. Everything about her was long; her face, and her nose (not prominently but downwards), and her fingers, and her feet. The colour of her face was very delicate, creamy white and delicately pink; she had long, soft, and curly, light-brown hair, and beautiful eyes, clear, mild, and confiding. Those eyes especially struck Eugène, and when he thought of Liza he always saw those clear, mild, confiding eyes.

Such was she physically; he knew nothing of her spiritually, but only saw those eyes. And those eyes seemed to tell him all he needed to know. The meaning of their expression was this:

While still in the Institute, when she was fifteen, Liza used continually to fall in love with all the attractive men she met and was animated and happy only when she was in love. After leaving the Institute she continued to fall in love in just the same way with all the young men she met, and of course fell in love with Eugène as soon as she made his acquaintance. It was this being in love which gave her eyes that particular expression which so captivated Eugène. Already that winter she had been in love with two young men at one and the same time, and blushed and became excited not only when they entered the room but whenever their names were mentioned. But afterwards, when her mother hinted to her that Irténev seemed to have serious intentions, her love for him increased so that she became almost indifferent to the two previous attractions, and when Irténev began to come to their balls and parties and danced with her more than with others and evidently only wished to know whether she loved him, her love for him became painful. She dreamed of him in her sleep and seemed to see him when she was awake in a dark room, and everyone else vanished from her mind. But when he proposed and they were formally engaged, and when they had kissed one another and were a betrothed couple, then she had no thoughts but of him, no desire but to be with him, to love him, and to be loved by him. She was also proud of him and felt emotional about him and herself and her love, and quite melted and felt faint from love of him.

The more he got to know her the more he loved her. He had not at all expected to find such love, and it strengthened his own feeling more.

Towards spring he went to his estate at Semënovskoe to have a look at it and to give directions about the management, and especially about the house which was being done up for his wedding.

Mary Pávlovna was dissatisfied with her son’s choice, not only because the match was not as brilliant as it might have been, but also because she did not like Varvára Alexéevna, his future mother-in-law. Whether she was good-natured or not she did not know and could not decide, but that she was not well-bred, not comme il faut⁠—“not a lady” as Mary Pávlovna said to herself⁠—she saw from their first acquaintance, and this distressed her; distressed her because she was accustomed to value breeding and knew that Eugène was sensitive to it, and she foresaw that he would suffer much annoyance on this account. But she liked the girl. Liked her chiefly because Eugène did. One could not help loving her, and Mary Pávlovna was quite sincerely ready to do so.

Eugène found his mother contented and in good spirits. She was getting everything straight in the house and preparing to go away herself as soon as he brought his young wife. Eugène persuaded her to stay for the time being, and the future remained undecided.

In the evening after tea Mary Pávlovna played patience as usual. Eugène sat by, helping her. This was the hour of their most intimate talks. Having finished one game and while preparing to begin another, she looked up at him and, with a little hesitation, began thus:

“I wanted to tell you, Jénya⁠—of course I do not know, but in general I wanted to suggest to you⁠—that before your wedding it is absolutely necessary to have finished with all your bachelor affairs so that nothing may disturb either you or your wife. God forbid that it should. You understand me?”

And indeed Eugène at once understood that Mary Pávlovna was hinting at his relations with Stepanída which had ended in the previous autumn, and that she attributed much more importance to those relations than they deserved, as solitary women always do. Eugène blushed, not from shame so much as from vexation that good-natured Mary Pávlovna was bothering⁠—out of affection no doubt, but still was bothering⁠—about matters that were not her business and that she did not and could not understand. He answered that there was nothing that needed concealment, and that he had always conducted himself so that there should be nothing to hinder his marrying.

“Well, dear, that is excellent. Only, Jénya⁠ ⁠… don’t be vexed with me,” said Mary Pávlovna, and broke off in confusion.

Eugène saw that she had not finished and had not said what she wanted to. And this was confirmed, when a little later she began to tell him how, in his absence, she had been asked to stand godmother at⁠ ⁠… the Péchnikovs.

Eugène flushed again, not with vexation or shame this time, but with some strange consciousness of the importance of what was about to be told him⁠—an involuntary consciousness quite at variance with his conclusions. And what he expected happened. Mary Pávlovna, as if merely by way of conversation, mentioned that this year only boys were being born⁠—evidently a sign of a coming war. Both at the Vásins and the Péchnikovs the young wife had a first child⁠—at each house a boy. Mary Pávlovna wanted to say this casually, but she herself felt ashamed when she saw the colour mount to her son’s face and saw him nervously removing, tapping, and replacing his pince-nez and hurriedly lighting a cigarette. She became silent. He too was silent and could not think how to break that silence. So they both understood that they had understood one another.

“Yes, the chief thing is that there should be justice and no favouritism in the village⁠—as under your grandfather.”

“Mamma,” said Eugène suddenly, “I know why you are saying this. You have no need to be disturbed. My future family life is so sacred to me that I should not infringe it in any case. And as to what occurred in my bachelor days, that is quite ended. I never formed any union and on one has any claims on me.”

“Well, I am glad,” said his mother. “I know how noble your feelings are.”

Eugène accepted his mother’s words as a tribute due to him, and did not reply.

Next day he drove to town thinking of his fiancée and of anything in the world except of Stepanída. But, as if purposely to remind him, on approaching the church he met people walking and driving back from it. He met old Matvéy with Simon, some lads and girls, and then two women, one elderly, the other, who seemed familiar, smartly dressed and wearing a bright-red kerchief. This woman was walking lightly and boldly, carrying a child in her arms. He came up to them, and the elder woman bowed, stopping in the old-fashioned way, but the young woman with the child only bent her head, and from under the kerchief gleamed familiar, merry, smiling eyes.

Yes, this was she, but all that was over and it was no use looking at her: “and the child may be mine,” flashed through his mind. No, what nonsense! There was her husband, she used to see him. He did not even consider the matter further, so settled in his mind was it that it had been necessary for his health⁠—he had paid her money and there was no more to be said; there was, there had been, and there could be, no question of any union between them. It was not that he stifled the voice of conscience, no⁠—his conscience simply said nothing to him. And he thought no more about her after the conversation with his mother and this meeting. Nor did he meet her again.

Eugène was married in town the week after Easter, and left at once with his young wife for his country estate. The house had been arranged as usual for a young couple. Mary Pávlovna wished to leave, but Eugène begged her to remain, and Liza still more strongly, and she only moved into a detached wing of the house.

And so a new life began for Eugène.

The first year of his marriage was a hard one for Eugène. It was hard because affairs he had managed to put off during the time of his courtship now, after his marriage, all came upon him at once.

To escape from debts was impossible. An outlying part of the estate was sold and the most pressing obligations met, but others remained, and he had no money. The estate yielded a good revenue, but he had had to send payments to his brother and to spend on his own marriage, so that there was no ready money and the factory could not carry on and would have to be closed down. The only way of escape was to use his wife’s money; and Liza, having realized her husband’s position, insisted on this herself. Eugène agreed, but only on condition that he should give her a mortgage on half his estate, which he did. Of course this was done not for his wife’s sake, who felt offended at it, but to appease his mother-in-law.

These affairs with various fluctuations of success and failure helped to poison Eugène’s life that first year. Another thing was his wife’s ill-health. That same first year, seven months after their marriage, a misfortune befell Liza. She was driving out to meet her husband on his return from town, and the quiet horse became rather playful and she was frightened and jumped out. Her jump was comparatively fortunate⁠—she might have been caught by the wheel⁠—but she was pregnant, and that same night the pains began and she had a miscarriage from which she was long in recovering. The loss of the expected child and his wife’s illness, together with the disorder in his affairs, and above all the presence of his mother-in-law, who arrived as soon as Liza fell ill⁠—all this together made the year still harder for Eugène.

But notwithstanding these difficult circumstances, towards the end of the first year Eugène felt very well. First of all his cherished hope of restoring his fallen fortune and renewing his grandfather’s way of life in a new form, was approaching accomplishment, though slowly and with difficulty. There was no longer any question of having to sell the whole estate to meet the debts. The chief estate, thoughh transferred to his wife’s name, was saved, and if only the beet crop succeeded and the price kept up, by next year his position of want and stress might be replaced by one of complete prosperity. That was one thing.

Another was that however much he had expected from his wife, he had never expected to find in her what he actually found. He found not what he had expected, but something much better. Raptures of love⁠—though he tried to produce them⁠—did not take place or were very slight, but he discovered something quite different, namely that he was not merely more cheerful and happier but that it had become easier to live. He did not know why this should be so, but it was.

And it was so because immediately after marriage his wife decided that Eugène Irténev was superior to anyone else in the world: wiser, purer, and nobler than they, and that therefore it was right for everyone to serve him and please him; but that as it was impossible to make everyone do this, she must do it herself to the limit of her strength. And she did; directing all her strength of mind towards learning and guessing what he liked, and then doing just that thing, whatever it was and however difficult it might be.

She had the gift which furnishes the chief delight of intercourse with a loving woman: thanks to her love of her husband she penetrated into his soul. She knew his every state and his every shade of feeling⁠—better it seemed to him than he himself⁠—and she behaved correspondingly and therefore never hurt his feelings, but always lessened his distresses and strengthened his joys. And she understood not only his feelings but also his joys. Things quite foreign to her⁠—concerning the farming, the factory, or the appraisement of others⁠—she immediately understood so that she could not merely converse with him, but could often, as he himself said, be a useful and irreplaceable counselor. She regarded affairs and people and everything in the world only though his eyes. She loved her mother, but having seen that Eugène disliked his mother-in-law’s interference in their life she immediately took her husband’s side, and did so with such decision that he had to restrain her.

Besides all this she had very good taste, much tact, and above all she had repose. All that she did, she did unnoticed; only the results of what she did were observable, namely, that always and in everything there was cleanliness, order, and elegance. Liza had at once understood in what her husband’s ideal of life consisted, and she tried to attain, and in the arrangement and order of the house did attain, what he wanted. Children it is true were lacking, but there was hope of that also. In winter she went to Petersburg to see a specialist and he assured them that she was quite well and could have children.

And this desire was accomplished. By the end of the year she was again pregnant.

The one thing that threatened, not to say poisoned, their happiness was her jealousy⁠—a jealousy she restrained and did not exhibit, but from which she often suffered. Not only might Eugène not love any other woman⁠—because there was not a woman on earth worthy of him (as to whether she herself was worthy or not she never asked herself)⁠—but not a single woman might therefore dare to love him.

This was how they lived: he rose early, as he always had done, and went to see to the farm or the factory where work was going on, or sometimes to the fields. Towards ten o’clock he would come back for his coffee, which they had on the veranda: Mary Pávlovna, an uncle who lived with them, and Liza. After a conversation which was often very animated while they drank their coffee, they dispersed till dinnertime. At two o’clock they dined and then went for a walk or a drive. In the evening when he returned from the office they drank their evening tea and sometimes he read aloud while she worked, or when there were guests they had music or conversation. When he went away on business he wrote to his wife and received letters from her every day. Sometimes she accompanied him, and then they were particularly merry. On his name-day and on hers guests assembled, and it pleased him to see how well she managed to arrange things so that everybody enjoyed coming. He saw and heard that they all admired her⁠—the young, agreeable hostess⁠—and he loved her still more for this.

All went excellently. She bore her pregnancy easily and, though they were afraid, they both began making plans as to how they would bring the child up. The system of education and the arrangements were all decided by Eugène, and her only wish was to carry out his desires obediently. Eugène on his part read up medical works and intended to bring the child up according to all the precepts of science. She of course agreed to everything and made preparations, making warm and also cool “envelopes,”288 and preparing a cradle. Thus the second year of their marriage arrived and the second spring.

It was just before Trinity Sunday. Liza was in her fifth month, and though careful she was still brisk and active. Both his mother and hers were living in the house, but under the pretext of watching and safeguarding her only upset her by their tiffs. Eugène was specially engrossed with a new experiment for the cultivation of sugar-beet on a large scale.

Just before Trinity Liza decided it was necessary to have a thorough housecleaning as it had not been done since Easter, and she hired two women by the day to help the servants wash the floors and windows, beat the furniture and the carpets, and put covers on them. These women came early in the morning, heated the coppers, and set to work. One of the two was Stepanída, who had just weaned her baby boy and had begged for the job of washing the floors through the office-clerk⁠—whom she now carried on with. She wanted to have a good look at the new mistress. Stepanída was living by herself as formerly, her husband being away, and she was up to tricks as she had formerly been first with old Daniel (who had once caught her taking some logs of firewood), afterwards with the master, and now with the young clerk. She was not concerning herself any longer about her master. “He has a wife now,” she thought. But it would be good to have a look at the lady and at her establishment: folk said it was well arranged.

Eugène had not seen her since he had met her with the child. Having a baby to attend to she had not been going out to work, and he seldom walked through the village. That morning, on the eve of Trinity Sunday, he got up at five o’clock and rode to the fallow land which was to be sprinkled with phosphates, and had left the house before the women were about, and while they were still engaged lighting the copper fires.

He returned to breakfast merry, contented, and hungry; dismounting from his mare at the gate and handing her over to the gardener. Flicking the high grass with his whip and repeating a phrase he had just uttered, as one often does, he walked towards the house. The phrase was: “phosphates justify”⁠—what or to whom, he neither knew nor reflected.

They were beating a carpet on the grass. The furniture had been brought out.

“There now! What a housecleaning Liza has undertaken!⁠ ⁠… Phosphates justify.⁠ ⁠… What a manageress she is! Yes, a manageress,” said he to himself, vividly imagining her in her white wrapper and with her smiling joyful face, as it nearly always was when he looked at her. “Yes, I must change my boots, or else ‘phosphates justify,’ that is, smell of manure, and the manageress in such a condition. Why ‘in such a condition’? Because a new little Irténev is growing there inside her,” he thought. “Yes, phosphates justify,” and smiling at his thoughts he put his hand to the door of his room.

But he had not time to push the door before it opened of itself and he came face to face with a woman coming towards him carrying a pail, barefoot and with sleeves turned up high. He stepped aside to let her pass and she too stepped aside, adjusting her kerchief with a wet hand.

“Go on, go on, I won’t go in, if you⁠ ⁠…” began Eugène and suddenly stopped, recognizing her.

She glanced merrily at him with smiling eyes, and pulling down her skirt went out at the door.

“What nonsense!⁠ ⁠… It is impossible,” said Eugène to himself, frowning and waving his hand as though to get rid of a fly, displeased at having noticed her. He was vexed that he had noticed her and yet he could not take his eyes from her strong body, swayed by her agile strides, from her bare feet, or from her arms and shoulders, and the pleasing folds of her shirt and the handsome skirt tucked up high above her white calves.

“But why am I looking?” said he to himself, lowering his eyes so as not to see her. “And anyhow I must go in to get some other boots.” And he turned back to go into his own room, but had not gone five steps before he again glanced round to have another look at her without knowing why or wherefore. She was just going round the corner and also glanced at him.

“Ah, what am I doing!” said he to himself. “She may think⁠ ⁠… It is even certain that she already does think⁠ ⁠…”

He entered his damp room. Another woman, an old and skinny one, was there, and was still washing it. Eugène passed on tiptoe across the floor, wet with dirty water, to the wall where his boots stood, and he was about to leave the room when the woman herself went out.

“This one has gone and the other, Stepanída, will come here alone,” someone within him began to reflect.

“My God, what am I thinking of and what am I doing!” He seized his boots and ran out with them into the hall, put them on there, brushed himself, and went out onto the veranda where both the mammas were already drinking coffee. Liza had evidently been expecting him and came onto the veranda through another door at the same time.

“My God! If she, who considers me so honourable, pure, and innocent⁠—if she only knew!”⁠—thought he.

Liza as usual met him with shining face. But today somehow she seemed to him particularly pale, yellow, long, and weak.

During coffee, as often happened, a peculiarly feminine kind of conversation went on which had no logical sequence but which evidently was connected in some way for it went on uninterruptedly.

The two old ladies were pinpricking one another, and Liza was skillfully manoeuvring between them.

“I am so vexed that we had not finished washing your room before you got back,” she said to her husband. “But I do so want to get everything arranged.”

“Well, did you sleep well after I got up?”

“Yes, I slept well and I fell well.”

“How can a woman be well in her condition during this intolerable heat, when her windows face the sun,” said Varvára Alexéevna, her mother. “And they have no venetian-blinds or awnings. I always had awnings.”

“But you know we are in the shade after ten o’clock,” said Mary Pávlovna.

“That’s what causes fever; it comes of dampness,” said Varvára Alexéevna, not noticing that what she was saying did not agree with what she had just said. “My doctor always says that it is impossible to diagnose an illness unless one knows the patient. And he certainly knows, for he is the leading physician and we pay him a hundred rubles a visit. My late husband did not believe in doctors, but he did not grudge me anything.”

“How can a man grudge anything to a woman when perhaps her life and the child’s depend⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, when she has means a wife need not depend on her husband. A good wife submits to her husband,” said Varvára Alexéevna⁠—“only Liza is too weak after her illness.”

“Oh no, mamma, I feel quite well. But why have they not brought you any boiled cream?”

“I don’t want any. I can do with raw cream.”

“I offered some to Varvára Alexéevna, but she declined,” said Mary Pávlovna, as if justifying herself.

“No, I don’t want any today.” and as if to terminate an unpleasant conversation and yield magnanimously, Varvára Alexéevna turned to Eugène and said: “Well, and have you sprinkled the phosphates?”

Liza ran to fetch the cream.

“But I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”

“Liza, Liza, go gently,” said Mary Pávlovna. “Such rapid movements do her harm.”

“Nothing does harm if one’s mind is at peace,” said Varvára Alexéevna as if referring to something, though she knew that there was nothing her words could refer to.

Liza returned with the cream and Eugène drank his coffee and listened morosely. He was accustomed to these conversations, but today he was particularly annoyed by its lack of sense. He wanted to think over what had happened to him but this chatter disturbed him. Having finished her coffee Varvára Alexéevna went away in a bad humour. Liza, Eugène, and Mary Pávlovna stayed behind, and their conversation was simple and pleasant. But Liza, being sensitive, at once noticed that something was tormenting Eugène, and she asked him whether anything unpleasant had happened. He was not prepared for this question and hesitated a little before replying that there had been nothing. This reply made Liza think all the more. That something was tormenting him, and greatly tormenting, was as evident to her as that a fly had fallen into the milk, yet he would not speak of it. What could it be?

After breakfast they all dispersed. Eugène as usual went to his study, but instead of beginning to read or write his letters, he sat smoking one cigarette after another and thinking. He was terribly surprised and disturbed by the unexpected recrudescence within him of the bad feeling from which he had thought himself free since his marriage. Since then he had not once experienced that feeling, either for her⁠—the woman he had known⁠—or for any other woman except his wife. He had often felt glad of this emancipation, and now suddenly a chance meeting, seemingly so unimportant, revealed to him the fact that he was not free. What now tormented him was not that he was yielding to that feeling and desired her⁠—he did not dream of so doing⁠—but that the feeling was awake within him and he had to be on his guard against it. He had not doubt but that he would suppress it.

He had a letter to answer and a paper to write, and sat down at his writing table and began to work. Having finished it and quite forgotten what had disturbed him, he went out to go to the stables. And again as ill-luck would have it, either by unfortunate chance or intentionally, as soon as he stepped from the porch a red skirt and a red kerchief appeared from round the corner, and she went past him swinging her arms and swaying her body. She not only went past him, but on passing him ran, as if playfully, to overtake her fellow-servant.

Again the bright midday, the nettles, the back of Daniel’s hut, and in the shade of the plane-trees her smiling face biting some leaves, rose in his imagination.

“No, it is impossible to let matters continue so,” he said to himself, and waiting till the women had passed out of sight he went to the office.

It was just the dinner-hour and he hoped to find the steward still there, and so it happened. The steward was just waking up from his after-dinner nap, and stretching himself and yawning was standing in the office, looking at the herdsman who was telling him something.

“Vasíli Nikoláich!” said Eugène to the steward.

“What is your pleasure?”

“I want to speak to you.”

“What is your pleasure?”

“Just finish what you are saying.”

“Aren’t you going to bring it in?” said Vasíli Nikoláich to the herdsman.

“It’s heavy, Vasíli Nikoláich.”

“What is it?” asked Eugène.

“Why, a cow has calved in the meadow. Well, all right, I’ll order them to harness a horse at once. Tell Nicholas Lysúkh to get out the dray cart.”

The herdsman went out.

“Do you know,” began Eugène, flushing and conscious that he was doing so, “do you know, Vasíli Nikoláich, while I was a bachelor I went off the track a bit.⁠ ⁠… You may have heard⁠ ⁠…”

Vasíli Nikoláich, evidently sorry for his master, said with smiling eyes: “Is it about Stepanída?”

“Why, yes. Look here. Please, please do not engage her to help in the house. You understand, it is very awkward for me⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, it must have been Ványa the clerk who arranged it.”

“Yes, please⁠ ⁠… and hadn’t the rest of the phosphate better be strewn?” said Eugène, to hide his confusion.

“Yes, I am just going to see to it.”

So the matter ended, and Eugène calmed down, hoping that as he had lived for a year without seeing her, so things would go on now. “Besides, Vasíli Nikoláich will speak to Iván the clerk; Iván will speak to her, and she will understand that I don’t want it,” said Eugène to himself, and he was glad he had forced himself to speak to Vasíli Nikoláich, hard as it had been to do so.

“Yes, it is better, much better, than that feeling of doubt, that feeling of shame.” He shuddered at the mere remembrance of his sin in thought.

The moral effort he had made to overcome his shame and speak to Vasíli Nikoláich tranquillized Eugène. It seemed to him that the matter was all over now. Liza at once noticed that he was quite calm, and even happier than usual. “No doubt he was upset by our mothers pinpricking one another. It really is disagreeable, especially for him who is so sensitive and noble, always to hear such unfriendly and ill-mannered insinuations,” thought she.

The next day was Trinity Sunday. It was a beautiful day, and the peasant-women, on their way into the woods to plait wreaths, came, according to custom, to the landowner’s home and began to sing and dance. Mary Pávlovna and Varvára Alexéevna came out onto the porch in smart clothes, carrying sunshades, and went up to the ring of singers. With them, in a jacket of Chinese silk, came out the uncle, a flabby libertine and drunkard, who was living that summer with Eugène.

As usual there was a bright, many-coloured ring of young women and girls, the centre of everything, and around these from different sides like attendant planets that had detached themselves and were circling round, went girls hand in hand, rustling in their new print gowns; young lads giggling and running backwards and forwards after one another; full-grown lads in dark blue or black coats and caps and with red shirts, who unceasingly spat out sunflower-seed shells; and the domestic servants or other outsiders watching the dance-circle from aside. Both the old ladies went close up to the ring, and Liza accompanied them in a light blue dress, with light blue ribbons on her head, and with wide sleeves under which her long white arms and angular elbows were visible.

Eugène did not wish to come out, but it was ridiculous to hide, and he too came out onto the porch smoking a cigarette, bowed to the men and lads, and talked with one of them. The women meanwhile shouted a dance-song with all their might, snapping their fingers, clapping their hands, and dancing.

“They are calling for the master,” said a youngster coming up to Eugène’s wife, who had not noticed the call. Liza called Eugène to look at the dance and at one of the women dancers who particularly pleased her. This was Stepanída. She wore a yellow skirt, a velveteen sleeveless jacket and a silk kerchief, and was broad, energetic, ruddy, and merry. No doubt she danced well. He saw nothing.

“Yes, yes,” he said, removing and replacing his pince-nez. “Yes, yes,” he repeated. “So it seems I cannot be rid of her,” he thought.

He did not look at her, fearing her attraction, and just on that account what his passing glance caught of her seemed to him especially attractive. Besides this he saw by her sparkling look that she saw him and saw that he admired her. He stood there as long as propriety demanded, and seeing that Varvára Alexéevna had called her “my dear” senselessly and insincerely and was talking to her, he turned aside and went away.

He went into the house in order not to see her, but on reaching the upper story he approached the window, without knowing how or why, and as long as the women remained at the porch he stood there and looked and looked at her, feasting his eyes on her.

He ran, while there was no one to see him, and then went with quiet steps onto the veranda and from there, smoking a cigarette, he passed through the garden as if going for a stroll, and followed the direction she had taken. He had not gone two steps along the alley before he noticed behind the trees a velveteen sleeveless jacket, with a pink and yellow skirt and a red kerchief. She was going somewhere with another woman. “Where are they going?”

And suddenly a terrible desire scorched him as though a hand were seizing his heart. As if by someone else’s wish he looked round and went towards her.

“Eugène Ivánich, Eugène Ivánich! I have come to see your honour,” said a voice behind him, and Eugène, seeing old Samókhin who was digging a well for him, roused himself and turning quickly round went to meet Samókhin. While speaking with him he turned sideways and saw that she and the woman who was with her went down the slope, evidently to the well or making an excuse of the well, and having stopped there a little while ran back to the dance-circle.

After talking to Samókhin, Eugène returned to the house as depressed as if he had committed a crime. In the first place she had understood him, believed that he wanted to see her, and desired it herself. Secondly that other woman, Anna Prókhorova, evidently knew of it.

Above all he felt that he was conquered, that he was not master of his own will but that there was another power moving him, that he had been saved only by good fortune, and that if not today then tomorrow or a day later, he would perish all the same.

“Yes, perish,” he did not understand it otherwise: to be unfaithful to his young and loving wife with a peasant-woman in the village, in the sight of everyone⁠—what was it but to perish, perish utterly, so that it would be impossible to live? No, something must be done.

“My God, my God! What am I to do? Can it be that I shall perish like this?” said he to himself. “Is it not possible to do anything? Yet something must be done. Do not think about her”⁠—he ordered himself. “Do not think!” and immediately he began thinking and seeing her before him, and seeing also the shade of the plane-tree.

He remembered having read of a hermit who, to avoid the temptation he felt for a woman on whom he had to lay his hand to heal her, thrust his other hand into a brazier and burnt his fingers. He called that to mind. “Yes, I am ready to burn my fingers rather than to perish.” He looked round to make sure that there was no one in the room, lit a candle, and put a finger into the flame. “There, now think about her,” he said to himself ironically. It hurt him and he withdrew his smoke-stained finger, threw away the match, and laughed at himself. What nonsense! That was not what had to be done. But it was necessary to do something, to avoid seeing her⁠—either to go away himself or to send her away. Yes⁠—send her away. Offer her husband money to remove to town or to another village. People would hear of it and would talk about it. Well, what of that? At any rate it was better than this danger. “Yes, that must be done,” he said to himself, and at that very moment he was looking at her without moving his eyes. “Where is she going?” he suddenly asked himself. She, it seemed to him, had seen him at the window and now, having glanced at him and taken another woman by the hand, was going towards the garden swinging her arm briskly. Without knowing why or wherefore, merely in accord with what he had been thinking, he went to the office.

Vasíli Nikoláich in holiday costume and with oiled hair was sitting at tea with his wife and a guest who was wearing an oriental kerchief.

“I want a word with you, Vasíli Nikoláich!”

“Please say what you want to. We have finished tea.”

“No. I’d rather you came out with me.”

“Directly; only let me get my cap. Tánya, put out the samovar,” said Vasíli Nikoláich, stepping outside cheerfully.

It seemed to Eugène that Vasíli had been drinking, but what was to be done? It might be all the better⁠—he would sympathize with him in his difficulties the more readily.

“I have come again to speak about that same matter, Vasíli Nikoláich,” said Eugène⁠—“about that woman.”

“Well, what of her? I told them not to take her again on any account.”

“No, I have been thinking in general, and this is what I wanted to take your advice about. Isn’t it possible to get them away, to send the whole family away?”

“Where can they be sent?” said Vasíli, disapprovingly and ironically as it seemed to Eugène.

“Well, I thought of giving them money, or even some land in Koltóvski⁠—so that she should not be here.”

“But how can they be sent away? Where is he to go⁠—torn up from his roots? And why should you do it? What harm can she do you?”

“Ah, Vasíli Nikoláich, you must understand that it would be dreadful for my wife to hear of it.”

“But who will tell her?”

“How can I live with this dread? The whole thing is vary painful for me.”

“But really, why should you distress yourself? Whoever stirs up the past⁠—out with his eye! Who is not a sinner before God and to blame before the Tsar, as the saying is?”

“All the same it would be better to get rid of them. Can’t you speak to the husband?”

“But it is no use speaking! Eh, Eugène Ivánich, what is the matter with you? It is all past and forgotten. All sorts of things happen. Who is there that would now say anything bad of you? Everybody sees you.”

“But all the same go and have a talk with him.”

“All right, I will speak to him.”

Though he knew that nothing would come of it, this talk somewhat calmed Eugène. Above all, it made him feel that through excitement he had been exaggerating the danger.

Had he gone to meet her by appointment? It was impossible. He had simply gone to stroll in the garden and she had happened to run out at the same time.

After dinner that very Trinity Sunday Liza while walking from the garden to the meadow, where her husband wanted to show her the clover, took a false step and fell when crossing a little ditch. She fell gently, on her side; but she gave an exclamation, and her husband saw an expression in her face not only of fear but of pain. He was about to help her up, but she motioned him away with her hand.

“No, wait a bit, Eugène,” she said, with a weak smile, and looked up guiltily as it seemed to him. “My foot only gave way under me.”

“There, I always say,” remarked Varvára Alexéevna, “can anyone in her condition possibly jump over ditches?”

“But it is all right, mamma. I shall get up directly.” With her husband’s help she did get up, but she immediately turned pale, and looked frightened.

“Yes, I am not well!” and she whispered something to her mother.

“Oh, my God, what have you done! I said you ought not to go there,” cried Varvára Alexéevna. “Wait⁠—I will call the servants. She must not walk. She must be carried!”

“Don’t be afraid, Liza, I will carry you,” said Eugène, putting his left arm round her. “Hold me by the neck. Like that.” And stopping down he put his right arm under her knees and lifted her. He could never afterwards forget the suffering and yet beatific expression of her face.

“I am too heavy for you, dear,” she said with a smile. “Mamma is running, tell her!” And she bent towards him and kissed him. She evidently wanted her mother to see how he was carrying her.

Eugène shouted to Varvára Alexéevna not to hurry, and that he would carry Liza home. Varvára Alexéevna stopped and began to shout still louder.

“You will drop her, you’ll be sure to drop her. You want to destroy her. You have no conscience!”

“But I am carrying her excellently.”

“I do not want to watch you killing my daughter, and I can’t.” And she ran round the bend in the alley.

“Never mind, it will pass,” said Liza, smiling.

“Yes, If only it does not have consequences like last time.”

“No. I am not speaking of that. That is all right. I mean mamma. You are tired. Rest a bit.”

But though he found it heavy, Eugène carried his burden proudly and gladly to the house and did not hand her over to the housemaid and the man-cook whom Varvára Alexéevna had found and sent to meet them. He carried her to the bedroom and put her on the bed.

“Now go away,” she said, and drawing his hand to her she kissed it. “Ánnushka and I will manage all right.”

Mary Pávlovna also ran in from her rooms in the wing. They undressed Liza and laid her on the bed. Eugène sat in the drawing room with a book in his hand, waiting. Varvára Alexéevna went past him with such a reproachfully gloomy air that he felt alarmed.

“Well, how is it?” he asked.

“How is it? What’s the good of asking? It is probably what you wanted when you made your wife jump over the ditch.”

“Varvára Alexéevna!” he cried. “This is impossible. If you want to torment people and to poison their life” (he wanted to say, “then go elsewhere to do it,” but restrained himself). “How is it that it does not hurt you?”

“It is too late now.” And shaking her cap in a triumphant manner she passed out by the door.

The fall had really been a bad one; Liza’s foot had twisted awkwardly and there was danger of her having another miscarriage. Everyone knew that there was nothing to be done but that she must just lie quietly, yet all the same they decided to send for a doctor.

“Dear Nikoláy Semënich,” wrote Eugène to the doctor, “you have always been so kind to us that I hope you will not refuse to come to my wife’s assistance. She⁠ ⁠…” and so on. Having written the letter he went to the stables to arrange about the horses and the carriage. Horses had to be got ready to bring the doctor and others to take him back. When an estate is not run on a large scale, such things cannot be quickly decided but have to be considered. Having arranged it all and dispatched the coachman, it was past nine before he got back to the house. His wife was lying down, and said that she felt perfectly well and had no pain. But Varvára Alexéevna was sitting with a lamp screened from Liza by some sheets of music and knitting a large red coverlet, with a mien that said that after what had happened peace was impossible, but that she at any rate would do her duty no matter what anyone else did.

Eugène noticed this, but, to appear as if he had not done so, tried to assume a cheerful and tranquil air and told how he had chosen the horses and how capitally the mare, Kabúshka, had galloped as left trace-horse in the troika.

“Yes, of course, it is just the time to exercise the horses when help is needed. Probably the doctor will also be thrown into the ditch,” remarked Varvára Alexéevna, examining her knitting from under her pince-nez and moving it close up to the lamp.

“But you know we had to send one way or another, and I made the best arrangement I could.”

“Yes, I remember very well how your horses galloped with me under the arch of the gateway.” This was a long-standing fancy of hers, and Eugène now was injudicious enough to remark that that was not quite what had happened.

“It is not for nothing that I have always said, and have often remarked to the prince, that it is hardest of all to live with people who are untruthful and insincere. I can endure anything except that.”

“Well, if anyone has to suffer more than another, it is certainly I,” said Eugène. “But you⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, it is evident.”

“What?”

“Nothing, I am only counting my stitches.”

Eugène was standing at the time by the bed and Liza was looking at him, and one of her moist hands outside the coverlet caught his hand and pressed it. “Bear with her for my sake. You know she cannot prevent our loving one another,” was what her look said.

“I won’t do so again. It’s nothing,” he whispered, and he kissed her damp, long hand and then her affectionate eyes, which closed while he kissed them.

“Can it be the same thing over again?” he asked. “How are you feeling?”

“I am afraid to say for fear of being mistaken, but I feel that he is alive and will live,” said she, glancing at her stomach.

“Ah, it is dreadful, dreadful to think of.”

Notwithstanding Liza’s insistence that he should go away, Eugène spent the night with her, hardly closing an eye and ready to attend on her.

But she passed the night well, and had they not sent for the doctor she would perhaps have got up.

By dinnertime the doctor arrived and of course said that though if the symptoms recurred there might be cause for apprehension, yet actually there were no positive symptoms, but as there were also no contrary indications one might suppose on the one hand that⁠—and on the other hand that⁠ ⁠… And therefore she must lie still, and that “though I do not like prescribing, yet all the same she should take this mixture and should lie quiet.” Besides this, the doctor gave Varvára Alexéevna a lecture on woman’s anatomy, during which Varvára Alexéevna nodded her head significantly. Having received his fee, as usual into the backmost part of his palm, the doctor drove away and the patient was left to lie in bed for a week.

Eugène spent most of his time by his wife’s bedside, talking to her, reading to her, and what was hardest of all, enduring without murmur Varvára Alexéevna’s attacks, and even contriving to turn these into jokes.

But he could not stay at home all the time. In the first place his wife sent him away, saying that he would fall ill if he always remained with her; and secondly the farming was progressing in a way that demanded his presence at every step. He could not stay at home, but had to be in the fields, in the wood, in the garden, at the thrashing-floor; and everywhere he was pursued not merely by the thought but by the vivid image of Stepanída, and he only occasionally forgot her. But that would not have mattered, he could perhaps have mastered his feeling; what was worst of all was that, whereas he had previously lived for months without seeing her, he now continually came across her. She evidently understood that he wished to renew relations with her and tried to come in his way. Nothing was said either by him or by her, and therefore neither he nor she went directly to a rendezvous, but only sought opportunities of meeting.

The most possible place for them to meet was in the forest, where peasant-women went with sacks to collect grass for their cows. Eugène knew this and therefore went there every day. Every day he told himself that he would not go, and every day it ended by his making his way to the forest and, on hearing the sound of voices, standing behind the bushes with sinking heart looking to see if she was there.

Why he wanted to know whether it was she who was there, he did not know. If it had been she and she had been alone, he would not have gone to her⁠—so he believed⁠—he would have run away; but he wanted to see her.

Once he met her. As he was entering the forest she came out of it with two other women, carrying a heavy sack full of grass on her back. A little earlier he would perhaps have met her in the forest. Now, with the other women there, she could not go back to him. But though he realized this impossibility, he stood for a long time behind a hazel bush, at the risk of attracting the other women’s attention. Of course she did not return, but he stayed there a long time. And, great heavens, how delightful his imagination made her appear to him! And this not only once, but five or six times, and each time more intensely. Never had she seemed so attractive, and never had he been so completely in her power.

He felt that he had lost control of himself and had become almost insane. His strictness with himself had not weakened a jog; on the contrary he saw all the abomination of his desire and even of his action, for his going to the wood was an action. He knew that he only need come near her anywhere in the dark, and if possible touch her, and he would yield to his feelings. He knew that it was only shame before people, before her, and no doubt before himself that restrained him. And he knew too that he had sought conditions in which that shame would not be apparent⁠—darkness or proximity⁠—in which it would be stifled by animal passion. And therefore he knew that he was a wretched criminal, and despised and hated himself with all his soul. He hated himself because he still had not surrendered: every day he prayed God to strengthen him, to save him from perishing; every day he determined that from today onward he would not take a step to see her, and would forget her. Every day he devised means of delivering himself from this enticement, and he made use of those means.

But it was all in vain.

One of the means was continual occupation; another was intense physical work and fasting; a third was imagining to himself the shame that would fall upon him when everybody knew of it⁠—his wife, his mother-in-law, and the folk around. He did all this and it seemed to him that he was conquering, but midday came⁠—the hour of their former meetings and the hour when he had met her carrying the grass⁠—and he went to the forest. Thus five days of torment passed. He only saw her from a distance, and did not once encounter her.

Liza was gradually recovering, she could move about and was only uneasy at the change that had taken place in her husband, which she did not understand.

Varvára Alexéevna had gone away for a while, and the only visitor was Eugène’s uncle. Mary Pávlovna was as usual at home.

Eugène was in his semi-insane condition when there came two days of pouring rain, as often happens after thunder in June. The rain stopped all work. They even ceased carting manure on account of the dampness and dirt. The peasants remained at home. The herdsmen wore themselves out with the cattle, and eventually drove them home. The cows and sheep wandered about in the pastureland and ran loose in the grounds. The peasant-women, barefoot and wrapped in shawls, splashing through the mud, rushed about to seek the runaway cows. Streams flowed everywhere along the paths, all the leaves and all the grass were saturated with water, and streams flowed unceasingly from the spouts into the bubbling puddles. Eugène sat at home with his wife, who was particularly wearisome that day. She questioned Eugène several times as to the cause of his discontent, and he replied with vexation that nothing was the matter. She ceased questioning him but was still distressed.

They were sitting after breakfast in the drawing room. His uncle for the hundredth time was recounting fabrications about his society acquaintances. Liza was knitting a jacket and sighed, complaining of the weather and of a pain in the small of her back. The uncle advised her to lie down, and asked for vodka for himself. It was terribly dull for Eugène in the house. Everything was weak and dull. He read a book and a magazine, but understood nothing of them.

“I must go out and look at the rasping-machine they brought yesterday,” said he, and got up and went out.

“Take an umbrella with you.”

“Oh, no, I have a leather coat. And I am only going as far as the boiling-room.”

He put on his boots and his leather coat and went to the factory; and he had not gone twenty steps before he met her coming towards him, with her skirts tucked up high above her white calves. She was walking, holding down the shawl in which her head and shoulders were wrapped.

“Where are you going?” said he, not recognizing her the first instant. When he recognized her it was already too late. She stopped, smiling, and looked long at him.

“I am looking for a calf. Where are you off to in such weather?” said she, as if she were seeing him every day.

“Come to the shed,” said he suddenly, without knowing how he said it. It was as if someone else had uttered the words.

She bit her shawl, winked, and ran in the direction which led from the garden to the shed, and he continued his path, intending to turn off beyond the lilac-bush and go there too.

“Master,” he heard a voice behind him. “The mistress is calling you, and wants you to come back for a minute.”

This was Mísha, his manservant.

“My God! This is the second time you have saved me,” thought Eugène, and immediately turned back. His wife reminded him that he had promised to take some medicine at the dinner-hour to a sick woman, and he had better take it with him.

While they were getting the medicine some five minutes elapsed, and then, going away with the medicine, he hesitated to go direct to the shed lest he should be seen from the house, but as soon as he was out of sight he promptly turned and made his way to it. He already saw her in imagination inside the shed smiling gaily. But she was not there, and there was nothing in the shed to show that she had been there.

He was already thinking that she had not come, had not heard or understood his words⁠—he had muttered them through his nose as if afraid of her hearing them⁠—or perhaps she had not wanted to come. “And why did I imagine that she would rush to me? She has her own husband; it is only I who am such a wretch as to have a wife, and a good one, and to run after another.” Thus he thought sitting in the shed, the thatch of which had a leak and dripped from its straw. “But how delightful it would be if she did come⁠—alone here in this rain. If only I could embrace her once again, then let happen what may. But I could tell if she has been here by her footprints,” he reflected. He looked at the trodden ground near the shed and at the path overgrown by grass, and the fresh print of bare feet, and even of one that had slipped, was visible. “Yes, she has been here. Well, now it is settled. Wherever I may see her I shall go straight to her. I will go to her at night.” He sat for a long time in the shed and left it exhausted and crushed. He delivered the medicine, returned home, and lay down in his room to wait for dinner.

Before dinner Liza came to him and, still wondering what could be the cause of his discontent, began to say that she was afraid he did not like the idea of her going to Moscow for her confinement, and that she had decided that she would remain at home and on no account go to Moscow. He knew how she feared both her confinement itself and the risk of not having a healthy child, and therefore he could not help being touched at seeing how ready she was to sacrifice everything for his sake. All was so nice, so pleasant, so clean, in the house; and in his soul it was so dirty, despicable, and foul. The whole evening Eugène was tormented by knowing that notwithstanding his sincere repulsion at his own weakness, notwithstanding his firm intention to break off⁠—the same thing would happen again tomorrow.

“No, this is impossible,” he said to himself, walking up and down in his room. “There must be some remedy for it. My God! What am I to do?”

Someone knocked at the door as foreigners do. He knew this must be his uncle. “Come in,” he said.

The uncle had come as a self-appointed ambassador from Liza.

“Do you know, I really do notice that there is a change in you,” he said⁠—“and Liza⁠—I understand how it troubles her. I understand that it must be hard for you to leave all the business you have so excellently started, but que veux-tu?289 I should advise you to go away. It will be more satisfactory both for you and for her. And do you know, I should advise you to go to the Crimea. The climate is beautiful and there is an excellent accoucheur there, and you would be just in time for the best of the grape season.”

“Uncle,” Eugène suddenly exclaimed. “Can you keep a secret? A secret that is terrible to me, a shameful secret.”

“Oh, come⁠—do you really feel any doubt of me?”

“Uncle, you can help me. Not only help, but save me!” said Eugène. And the thought of disclosing his secret to his uncle whom he did not respect, the thought that he should show himself in the worst light and humiliate himself before him, was pleasant. He felt himself to be despicable and guilty, and wished to punish himself.

“Speak, my dear fellow, you know how fond I am of you,” said the uncle, evidently well content that there was a secret and that it was a shameful one, and that it would be communicated to him, and that he could be of use.

“First of all I must tell you that I am a wretch, a good-for-nothing, a scoundrel⁠—a real scoundrel.”

“Now what are you saying⁠ ⁠…” began his uncle, as if he were offended.

“What! Not a wretch when I⁠—Liza’s husband, Liza’s! One has only to know her purity, her love⁠—and that I, her husband, want to be untrue to her with a peasant-woman!”

“What is this? Why do you want to⁠—you have not been unfaithful to her?”

“Yes, at least just the same as being untrue, for it did not depend on me. I was ready to do so. I was hindered, or else I should⁠ ⁠… now. I do not know what I should have done⁠ ⁠…”

“But please, explain to me⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, it is like this. When I was a bachelor I was stupid enough to have relations with a woman here in our village. That is to say, I used to have meetings with her in the forest, in the field⁠ ⁠…”

“Was she pretty?” asked his uncle.

Eugène frowned at this question, but he was in such need of external help that he made as if he did not hear it, and continued:

“Well, I thought this was just casual and that I should break it off and have done with it. And I did break it off before my marriage. For nearly a year I did not see her or think about her.” It seemed strange to Eugène himself to hear the description of his own condition. “Then suddenly, I don’t myself know why⁠—really one sometimes believes in witchcraft⁠—I saw her, and a worm crept into my heart; and it gnaws. I reproach myself, I understand the full horror of my action, that is to say, of the act I may commit any moment, and yet I myself turn to it, and if I have not committed it, it is only because God preserved me. Yesterday I was on my way to see her when Liza sent for me.”

“What, in the rain?”

“Yes. I am worn out, Uncle, and have decided to confess to you and to ask your help.”

“Yes, of course, it’s a bad thing on your own estate. People will get to know. I understand that Liza is weak and that it is necessary to spare her, but why on your own estate?”

Again Eugène tried not to hear what his uncle was saying, and hurried on to the core of the matter.

“Yes, save me from myself. That is what I ask of you. Today I was hindered by chance. But tomorrow or next time no one will hinder me. And she knows now. Don’t leave me alone.”

“Yes, all right,” said his uncle⁠—“but are you really so much in love?”

“Oh, it is not that at all. It is not that, it is some kind of power that has seized me and holds me. I do not know what to do. Perhaps I shall gain strength, and then⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, it turns out as I suggested,” said his uncle. “Let us be off to the Crimea.”

“Yes, yes, let us go, and meanwhile you will be with me and will talk to me.”

The fact that Eugène had confided his secret to his uncle, and still more the sufferings of his conscience and the feeling of shame he experienced after that rainy day, sobered him. It was settled that they would start for Yálta in a week’s time. During that week Eugène drove to town to get money for the journey, gave instructions from the house and from the office concerning the management of the estate, again became gay and friendly with his wife, and began to awaken morally.

So without having once seen Stepanída after that rainy day he left with his wife for the Crimea. There he spent an excellent two months. He received so many new impressions that it seemed to him that the past was obliterated from his memory. In the Crimea they met former acquaintances and became particularly friendly with them, and they also made new acquaintances. Life in the Crimea was a continual holiday for Eugène, besides being instructive and beneficial. They became friendly there with the former Marshal of the Nobility of their province, a clever and liberal-minded man who became fond of Eugène and coached him, and attracted him to his Party.

At the end of August Liza gave birth to a beautiful, healthy daughter, and her confinement was unexpectedly easy.

In September they returned home, the four of them, including the baby and its wet-nurse, as Liza was unable to nurse it herself. Eugène returned home entirely free from the former horrors and quite a new and happy man. Having gone through all that a husband goes through when his wife bears a child, he loved her more than ever. His feeling for the child when he took it in his arms was a funny, new, very pleasant and, as it were, a tickling feeling. Another new thing in his life now was that, besides his occupation with the estate, thanks to his acquaintance with Dúmchin (the ex-Marshal) a new interest occupied his mind, that of the Zemstvo⁠—partly an ambitious interest, partly a feeling of duty. In October there was to be a special Assembly, at which he was to be elected. After arriving home he drove once to town and another time to Dúmchin.

Of the torments of his temptation and struggle he had forgotten even to think, and could with difficulty recall them to mind. It seemed to him something like an attack of insanity he had undergone.

To such an extent did he now feel free from it that he was not even afraid to make inquiries on the first occasion when he remained alone with the steward. As he had previously spoken to him about the matter he was not ashamed to ask.

“Well, and is Sídor Péchnikov still away from home?” he inquired.

“Yes, he is still in town.”

“And his wife?”

“Oh, she is a worthless woman. She is now carrying on with Zenóvi. She has gone quite on the loose.”

“Well, that is all right,” thought Eugène. “How wonderfully indifferent to it I am! How I have changed.”

All that Eugène had wished had been realized. He had obtained the property, the factory was working successfully, the beet-crops were excellent, and he expected a large income; his wife had borne a child satisfactorily, his mother-in-law had left, and he had been unanimously elected to the Zemstvo.

He was returning home from town after the election. He had been congratulated and had had to return thanks. He had had dinner and had drunk some five glasses of champagne. Quite new plans of life now presented themselves to him, and he was thinking about these as he drove home. It was the Indian summer: an excellent road and a hot sun. As he approached his home Eugène was thinking of how, as a result of this election, he would occupy among the people the position he had always dreamed of; that is to say, one in which he would be able to serve them not only by production, which gave employment, but also by direct influence. He imagined what his own and the other peasants would think of him in three years’ time. “For instance this one,” he thought, drifting just then through the village and glancing at a peasant who with a peasant-woman was crossing the street in front of him carrying a full water-tub. They stopped to let his carriage pass. The peasant was old Péchnikov, and the woman was Stepanída. Eugène looked at her, recognized her, and was glad to feel that he remained quite tranquil. She was still as good-looking as ever, but this did not touch him at all. He drove home.

“Well, may we congratulate you?” said his uncle.

“Yes, I was elected.”

“Capital! We must drink to it!”

Next day Eugène drove about to see to the farming which he had been neglecting. At the outlying farmstead a new thrashing machine was at work. While watching it Eugène stepped among the women, trying not to take notice of them; but try as he would he once or twice noticed the black eyes and red kerchief of Stepanída, who was carrying away the straw. Once or twice he glanced sideways at her and felt that something was happening, but could not account for it to himself. Only next day, when he again drove to the thrashing-floor and spent two hours there quite unnecessarily, without ceasing to caress with his eyes the familiar, handsome figure of the young woman, did he feel that he was lost, irremediably lost. Again those torments! Again all that horror and fear, and there was no saving himself.

What he expected happened to him. The evening of the next day, without knowing how, he found himself at her backyard, by her hay-shed, where in autumn they had once had a meeting. As though having a stroll, he stopped there lighting a cigarette. A neighbouring peasant-woman saw him, and as he turned back he heard her say to someone: “Go, he is waiting for you⁠—on my dying word he is standing there. Go, you fool!”

He saw how a woman⁠—she⁠—ran to the hay-shed; but as a peasant had met him it was no longer possible for him to turn back, and so he went home.

When he entered the drawing-room everything seemed strange and unnatural to him. He had risen that morning vigorous, determined to fling it all aside, to forget it and not allow himself to think about it. But without noticing how it occurred he had all the morning not merely not interested himself in the work, but tried to avoid it. What had formerly cheered him and been important was now insignificant. Unconsciously he tried to free himself from business. It seemed to him that he had to do so in order to think and to plan. And he freed himself and remained alone. But as soon as he was alone he began to wander about in the garden and the forest. And all those spots were besmirched in his recollection by memories that gripped him. He felt that he was walking in the garden and pretending to himself that he was thinking out something, but that really he was not thinking out anything, but insanely and unreasonably expecting her; expecting that by some miracle she would be aware that he was expecting her, and would come here at once and go somewhere where no one would see them, or would come at night when there would be no moon, and no one, not even she herself, would see⁠—on such a night she would come and he would touch her body.⁠ ⁠…

“There now, talking of breaking off when I wish to,” he said to himself. “Yes, and that is having a clean healthy woman for one’s health sake! No, it seems one can’t play with her like that. I thought I had taken her, but it was she who took me; took me and does not let me go. Why, I thought I was free, but I was not free and was deceiving myself when I married. It was all nonsense⁠—fraud. From the time I had her I experienced a new feeling, the real feeling of a husband. Yes, I ought to have lived with her.

“One of two lives is possible for me: that which I began with Liza: service, estate management, the child, and people’s respect. If that is life, it is necessary that she, Stepanída, should not be there. She must be sent away, as I said, or destroyed so that she shall not exist. And the other life⁠—is this: For me to take her away from her husband, pay him money, disregard the shame and disgrace, and live with her. But in that case it is necessary that Liza should not exist, nor Mimi (the baby). No, that is not so, the baby does not matter, but it is necessary that there should be no Liza⁠—that she should go away⁠—that she should know, curse me, and go away. That she should know that I have exchanged her for a peasant-woman, that I am a deceiver and a scoundrel!⁠—No, that is too terrible! It is impossible. But it might happen,” he went on thinking⁠—“it might happen that Liza might fall ill and die. Die, and then everything would be capital.

“Capital! Oh, scoundrel! No, if someone must die it should be Stepanída. If she were to die, how good it would be.

“Yes, that is how men come to poison or kill their wives or lovers. Take a revolver and go and call her, and instead of embracing her, shoot her in the breast and have done with it.

“Really she is⁠—a devil. Simply a devil. She has possessed herself of me against my own will.

“Kill? Yes. There are only two ways out: to kill my wife or her. For it is impossible to live like this.290 It is impossible! I must consider the matter and look ahead. If things remain as they are what will happen? I shall again be saying to myself that I do not wish it and that I will throw her off, but it will be merely words; in the evening I shall be at her backyard, and she will know it and will come out. And if people know of it and tell my wife, or if I tell her myself⁠—for I can’t lie⁠—I shall not be able to live so. I cannot! People will know. They will all know⁠—Parásha and the blacksmith. Well, is it possible to live so?

“Impossible! There are only two ways out: to kill my wife, or to kill her. Yes, or else⁠ ⁠… Ah, yes, there is a third way: to kill myself,” said he softly, and suddenly a shudder ran over his skin. “Yes, kill myself, then I shall not need to kill them.” He became frightened, for he felt that only that way was possible. He had a revolver. “Shall I really kill myself? It is something I never thought of⁠—how strange it will be⁠ ⁠…”

He returned to his study and at once opened the cupboard where the revolver lay, but before he had taken it out of its case his wife entered the room.

He threw a newspaper over the revolver.

“Again the same!” said she aghast when she had looked at him.

“What is the same?”

“The same terrible expression that you had before and would not explain to me. Jénya, dear one, tell me about it. I see that you are suffering. Tell me and you will feel easier. Whatever it may be, it will be better than for you to suffer so. Don’t I know that it is nothing bad?”

“You know? While⁠ ⁠…”

“Tell me, tell me, tell me. I won’t let you go.”

He smiled a piteous smile.

“Shall I?⁠—No, it is impossible. And there is nothing to tell.”

Perhaps he might have told her, but at that moment the wet-nurse entered to ask if she should go for a walk. Liza went out to dress the baby.

“Then you will tell me? I will be back directly.”

“Yes, perhaps⁠ ⁠…”

She never could forget the piteous smile with which he said this. She went out.

Hurriedly, stealthily like a robber, he seized the revolver and took it out of its case. It was loaded, yes, but long ago, and one cartridge was missing.

“Well, how will it be?” He put it to his temple and hesitated a little, but as soon as he remembered Stepanída⁠—his decision not to see her, his struggle, temptation, fall, and renewed struggle⁠—he shuddered with horror. “No, this is better,” and he pulled the trigger⁠ ⁠…

When Liza ran into the room⁠—she had only had time to step down from the balcony⁠—he was lying face downwards on the floor: black, warm blood was gushing from the wound, and his corpse was twitching.

There was an inquest. No one could understand or explain the suicide. It never even entered his uncle’s head that its cause could be anything in common with the confession Eugène had made to him two months previously.

Varvára Alexéevna assured them that she had always foreseen it. It had been evident from his way of disputing. Neither Liza nor Mary Pávlovna could at all understand why it had happened, but still they did not believe what the doctors said, namely, that he was mentally deranged⁠—a psychopath. They were quite unable to accept this, for they knew he was saner than hundreds of their acquaintances.

And indeed if Eugène Irténev was mentally deranged everyone is in the same case; the most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.

“To kill, yes. There are only two ways out: to kill my wife, or to kill her. For it is impossible to live like this,” said he to himself, and going up to the table he took from it a revolver and, having examined it⁠—one cartridge was wanting⁠—he put it in his trouser pocket.

“My God! What am I doing?” he suddenly exclaimed, and folding his hands he began to pray.

“O God, help me and deliver me! Thou knowest that I do not desire evil, but by myself am powerless. Help me,” said he, making the sign of the cross on his breast before the icon.

“Yes, I can control myself. I will go out, walk about and think things over.”

He went to the entrance-hall, put on his overcoat and went out onto the porch. Unconsciously his steps took him past the garden along the field path to the outlying farmstead. There the thrashing machine was still droning and the cries of the driver-lads were heard. He entered the barn. She was there. He saw her at once. She was raking up the corn, and on seeing him she ran briskly and merrily about, with laughing eyes, raking up the scattered corn with agility. Eugène could not help watching her though he did not wish to do so. He only recollected himself when she was no longer in sight. The clerk informed him that they were now finishing thrashing the corn that had been beaten down⁠—that was why it was going slower and the output was less. Eugène went up to the drum, which occasionally gave a knock as sheaves not evenly fed in passed under it, and he asked the clerk if there were many such sheaves of beaten-down corn.

“There will be five cartloads of it.”

“Then look here⁠ ⁠…” began Eugène, but he did not finish the sentence. She had gone close up to the drum and was raking the corn from under it, and she scorched him with her laughing eyes. That look spoke of a merry, careless love between them, of the fact that she knew he wanted her and had come to her shed, and that she as always was ready to live and be merry with him regardless of all conditions or consequences. Eugène felt himself to be in her power but did not wish to yield.

He remembered his prayer and tried to repeat it. He began saying it to himself, but at once felt that it was useless. A single thought now engrossed him entirely: how to arrange a meeting with her so that the others should not notice it.

“If we finish this lot today, are we to start on a fresh stack or leave it till tomorrow?” asked the clerk.

“Yes, yes,” replied Eugène, involuntarily following her to the heap to which with the other women she was raking the corn.

“But can I really not master myself?” said he to himself. “Have I really perished? O God! But there is no God. There is only a devil. And it is she. She has possessed me. But I won’t, I won’t! A devil, yes, a devil.”

Again he went up to her, drew the revolver from his pocket and shot her, once, twice, thrice, in the back. She ran a few steps and fell on the heap of corn.

“My God, my God! What is that?” cried the women.

“No, it was not an accident. I killed her on purpose,” cried Eugène. “Send for the police-officer.”

He went home and went to his study and locked himself in, without speaking to his wife.

“Do not come to me,” he cried to her through the door. “You will know all about it.”

An hour later he rang, and bade the manservant who answered the bell: “Go and find out whether Stepanída is alive.”

The servant already knew all about it, and told him she had died an hour ago.

“Well, all right. Now leave me alone. When the police-officer or the magistrate comes, let me know.”

The police-officer and magistrate arrived next morning, and Eugène, having bidden his wife and baby farewell, was taken to prison.

He was tried. It was during the early days of trial by jury,291 and the verdict was one of temporary insanity, and he was sentenced only to perform church penance.

He had been kept in prison for nine months and was then confined in a monastery for one month.

He had begun to drink while still in prison, continued to do so in the monastery, and returned home an enfeebled, irresponsible drunkard.

Varvára Alexéevna assured them that she had always predicted this. It was, she said, evident from the way he disputed. Neither Liza nor Mary Pávlovna could understand how the affair had happened, but for all that, they did not believe what the doctors said, namely, that he was mentally deranged⁠—a psychopath. They could not accept that, for the knew that he was saner than hundreds of their acquaintances.

And indeed, if Eugène Irténev was mentally deranged when he committed this crime, then everyone is similarly insane. The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.

November 19, 1889.

On the 3rd of May 1882 a three-masted sailing vessel, Notre-Dame-des-Vents, left Havre for the China Seas. After discharging her cargo in China, she took on board a fresh freight for Buenos Aires, from whence she carried other goods to Brazil.

Apart from these long voyages, the vessel was so much delayed by damages, repairs, calms that continued for months, gales which drove her far out of her course, adventures at sea, and various accidents, that it was four years before she returned to France. At last however, on the 8th of May 1886, she reached Marseilles with a cargo of American tinned fruit.

When the ship left Havre she had on board a captain, a mate, and fourteen sailors. During the voyage one sailor died, four were lost in various adventures, and of those that had sailed from France only nine returned home. In place of these men struck off the list, two Americans had been engaged, besides one negro, and a Swede who had been picked up in a drink-shop at Singapore.

The sails were furled and all the rigging made taut. A tug took them in tow and, steaming noisily, drew the vessel to the line of ships moored at the quay. The sea was calm, only a slight swell plashed on the shore. The vessel took her place in the line of those ranged along the quay, where cheek by jowl stood ships large and small, of all sizes, shapes, and kinds, from every country in the world. Notre-Dame-des-Vents lay between an Italian brig and an English schooner, which had both crowded up to make room for their new companion.

As soon as the captain had got rid of the customhouse officers and port officials, he gave leave to the greater part of the crew to go ashore for the night.

It was a warm summer night. The streets of Marseilles were lighted up and were pervaded by the smell of food, the buzz of conversation, and the noise of traffic interspersed by sounds of gaiety.

The sailors from Notre-Dame-des-Vents had not been on shore for four months and now on landing went about timidly in pairs, like strangers unused to a town. They wandered about the streets nearest the quay, looking around them like dogs sniffing about in search of something. It was four months since they had seen a woman. In front walked Celestin Duclos, a strong and agile fellow who always took the lead when they went ashore. He knew how to find the right places and how to get out of a scrape when necessary. He avoided such broils as sailors frequently engage in when they go ashore, but he went the pace with his comrades and could stand up for himself.

For some time the sailors strolled about those streets which run down to the sea like sewers, filled with an oppressive smell rising from their damp cellars and musty attics. At last Celestin chose a narrow side-street where large, prominent lamps shone over the doors of the houses, and into this he turned. The others followed him, grinning and singing. Numbers were painted in huge figures on the coloured glass of these lamps. In the low doorways, on straw-platted chairs, sat women in aprons. They rushed out at the sight of the sailors, and running into the street threw themselves in their way, enticing them each to her own lair.

At times a door unexpectedly opened at the end of a passage, through which one saw a half-naked woman wearing very short skirts and a very low-cut velvet bodice trimmed with gilt lace.

“Ah! lads, come here,” such a one would cry from a distance, or even ran out herself and catching hold of a sailor dragged him with all her strength towards her den. She stuck to him like a spider seizing a fly stronger than itself. The fellow resisted feebly and the others stopped to see the result, but Celestin Duclos shouted:

“Not there, don’t go in there: come farther!”

The fellow obeyed, tearing himself from the woman by force, and the sailors went on, followed by the abuse of the enraged woman. At the noise of the encounter other women along the street rushed out and fell upon them, shouting the praises of their wares in hoarse voices, but the sailors went on farther and farther. Occasionally they met a soldier with jingling spurs or a solitary clerk or tradesman making his way to some accustomed haunt. In other side-streets shone other lamps of the same kind, but the sailors went farther and farther, tramping through the foul-smelling slush that oozed from the yards. At last Duclos stopped at a house of better appearance than the others, and led his comrades in.

The sailors were sitting in the chief room of the establishment. Each of them had chosen a woman companion from whom he did not part the whole evening; such was the custom of the place. Three tables had been placed together, and first of all the sailors drank, each with his lass. Then they rose and went upstairs with them. Long and loud clattered their twenty feet in their thick boots on the wooden stairs before they had all tumbled through the narrow doors into their separate rooms. From there they came down again to drink, and then returned once more upstairs.

The carouse was kept up recklessly. The whole half-year’s pay went in a four hours’ debauch. By eleven o’clock they were all drunk, and with bloodshot eyes were shouting disconnected phrases not knowing what they said. They sang, shouted, beat with their fists on the table, or poured wine down their throats. Celestin Duclos was there among his comrades and with him sat a large, stout, red-cheeked woman. He had had as much to drink as the others, but was not yet quite drunk: some more or less connected thoughts still flickered through his brain. He grew tender, and tried to think of something to say to his lass, but the thoughts that came into his head vanished again at once and he was unable to remember or express them.

“Yes,” said he, laughing. “Just so.⁠ ⁠… Just so.⁠ ⁠… And have you lived here long?”

“Six months,” replied the woman.

He nodded his head, as if to show his approval of this.

“And are you comfortable here?”

She thought a moment.

“I have got accustomed to it,” she said. “One has to live somehow. It is not so bad as being in service or working in a laundry.”

He nodded his head approvingly, as if to commend her for this also.

“Were you born in these parts?” said he.

She shook her head.

“Do you come from far away?” he continued.

She nodded.

“Where from?”

She paused, as if to remember.

“I am from Perpignan,” said she.

“Yes, yes,” said he and ceased questioning her.

“And what are you⁠—a sailor?” asked the woman in her turn.

“Yes, we are sailors.”

“And have you been on long voyages?”

“Yes, long enough! We have seen places of all sorts.”

“Have you been round the world?”

“Oh yes,” said he, “not once only⁠—we have been nearly twice round.”

She again paused, as if remembering something.

“I suppose you have met many ships?” said she.

“Of course we have.”

“Have you ever met the Notre-Dame-des-Vents? There is a ship of that name.”

He was surprised at her naming his vessel, and thought he would play a trick on her.

“Why, certainly,” said he; “we met her only last week.”

“Is that the truth?” she said, growing pale.

“The solemn truth.”

“You are not telling me a lie?”

“So help me God,” swore he, “I am telling the truth.”

“And did you not meet a man on board named Celestin Duclos?” asked she.

“Celestin Duclos?” he repeated, astonished and even alarmed. How did this woman know his name?

“Why! do you know him?” he asked.

It was evident that she too was alarmed.

“No, not I, but there is a woman here that knows him.”

“What woman? Here in this house?”

“No, but near here.”

“Tell me where?”

“Oh, not very far away.”

“Who is she?”

“Oh, just a woman⁠—like myself.”

“What has she to do with him?”

“How should I know? Perhaps they come from the same parts.”

They looked searchingly into each other’s eyes.

“I should like to see that woman,” he said.

“Why?” she asked. “Have you anything to tell her?”

“I want to tell her⁠ ⁠…”

“To tell her⁠—what?”

“That I have seen Celestin Duclos.”

“You have seen Celestin Duclos! Is he alive and well?”

“He is quite well. But what is that to you?”

She was silent, again collecting her thoughts. Then she said softly:

“What port is the Notre-Dame-des-Vents bound for?”

“What port? Why, Marseilles.”

“Is that true?” cried she.

“Quite true.”

“And you know Duclos?”

“I have already told you that I know him.”

She thought awhile.

“Yes, yes, it is well,” said she softly.

“What do you want with him?”

“If you should see him, tell him⁠ ⁠… No, better not!”

“What shall I tell him?”

“No, never mind.”

As he looked at her he became more and more agitated.

“Do you know him yourself?” asked he.

“No, I don’t know him myself.”

“Then what does he matter to you?”

She did not answer, but jumping up ran to the counter, behind which the hostess sat. Taking a lemon, she cut it in half and squeezed the juice into a glass which she filled with water, and this she gave to Celestin.

“There⁠—drink that!” she said, sitting down as before on his knees.

“What is this for?” he asked, taking the glass from her.

“To clear your head. Then I will tell you something. Drink it!”

He drank it, and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“Well, now tell me! I am attending.”

“But you must not let him know that you have seen me, nor tell him whom you heard it from.”

“Very well, I will not tell.”

“Swear it!”

He swore.

“So help you God!”

“So help me God!”

“Well then, tell him his father and mother are both dead and his brother also. A fever broke out and they all died in one and the same month.”

Duclos felt the blood rushing to his heart. For some minutes he sat in silence, not knowing what to say. Presently he uttered the words:

“Are you sure it is so?”

“Quite sure.”

“Who told you?”

She put her hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes.

“Swear you will not let it out!”

He swore it: “So help me God!”

“I am his sister.”

“Françoise!” he shrieked.

She looked intently at him, and softly, softly moved her lips, hardly letting the words escape:

“So you are Celestin!”

They did not stir, but remained as though benumbed, gazing into each other’s eyes.

Around them the others shouted with drunken voices. The ringing of glasses, the beating of hands and heels, and the piercing screams of women, intermingled with the singing and the shouting.

“How can it have happened?” said he, so gently that even she could hardly catch the words.

Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“They died,” she continued. “All three in one month. What was I to do? I was left alone. The chemist, the doctor, the three funerals.⁠ ⁠… I had to sell everything to pay the debts. Nothing was left but the clothes I wore. I went as servant to Monsieur Cacheux.⁠ ⁠… Do you remember him? A lame man. I was only just fifteen. I was scarcely fourteen when you left home⁠—and I went wrong with him.⁠ ⁠… You know how stupid we peasant girls are. Then I went as nurse in a notary’s family⁠—and it was the same with him. For a time he made me his mistress and I had a lodging of my own; but that did not last long. He left me, and for three days I was without food. No one would take me, so I came here like the rest of them.” And as she spoke the water flowed in streams from her eyes and nose, wetting her cheeks and trickling into her mouth.

“What have we done?” said he.

“I thought you were dead also. How could I have helped it?” whispered she through her tears.

“How was it you did not know me?” he answered, also in a whisper.

“I do not know. It was not my fault,” continued she, weeping yet more bitterly.

“How could I know you?” he said again. “You were so different when I left home! But you should have known me!”

She threw up her hands in despair.

“Ah! I see so many of them⁠—these men. They all look alike to me now!”

His heart contracted so painfully and so strongly that he wanted to cry aloud, as a little boy does when he is beaten.

He rose and held her at arm’s length; then, seizing her head in his great sailor paws, he gazed intently into her face.

Little by little he recognized in her the small, slender, merry maiden he had left at home with those others whose eyes it had been her lot to close.

“Yes, you are Françoise! My sister!” he exclaimed. And suddenly sobs⁠—the sobs of a strong man, sounding like the hiccups of a drunkard⁠—rose in his throat. He let go of her head, and striking the table so that the glasses upset and broke to atoms, he cried out in a wild voice.

His comrades, astonished, turned towards him.

“See how he’s swaggering,” said one.

“Stop that shouting,” said another.

“Eh, Duclos! What are you bawling about? Let’s get upstairs again,” said a third, plucking Celestin by the sleeve with one hand while his other arm encircled a flushed, laughing, black-eyed lass, in a rose-coloured, low cut, silk dress.

Duclos suddenly became quiet, and holding his breath looked at his comrades. Then, with the same strange and resolute expression with which he used to enter on a fight, he staggered up to the sailor who was embracing the girl, and struck down with his hand⁠—dividing them apart.

“Away! Do you not see that she is your sister! Each of them is someone’s sister. See, here is my sister, Françoise! Ha, ha⁠ ⁠… ha⁠ ⁠… and he broke into sobs that almost sounded like laughter. Then he staggered, raised his hands, and fell with a crash to the floor, where he rolled about, striking the floor with his hands and feet and choking as though about to die.

“He must be put to bed,” said one of his comrades. “We shall be having him taken up if we go out into the streets.”

So they lifted Celestin and dragged him upstairs to Françoise’s room, where they laid him on her bed.

A weed had spread over a beautiful meadow. And in order to get rid of it the tenants of the meadow mowed it, but the weed only increased in consequence. And now the kind, wise master came to visit the tenants of the meadow, and among the other good counsels which he gave them, he told them they ought not to mow the weed, since that only made it grow the more luxuriantly, but that they must pull it up by the roots.

But either because the tenants of the meadow did not, amongst the other prescriptions of the good master, take heed of his advice not to mow down the weed, but to pull it up, or because they did not understand him, or because, according to their calculations, it seemed foolish to obey, the result was that his advice not to mow the weed but to pull it up was not followed, just as if he had never proffered it, and the men went on mowing the weed and spreading it.

And although, during the succeeding years, there were men that reminded the tenants of the meadow of the advice of the kind, wise master, they did not heed them, and continued to do as before, so that mowing of the weed as soon as it began to appear became not only a custom but even a sacred tradition, and the meadow grew more and more infested. And the matter went so far that the meadow grew nothing but weeds, and men lamented this and invented all kinds of means to correct the evil; but the only one they did not use was that which had long ago been prescribed by their kind, wise master.

And now, as time went on, it occurred to one man who saw the wretched condition into which the meadow had fallen, and who found among the master’s forgotten prescriptions the rule not to mow the weed, but to pull it up by the root⁠—it occurred to the man, I say, to remind the tenants of the meadow that they were acting foolishly, and that their folly had long ago been pointed out by the kind, wise master.

But what do you think! instead of putting credence in the correctness of this man’s recollections, and in case they proved to be reliable ceasing to mow the weed, and in case he were mistaken proving to him the incorrectness of his recollections, or stigmatizing the good, wise master’s recommendations as impracticable and not obligatory upon them, the tenants of the meadow did nothing of the sort; but they took exception to this man’s recollections and began to abuse him. Some called him a conceited fool who imagined that he was the only one to understand the master’s regulations; others called him a malicious false interpreter and slanderer; still others, forgetting that he was not giving them his own opinions, but was only reminding them of the prescriptions of the wise master whom they all revered, called him a dangerous man because he wished to pull up the weed and deprive them of their meadow. “He says we ought not to mow the meadow,” said they, purposely suppressing the fact that the man did not say that it was not necessary to destroy the weed, but said that they should pull it up by the roots instead of mowing it, “but if we do not destroy the weed, then it will spread and wholly ruin our meadow. And why was the meadow granted to us if we must train the weed in it?”

And the general impression that this man was either a fool or a false interpreter, or had the purpose of injuring the people, became so deeply grounded that everyone cast reproaches and ridicule upon him. And however earnestly he asseverated that he not only did not desire to spread the weed, but on the contrary considered that the destruction of the weed was one of the chief duties of the agriculturist, just as it was meant by the good, wise master whose words he merely repeated, still they would not listen to him because they had definitely made up their minds that he was either a conceited fool misinterpreting the good, wise master’s words, or a villain trying to induce men not to destroy the weeds but to protect and spread them more widely.

The same thing took place in my own case when I pointed out the injunction of the evangelical teaching about the nonresistance of evil by violence. This rule was laid down by Christ and after Him in all times by all His true disciples. But either because they did not notice this rule, or because they did not understand it, or because its fulfilment seemed to them too difficult, as time went the more completely this rule was forgotten, the farther the manner of men’s lives departed from this rule; and finally it came to the pass to which it has now come that this rule has already begun to seem to people something new, strange, unheard-of, and even foolish. And I, also, have the same experience as the man had who reminded men of the good, wise master’s prescription to refrain from mowing the weed, but to pull it up by the roots.

As the tenants of the meadow purposely shut their eyes to the fact that the counsel was not to give up destroying the weed, but to destroy it by a different method, and said, “We will not listen to this man, he is a fool; he forbids us to mow down the weeds and tells us to pull them up”⁠—so in reply to my reminder that according to Christ’s teaching in order to annihilate evil we must not employ violence against it, but must destroy it from the root with love, men said: “We will not listen to him, he is a fool; he advises not to oppose evil to evil so that evil may overwhelm us.”

I said that, according to Christ’s teaching, evil cannot be eradicated by evil; that all resistance of evil by violence only intensifies the evil, that according to Christ’s teaching evil is eradicated by good. “Bless them that curse you, pray for them that abuse you, do good to them that hate you, love your enemies, and you will have no enemies!”292

I said that, according to Christ’s teaching, the whole life of man is a battle with evil, a resistance of evil by reason and love, but that out of all the methods of resisting evil Christ excepted only the one unreasonable method of resisting evil with violence, which is equivalent to fighting evil with evil.

And I was misunderstood as saying that Christ taught that we must not resist evil. And all those whose lives were based on violence, and to whom in consequence violence was dear, were glad to take such a misconstruction of my words, and at the same time of Christ’s words, and it was avowed that the teaching of nonresistance of evil was incredible, stupid, godless, and dangerous. And men calmly continue under the guise of destroying evil to make it more widely spread.

Men were trafficking in flour, butter, milk, and all kinds of foodstuffs. And as each one was desirous of receiving the greatest profit and becoming rich as soon as possible, all these men got more and more into the habit of adulterating their goods with cheap and injurious mixtures: with the flour they mixed bran and lime, they put oleomargarin into their butter, they put water and chalk into their milk. And until these goods reached the consumers all went well: the wholesale traders sold them to the retailers, and the retailers distributed them in small quantities.

There were many stores and shops, and the wares, it seemed, went off very rapidly. And the tradesmen were satisfied. But the city consumers, those that did not raise their own produce and were therefore obliged to buy it, found it very harmful and disagreeable. The flour was bad, the butter and milk were bad, but as there were no other wares except those adulterated to be had in the city markets, the city consumers continued to buy them, and they complained because the food tasted bad and was unwholesome; they blamed themselves, and ascribed it to the wretched way in which the food was prepared. Meantime the tradespeople continued more and more flagrantly to adulterate their foodstuffs with cheap foreign ingredients. Thus passed a sufficiently long time. The city people were all suffering, and no one had the resolution to express his dissatisfaction.

And it happened that a housekeeper who had always given her family food and drink of her own make came to the city. This woman had spent her whole life in the preparation of food, and though she was not a famous cook, still she knew very well how to bake bread and to cook good dinners.

This woman bought various articles in the city and began to bake and cook. Her loaves did not rise, but fell. Her cakes, owing to the oleomargarin butter, seemed tasteless. She set her milk, but there was no cream. The housekeeper instantly came to the conclusion that her purchases were poor. She examined them, and her surmises were confirmed. She found lime in the flour, oleomargarin in the butter, chalk in the milk. Finding that all the materials she had bought were adulterated, the housekeeper went to the bazaars and began in a loud voice to accuse the tradesmen, and to demand that they should either stock their shops with good, nutritious, unadulterated articles, or else cease to trade, and shut up shop.

But the tradesmen paid no attention to the housekeeper, but told her that their goods were first class, that the whole city had been buying of them for so many years, and that they even had medals, and they showed her their medals on their signs. But the housekeeper did not give in.

“I don’t need any medals,” said she, “but wholesome food, so that I and my children may not have stomach troubles from it.”

“Apparently, my good woman, you have never seen genuine flour and butter,” said the tradesmen, showing her the white, pure-looking flour in varnished bins, the wretched imitation of butter lying in neat dishes, and the white fluid in glittering transparent jars.

“Of course I know them,” replied the housekeeper, “because all my life long I have had to do with them, and I have cooked with them and have eaten them, I and my children. Your goods are adulterated. Here is the proof of it,” said she, displaying the spoilt bread, the oleomargarin in the cakes, and the sediment in the milk. “You ought to throw all this stuff of yours into the river or burn it, and get unadulterated goods instead.”

And the woman, standing in front of the shops, kept incessantly crying her one message to the purchasers who came by, and the purchasers began to be troubled.

Then perceiving that this audacious housekeeper was likely to injure their wares, the tradesmen said to the purchasers:⁠—

“Look here, gentlemen, what a lunatic this woman is! She wants people to perish of starvation. She insists on our burning up and destroying all our provisions. What would you have to eat if we should heed her and refuse to sell you our goods? Do not listen to her, she is a coarse countrywoman, and she is no judge of provisions, and it is nothing but envy which makes her attack us. She is poor, and wants everyone else to be as poor as she is.”

Thus spoke the tradesmen to the gathering throng, purposely blinking the fact that the woman wanted, not that all provisions should be destroyed, but that good ones should be substituted for bad.

And thereupon the throng fell upon the woman and began to beat her. And though she assured them all that she had no wish to destroy the foodstuffs, that, on the contrary, she had all her life been occupied in feeding others and herself, but that she only wanted that those men that took upon themselves the feeding of the people should not poison them with deleterious adulterations pretending to be edible. Though she pleaded her cause eloquently, they refused to hear her because their minds were made up that she wanted to deprive people of the food which they needed.

The same thing has happened to me in regard to the art and science of our day.

All my life long I have been fed on this food, and to the best of my ability I have attempted to feed others on it. And as this for me is a food and not an object of traffic or luxury, I know beyond a question when food is food and when it is only a counterfeit. And now when I made trial of the food which in our time began to be offered for sale in the intellectual bazaar under the guise of art and science, and attempted to feed those dear to me with it, I discovered that a large part of this food was not genuine. And when I declared that the art and the science on sale in the intellectual bazaar are margarined or at least contain great mixtures of what is foreign to true art and true science, and that I know this because the produce I have bought in the intellectual bazaar has been proved to be, not merely disadvantageous to me and those near and dear to me, but positively deleterious, then I was hooted at and abused, and it was insinuated that I did this because I was untrained and could not properly treat of such lofty objects.

When I began to show that the dealers themselves in these intellectual wares were all the time charging one another of cheating, when I called to mind that in all times under the name of art and science much that was bad and harmful was offered to men, and that consequently in our time also the same danger was threatening, that this was no joke, that the poison for the soul was many times more dangerous than a poison for the body, and that therefore these spiritual products ought to be examined with the greatest attention when they are offered to us in the form of food, and everything counterfeit and deleterious ought to be rejected⁠—when I began to say this, no one, no one, not a single man in a single article or book made reply to these arguments, but from all the shops there was a chorus of cries against me as against the woman: “He is a fool! He wants to destroy art and science which we live by! Beware of him and do not heed him! Hear us, hear us! We have the very latest foreign wares!”

Travelers were making a journey. And they happened to lose their way, so that they found themselves proceeding, not on a smooth road, but across a bog, among clumps of bushes, briers, and fallen trees, which blocked their progress, and even to move grew more and more difficult.

Then the travelers divided into two parties; one decided not to stop, but to keep going in the direction that they had been going, assuring themselves and the others that they had not wandered from the right road, and were sure to reach their journey’s end.

The other party decided that, as the direction in which they were now going was evidently not the right one⁠—otherwise they would long ago have reached the journey’s end⁠—it was necessary to find the road, and in order to find it, it was requisite that without delay they should move as rapidly as possible in all directions. All the travelers were divided between these two opinions: some decided to keep going straight ahead, the others decided to make trials in all directions; but there was one man who, without sharing either opinion, declared that before continuing in the direction in which they had been going, or beginning to move rapidly in all directions, hoping that by this means they might find the right way, it was necessary first of all to pause and deliberate on their situation, and then after due deliberation to decide on one thing or the other.

But the travelers were so excited by the disturbance, were so alarmed at their situation, they were so desirous of flattering themselves with the hope that they had not lost their way, but had only temporarily wandered from the road, and would soon find it again, and, above all, they had such a desire to forget their terror by moving about, that this opinion was met with universal indignation, with reproaches, and with the ridicule of those of both parties.

“It is the advice of weakness, cowardice, sloth,” they said.

“It is a fine way to reach the end of our journey, sitting down and not moving from the place!” cried others.

“For this are we men, and for this is strength given us, to struggle and labor, conquering obstacles, and not pusillanimously giving in to them,” exclaimed still others.

And in spite of what was said by the man that differed from the rest, “how if we proceeded in a wrong direction without changing it, we should never attain our goal, but go farther from it, and how we should never attain it either if we kept flying from one direction to another, and how the only means of attaining our goal was by taking observation from the sun or the stars and thus finding what direction we must take to reach it, and having chosen it to stick to it⁠—and how to do this it was necessary first of all to halt, and to halt not for the purpose of stopping, but to find the right way and then unfalteringly to go in it, and how for either case it was necessary to stop and consider”⁠—in spite of all this argument, they refused to heed him.

And the first division of the travelers went off in the direction in which they had been going, and the second division kept changing their course; but neither division succeeded in attaining their journey’s end, but up to the present time, moreover, they have not yet escaped from the bushes and the briers, but are still lost.

Exactly the same thing happened to me when I attempted to express my doubts as to whether the road which we have taken through the dark forest of the labor question and through the all-swallowing bog of the endless armament of the nations is exactly the right route by which we ought to go, that it is very possible that we have lost our way, and that, therefore, it might be well for us for a time to stop moving in that direction which is evidently wrong, and first of all to consider, by means of the universal and eternal laws of truth revealed to us, what the direction is by which we intend to go.

No one replied to this, not a person said, “We are not mistaken in our direction and we are not gone astray; we are sure of this for this reason and for that.”

Not a person said, “Possibly we are mistaken, but we have an infallible means of correcting our error without ceasing to move.”

No one said either the one thing or the other. But all were indignant, took offense, and hastened to quench my solitary voice with a simultaneous outburst.

“We are so indolent and backward! And this is the advice of indolence, sluggishness, inefficiency!”

Some even went so far as to add:⁠—

“It’s all nonsense! Don’t listen to him. Follow us.”

And they shouted like those that reckon that salvation is to be found in unchangedly traveling a once selected road, whatever it may have been; like those also that expect to find salvation in flying about in all directions.

“Why wait? Why consider? Push forward! Everything will come out of itself!”

Men have lost their way and are suffering in consequence. It would seem that the first main application of energy which should be put forth ought to be directed, not to the confirmation of the movement that has seduced us into the false position where we are, but to the cessation of it. It would seem clear that as soon as we stopped we might, in a measure, comprehend our situation, and discover the direction in which we ought to go in order to attain true happiness, not for one man, not for one class of men, but that general good of humanity toward which all men are striving and every human heart by itself. But how is it? Men invent everything possible, but do not hit upon the one thing that might prove their salvation, or if it did not do that, might at least ameliorate their condition; I mean, that they should pause for a moment and not go on increasing their misfortunes by their fallacious activity. Men are conscious of the wretchedness of their condition, and are doing all they can to avoid it, but the one thing that would assuredly ameliorate it they are unwilling to do, and the advice given them to do it, more than anything else, rouses their indignation.

If there were any possibility of doubting the fact that we have gone astray, then this treatment of the advice to “think it over” proves more distinctly than anything else how hopelessly astray we have gone and how great is our despair.

1895.

In Petersburg in the eighteen-forties a surprising event occurred. An officer of the Cuirassier Life Guards, a handsome prince who everyone predicted would become aide-de-camp to the Emperor Nicholas I and have a brilliant career, left the service, broke off his engagement to a beautiful maid of honour, a favourite of the Empress’s, gave his small estate to his sister, and retired to a monastery to become a monk.

This event appeared extraordinary and inexplicable to those who did not know his inner motives, but for Prince Stepán Kasátsky himself it all occurred so naturally that he could not imagine how he could have acted otherwise.

His father, a retired colonel of the Guards, had died when Stepán was twelve, and sorry as his mother was to part from her son, she entered him at the Military College as her deceased husband had intended.

The widow herself, with her daughter, Varvára, moved to Petersburg to be near her son and have him with her for the holidays.

The boy was distinguished both by his brilliant ability and by his immense self-esteem. He was first both in his studies⁠—especially in mathematics, of which he was particularly fond⁠—and also in drill and in riding. Though of more than average height, he was handsome and agile, and he would have been an altogether exemplary cadet had it not been for his quick temper. He was remarkably truthful, and was neither dissipated nor addicted to drink. The only faults that marred his conduct were fits of fury to which he was subject and during which he lost control of himself and became like a wild animal. He once nearly threw out of the window another cadet who had begun to tease him about his collection of minerals. On another occasion he came almost completely to grief by flinging a whole dish of cutlets at an officer who was acting as steward, attacking him and, it was said, striking him for having broken his word and told a barefaced lie. He would certainly have been reduced to the ranks had not the Director of the College hushed up the whole matter and dismissed the steward.

By the time he was eighteen he had finished his College course and received a commission as lieutenant in an aristocratic regiment of the Guards.

The Emperor Nicholas Pávlovich (Nicholas I) had noticed him while he was still at the College, and continued to take notice of him in the regiment, and it was on this account that people predicted for him an appointment as aide-de-camp to the Emperor. Kasátsky himself strongly desired it, not from ambition only but chiefly because since his cadet days he had been passionately devoted to Nicholas Pávlovich. The Emperor had often visited the Military College and every time Kasátsky saw that tall erect figure, with breast expanded in its military overcoat, entering with brisk step, saw the cropped side-whiskers, the moustache, the aquiline nose, and heard the sonorous voice exchanging greetings with the cadets, he was seized by the same rapture that he experienced later on when he met the woman he loved. Indeed, his passionate adoration of the Emperor was even stronger: he wished to sacrifice something⁠—everything, even himself⁠—to prove his complete devotion. And the Emperor Nicholas was conscious of evoking this rapture and deliberately aroused it. He played with the cadets, surrounded himself with them, treating them sometimes with childish simplicity, sometimes as a friend, and then again with majestic solemnity. After that affair with the officer, Nicholas Pávlovich said nothing to Kasátsky, but when the latter approached he waved him away theatrically, frowned, shook his finger at him, and afterwards when leaving, said: “Remember that I know everything. There are some things I would rather not know, but they remain here,” and he pointed to his heart.

When on leaving College the cadets were received by the Emperor, he did not again refer to Kasátsky’s offence, but told them all, as was his custom, that they should serve him and the fatherland loyally, that he would always be their best friend, and that when necessary they might approach him direct. All the cadets were as usual greatly moved, and Kasátsky even shed tears, remembering the past, and vowed that he would serve his beloved Tsar with all his soul.

When Kasátsky took up his commission his mother moved with her daughter first to Moscow and then to their country estate. Kasátsky gave half his property to his sister and kept only enough to maintain himself in the expensive regiment he had joined.

To all appearance he was just an ordinary, brilliant young officer of the Guards making a career for himself; but intense and complex strivings went on within him. From early childhood his efforts had seemed to be very varied, but essentially they were all one and the same. He tried in everything he took up to attain such success and perfection as would evoke praise and surprise. Whether it was his studies or his military exercises, he took them up and worked at them till he was praised and held up as an example to others. Mastering one subject he took up another, and obtained first place in his studies. For example, while still at College he noticed in himself an awkwardness in French conversation, and contrived to master French till he spoke it as well as Russian, and then he took up chess and became an excellent player.

Apart from his main vocation, which was the service of his Tsar and the fatherland, he always set himself some particular aim, and however unimportant it was, devoted himself completely to it and lived for it until it was accomplished. And as soon as it was attained another aim would immediately present itself, replacing its predecessor. This passion for distinguishing himself, or for accomplishing something in order to distinguish himself, filled his life. On taking up his commission he set himself to acquire the utmost perfection in knowledge of the service, and very soon became a model officer, though still with the same fault of ungovernable irascibility, which here in the service again led him to commit actions inimical to his success. Then he took to reading, having once in conversation in society felt himself deficient in general education⁠—and again achieved his purpose. Then, wishing to secure a brilliant position in high society, he learnt to dance excellently and very soon was invited to all the balls in the best circles, and to some of their evening gatherings. But this did not satisfy him: he was accustomed to being first, and in this society was far from being so.

The highest society then consisted, and I think always consist, of four sorts of people: rich people who are received at Court, people not wealthy but born and brought up in Court circles, rich people who ingratiate themselves into the Court set, and people neither rich nor belonging to the Court but who ingratiate themselves into the first and second sets.

Kasátsky did not belong to the first two sets, but was readily welcomed in the others. On entering society he determined to have relations with some society lady, and to his own surprise quickly accomplished this purpose. He soon realized, however, that the circles in which he moved were not the highest, and that though he was received in the highest spheres he did not belong to them. They were polite to him, but showed by their whole manner that they had their own set and that he was not of it. And Kasátsky wished to belong to that inner circle. To attain that end it would be necessary to be an aide-de-camp to the Emperor⁠—which he expected to become⁠—or to marry into that exclusive set, which he resolved to do. And his choice fell on a beauty belonging to the Court, who not merely belonged to the circle into which he wished to be accepted, but whose friendship was coveted by the very highest people and those most firmly established in that highest circle. This was Countess Korotkóva. Kasátsky began to pay court to her, and not merely for the sake of his career. She was extremely attractive and he soon fell in love with her. At first she was noticeably cool towards him, but then suddenly changed and became gracious, and her mother gave him pressing invitations to visit them. Kasátsky proposed and was accepted. He was surprised at the facility with which he attained such happiness. But though he noticed something strange and unusual in the behaviour towards him of both mother and daughter, he was blinded by being so deeply in love, and did not realize what almost the whole town knew⁠—namely, that his fiancée had been the Emperor Nicholas’s mistress the previous year.

Two weeks before the day arranged for the wedding, Kasátsky was at Tsárskoe Seló at his fiancée’s country place. It was a hot day in May. He and his betrothed had walked about the garden and were sitting on a bench in a shady linden alley. Mary’s white muslin dress suited her particularly well, and she seemed the personification of innocence and love as she sat, now bending her head, now gazing up at the very tall and handsome man who was speaking to her with particular tenderness and self-restraint, as if he feared by word or gesture to offend or sully her angelic purity.

Kasátsky belonged to those men of the eighteen-forties (they are now no longer to be found) who while deliberately and without any conscientious scruples condoning impurity in themselves, required ideal and angelic purity in their women, regarded all unmarried women of their circle as possessed of such purity, and treated them accordingly. There was much that was false and harmful in this outlook, as concerning the laxity the men permitted themselves, but in regard to the women that old-fashioned view (sharply differing from that held by young people today who see in every girl merely a female seeking a mate) was, I think, of value. The girls, perceiving such adoration, endeavoured with more or less success to be goddesses.

Such was the view Kasátsky held of women, and that was how he regarded his fiancée. He was particularly in love that day, but did not experience any sensual desire for her. On the contrary he regarded her with tender adoration as something unattainable.

He rose to his full height, standing before her with both hands on his sabre.

“I have only now realized what happiness a man can experience! And it is you, my darling, who have given me this happiness,” he said with a timid smile.

Endearments had not yet become usual between them, and feeling himself morally inferior he felt terrified at this stage to use them to such an angel.

“It is thanks to you that I have come to know myself. I have learnt that I am better than I thought.”

“I have known that for a long time. That was why I began to love you.”

Nightingales trilled nearby and the fresh leafage rustled, moved by a passing breeze.

He took her hand and kissed it, and tears came into his eyes.

She understood that he was thanking her for having said she loved him. He silently took a few steps up and down, and then approached her again and sat down.

“You know⁠ ⁠… I have to tell you⁠ ⁠… I was not disinterested when I began to make love to you. I wanted to get into society; but later⁠ ⁠… how unimportant that became in comparison with you⁠—when I got to know you. You are not angry with me for that?”

She did not reply but merely touched his hand. He understood that this meant: “No, I am not angry.”

“You said⁠ ⁠…” He hesitated. It seemed too bold to say. “You said that you began to love me. I believe it⁠—but there is something that troubles you and checks your feeling. What is it?”

“Yes⁠—now or never!” thought she. “He is bound to know of it anyway. But now he will not forsake me. Ah, if he should, it would be terrible!” And she threw a loving glance at his tall, noble, powerful figure. She loved him now more than she had loved the Tsar, and apart from the Imperial dignity would not have preferred the Emperor to him.

“Listen! I cannot deceive you. I have to tell you. You ask what it is? It is that I have loved before.”

She again laid her hand on his with an imploring gesture. He was silent.

“You want to know who it was? It was⁠—the Emperor.”

“We all love him. I can imagine you, a schoolgirl at the Institute⁠ ⁠…”

“No, it was later. I was infatuated, but it passed⁠ ⁠… I must tell you⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, what of it?”

“No, it was not simply⁠—” She covered her face with her hands.

“What? You gave yourself to him?”

She was silent.

“His mistress?”

She did not answer.

He sprang up and stood before her with trembling jaws, pale as death. He now remembered how the Emperor, meeting him on the Névsky, had amiably congratulated him.

“O God, what have I done! Stíva!”

“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Oh, how it pains!”

He turned away and went to the house. There he met her mother.

“What is the matter, Prince? I⁠ ⁠…” She became silent on seeing his face. The blood had suddenly rushed to his head.

“You knew it, and used me to shield them! If you weren’t a woman⁠ ⁠… !” he cried, lifting his enormous fist, and turning aside he ran away.

Had his fiancée’s lover been a private person he would have killed him, but it was his beloved Tsar.

Next day he applied both for furlough and his discharge, and professing to be ill, so as to see no one, he went away to the country.

He spent the summer at his village arranging his affairs. When summer was over he did not return to Petersburg, but entered a monastery and there became a monk.

His mother wrote to try to dissuade him from this decisive step, but he replied that he felt God’s call which transcended all other considerations. Only his sister, who was as proud and ambitious as he, understood him.

She understood that he had become a monk in order to be above those who considered themselves his superiors. And she understood him correctly. By becoming a monk he showed contempt for all that seemed most important to others and had seemed so to him while he was in the service, and he now ascended a height from which he could look down on those he had formerly envied.⁠ ⁠… But it was not this alone, as his sister Varvára supposed, that influenced him. There was also in him something else⁠—a sincere religious feeling which Varvára did not know, which intertwined itself with the feeling of pride and the desire for preeminence, and guided him. His disillusionment with Mary, whom he had thought of angelic purity, and his sense of injury, were so strong that they brought him to despair, and the despair led him⁠—to what? To God, to his childhood’s faith which had never been destroyed in him.

Kasátsky entered the monastery on the feast of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin.293 The Abbot of that monastery was a gentleman by birth, a learned writer and a starets, that is, he belonged to that succession of monks originating in Walachia who each choose a director and teacher whom they implicitly obey. This Superior had been a disciple of the starets Ambrose, who was a disciple of Makarius, who was a disciple of the starets Leonid, who was a disciple of Païssy Velichkóvsky.

To this Abbot Kasátsky submitted himself as to his chosen director. Here in the monastery, besides the feeling of ascendency over others that such a life gave him, he felt much as he had done in the world: he found satisfaction in attaining the greatest possible perfection outwardly as well as inwardly. As in the regiment he had been not merely an irreproachable officer but had even exceeded his duties and widened the borders of perfection, so also as a monk he tried to be perfect, and was always industrious, abstemious, submissive, and meek, as well as pure both in deed and in thought, and obedient. This last quality in particular made life far easier for him. If many of the demands of life in the monastery, which was near the capital and much frequented, did not please him and were temptations to him, they were all nullified by obedience: “It is not for me to reason; my business is to do the task set me, whether it be standing beside the relics, singing in the choir, or making up accounts in the monastery guesthouse.” All possibility of doubt about anything was silenced by obedience to the starets. Had it not been for this, he would have been oppressed by the length and monotony of the church services, the bustle of the many visitors, and the bad qualities of the other monks. As it was, he not only bore it all joyfully but found in it solace and support. “I don’t know why it is necessary to hear the same prayers several times a day, but I know that it is necessary; and knowing this I find joy in them.” His director told him that as material food is necessary for the maintenance of the life of the body, so spiritual food⁠—the church prayers⁠—is necessary for the maintenance of the spiritual life. He believed this, and though the church services, for which he had to get up early in the morning, were a difficulty, they certainly calmed him and gave him joy. This was the result of his consciousness of humility, and the certainty that whatever he had to do, being fixed by the starets, was right.

The interest of his life consisted not only in an ever greater and greater subjugation of his will, but in the attainment of all the Christian virtues, which at first seemed to him easily attainable. He had given his whole estate to his sister and did not regret it, he had no personal claims, humility towards his inferiors was not merely easy for him but afforded him pleasure. Even victory over the sins of the flesh, greed and lust, was easily attained. His director had specially warned him against the latter sin, but Kasátsky felt free from it and was glad.

One thing only tormented him⁠—the remembrance of his fiancée; and not merely the remembrance but the vivid image of what might have been. Involuntarily he recalled a lady he knew who had been a favourite of the Emperor’s, but had afterwards married and become an admirable wife and mother. The husband had a high position, influence and honour, and a good and penitent wife.

In his better hours Kasátsky was not disturbed by such thoughts, and when he recalled them at such times he was merely glad to feel that the temptation was past. But there were moments when all that made up his present life suddenly grew dim before him, moments when, if he did not cease to believe in the aims he had set himself, he ceased to see them and could evoke no confidence in them but was seized by a remembrance of, and⁠—terrible to say⁠—a regret for, the change of life he had made.

The only thing that saved him in that state of mind was obedience and work, and the fact that the whole day was occupied by prayer. He went through the usual forms of prayer, he bowed in prayer, he even prayed more than usual, but it was lip-service only and his soul was not in it. This condition would continue for a day, or sometimes for two days, and would then pass of itself. But those days were dreadful. Kasátsky felt that he was neither in his own hands nor in God’s, but was subject to something else. All he could do then was to obey the starets, to restrain himself, to undertake nothing, and simply to wait. In general all this time he lived not by his own will but by that of the starets, and in this obedience he found a special tranquillity.

So he lived in his first monastery for seven years. At the end of the third year he received the tonsure and was ordained to the priesthood by the name of Sergius. The profession was an important event in his inner life. He had previously experienced a great consolation and spiritual exaltation when receiving communion, and now when he himself officiated, the performance of the preparation filled him with ecstatic and deep emotion. But subsequently that feeling became more and more deadened, and once when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt that the influence produced on him by the service would not endure. And it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained.

In general in the seventh year of his life in the monastery Sergius grew weary. He had learnt all there was to learn and had attained all there was to attain, there was nothing more to do and his spiritual drowsiness increased. During this time he heard of his mother’s death and his sister Varvára’s marriage, but both events were matters of indifference to him. His whole attention and his whole interest were concentrated on his inner life.

In the fourth year of his priesthood, during which the Bishop had been particularly kind to him, the starets told him that he ought not to decline it if he were offered an appointment to higher duties. Then monastic ambition, the very thing he had found so repulsive in other monks, arose within him. He was assigned to a monastery near the metropolis. He wished to refuse but the starets ordered him to accept the appointment. He did so, and took leave of the starets and moved to the other monastery.

The exchange into the metropolitan monastery was an important event in Sergius’s life. There he encountered many temptations, and his whole willpower was concentrated on meeting them.

In the first monastery, women had not been a temptation to him, but here that temptation arose with terrible strength and even took definite shape. There was a lady known for her frivolous behaviour who began to seek his favour. She talked to him and asked him to visit her. Sergius sternly declined, but was horrified by the definiteness of his desire. He was so alarmed that he wrote about it to the starets. And in addition, to keep himself in hand, he spoke to a young novice and, conquering his sense of shame, confessed his weakness to him, asking him to keep watch on him and not let him go anywhere except to service and to fulfil his duties.

Besides this, a great pitfall for Sergius lay in the fact of his extreme antipathy to his new Abbot, a cunning worldly man who was making a career for himself in the Church. Struggle with himself as he might, he could not master that feeling. He was submissive to the Abbot, but in the depths of his soul he never ceased to condemn him. And in the second year of his residence at the new monastery that ill-feeling broke out.

The Vigil service was being performed in the large church on the eve of the feast of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin, and there were many visitors. The Abbot himself was conducting the service. Father Sergius was standing in his usual place and praying: that is, he was in that condition of struggle which always occupied him during the service, especially in the large church when he was not himself conducting the service. This conflict was occasioned by his irritation at the presence of fine folk, especially ladies. He tried not to see them or to notice all that went on: how a soldier conducted them, pushing the common people aside, how the ladies pointed out the monks to one another⁠—especially himself and a monk noted for his good looks. He tried as it were to keep his mind in blinkers, to see nothing but the light of the candles on the altar-screen, the icons, and those conducting the service. He tried to hear nothing but the prayers that were being chanted or read, to feel nothing but self-oblivion in consciousness of the fulfilment of duty⁠—a feeling he always experienced when hearing or reciting in advance the prayers he had so often heard.

So he stood, crossing and prostrating himself when necessary, and struggled with himself, now giving way to cold condemnation and now to a consciously evoked obliteration of thought and feeling. Then the sacristan, Father Nicodemus⁠—also a great stumbling-block to Sergius who involuntarily reproached him for flattering and fawning on the Abbot⁠—approached him and, bowing low, requested his presence behind the holy gates. Father Sergius straightened his mantle, put on his biretta, and went circumspectly through the crowd.

“Lise, regarde à droite, c’est lui!”294 he heard a woman’s voice say.

“Où, où? Il n’est pas tellement beau.”295

He knew that they were speaking of him. He heard them and, as always at moments of temptation, he repeated the words, “Lead us not into temptation,” and bowing his head and lowering his eyes went past the ambo and in by the north door, avoiding the canons in their cassocks who were just then passing the altar-screen. On entering the sanctuary he bowed, crossing himself as usual and bending double before the icons. Then, raising his head but without turning, he glanced out of the corner of his eye at the Abbot, whom he saw standing beside another glittering figure.

The Abbot was standing by the wall in his vestments. Having freed his short plump hands from beneath his chasuble he had folded them over his fat body and protruding stomach, and fingering the cords of his vestments was smilingly saying something to a military man in the uniform of a general of the Imperial suite, with its insignia and shoulder-knots which Father Sergius’s experienced eye at once recognized. This general had been the commander of the regiment in which Sergius had served. He now evidently occupied an important position, and Father Sergius at once noticed that the Abbot was aware of this and that his red face and bald head beamed with satisfaction and pleasure. This vexed and disgusted Father Sergius, the more so when he heard that the Abbot had only sent for him to satisfy the general’s curiosity to see a man who had formerly served with him, as he expressed it.

“Very pleased to see you in your angelic guise,” said the general, holding out his hand. “I hope you have not forgotten an old comrade.”

The whole thing⁠—the Abbot’s red, smiling face amid its fringe of grey, the general’s words, his well-cared-for face with its self-satisfied smile and the smell of wine from his breath and of cigars from his whiskers⁠—revolted Father Sergius. He bowed again to the Abbot and said:

“Your reverence deigned to send for me?”⁠—and stopped, the whole expression of his face and eyes asking why.

“Yes, to meet the General,” replied the Abbot.

“Your reverence, I left the world to save myself from temptation,” said Father Sergius, turning pale and with quivering lips. “Why do you expose me to it during prayers and in God’s house?”

“You may go! Go!” said the Abbot, flaring up and frowning.

Next day Father Sergius asked pardon of the Abbot and of the brethren for his pride, but at the same time, after a night spent in prayer, he decided that he must leave this monastery, and he wrote to the starets begging permission to return to him. He wrote that he felt his weakness and incapacity to struggle against temptation without his help and penitently confessed his sin of pride. By return of post came a letter from the starets, who wrote that Sergius’s pride was the cause of all that had happened. The old man pointed out that his fits of anger were due to the fact that in refusing all clerical honours he humiliated himself not for the sake of God but for the sake of his pride. “There now, am I not a splendid man not to want anything?” That was why he could not tolerate the Abbot’s action. “I have renounced everything for the glory of God, and here I am exhibited like a wild beast!” “Had you renounced vanity for God’s sake you would have borne it. Worldly pride is not yet dead in you. I have thought about you, Sergius my son, and prayed also, and this is what God has suggested to me. At the Tambóv hermitage the anchorite Hilary, a man of saintly life, has died. He had lived there eighteen years. The Tambóv Abbot is asking whether there is not a brother who would take his place. And here comes your letter. Go to Father Païssy of the Tambóv Monastery. I will write to him about you, and you must ask for Hilary’s cell. Not that you can replace Hilary, but you need solitude to quell your pride. May God bless you!”

Sergius obeyed the starets, showed his letter to the Abbot, and having obtained his permission, gave up his cell, handed all his possessions over to the monastery, and set out for the Tambóv hermitage.

There the Abbot, an excellent manager of merchant origin, received Sergius simply and quietly and placed him in Hilary’s cell, at first assigning to him a lay brother but afterwards leaving him alone, at Sergius’s own request. The cell was a dual cave, dug into the hillside, and in it Hilary had been buried. In the back part was Hilary’s grave, while in the front was a niche for sleeping, with a straw mattress, a small table, and a shelf with icons and books. Outside the outer door, which fastened with a hook, was another shelf on which, once a day, a monk placed food from the monastery.

And so Sergius became a hermit.

At Carnival time, in the sixth year of Sergius’s life at the hermitage, a merry company of rich people, men and women from a neighbouring town, made up a troika-party, after a meal of carnival-pancakes and wine. The company consisted of two lawyers, a wealthy landowner, an officer, and four ladies. One lady was the officer’s wife, another the wife of the landowner, the third his sister⁠—a young girl⁠—and the fourth a divorcee, beautiful, rich, and eccentric, who amazed and shocked the town by her escapades.

The weather was excellent and the snow-covered road smooth as a floor. They drove some seven miles out of town, and then stopped and consulted as to whether they should turn back or drive farther.

“But where does this road lead to?” asked Makóvkina, the beautiful divorcee.

“To Tambóv, eight miles from here,” replied one of the lawyers, who was having a flirtation with her.

“And then where?”

“Then on to L⁠⸺, past the Monastery.”

“Where that Father Sergius lives?”

“Yes.”

“Kasátsky, the handsome hermit?”

“Yes.”

“Mesdames et messieurs, let us drive on and see Kasátsky! We can stop at Tambóv and have something to eat.”

“But we shouldn’t get home tonight!”

“Never mind, we will stay at Kasátsky’s.”

“Well, there is a very good hostelry at the Monastery. I stayed there when I was defending Mákhin.”

“No, I shall spend the night at Kasátsky’s!”

“Impossible! Even your omnipotence could not accomplish that!”

“Impossible? Will you bet?”

“All right! If you spend the night with him, the stake shall be whatever you like.”

“A discrétion!”

“But on your side too!”

“Yes, of course. Let us drive on.”

Vodka was handed to the drivers, and the party got out a box of pies, wine, and sweets for themselves. The ladies wrapped up in their white dogskins. The drivers disputed as to whose troika should go ahead, and the youngest, seating himself sideways with a dashing air, swung his long knout and shouted to the horses. The troika-bells tinkled and the sledge-runners squeaked over the snow.

The sledge swayed hardly at all. The shaft-horse, with his tightly bound tail under his decorated breechband, galloped smoothly and briskly; the smooth road seemed to run rapidly backwards, while the driver dashingly shook the reins. One of the lawyers and the officer sitting opposite talked nonsense to Makóvkina’s neighbour, but Makóvkina herself sat motionless and in thought, tightly wrapped in her fur. “Always the same and always nasty! The same red shiny faces smelling of wine and cigars! The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die. But I can’t. It bores me. I want something that would upset it all and turn it upside down. Suppose it happened to us as to those people⁠—at Sarátov was it?⁠—who kept on driving and froze to death.⁠ ⁠… What would our people do? How would they behave? Basely, for certain. Each for himself. And I too should act badly. But I at any rate have beauty. They all know it. And how about that monk? Is it possible that he has become indifferent to it? No! That is the one thing they all care for⁠—like that cadet last autumn. What a fool he was!”

“Iván Nikoláevich!” she said aloud.

“What are your commands?”

“How old is he?”

“Who?”

“Kasátsky.”

“Over forty, I should think.”

“And does he receive all visitors?”

“Yes, everybody, but not always.”

“Cover up my feet. Not like that⁠—how clumsy you are! No! More, more⁠—like that! But you need not squeeze them!”

So they came to the forest where the cell was.

Makóvkina got out of the sledge, and told them to drive on. They tried to dissuade her, but she grew irritable and ordered them to go on.

When the sledges had gone she went up the path in her white dogskin coat. The lawyer got out and stopped to watch her.

It was Father Sergius’s sixth year as a recluse, and he was now forty-nine. His life in solitude was hard⁠—not on account of the fasts and the prayers (they were no hardship to him) but on account of an inner conflict he had not at all anticipated. The sources of that conflict were two: doubts, and the lust of the flesh. And these two enemies always appeared together. It seemed to him that they were two foes, but in reality they were one and the same. As soon as doubt was gone so was the lustful desire. But thinking them to be two different fiends he fought them separately.

“O my God, my God!” thought he. “Why dost thou not grant me faith? There is lust, of course: even the saints had to fight that⁠—Saint Anthony and others. But they had faith, while I have moments, hours, and days, when it is absent. Why does the whole world, with all its delights, exist if it is sinful and must be renounced? Why hast Thou created this temptation? Temptation? Is it not rather a temptation that I wish to abandon all the joys of earth and prepare something for myself there where perhaps there is nothing?” And he became horrified and filled with disgust at himself. “Vile creature! And it is you who wish to become a saint!” he upbraided himself, and he began to pray. But as soon as he started to pray he saw himself vividly as he had been at the Monastery, in a majestic post in biretta and mantle, and he shook his head. “No, that is not right. It is deception. I may deceive others, but not myself or God. I am not a majestic man, but a pitiable and ridiculous one!” And he threw back the folds of his cassock and smiled as he looked at his thin legs in their underclothing.

Then he dropped the folds of the cassock again and began reading the prayers, making the sign of the cross and prostrating himself. “Can it be that this couch will be my bier?” he read. And it seemed as if a devil whispered to him: “A solitary couch is itself a bier. Falsehood!” And in imagination he saw the shoulders of a widow with whom he had lived. He shook himself, and went on reading. Having read the precepts he took up the Gospels, opened the book, and happened on a passage he often repeated and knew by heart: “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief!”⁠—and he put away all the doubts that had arisen. As one replaces an object of insecure equilibrium, so he carefully replaced his belief on its shaky pedestal and carefully stepped back from it so as not to shake or upset it. The blinkers were adjusted again and he felt tranquillized, and repeating his childhood’s prayer: “Lord, receive me, receive me!” he felt not merely at ease, but thrilled and joyful. He crossed himself and lay down on the bedding on his narrow bench, tucking his summer cassock under his head. He fell asleep at once, and in his light slumber he seemed to hear the tinkling of sledge bells. He did not know whether he was dreaming or awake, but a knock at the door aroused him. He sat up, distrusting his senses, but the knock was repeated. Yes, it was a knock close at hand, at his door, and with it the sound of a woman’s voice.

“My God! Can it be true, as I have read in the Lives of the Saints, that the devil takes on the form of a woman? Yes⁠—it is a woman’s voice. And a tender, timid, pleasant voice. Phui!” And he spat to exorcise the devil. “No, it was only my imagination,” he assured himself, and he went to the corner where his lectern stood, falling on his knees in the regular and habitual manner which of itself gave him consolation and satisfaction. He sank down, his hair hanging over his face, and pressed his head, already going bald in front, to the cold damp strip of drugget on the draughty floor. He read the psalm old Father Pímon had told him warded off temptation. He easily raised his light and emaciated body on his strong sinewy legs and tried to continue saying his prayers, but instead of doing so he involuntarily strained his hearing. He wished to hear more. All was quiet. From the corner of the roof regular drops continued to fall into the tub below. Outside was a mist and fog eating into the snow that lay on the ground. It was still, very still. And suddenly there was a rustling at the window and a voice⁠—that same tender, timid voice, which could only belong to an attractive woman⁠—said:

“Let me in, for Christ’s sake!”

It seemed as though his blood had all rushed to his heart and settled there. He could hardly breathe. “Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered⁠ ⁠…”

“But I am not a devil!” It was obvious that the lips that uttered this were smiling. “I am not a devil, but only a sinful woman who has lost her way, not figuratively but literally!” She laughed. “I am frozen and beg for shelter.”

He pressed his face to the window, but the little icon-lamp was reflected by it and shone on the whole pane. He put his hands to both sides of his face and peered between them. Fog, mist, a tree, and⁠—just opposite him⁠—she herself. Yes, there, a few inches from him, was the sweet, kindly frightened face of a woman in a cap and a coat of long white fur, leaning towards him. Their eyes met with instant recognition: not that they had ever known one another, they had never met before, but by the look they exchanged they⁠—and he particularly⁠—felt that they knew and understood one another. After that glance to imagine her to be a devil and not a simple, kindly, sweet, timid woman, was impossible.

“Who are you? Why have you come?” he asked.

“Do please open the door!” she replied, with capricious authority. “I am frozen. I tell you I have lost my way.”

“But I am a monk⁠—a hermit.”

“Oh, do please open the door⁠—or do you wish me to freeze under your window while you say your prayers?”

“But how have you⁠ ⁠…”

“I shan’t eat you. For God’s sake let me in! I am quite frozen.”

She really did feel afraid, and said this in an almost tearful voice.

He stepped back from the window and looked at an icon of the Saviour in His crown of thorns. “Lord, help me! Lord, help me!” he exclaimed, crossing himself and bowing low. Then he went to the door, and opening it into the tiny porch, felt for the hook that fastened the outer door and began to lift it. He heard steps outside. She was coming from the window to the door. “Ah!” she suddenly exclaimed, and he understood that she had stepped into the puddle that the dripping from the roof had formed at the threshold. His hands trembled, and he could not raise the hook of the tightly closed door.

“Oh, what are you doing? Let me in! I am all wet. I am frozen! You are thinking about saving your soul and are letting me freeze to death⁠ ⁠…”

He jerked the door towards him, raised the hook, and without considering what he was doing, pushed it open with such force that it struck her.

“Oh⁠—pardon!” he suddenly exclaimed, reverting completely to his old manner with ladies.

She smiled on hearing that pardon. “He is not quite so terrible, after all,” she thought. “It’s all right. It is you who must pardon me,” she said, stepping past him. “I should never have ventured, but such an extraordinary circumstance⁠ ⁠…”

“If you please!” he uttered, and stood aside to let her pass him. A strong smell of fine scent, which he had long not encountered, struck him. She went through the little porch into the cell where he lived. He closed the outer door without fastening the hook, and stepped in after her.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner! Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!” he prayed unceasingly, not merely to himself but involuntarily moving his lips. “If you please!” he said to her again. She stood in the middle of the room, moisture dripping from her to the floor as she looked him over. Her eyes were laughing.

“Forgive me for having disturbed your solitude. But you see what a position I am in. It all came about from our starting from town for a sledge-drive, and my making a bet that I would walk back by myself from the Vorobëvka to the town. But then I lost my way, and if I had not happened to come upon your cell⁠ ⁠…” She began lying, but his face confused her so that she could not continue, but became silent. She had not expected him to be at all such as he was. He was not as handsome as she had imagined, but was nevertheless beautiful in her eyes: his greyish hair and beard, slightly curling, his fine, regular nose, and his eyes like glowing coal when he looked at her, made a strong impression on her.

He saw that she was lying.

“Yes⁠ ⁠… so,” said he, looking at her and again lowering his eyes. “I will go in there, and this place is at your disposal.”

And taking down the little lamp, he lit a candle, and bowing low to her went into the small cell beyond the partition, and she heard him begin to move something about there. “Probably he is barricading himself in from me!” she thought with a smile, and throwing off her white dogskin cloak she tried to take off her cap, which had become entangled in her hair and in the woven kerchief she was wearing under it. She had not got at all wet when standing under the window, and had said so only as a pretext to get him to let her in. But she really had stepped into the puddle at the door, and her left foot was wet up to the ankle and her overshoe full of water. She sat down on his bed⁠—a bench only covered by a bit of carpet⁠—and began to take off her boots. The little cell seemed to her charming. The narrow little room, some seven feet by nine, was as clean as glass. There was nothing in it but the bench on which she was sitting, the bookshelf above it, and a lectern in the corner. A sheepskin coat and a cassock hung on nails by the door. Above the lectern was the little lamp and an icon of Christ in His crown of thorns. The room smelt strangely of perspiration and of earth. It all pleased her⁠—even that smell. Her wet feet, especially one of them, were uncomfortable, and she quickly began to take off her boots and stockings without ceasing to smile, pleased not so much at having achieved her object as because she perceived that she had abashed that charming, strange, striking, and attractive man. “He did not respond, but what of that?” she said to herself.

“Father Sergius! Father Sergius! Or how does one call you?”

“What do you want?” replied a quiet voice.

“Please forgive me for disturbing your solitude, but really I could not help it. I should simply have fallen ill. And I don’t know that I shan’t now. I am all wet and my feet are like ice.”

“Pardon me,” replied the quiet voice. “I cannot be of any assistance to you.”

“I would not have disturbed you if I could have helped it. I am only here till daybreak.”

He did not reply and she heard him muttering something, probably his prayers.

“You will not be coming in here?” she asked, smiling. “For I must undress to dry myself.”

He did not reply, but continued to read his prayers.

“Yes, that is a man!” thought she, getting her dripping boot off with difficulty. She tugged at it, but could not get it off. The absurdity of it struck her and she began to laugh almost inaudibly. But knowing that he would hear her laughter and would be moved by it just as she wished him to be, she laughed louder, and her laughter⁠—gay, natural, and kindly⁠—really acted on him just in the way she wished.

“Yes, I could love a man like that⁠—such eyes and such a simple noble face, and passionate too despite all the prayers he mutters!” thought she. “You can’t deceive a woman in these things. As soon as he put his face to the window and saw me, he understood and knew. The glimmer of it was in his eyes and remained there. He began to love me and desired me. Yes⁠—desired!” said she, getting her overshoe and her boot off at last and starting to take off her stockings. To remove those long stockings fastened with elastic it was necessary to raise her skirts. She felt embarrassed and said:

“Don’t come in!”

But there was no reply from the other side of the wall. The steady muttering continued and also a sound of moving.

“He is prostrating himself to the ground, no doubt,” thought she. “But he won’t bow himself out of it. He is thinking of me just as I am thinking of him. He is thinking of these feet of mine with the same feeling that I have!” And she pulled off her wet stockings and put her feet up on the bench, pressing them under her. She sat a while like that with her arms round her knees and looking pensively before her. “But it is a desert, here in this silence. No one would ever know.⁠ ⁠…”

She rose, took her stockings over to the stove, and hung them on the damper. It was a queer damper, and she turned it about, and then, stepping lightly on her bare feet, returned to the bench and sat down there again with her feet up.

There was complete silence on the other side of the partition. She looked at the tiny watch that hung round her neck. It was two o’clock. “Our party should return about three!” She had not more than an hour before her. “Well, am I to sit like this all alone? What nonsense! I don’t want to. I will call him at once.”

“Father Sergius, Father Sergius! Sergéy Dmítrich! Prince Kasátsky!”

Beyond the partition all was silent.

“Listen! This is cruel. I would not call you if it were not necessary. I am ill. I don’t know what is the matter with me!” she exclaimed in a tone of suffering. “Oh! Oh!” she groaned, falling back on the bench. And strange to say she really felt that her strength was failing, that she was becoming faint, that everything in her ached, and that she was shivering with fever.

“Listen! Help me! I don’t know what is the matter with me. Oh! Oh!” She unfastened her dress, exposing her breast, and lifted her arms, bare to the elbow. “Oh! Oh!”

All this time he stood on the other side of the partition and prayed. Having finished all the evening prayers, he now stood motionless, his eyes looking at the end of his nose, and mentally repeated with all his soul: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me!”

But he had heard everything. He had heard how the silk rustled when she took off her dress, how she stepped with bare feet on the floor, and had heard how she rubbed her feet with her hand. He felt his own weakness, and that he might be lost at any moment. That was why he prayed unceasingly. He felt rather as the hero in the fairytale must have felt when he had to go on and on without looking round. So Sergius heard and felt that danger and destruction were there, hovering above and around him, and that he could only save himself by not looking in that direction for an instant. But suddenly the desire to look seized him. At the same instant she said:

“This is inhuman. I may die.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, I will go to her, but like the Saint who laid one hand on the adulteress and thrust his other into the brazier. But there is no brazier here.” He looked round. The lamp! He put his finger over the flame and frowned, preparing himself to suffer. And for a rather long time, as it seemed to him, there was no sensation, but suddenly⁠—he had not yet decided whether it was painful enough⁠—he writhed all over, jerked his hand away, and waved it in the air. “No, I can’t stand that!”

“For God’s sake come to me! I am dying! Oh!”

“Well⁠—shall I perish? No, not so!”

“I will come to you directly,” he said, and having opened his door, he went without looking at her through the cell into the porch where he used to chop wood. There he felt for the block and for an axe which leant against the wall.

“Immediately!” he said, and taking up the axe with his right hand he laid the forefinger of his left hand on the block, swung the axe, and struck with it below the second joint. The finger flew off more lightly than a stick of similar thickness, and bounding up, turned over on the edge of the block and then fell to the floor.

He heard it fall before he felt any pain, but before he had time to be surprised he felt a burning pain and the warmth of flowing blood. He hastily wrapped the stump in the skirt of his cassock, and pressing it to his hip went back into the room, and standing in front of the woman, lowered his eyes and asked in a low voice: “What do you want?”

She looked at his pale face and his quivering left cheek, and suddenly felt ashamed. She jumped up, seized her fur cloak, and throwing it round her shoulders, wrapped herself up in it.

“I was in pain⁠ ⁠… I have caught cold⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠… Father Sergius⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠…”

He let his eyes, shining with a quiet light of joy, rest upon her, and said:

“Dear sister, why did you wish to ruin your immortal soul? Temptations must come into the world, but woe to him by whom temptation comes. Pray that God may forgive us!”

She listened and looked at him. Suddenly she heard the sound of something dripping. She looked down and saw that blood was flowing from his hand and down his cassock.

“What have you done to your hand?” She remembered the sound she had heard, and seizing the little lamp ran out into the porch. There on the floor she saw the bloody finger. She returned with her face paler than his and was about to speak to him, but he silently passed into the back cell and fastened the door.

“Forgive me!” she said. “How can I atone for my sin?”

“Go away.”

“Let me tie up your hand.”

“Go away from here.”

She dressed hurriedly and silently, and when ready sat waiting in her furs. The sledge-bells were heard outside.

“Father Sergius, forgive me!”

“Go away. God will forgive.”

“Father Sergius! I will change my life. Do not forsake me!”

“Go away.”

“Forgive me⁠—and give me your blessing!”

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost!”⁠—she heard his voice from behind the partition. “Go!”

She burst into sobs and left the cell. The lawyer came forward to meet her.

“Well, I see I have lost the bet. It can’t be helped. Where will you sit?”

“It is all the same to me.”

She took a seat in the sledge, and did not utter a word all the way home.

A year later she entered a convent as a novice, and lived a strict life under the direction of the hermit Arsény, who wrote letters to her at long intervals.

Father Sergius lived as a recluse for another seven years.

At first he accepted much of what people brought him⁠—tea, sugar, white bread, milk, clothing, and firewood. But as time went on he led a more and more austere life, refusing everything superfluous, and finally he accepted nothing but rye-bread once a week. Everything else that was brought to him he gave to the poor who came to him. He spent his entire time in his cell, in prayer or in conversation with callers, who became more and more numerous as time went on. Only three times a year did he go out to church, and when necessary he went out to fetch water and wood.

The episode with Makóvkina had occurred after five years of his hermit life. That occurrence soon became generally known⁠—her nocturnal visit, the change she underwent, and her entry into a convent. From that time Father Sergius’s fame increased. More and more visitors came to see him, other monks settled down near his cell, and a church was erected there and also a hostelry. His fame, as usual exaggerating his feats, spread ever more and more widely. People began to come to him from a distance, and began bringing invalids to him whom they declared he cured.

His first cure occurred in the eighth year of his life as a hermit. It was the healing of a fourteen-year-old boy, whose mother brought him to Father Sergius insisting that he should lay his hand on the child’s head. It had never occurred to Father Sergius that he could cure the sick. He would have regarded such a thought as a great sin of pride; but the mother who brought the boy implored him insistently, falling at his feet and saying: “Why do you, who heal others, refuse to help my son?” She besought him in Christ’s name. When Father Sergius assured her that only God could heal the sick, she replied that she only wanted him to lay his hands on the boy and pray for him. Father Sergius refused and returned to his cell. But next day (it was in autumn and the nights were already cold) on going out for water he saw the same mother with her son, a pale boy of fourteen, and was met by the same petition.

He remembered the parable of the unjust judge, and though he had previously felt sure that he ought to refuse, he now began to hesitate and, having hesitated, took to prayer and prayed until a decision formed itself in his soul. This decision was, that he ought to accede to the woman’s request and that her faith might save her son. As for himself, he would in this case be but an insignificant instrument chosen by God.

And going out to the mother he did what she asked⁠—laid his hand on the boy’s head and prayed.

The mother left with her son, and a month later the boy recovered, and the fame of the holy healing power of the starets Sergius (as they now called him) spread throughout the whole district. After that, not a week passed without sick people coming, riding or on foot, to Father Sergius; and having acceded to one petition he could not refuse others, and he laid his hands on many and prayed. Many recovered, and his fame spread more and more.

So seven years passed in the Monastery and thirteen in his hermit’s cell. He now had the appearance of an old man: his beard was long and grey, but his hair, though thin, was still black and curly.

For some weeks Father Sergius had been living with one persistent thought: whether he was right in accepting the position in which he had not so much placed himself as been placed by the Archimandrite and the Abbot. That position had begun after the recovery of the fourteen-year-old boy. From that time, with each month, week, and day that passed, Sergius felt his own inner life wasting away and being replaced by external life. It was as if he had been turned inside out.

Sergius saw that he was a means of attracting visitors and contributions to the monastery, and that therefore the authorities arranged matters in such a way as to make as much use of him as possible. For instance, they rendered it impossible for him to do any manual work. He was supplied with everything he could want, and they only demanded of him that he should not refuse his blessing to those who came to seek it. For his convenience they appointed days when he would receive. They arranged a reception-room for men, and a place was railed in so that he should not be pushed over by the crowds of women visitors, and so that he could conveniently bless those who came.

They told him that people needed him, and that fulfilling Christ’s law of love he could not refuse their demand to see him, and that to avoid them would be cruel. He could not but agree with this, but the more he gave himself up to such a life the more he felt that what was internal became external, and that the fount of living water within him dried up, and that what he did now was done more and more for men and less and less for God.

Whether he admonished people, or simply blessed them, or prayed for the sick, or advised people about their lives, or listened to expressions of gratitude from those he had helped by precepts, or alms, or healing (as they assured him)⁠—he could not help being pleased at it, and could not be indifferent to the results of his activity and to the influence he exerted. He thought himself a shining light, and the more he felt this the more was he conscious of a weakening, a dying down of the divine light of truth that shone within him.

“In how far is what I do for God and in how far is it for men?” That was the question that insistently tormented him and to which he was not so much unable to give himself an answer as unable to face the answer.

In the depth of his soul he felt that the devil had substituted an activity for men in place of his former activity for God. He felt this because, just as it had formerly been hard for him to be torn from his solitude so now that solitude itself was hard for him. He was oppressed and wearied by visitors, but at the bottom of his heart he was glad of their presence and glad of the praise they heaped upon him.

There was a time when he decided to go away and hide. He even planned all that was necessary for that purpose. He prepared for himself a peasant’s shirt, trousers, coat, and cap. He explained that he wanted these to give to those who asked. And he kept these clothes in his cell, planning how he would put them on, cut his hair short, and go away. First he would go some three hundred versts by train, then he would leave the train and walk from village to village. He asked an old man who had been a soldier how he tramped: what people gave him, and what shelter they allowed him. The soldier told him where people were most charitable, and where they would take a wanderer in for the night, and Father Sergius intended to avail himself of this information. He even put on those clothes one night in his desire to go, but he could not decide what was best⁠—to remain or to escape. At first he was in doubt, but afterwards this indecision passed. He submitted to custom and yielded to the devil, and only the peasant garb reminded him of the thought and feeling he had had.

Every day more and more people flocked to him and less and less time was left him for prayer and for renewing his spiritual strength. Sometimes in lucid moments he thought he was like a place where there had once been a spring. “There used to be a feeble spring of living water which flowed quietly from me and through me. That was true life, the time when she tempted me!” (He always thought with ecstasy of that night and of her who was now Mother Agnes.) She had tasted of that pure water, but since then there had not been time for it to collect before thirsty people came crowding in and pushing one another aside. And they had trampled everything down and nothing was left but mud.

So he thought in rare moments of lucidity, but his usual state of mind was one of weariness and a tender pity for himself because of that weariness.

It was in spring, on the eve of the mid-Pentecostal feast. Father Sergius was officiating at the Vigil Service in his hermitage church, where the congregation was as large as the little church could hold⁠—about twenty people. They were all well-to-do proprietors or merchants. Father Sergius admitted anyone, but a selection was made by the monk in attendance and by an assistant who was sent to the hermitage every day from the monastery. A crowd of some eighty people⁠—pilgrims and peasants, and especially peasant-women⁠—stood outside waiting for Father Sergius to come out and bless them. Meanwhile he conducted the service, but at the point at which he went out to the tomb of his predecessor, he staggered and would have fallen had he not been caught by a merchant standing behind him and by the monk acting as deacon.

“What is the matter, Father Sergius? Dear man! O Lord!” exclaimed the women. “He is as white as a sheet!”

But Father Sergius recovered immediately, and though very pale, he waved the merchant and the deacon aside and continued to chant the service.

Father Seraphim, the deacon, the acolytes, and Sófya Ivánovna, a lady who always lived near the hermitage and tended Father Sergius, begged him to bring the service to an end.

“No, there’s nothing the matter,” said Father Sergius, slightly smiling from beneath his moustache and continuing the service. “Yes, that is the way the Saints behave!” thought he.

“A holy man⁠—an angel of God!” he heard just then the voice of Sófya Ivánovna behind him, and also of the merchant who had supported him. He did not heed their entreaties, but went on with the service. Again crowding together they all made their way by the narrow passages back into the little church, and there, though abbreviating it slightly, Father Sergius completed vespers.

Immediately after the service Father Sergius, having pronounced the benediction on those present, went over to the bench under the elm tree at the entrance to the cave. He wished to rest and breathe the fresh air⁠—he felt in need of it. But as soon as he left the church the crowd of people rushed to him soliciting his blessing, his advice, and his help. There were pilgrims who constantly tramped from one holy place to another and from one starets to another, and were always entranced by every shrine and every starets. Father Sergius knew this common, cold, conventional, and most irreligious type. There were pilgrims, for the most part discharged soldiers, unaccustomed to a settled life, poverty-stricken, and many of them drunken old men, who tramped from monastery to monastery merely to be fed. And there were rough peasants and peasant-women who had come with their selfish requirements, seeking cures or to have doubts about quite practical affairs solved for them: about marrying off a daughter, or hiring a shop, or buying a bit of land, or how to atone for having overlaid a child or having an illegitimate one.

All this was an old story and not in the least interesting to him. He knew he would hear nothing new from these folk, that they would arouse no religious emotion in him; but he liked to see the crowd to which his blessing and advice was necessary and precious, so while that crowd oppressed him it also pleased him. Father Seraphim began to drive them away, saying that Father Sergius was tired.

But Father Sergius, remembering the words of the Gospel: “Forbid them” (children) “not to come unto me,” and feeling tenderly towards himself at this recollection, said they should be allowed to approach.

He rose, went to the railing beyond which the crowd had gathered, and began blessing them and answering their questions, but in a voice so weak that he was touched with pity for himself. Yet despite his wish to receive them all he could not do it. Things again grew dark before his eyes, and he staggered and grasped the railings. He felt a rush of blood to his head and first went pale and then suddenly flushed.

“I must leave the rest till tomorrow. I cannot do more today,” and, pronouncing a general benediction, he returned to the bench. The merchant again supported him, and leading him by the arm helped him to be seated.

“Father!” came voices from the crowd. “Dear Father! Do not forsake us. Without you we are lost!”

The merchant, having seated Father Sergius on the bench under the elm, took on himself police duties and drove the people off very resolutely. It is true that he spoke in a low voice so that Father Sergius might not hear him, but his words were incisive and angry.

“Be off, be off! He has blessed you, and what more do you want? Get along with you, or I’ll wring your necks! Move on there! Get along, you old woman with your dirty leg-bands! Go, go! Where are you shoving to? You’ve been told that it is finished. Tomorrow will be as God wills, but for today he has finished!”

“Father! Only let my eyes have a glimpse of his dear face!” said an old woman.

“I’ll glimpse you! Where are you shoving to?”

Father Sergius noticed that the merchant seemed to be acting roughly, and in a feeble voice told the attendant that the people should not be driven away. He knew that they would be driven away all the same, and he much desired to be left alone and to rest, but he sent the attendant with that message to produce an impression.

“All right, all right! I am not driving them away. I am only remonstrating with them,” replied the merchant. “You know they wouldn’t hesitate to drive a man to death. They have no pity, they only consider themselves.⁠ ⁠… You’ve been told you cannot see him. Go away! Tomorrow!” And he got rid of them all.

He took all these pains because he liked order and liked to domineer and drive the people away, but chiefly because he wanted to have Father Sergius to himself. He was a widower with an only daughter who was an invalid and unmarried, and whom he had brought fourteen hundred versts to Father Sergius to be healed. For two years past he had been taking her to different places to be cured: first to the university clinic in the chief town of the province, but that did no good; then to a peasant in the province of Samara, where she got a little better; then to a doctor in Moscow to whom he paid much money, but this did no good at all. Now he had been told that Father Sergius wrought cures, and had brought her to him. So when all the people had been driven away he approached Father Sergius, and suddenly falling on his knees loudly exclaimed:

“Holy Father! Bless my afflicted offspring that she may be healed of her malady. I venture to prostrate myself at your holy feet.”

And he placed one hand on the other, cup-wise. He said and did all this as if he were doing something clearly and firmly appointed by law and usage⁠—as if one must and should ask for a daughter to be cured in just this way and no other. He did it with such conviction that it seemed even to Father Sergius that it should be said and done in just that way, but nevertheless he bade him rise and tell him what the trouble was. The merchant said that his daughter, a girl of twenty-two, had fallen ill two years ago, after her mother’s sudden death. She had moaned (as he expressed it) and since then had not been herself. And now he had brought her fourteen hundred versts and she was waiting in the hostelry till Father Sergius should give orders to bring her. She did not go out during the day, being afraid of the light, and could only come after sunset.

“Is she very weak?” asked Father Sergius.

“No, she has no particular weakness. She is quite plump, and is only ‘nerastenic’ the doctors say. If you will only let me bring her this evening, Father Sergius, I’ll fly like a spirit to fetch her. Holy Father! Revive a parent’s heart, restore his line, save his afflicted daughter by your prayers!” And the merchant again threw himself on his knees and bending sideways, with his head resting on his clenched fists, remained stock still. Father Sergius again told him to get up, and thinking how heavy his activities were and how he went through with them patiently notwithstanding, he sighed heavily and after a few seconds of silence, said:

“Well, bring her this evening. I will pray for her, but now I am tired.⁠ ⁠…” and he closed his eyes. “I will send for you.”

The merchant went away, stepping on tiptoe, which only made his boots creak the louder, and Father Sergius remained alone.

His whole life was filled by Church services and by people who came to see him, but today had been a particularly difficult one. In the morning an important official had arrived and had had a long conversation with him; after that a lady had come with her son. This son was a sceptical young professor whom the mother, an ardent believer and devoted to Father Sergius, had brought that he might talk to him. The conversation had been very trying. The young man, evidently not wishing to have a controversy with a monk, had agreed with him in everything as with someone who was mentally inferior. Father Sergius saw that the young man did not believe but yet was satisfied, tranquil, and at ease, and the memory of that conversation now disquieted him.

“Have something to eat, Father,” said the attendant.

“All right, bring me something.”

The attendant went to a hut that had been arranged some ten paces from the cave, and Father Sergius remained alone.

The time was long past when he had lived alone doing everything for himself and eating only rye-bread, or rolls prepared for the Church. He had been advised long since that he had no right to neglect his health, and he was given wholesome, though Lenten, food. He ate sparingly, though much more than he had done, and often he ate with much pleasure, and not as formerly with aversion and a sense of guilt. So it was now. He had some gruel, drank a cup of tea, and ate half a white roll.

The attendant went away, and Father Sergius remained alone under the elm tree.

It was a wonderful May evening, when the birches, aspens, elms, wild cherries, and oaks, had just burst into foliage.

The bush of wild cherries behind the elm tree was in full bloom and had not yet begun to shed its blossoms, and the nightingales⁠—one quite near at hand and two or three others in the bushes down by the river⁠—burst into full song after some preliminary twitters. From the river came the far-off songs of peasants returning, no doubt, from their work. The sun was setting behind the forest, its last rays glowing through the leaves. All that side was brilliant green, the other side with the elm tree was dark. The cockchafers flew clumsily about, falling to the ground when they collided with anything.

After supper Father Sergius began to repeat a silent prayer: “O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!” and then he read a psalm, and suddenly in the middle of the psalm a sparrow flew out from the bush, alighted on the ground, and hopped towards him chirping as it came, but then it took fright at something and flew away. He said a prayer which referred to his abandonment of the world, and hastened to finish it in order to send for the merchant with the sick daughter. She interested him in that she presented a distraction, and because both she and her father considered him a saint whose prayers were efficacious. Outwardly he disavowed that idea, but in the depths of his soul he considered it to be true.

He was often amazed that this had happened, that he, Stepán Kasátsky, had come to be such an extraordinary saint and even a worker of miracles, but of the fact that he was such there could not be the least doubt. He could not fail to believe in the miracles he himself witnessed, beginning with the sick boy and ending with the old woman who had recovered her sight when he had prayed for her.

Strange as it might be, it was so. Accordingly the merchant’s daughter interested him as a new individual who had faith in him, and also as a fresh opportunity to confirm his healing powers and enhance his fame. “They bring people a thousand versts and write about it in the papers. The Emperor knows of it, and they know of it in Europe, in unbelieving Europe”⁠—thought he. And suddenly he felt ashamed of his vanity and again began to pray. “Lord, King of Heaven, Comforter, Soul of Truth! Come and enter into me and cleanse me from all sin and save and bless my soul. Cleanse me from the sin of worldly vanity that troubles me!” he repeated, and he remembered how often he had prayed about this and how vain till now his prayers had been in that respect. His prayers worked miracles for others, but in his own case God had not granted him liberation from this petty passion.

He remembered his prayers at the commencement of his life at the hermitage, when he prayed for purity, humility, and love, and how it seemed to him then that God heard his prayers. He had retained his purity and had chopped off his finger. And he lifted the shrivelled stump of that finger to his lips and kissed it. It seemed to him now that he had been humble then when he had always seemed loathsome to himself on account of his sinfulness; and when he remembered the tender feelings with which he had then met an old man who was bringing a drunken soldier to him to ask alms; and how he had received her, it seemed to him that he had then possessed love also. But now? And he asked himself whether he loved anyone, whether he loved Sófya Ivánovna, or Father Seraphim, whether he had any feeling of love for all who had come to him that day⁠—for that learned young man with whom he had had that instructive discussion in which he was concerned only to show off his own intelligence and that he had not lagged behind the times in knowledge. He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity.

He was pleased to know that the merchant’s daughter was twenty-two, and he wondered whether she was good-looking. When he inquired whether she was weak, he really wanted to know if she had feminine charm.

“Can I have fallen so low?” he thought. “Lord, help me! Restore me, my Lord and God!” And he clasped his hands and began to pray.

The nightingales burst into song, a cockchafer knocked against him and crept up the back of his neck. He brushed it off. “But does He exist? What if I am knocking at a door fastened from outside? The bar is on the door for all to see. Nature⁠—the nightingales and the cockchafers⁠—is that bar. Perhaps the young man was right.” And he began to pray aloud. He prayed for a long time till these thoughts vanished and he again felt calm and confident. He rang the bell and told the attendant to say that the merchant might bring his daughter to him now.

The merchant came, leading his daughter by the arm. He led her into the cell and immediately left her.

She was a very fair girl, plump and very short, with a pale, frightened, childish face and a much developed feminine figure. Father Sergius remained seated on the bench at the entrance and when she was passing and stopped beside him for his blessing he was aghast at himself for the way he looked at her figure. As she passed by him he was acutely conscious of her femininity, though he saw by her face that she was sensual and feebleminded. He rose and went into the cell. She was sitting on a stool waiting for him, and when he entered she rose.

“I want to go back to Papa,” she said.

“Don’t be afraid,” he replied. “What are you suffering from?”

“I am in pain all over,” she said, and suddenly her face lit up with a smile.

“You will be well,” said he. “Pray!”

“What is the use of praying? I have prayed and it does no good”⁠—and she continued to smile. “I want you to pray for me and lay your hands on me. I saw you in a dream.”

“How did you see me?”

“I saw you put your hands on my breast like that.” She took his hand and pressed it to her breast. “Just here.”

He yielded his right hand to her.

“What is your name?” he asked, trembling all over and feeling that he was overcome and that his desire had already passed beyond control.

“Marie. Why?”

She took his hand and kissed it, and then put her arm round his waist and pressed him to herself.

“What are you doing?” he said. “Marie, you are a devil!”

“Oh, perhaps. What does it matter?”

And embracing him she sat down with him on the bed.

At dawn he went out into the porch.

“Can this all have happened? Her father will come and she will tell him everything. She is a devil! What am I to do? Here is the axe with which I chopped off my finger.” He snatched up the axe and moved back towards the cell.

The attendant came up.

“Do you want some wood chopped? Let me have the axe.”

Sergius yielded up the axe and entered the cell. She was lying there asleep. He looked at her with horror, and passed on beyond the partition, where he took down the peasant clothes and put them on. Then he seized a pair of scissors, cut off his long hair, and went out along the path down the hill to the river, where he had not been for more than three years.

A road ran beside the river and he went along it and walked till noon. Then he went into a field of rye and lay down there. Towards evening he approached a village, but without entering it went towards the cliff that overhung the river. There he again lay down to rest.

It was early morning, half an hour before sunrise. All was damp and gloomy and a cold early wind was blowing from the west. “Yes, I must end it all. There is no God. But how am I to end it? Throw myself into the river? I can swim and should not drown. Hang myself? Yes, just throw this sash over a branch.” This seemed so feasible and so easy that he felt horrified. As usual at moments of despair he felt the need of prayer. But there was no one to pray to. There was no God. He lay down resting on his arm, and suddenly such a longing for sleep overcame him that he could no longer support his head on his hand, but stretched out his arm, laid his head upon it, and fell asleep. But that sleep lasted only for a moment. He woke up immediately and began not to dream but to remember.

He saw himself as a child in his mother’s home in the country. A carriage drives up, and out of it steps Uncle Nicholas Sergeévich, with his long, spade-shaped, black beard, and with him Páshenka, a thin little girl with large mild eyes and a timid pathetic face. And into their company of boys Páshenka is brought and they have to play with her, but it is dull. She is silly, and it ends by their making fun of her and forcing her to show how she can swim. She lies down on the floor and shows them, and they all laugh and make a fool of her. She sees this and blushes red in patches and becomes more pitiable than before, so pitiable that he feels ashamed and can never forget that crooked, kindly, submissive smile. And Sergius remembered having seen her since then. Long after, just before he became a monk, she had married a landowner who squandered all her fortune and was in the habit of beating her. She had had two children, a son and a daughter, but the son had died while still young. And Sergius remembered having seen her very wretched. Then again he had seen her in the monastery when she was a widow. She had been still the same, not exactly stupid, but insipid, insignificant, and pitiable. She had come with her daughter and her daughter’s fiancé. They were already poor at that time and later on he had heard that she was living in a small provincial town and was very poor.

“Why am I thinking about her?” he asked himself, but he could not cease doing so. “Where is she? How is she getting on? Is she still as unhappy as she was then when she had to show us how to swim on the floor? But why should I think about her? What am I doing? I must put an end to myself.”

And again he felt afraid, and again, to escape from that thought, he went on thinking about Páshenka.

So he lay for a long time, thinking now of his unavoidable end and now of Páshenka. She presented herself to him as a means of salvation. At last he fell asleep, and in his sleep he saw an angel who came to him and said: “Go to Páshenka and learn from her what you have to do, what your sin is, and wherein lies your salvation.”

He awoke, and having decided that this was a vision sent by God, he felt glad, and resolved to do what had been told him in the vision. He knew the town where she lived. It was some three hundred versts296 away, and he set out to walk there.

Páshenka had already long ceased to be Páshenka and had become old, withered, wrinkled Praskóvya Mikháylovna,297 mother-in-law of that failure, the drunken official Mavríkyev. She was living in the country town where he had had his last appointment, and there she was supporting the family: her daughter, her ailing neurasthenic son-in-law, and her five grandchildren. She did this by giving music lessons to tradesmen’s daughters, giving four and sometimes five lessons a day of an hour each, and earning in this way some sixty rubles298 a month. So they lived for the present, in expectation of another appointment. She had sent letters to all her relations and acquaintances asking them to obtain a post for her son-in-law, and among the rest she had written to Sergius, but that letter had not reached him.

It was a Saturday, and Praskóvya Mikháylovna was herself mixing dough for currant bread such as the serf-cook on her father’s estate used to make so well. She wished to give her grandchildren a treat on the Sunday.

Másha, her daughter, was nursing her youngest child, the eldest boy and girl were at school, and her son-in-law was asleep, not having slept during the night. Praskóvya Mikháylovna had remained awake too for a great part of the night, trying to soften her daughter’s anger against her husband.

She saw that it was impossible for her son-in-law, a weak creature, to be other than he was, and realized that his wife’s reproaches could do no good⁠—so she used all her efforts to soften those reproaches and to avoid recrimination and anger. Unkindly relations between people caused her actual physical suffering. It was so clear to her that bitter feelings do not make anything better, but only make everything worse. She did not in fact think about this: she simply suffered at the sight of anger as she would from a bad smell, a harsh noise, or from blows on her body.

She had⁠—with a feeling of self-satisfaction⁠—just taught Lukérya how to mix the dough, when her six-year-old grandson Mísha, wearing an apron and with darned stockings on his crooked little legs, ran into the kitchen with a frightened face.

“Grandma, a dreadful old man wants to see you.”

Lukérya looked out at the door.

“There is a pilgrim of some kind, a man⁠ ⁠…”

Praskóvya Mikháylovna rubbed her thin elbows against one another, wiped her hands on her apron and went upstairs to get a five-kopeck piece299 out of her purse for him, but remembering that she had nothing less than a ten-kopeck piece she decided to give him some bread instead. She returned to the cupboard, but suddenly blushed at the thought of having grudged the ten-kopeck piece, and telling Lukérya to cut a slice of bread, went upstairs again to fetch it. “It serves you right,” she said to herself. “You must now give twice over.”

She gave both the bread and the money to the pilgrim, and when doing so⁠—far from being proud of her generosity⁠—she excused herself for giving so little. The man had such an imposing appearance.

Though he had tramped two hundred versts as a beggar, though he was tattered and had grown thin and weatherbeaten, though he had cropped his long hair and was wearing a peasant’s cap and boots, and though he bowed very humbly, Sergius still had the impressive appearance that made him so attractive. But Praskóvya Mikháylovna did not recognize him. She could hardly do so, not having seen him for almost twenty years.

“Don’t think ill of me, Father. Perhaps you want something to eat?”

He took the bread and the money, and Praskóvya Mikháylovna was surprised that he did not go, but stood looking at her.

“Páshenka, I have come to you! Take me in⁠ ⁠…”

His beautiful black eyes, shining with the tears that started in them, were fixed on her with imploring insistence. And under his greyish moustache his lips quivered piteously.

Praskóvya Mikháylovna pressed her hands to her withered breast, opened her mouth, and stood petrified, staring at the pilgrim with dilated eyes.

“It can’t be! Stëpa! Sergéy! Father Sergius!”

“Yes, it is I,” said Sergius in a low voice. “Only not Sergius, or Father Sergius, but a great sinner, Stepán Kasátsky⁠—a great and lost sinner. Take me in and help me!”

“It’s impossible! How have you so humbled yourself? But come in.”

She reached out her hand, but he did not take it and only followed her in.

But where was she to take him? The lodging was a small one. Formerly she had had a tiny room, almost a closet, for herself, but later she had given it up to her daughter, and Másha was now sitting there rocking the baby.

“Sit here for the present,” she said to Sergius, pointing to a bench in the kitchen.

He sat down at once, and with an evidently accustomed movement slipped the straps of his wallet first off one shoulder and then off the other.

“My God, my God! How you have humbled yourself, Father! Such great fame, and now like this⁠ ⁠…”

Sergius did not reply, but only smiled meekly, placing his wallet under the bench on which he sat.

“Másha, do you know who this is?”⁠—And in a whisper Praskóvya Mikháylovna told her daughter who he was, and together they then carried the bed and the cradle out of the tiny room and cleared it for Sergius.

Praskóvya Mikháylovna led him into it.

“Here you can rest. Don’t take offence⁠ ⁠… but I must go out.”

“Where to?”

“I have to go to a lesson. I am ashamed to tell you, but I teach music!”

“Music? But that is good. Only just one thing, Praskóvya Mikháylovna, I have come to you with a definite object. When can I have a talk with you?”

“I shall be very glad. Will this evening do?”

“Yes. But one thing more. Don’t speak about me, or say who I am. I have revealed myself only to you. No one knows where I have gone to. It must be so.”

“Oh, but I have told my daughter.”

“Well, ask her not to mention it.”

And Sergius took off his boots, lay down, and at once fell asleep after a sleepless night and a walk of nearly thirty miles.

When Praskóvya Mikháylovna returned, Sergius was sitting in the little room waiting for her. He did not come out for dinner, but had some soup and gruel which Lukérya brought him.

“How is it that you have come back earlier than you said?” asked Sergius. “Can I speak to you now?”

“How is it that I have the happiness to receive such a guest? I have missed one of my lessons. That can wait⁠ ⁠… I had always been planning to go to see you. I wrote to you, and now this good fortune has come.”

“Páshenka, please listen to what I am going to tell you as to a confession made to God at my last hour. Páshenka, I am not a holy man, I am not even as good as a simple ordinary man; I am a loathsome, vile, and proud sinner who has gone astray, and who, if not worse than everyone else, is at least worse than most very bad people.”

Páshenka looked at him at first with staring eyes. But she believed what he said, and when she had quite grasped it she touched his hand, smiling pityingly, and said:

“Perhaps you exaggerate, Stíva?”

“No, Páshenka. I am an adulterer, a murderer, a blasphemer, and a deceiver.”

“My God! How is that?” exclaimed Praskóvya Mikháylovna.

“But I must go on living. And I, who thought I knew everything, who taught others how to live⁠—I know nothing and ask you to teach me.”

“What are you saying, Stíva? You are laughing at me. Why do you always make fun of me?”

“Well, if you think I am jesting you must have it as you please. But tell me all the same how you live, and how you have lived your life.”

“I? I have lived a very nasty, horrible life, and now God is punishing me as I deserve. I live so wretchedly, so wretchedly⁠ ⁠…”

“How was it with your marriage? How did you live with your husband?”

“It was all bad. I married because I fell in love in the nastiest way. Papa did not approve. But I would not listen to anything and just got married. Then instead of helping my husband I tormented him by my jealousy, which I could not restrain.”

“I heard that he drank⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, but I did not give him any peace. I always reproached him, though you know it is a disease! He could not refrain from it. I now remember how I tried to prevent his having it, and the frightful scenes we had!”

And she looked at Kasátsky with beautiful eyes, suffering from the remembrance.

Kasátsky remembered how he had been told that Páshenka’s husband used to beat her, and now, looking at her thin withered neck with prominent veins behind her ears, and her scanty coil of hair, half grey half auburn, he seemed to see just how it had occurred.

“Then I was left with two children and no means at all.”

“But you had an estate!”

“Oh, we sold that while Vásya was still alive, and the money was all spent. We had to live, and like all our young ladies I did not know how to earn anything. I was particularly useless and helpless. So we spent all we had. I taught the children and improved my own education a little. And then Mítya fell ill when he was already in the fourth form, and God took him. Másha fell in love with Ványa, my son-in-law. And⁠—well, he is well-meaning but unfortunate. He is ill.”

“Mamma!”⁠—her daughter’s voice interrupted her⁠—“Take Mítya! I can’t be in two places at once.”

Praskóvya Mikháylovna shuddered, but rose and went out of the room, stepping quickly in her patched shoes. She soon came back with a boy of two in her arms, who threw himself backwards and grabbed at her shawl with his little hands.

“Where was I? Oh yes, he had a good appointment here, and his chief was a kind man too. But Ványa could not go on, and had to give up his position.”

“What is the matter with him?”

“Neurasthenia⁠—it is a dreadful complaint. We consulted a doctor, who told us he ought to go away, but we had no means.⁠ ⁠… I always hope it will pass of itself. He has no particular pain, but⁠ ⁠…”

“Lukérya!” cried an angry and feeble voice. “She is always sent away when I want her. Mamma⁠ ⁠…”

“I’m coming!” Praskóvya Mikháylovna again interrupted herself. “He has not had his dinner yet. He can’t eat with us.”

She went out and arranged something, and came back wiping her thin dark hands.

“So that is how I live. I always complain and am always dissatisfied, but thank God the grandchildren are all nice and healthy, and we can still live. But why talk about me?”

“But what do you live on?”

“Well, I earn a little. How I used to dislike music, but how useful it is to me now!” Her small hand lay on the chest of drawers beside which she was sitting, and she drummed an exercise with her thin fingers.

“How much do you get for a lesson?”

“Sometimes a ruble, sometimes fifty kopecks, or sometimes thirty.300 They are all so kind to me.”

“And do your pupils get on well?” asked Kasátsky with a slight smile.

Praskóvya Mikháylovna did not at first believe that he was asking seriously, and looked inquiringly into his eyes.

“Some of them do. One of them is a splendid girl⁠—the butcher’s daughter⁠—such a good kind girl! If I were a clever woman I ought, of course, with the connections Papa had, to be able to get an appointment for my son-in-law. But as it is I have not been able to do anything, and have brought them all to this⁠—as you see.”

“Yes, yes,” said Kasátsky, lowering his head. “And how is it, Páshenka⁠—do you take part in Church life?”

“Oh, don’t speak of it. I am so bad that way, and have neglected it so! I keep the fasts with the children and sometimes go to church, and then again sometimes I don’t go for months. I only send the children.”

“But why don’t you go yourself?”

“To tell the truth” (she blushed) “I am ashamed, for my daughter’s sake and the children’s, to go there in tattered clothes, and I haven’t anything else. Besides, I am just lazy.”

“And do you pray at home?”

“I do. But what sort of prayer is it? Only mechanical. I know it should not be like that, but I lack real religious feeling. The only thing is that I know how bad I am⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, yes, that’s right!” said Kasátsky, as if approvingly.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” she replied to a call from her son-in-law, and tidying her scanty plait she left the room.

But this time it was long before she returned. When she came back, Kasátsky was sitting in the same position, his elbows resting on his knees and his head bowed. But his wallet was strapped on his back.

When she came in, carrying a small tin lamp without a shade, he raised his fine weary eyes and sighed very deeply.

“I did not tell them who you are,” she began timidly. “I only said that you are a pilgrim, a nobleman, and that I used to know you. Come into the dining-room for tea.”

“No⁠ ⁠…”

“Well then, I’ll bring some to you here.”

“No, I don’t want anything. God bless you, Páshenka! I am going now. If you pity me, don’t tell anyone that you have seen me. For the love of God don’t tell anyone. Thank you. I would bow to your feet but I know it would make you feel awkward. Thank you, and forgive me for Christ’s sake!”

“Give me your blessing.”

“God bless you! Forgive me for Christ’s sake!”

He rose, but she would not let him go until she had given him bread and butter and rusks. He took it all and went away.

It was dark, and before he had passed the second house he was lost to sight. She only knew he was there because the dog at the priest’s house was barking.

“So that is what my dream meant! Páshenka is what I ought to have been but failed to be. I lived for men on the pretext of living for God, while she lived for God imagining that she lives for men. Yes, one good deed⁠—a cup of water given without thought of reward⁠—is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people. But after all was there not some share of sincere desire to serve God?” he asked himself, and the answer was: “Yes, there was, but it was all soiled and overgrown by desire for human praise. Yes, there is no God for the man who lives, as I did, for human praise. I will now seek Him!”

And he walked from village to village as he had done on his way to Páshenka, meeting and parting from other pilgrims, men and women, and asking for bread and a night’s rest in Christ’s name. Occasionally some angry housewife scolded him, or a drunken peasant reviled him, but for the most part he was given food and drink and even something to take with him. His noble bearing disposed some people in his favour, while others on the contrary seemed pleased at the sight of a gentleman who had come to beggary.

But his gentleness prevailed with everyone.

Often, finding a copy of the Gospels in a hut he would read it aloud, and when they heard him the people were always touched and surprised, as at something new yet familiar.

When he succeeded in helping people, either by advice, or by his knowledge of reading and writing, or by settling some quarrel, he did not wait to see their gratitude but went away directly afterwards. And little by little God began to reveal Himself within him.

Once he was walking along with two old women and a soldier. They were stopped by a party consisting of a lady and gentleman in a gig and another lady and gentleman on horseback. The husband was on horseback with his daughter, while in the gig his wife was driving with a Frenchman, evidently a traveller.

The party stopped to let the Frenchman see the pilgrims who, in accord with a popular Russian superstition, tramped about from place to place instead of working.

They spoke French, thinking that the others would not understand them.

“Demandez-leur,” said the Frenchman, “s’ils sont bien sur de ce que leur pèlerinage est agréable à Dieu.”301

The question was asked, and one old woman replied:

“As God takes it. Our feet have reached the holy places, but our hearts may not have done so.”

They asked the soldier. He said that he was alone in the world and had nowhere else to go.

They asked Kasátsky who he was.

“A servant of God.”

“Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? Il ne répond pas.”302

“Il dit qu’il est un serviteur de Dieu. Cela doit être un fils de prêtre. Il a de la race. Avez-vous de la petite monnaie?”303

The Frenchman found some small change and gave twenty kopecks to each of the pilgrims.

“Mais dites-leur que ce n’est pas pour les cierges que je leur donne, mais pour qu’ils se régalent de thé. Chay, chay pour vous, mon vieux!”304 he said with a smile. And he patted Kasátsky on the shoulder with his gloved hand.

“May Christ bless you,” replied Kasátsky without replacing his cap and bowing his bald head.

He rejoiced particularly at this meeting, because he had disregarded the opinion of men and had done the simplest, easiest thing⁠—humbly accepted twenty kopecks and given them to his comrade, a blind beggar. The less importance he attached to the opinion of men the more did he feel the presence of God within him.

For eight months Kasátsky tramped on in this manner, and in the ninth month he was arrested for not having a passport. This happened at a night-refuge in a provincial town where he had passed the night with some pilgrims. He was taken to the police-station, and when asked who he was and where was his passport, he replied that he had no passport and that he was a servant of God. He was classed as a tramp, sentenced, and sent to live in Siberia.

In Siberia he has settled down as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant, in which capacity he works in the kitchen-garden, teaches children, and attends to the sick.

Written in 1890, 1891, and 1898.

It was at the time when Jesus was revealing his teaching to men.

This teaching was so clear⁠—it was so easy to follow, and delivered men from evil so obviously, that it seemed impossible not to accept it, or that anything could arrest its spread.

Beelzebub, the father and ruler of all the devils, was alarmed. He clearly saw that if only Jesus did not renounce his teaching, the power of Beelzebub over men would cease forever. He was alarmed, yet did not lose heart, but incited the Pharisees and Scribes, obedient to him, to insult and torture Jesus to the utmost of their power, and also counselled the disciples of Jesus to fly and abandon him to himself, Beelzebub hoped that the condemnation of Jesus to infamous execution, and his being reviled and deserted by all the disciples, and also that the sufferings themselves and the execution would cause Jesus at the last moment to renounce his teaching. And a recantation would destroy all its power.

This was being decided on the cross. When Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Beelzebub was overjoyed. He snatched up the fetters prepared for Jesus, and, trying them on his own legs, proceeded to adjust them, so that when he should apply them to Jesus, they could not be undone.

Then, suddenly, from the cross came the words, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Then Jesus cried out, “It is finished,” and gave up the ghost.

Beelzebub understood that all was lost. He wished to take the fetters from his legs and to flee, but he could not move from his place⁠—the fetters had become welded on him and bound his own limbs. He wished to use his wings, but could not unfold them. And Beelzebub saw how Jesus, enveloped in a shining light, appeared at the gates of Hell, he saw how sinners from Adam to Judas came out of Hell, he saw how all the devils fled in affright, he saw the very walls of Hell silently fall to pieces on all sides. He could endure this no longer, and with a piercing shriek he fell through the rent floor to the basement.

One hundred, two hundred, three hundred years passed.

Beelzebub did not count the time. Around him spread black darkness and dead silence. He lay immovable, trying not to think of what had happened, yet he could not help thinking, and he helplessly hated him who had caused his ruin.

Then suddenly⁠—and he did not remember, nor know how many hundred years elapsed⁠—he heard above his head sounds resembling the trampling of feet, groans, cries, and the gnashing of teeth.

Beelzebub lifted his head and listened.

That Hell could be reestablished after the victory of Jesus, Beelzebub could not believe; and yet the trampling, the groans, the cries and gnashing of teeth grew louder and louder.

Beelzebub raised his body and doubled up his hairy legs with their overgrown hoofs. To his astonishment the fetters fell off of themselves, and flapping his liberated wings he gave that signal whistle by which in former times he gathered his servants and helpers around him.

He had hardly time to draw breath, when from an opening overhead red flames glared, and a crowd of devils hustling each other, rushed through the hole into the basement and seated themselves round Beelzebub like birds of prey round carrion.

These devils were big and small, stout and thin, with long and with short tails, with horns pointed straight and crooked.

One of them⁠—naked, but for a cape thrown over his shoulders⁠—of a shining black color, with a round hairless face, and with an enormous pendulous belly, sat on his heels in front of Beelzebub and turned up and down his fiery eyeballs, continuously smiling and regularly wagging his long thin tail from side to side.

“What does this noise signify?” said Beelzebub, pointing upwards. “What’s going on there?”

“Just the same as has always gone on,” answered the shining devil in the cape.

“But are there really any sinners now?” asked Beelzebub.

“Many,” answered the shining one.

“But how about the teaching of him whom I do not wish to name?” asked Beelzebub.

The devil in the cape grinned, disclosing his sharp teeth, while suppressed laughter was heard amongst all the devils.

“This teaching does not hinder us. Men do not believe in it,” said the devil in the cape.

“But this teaching obviously saves them from us, and he sealed it by his death,” said Beelzebub.

“I have transformed it,” said the devil in the cape, thumping his tail on the floor.

“How have you transformed it?”

“So that men do not believe in his teaching but in mine, which they call by his name.”

“How didst thou do this?” asked Beelzebub.

“It was done of itself. I only helped.”

“Tell me about it quickly,” said Beelzebub.

The devil in the cape bent down his head and was silent a while, as if leisurely considering, then he said:

“When that dreadful event happened, that Hell was overthrown and our father and ruler departed from us,” said he, “I went to those places where that very teaching which so nearly destroyed us was taught. I wished to see how those people lived who fulfilled it, and I saw that the people who lived according to this teaching were perfectly happy and quite out of our reach. They did not quarrel with each other, they did not give way to women’s charms, and either they did not marry, or if they married they kept to one wife; they had no property, holding all as common, and they did not defend themselves against attacks, but repaid evil by good.

“Their life was so good that many were attracted to them more and more. When I saw this I thought that all was lost, and was just going to quit. But then occurred a circumstance, in itself insignificant, yet which appeared to me to deserve attention, and I remained. Amongst these people some regarded it as necessary that all should undergo circumcision, and that none should eat meat offered to idols; whereas others were of opinion that these matters were not essential, and that one might abstain from circumcision and eat anything. So I began to instil into all their minds that this difference of opinion was very important, and that as the question concerned the service of God, neither side could possibly give way. They believed me, and the disputes became more obdurate. On both sides they began to be angry, and then I proceeded to instil into each of them that they might prove the truth of their teaching by miracles. Evident as it is that miracles cannot prove the truth of a teaching, yet they so desired to be in the right that they believed me, and I arranged miracles for them. It was not difficult to do this. They believed anything which supported their desire to prove that they only held the truth.

“Some said that tongues of fire descended upon them; others said that they had seen the risen body of the Master himself, and much else. They kept inventing what had never taken place, and lied in the name of him who called us liars, worse than we do ourselves⁠—and did not know it. One party said of the other: ‘Your miracles are not genuine; ours are genuine.’ Whereupon the other retorted: ‘No, yours are a fraud; ours are real.’

“Matters were going on well, but as I was afraid they might discern the too-evident trick, I invented the ‘Church.’ Once they believed in ‘the Church,’ I was at peace. I recognised that we were saved, and that Hell was restored.”305

God bless my dearest friend, Ivan Gregorievich, for this delightful retreat. I am not worthy of his kindness, nor of God’s mercy. Here I am at peace. There are less people to disturb me, and I am left alone with the recollections of my past wickedness and with my Maker. I will take advantage of this solitude to relate the whole story of my life. It may prove a warning to others.

For forty-seven years I lived amidst the most terrible temptations, and not only made no attempt to resist them, but abandoned myself to them⁠—I sinned and made others sin. At last the Lord had mercy on me. The loathsomeness of my life was revealed to me in all its horrors, and He delivered me from evil; if not wholly, at any rate from active participation in it. What inner anguish I went through, and what took place in my soul when I realised my transgressions and felt the need of atonement, not merely by faith but by deeds and by suffering, I will relate in due course. I will now describe the way in which I escaped from my position, leaving in my place the corpse of a soldier, who had been tortured to death in my name, and then proceed to relate my whole story from the very beginning.

It happened like this: In Vaganrog I continued the same life of dissipation I had been leading for the past twenty-four years. I am the greatest of all criminals. I murdered my own father; I caused the death of hundreds of thousands of men in wars of my making. I am a base libertine, a mean wretch, who believed in other people’s flatteries, and who considered myself the saviour of Europe, a benefactor of mankind, a model of perfection, un heureux hasard, as I once said to Madame Stahl. But in spite of it all, the Lord in His mercy did not quite forsake me, and the ever watchful voice of conscience gave me no rest. It seemed to me that everything and everybody were wrong; I only was right, and everyone failed to see it. I turned to God. At first, with Fotey’s help, I prayed to the God of the Orthodox Church; then I turned to the Catholic; then to the Protestant with Parrot; then to the god of the Mystics with Krudener; but I only prayed that others might see and be filled with admiration of me. I used to despise everybody, yet the opinion of the very people I despised was the one thing of importance to me⁠—the only thing for which I lived, and which guided all my actions. It was terrible to be left alone. Still more terrible to be alone with her⁠—with my wife. Consumptive, narrow-minded, deceitful, capricious, spiteful, hypocritical, she did more to poison my life than anything else. Nous étions censés to spend our new lune de miel, a very hell clothed in decent garb, too horrible to think of.

I felt particularly wretched on one occasion. I had received a letter from Arakcheev the night before, in which he informed me about the assassination of his mistress, and spoke of his utter grief and despair. Strange to say, in spite of his constant subtle flattery, I liked him. It was not altogether flattery, perhaps, but a real doglike devotion, which began even in my father’s time, when we both took the oath of allegiance to him unknown to my grandmother. This devotion of his made me love him⁠—if I loved any man at that time⁠—although the word love can hardly be used in connection with such a monster. What drew me to him particularly was the fact that not only had he no hand in my father’s death, as so many others had who became hateful to me afterwards as accomplices in my crime, but he had been devoted alike to him and to me. However, of this later.

Strange to say, the murder of the beautiful, wicked Nastasia⁠—she was a sensuous beauty⁠—had the effect of arousing all my desires so that I could not sleep the whole night. The fact that my consumptive wife, whom I loathed, was lying in the room next but one to me, coupled with thoughts of Mary Narishkin, who had thrown me over for an insignificant diplomat, vexed and tormented me still more. Both my father and I seemed to have been doomed to be jealous of the Gagarins. But I was carried away again. I could not sleep the whole of that night. With the first signs of dawn I pulled up my blind, slipped on a white dressing-gown, and rang for my valet. Everyone was still asleep. I dressed, put on a civilian overcoat and cap, and went out past the sentinels into the street.

It was a cool, autumn morning, the sun was just rising over the sea. I felt revived in the fresh air, and my depressing thoughts left me. I turned my steps towards the sea. The first rays of the rising sun were dancing about on its surface. I had barely reached the green-coloured house at the corner when I was attracted by sounds of drumming and piping from the square. I listened for a moment, and guessed that a punishment was going on, that someone was running the gauntlet. I had frequently sanctioned this form of punishment, but had never seen it before. All at once, as though at the instigation of Satan himself, a picture rose up in my mind of the beautiful Nastasia who had been murdered, and of the soldier’s body as it was being lashed with sticks, the two mingling together in one maddening sensation. I tried to recall this punishment in the Semijonov regiment, amongst the military settlers, hundreds of whom had been flogged to death in this way, and was suddenly seized by an overwhelming desire to witness this sight. As I was in civilian garb, it was quite possible for me to do so. The beating of the drum and the sound of the pipes grew louder as I drew nearer the square. Being shortsighted, I could not see very well without my glasses, but I could just make out a tall figure with a white back, marching along between two rows of soldiers. When I joined the crowd standing behind, I got out my glasses, and could see everything that was going on distinctly. A tall man with his bare arms tied to a bayonet, his bare back⁠—on which the blood was beginning to show itself⁠—slightly bent, was walking down an avenue of soldiers armed with sticks. This man was the image of myself⁠—my double! The same height, stooping shoulders, bald head, the same kind of whiskers without a moustache, the same cheekbones, mouth, and blue eyes. But there was no smile on those lips that opened and contorted with pain at the blows, no tender, caressing expression in those eyes that protruded horribly, now closing, now opening.

I recognised him at once. It was Strumensky, a corporal in the third company of the Semijonov regiment, well known to the guards by his likeness to me. They used to call him Alexander II in fun. I knew that he had been transferred to the garrison, together with some other rebels, and had most likely tried to escape or something of the sort, and having been caught, was undergoing punishment. I confirmed this afterwards. I stood as one petrified, gazing at the unfortunate man, as he was marching along under the blows. Suddenly I noticed that the crowd was staring at me, some people stepping aside, others approaching nearer. I had evidently been recognised; I turned my steps quickly homewards. The drumming and piping continued, so I gathered that the flogging was not yet over.

My first sensation on getting away was that my sympathies ought to be on the side of those who were inflicting the punishment; at any rate, that I ought to acknowledge that what they were doing was right, good, and necessary. But I could not do this, and was at the same time conscious that if I did not acknowledge it, I must admit that my whole life had been wrong from beginning to end, and that I ought to do what I had long ago wanted to do⁠—throw up everything, go away, and disappear.

I was completely overwhelmed by this sensation. I tried to fight against it, now assuring myself that the thing was right, a grievous necessity that could not be dispensed with; now feeling that I ought to be in the unfortunate man’s place. Strange to say, I did not pity the man in the least. Instead of doing anything to stop the proceeding, I hastened home merely to avoid recognition. Soon the drumming ceased, and the disturbing sensation somehow left me. I had some tea on reaching home, and received Volkonsky with his report. Then there was breakfast, the usual burdensome, insincere relations with my wife; then Dibich, and another report dealing with certain informations about a secret society. With God’s grace I will deal with this more fully in its proper place. I will merely say now that I received the information with outward composure. I continued in a more or less calm state until dinner came to an end, when I went into ray study, lay down on the couch, and dozed off. I had scarcely been asleep for five minutes when I was suddenly awakened by a powerful shock. I distinctly heard the beating of the drum, the sound of the pipes and Strumensky’s cries. I saw his agonised face, or mine⁠—I was not quite sure which; whether it was Strumensky or myself⁠—and the grim contorted faces of the soldiers and officers. I remained in this trance for a short time, and when I came to myself put on my hat and sword, and went out saying that I was going for a walk. I knew where the military hospital was situated, and directed my steps straight there. My appearance caused a great tumult as usual. The chief doctor and head of the staff came running up breathless. I told them that I wished to inspect the wards. On my round I caught sight of Strumensky’s bald head in the second ward. He was lying face downwards, his head resting on his arm, moaning pitifully. “He’s been punished for desertion,” someone said to me.

“Ah!” I exclaimed, with my usual gesture of approval, and walked on.

The next day I sent a messenger to ask how he was, and learnt that he had received the sacrament and was dying.

It was my brother Michael’s name-day; there was a special service and parade. I feigned to be unwell, as a result of my recent journey from the Crimea, and did not go to church. Dibich came again and continued his report about the conspiracy in the second army. He drew my attention to what Count Vitt had said before my Crimean visit, and to the information that had been received from Corporal Sherwood. Whilst listening to Dibich, and seeing the immense importance he attached to these plots and conspiracies, I was suddenly struck by the full significance of the revolution that had taken place within me. All these people were conspiring to change the form of government, to set up a constitution, the very thing I had myself wanted to do twenty years ago. I had made and unmade constitutions in Europe, but was there one soul the better for it? What right had I to take such a task upon myself? In reality external life, external affairs and participation in them were unimportant, unnecessary, and had nothing whatever to do with me. Had I not participated in them to the full, changed the fates of European nations? I suddenly realised that this did not concern me, that the only thing of importance to me, was myself⁠—my soul. My former ideas about abdication came back to me with new force. This time it was without any affectation, without any desire to grieve others, to astonish the world, or to add to my own aggrandisement⁠—all the things that had prompted me formerly; but it was with a real sincerity, not for the sake of impressing others, but for myself⁠—for the needs of my own soul. It seemed as if I had gone through my brilliant career (in the worldly sense of course), in order to return to that dream of my youth, which had reached me through penitence. I had come back to it with no feeling of vanity or desire for self glorification; it was for my true self alone, for God. In my youth the idea had not been quite clear to me, but now it seemed to me impossible to go on living as I had been doing. Nevertheless how could I escape? I no longer wished to astonish the world, but on the contrary wanted to go away quietly, unknown to anyone⁠—to go away and suffer. I was so filled with joy at the idea that I began considering ways and means of accomplishing it, and used all the resources of my mind and my peculiar subtleness to bring it about. Curiously enough it was not nearly so difficult as I had anticipated. My plan was to feign a dangerous illness, bribe the doctor, get Strumensky, who was dying, put in my place, and flee without disclosing my identity to anyone.

Everything turned out favourably. On the 9th, by some peculiar fate, I fell ill of a fever. I stayed in bed for about a week, during which time I considered my idea thoroughly, and became more confirmed in it. On the 16th I got up feeling quite well again.

I shaved as usual on that day and cut myself rather badly. I bled a great deal, and feeling faint dropped down on the floor. People came rushing in, and I was immediately raised. I could see at a glance that the incident might prove useful to my purpose, and though I had quite recovered, pretended to be very weak, and going back to bed and asked for Doctor Villier’s assistant. I knew it would have been impossible to bribe Villier, but I had hopes of his assistant. I told him of my purpose and offered him eighty thousand roubles, if he would do everything I wanted of him.

I had hit on the following plan, having heard that Strumensky was not expected to live through the day, I pretended to be irritated and annoyed with everybody, and allowed no one to come near me except the young doctor, whom I had bribed. He was to bring Strumensky’s body hidden in a bath, put him in my place, and announce my sudden death. It all happened as we had arranged it, and on the 7th day of November I was a free man.

Strumensky’s body was buried in great state. My brother Nicholas came to the throne, condemning the conspirators to hard labour. I met several of them later in Siberia. I have suffered very little in comparison to the enormity of my crime, and have enjoyed the greatest of all happiness. But I will speak of this in due course.

An old man of seventy-two, on the brink of the grave, fully realising the vanity of my former life and the deep significance of my present one as a wanderer, I will now endeavour to relate the whole story of the past.

December 12, 1849,

Near Krasnorechinsk, Siberia.

Today is my birthday. I have reached my seventy-second year. Exactly seventy-two years ago I was born in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. My mother, the Empress, was then the Grand Duchess Maria Fedorovna.

I slept well last night, and feel better than I did yesterday. I have come out of my spiritual torpor and can turn once more to God. During the night I prayed in the darkness, and a consciousness came upon me that my one and only purpose in life was to serve Him who had sent me into the world.

It is within my own power either to serve or not to serve Him. Serving Him I add to my own good and to the good of the whole world; not serving Him I forfeit my own good, and deprive the world of that good which was in my power to create; not, however, of its potential good. What I ought to have done, others will do after me, and His will shall be fulfilled. This is the meaning of free will. But if He knows everything that is to be, if all is ordained by Him, then how can there be free will? I do not know. This is the boundary of thought and the beginning of prayer. Let Thy will be done, O Lord. Help us. Come and dwell within us. Or more simply: Lord have mercy upon us! Lord have mercy upon us! Lord have mercy upon us, and forgive us our sins! Words fail me, O Lord, but Thou knowest what is in my heart, for Thou dwellest in it. And so I fell asleep. I was restless as usual, woke up several times, and had bad dreams. I seemed to be swimming in the sea, and wondering how it was that I lay so high above the water; why the water did not cover me. The sea was a beautiful green, and some people seemed to be in my way.

I wanted to come out of the water, but could not, because several women were standing on the shore and I was naked. I took the dream to mean that the power of the flesh was strong within me, standing in my way, but deliverance was close at hand. I got up before dawn, struck a flint, but could not light the tinder for a long time, after which, putting on my dressing-gown of elk skin, I went out into the fresh air. The rosy orange glow of the rising sun could be seen behind the snow-clad pines and larches. I brought in the wood which I chopped yesterday, lit my stove, and began chopping some more. It grew lighter. I had my breakfast of soaked rusks, shut the damper of the stove as soon as the logs were red, and sat down to write.

I begin again. I was born on 10th December 1777, and was named Alexander by my grandmother’s wish, in the hope, as she afterwards told me, that I should become as great as Alexander of Macedonia, and as holy as Alexander Nevsky. I was christened a week after my birth in the big church of the palace. I was carried into the church by the Duchess of Courland on a brocade pillow, whilst a number of other great personages held a cover over me. The Empress was my godmother, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia were my godfathers.

My room was arranged according to my grandmother’s taste. I can of course remember nothing about it, but have been told by other people. It was a large room with three high windows. A space was portioned off in the middle by four columns, with a velvety canopy overhead fastened to the ceiling, and silk curtains falling to the ground. Under this canopy there was a little iron bedstead with a leather mattress, a little pillow, and a light English blanket. The whole was enclosed by a rail four feet high, so that visitors should not come too close. There was no furniture in the room with the exception of the nurse’s bed behind the curtains.

All the details of my physical training were settled by my grandmother. I was not allowed to be rocked, and was swathed in a new way, with the feet left bare. I used to be bathed first in warm then in cold water. My clothes, too, were of a peculiar kind; none of my garments had any seams or fasteners, and were dipped straight over my head. As soon as I was able to crawl, I was put upon the carpet and left to my own devices. I was told that in the early days my grandmother used frequently to sit down beside me on the carpet and play with me. But I have no recollection of it, neither do I remember my nurse.

She was the wife of a gardener at Tsarskoye Selo, and was called Avdotia Petrova. I saw her again in the garden at Tsarskoye when I was eighteen years old⁠—she came up and told me who she was. It was at the best time of my life, during my first friendship with Chartorisky, when I was filled with disgust at what went on at the two courts⁠—my poor unfortunate father’s and my grandmother’s. She had made me hate her at that time. I was still a man then, and not a bad man, full of good intentions. I was walking in the garden with Chartorisky, when a neatly-dressed woman came out of one of the side avenues. Her rosy face, wreathed in smiles, was wonderfully kind and pleasant. She came up to me excitedly, and falling down on her knees, seized my hand and began kissing it.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Your Highness! Your Highness! Heaven be praised that I see you again!”

“I was your foster-mother, Avdotia Dunyasha. I nursed you for eleven months. Thank the Lord for this meeting with you!”

I raised her with difficulty, asked where she lived, and promised to go and see her.

The charming interior of her tiny cottage, her sweet daughter, my foster-sister, a perfect Russian beauty, who was engaged to the court riding-master, her husband the gardener, just as smiling as his wife, and their group of little children, all seemed to light up the darkness surrounding me.

“This is real life, real happiness!” I thought. “How simple it all is, how clear! No envies, intrigues, quarrels!”

This beloved Dunyasha was my foster-mother. My head nurse was a certain Sophia Ivanovna Benkendorf, a German; my second nurse was a Miss Hessler, an Englishwoman. Sophia Ivanovna Benkendorf was a tall, stout woman, with a pale complexion and straight nose. She had a majestic bearing when in the nursery, but was marvellously small and servile when in the presence of my grandmother, who was about a head shorter than herself. She was obsequious and severe with me at the same time. At one moment she was a queen in her broad skirts and with her haughty countenance; at another she was a cringing, hypocritical serving-maid. Praskovia Ivanovna Hessler was a long-faced, red-haired, serious Englishwoman, but when she smiled, her face shone with radiance, so that it was impossible to keep from smiling with her. I liked her sense of order, her cleanliness, her kindness, and her firmness. She seemed to be possessed of some mysterious knowledge of which neither my mother nor even grandmother herself were aware.

I remember my mother at that time as some supernaturally beautiful vision, mysterious and sad, gorgeously dressed in silks and laces, and glittering with diamonds. She would come into my room with her bare round white arms and a curiously aloof expression on her face which I did not understand. She would caress me, take me up in those lovely arms of hers, raise me to her still more lovely face, and, shaking back her beautiful thick hair, would kiss me and begin to cry. On one occasion she let me drop out of her arms as she fell to the floor senseless.

Strange to say, I had no sort of love for my mother. Whether it was due to her attitude towards me, or to my grandmother’s influence, or because I was able by my childish instinct to see through all the court intrigues centring round me, I am unable to say. There used to be something strained about her manner towards me. She was not really interested in me, but seemed to be displaying me for some end, and I was conscious of this. I was not mistaken, as I learnt later.

My grandmother took me away from my parents and brought me up entirely herself. She intended placing me on the throne instead of my poor unfortunate father, her son, whom she hated. Needless to say, I knew nothing of this at the time, but as soon as I began to notice things I felt myself to be an object of enmity and rivalry, the plaything of conspirators, without knowing the why or wherefore. I was conscious of everyone’s utter indifference to me⁠—to my childish heart, that had no need of a crown but rather of love, of which I knew nothing. There was my mother, who was always depressed when she saw me. On one occasion she was talking to Sophia Ivanovna in German, when she heard my grandmother coming; she suddenly burst into tears and ran out of the room. There was my father, who sometimes came to see us and whom we sometimes went to see. This poor unfortunate father of mine showed even greater displeasure on seeing me than my mother. His whole bearing towards me was one of restrained anger. I remember on one occasion how we were taken to their apartments before they set out for their travels abroad in 1781. I happened to be standing next to him, when he suddenly thrust me away, jumped up from his chair with flashing eyes, and gasped out something concerning me and my grandmother. I cannot recall all that he said, but the words après 62 tout est possible have remained in my memory. I remember how I got frightened and burst into tears. My mother took me up in her arms and kissed me, then carried me over to him. He gave me his blessing hurriedly and rushed out of the room, his high heels clattering as be went.

It was not until long after that I understood the meaning of this outburst. They set out for their travels under the name of Comte et Comtesse du Nord. It was my grandmother’s idea that they should go. My father was afraid that in his absence he would be deprived of the right to the throne and that I should be acknowledged as his successor. Good God! he prized that which ruined us both⁠—ruined us bodily and spiritually, and I, unfortunate man, prized it no less than he!

I hear someone knocking at the door and chanting a prayer in the name of Father and Son. Amen. I must put away my papers and go and see who it is. With God’s grace I will continue tomorrow.

Last night I slept very little and had bad dreams. I thought that an unpleasant, sickly-looking woman was pressing herself close against me and I was not afraid of her, nor of the sin, but afraid that my wife should see us. I did not want to hear her reproaches again. I am seventy-two years old and am not yet free. In a waking state it is possible to deceive yourself, but in dreams you get a true estimate of the plane that you have reached. I had a second dream which gave me another proof of my low moral condition. I thought that someone had brought me some sweets wrapped up in green moss. We unpacked them and divided them between us, leaving a few over. I still went on selecting some for myself, when suddenly I caught sight of an unpleasant-looking, dark-coloured boy, a son of the Sultan, stretching his arm towards me and trying to clutch them. I pushed him away rudely, though I knew quite well that it was far more natural for a child to eat sweets than for me, but I was angry with him and would not give him any and was conscious at the same time that it was mean.

A similar thing happened to me when I was awake. I had a visit from Maria Martemenovna; a messenger called yesterday to ask if she might come. I did not like to hurt her feelings, so I consented, but I find these visits extremely trying. She came today. I could hear the sound of her sledge over the crisp snow when she was still some way off. She arrived in her fur coat and shawls, laden with packages she had brought for me, letting in so much cold that I was obliged to put on my dressing-gown. She had brought me pancakes, lenten oil, and apples. She had come to consult me about her daughter, whom a rich widower wished to marry, and wanted to know if she was to give her consent. Their tremendous opinion of my wisdom is extremely annoying to me. All my protestations to the contrary they invariably put down to my humility. I repeated to her what I had said many times before, that chastity is higher than marriage, but that the Apostle Paul says it is better to marry than be the slave of passion.

Her brother-in-law Nikanor Ivanov was with her. He had once asked me to settle in his house, and has never since ceased worrying me with his visits. Nikanor Ivanov is a great trial to me. I can never overcome my aversion of him. Help me, O Lord, to see my own sins that I may not judge my brother. All his shortcomings are known to me. I see through them with a malicious shrewdness. I am conscious of his weaknesses and cannot conquer my dislike of him⁠—and he is my brother, with the same divine element in him that is in me. What do these aversions mean! It is not my first experience of them. The two strongest antipathies I ever felt in my life were against Louis XVIII, with his corpulent body, hook nose, irritating white hands; his conceit, insolence, and utter stupidity⁠ ⁠… (there! I cannot keep from abusing him). The other was against Nikanor Ivanov, who tormented me for two whole hours yesterday. Everything about him, from his voice, his hair, to his very nails was repulsive to me. I pretended to be unwell in order to account for my depression to Maria Martemenovna. After they had gone I said my prayers and grew calmer. I thank Thee, O Lord, for the power Thou hast granted me over the only thing that is necessary to me. I tried to remember that Nikanor Ivanov was once an innocent child and that he will come to die like the rest of us. I tried to think kindly of Louis XVIII, who was dead. I felt sorry that Nikanor Ivanov was not there that I might show him how kindly disposed I felt towards him.

Maria Martemenovna brought me a quantity of candles so that I shall be able to write at night.

I have just been out. To the left the stars had already merged into the glorious light of the aurora borealis. How beautiful! How beautiful! I must continue.

My father and mother started on their travels abroad and my brother Constantine and I were left in the entire charge of our grandmother. My brother, who was born two years later than I, had been christened Constantine in the hope that he would one day become the Emperor of Constantinople.

Children readily grow fond of people, especially of those who are kind to them. My grandmother was very nice to me, made much of me, and I loved her in spite of an extremely repellant odour that always seemed to hang about her. The stringent scents could not disguise this odour⁠—I used to notice it particularly when I sat upon her knee. I was still more repelled by her clean yellowish hands covered with wrinkles, so shiny and slippery, the fingers bending over, and the nails unnaturally long. Her languid, lustreless eyes, that seemed almost dead, and the smile playing about her toothless mouth, produced an oppressive though not altogether unpleasant effect on those who saw her. I believed at that time that the languid expression of her eyes was due to the enormous pains she took over her toilet. At any rate I was told so. I felt sorry for her then, but now I think of it with disgust.

I had seen Potemkin once or twice. This huge, greasy, one-eyed monster was terrible.

The thing that awed me most about him, though he used to play with me and call me your Highness, was the fact that he never seemed afraid of my grandmother, like other people, but would speak boldly in her presence in his gruff, bellowing voice.

Another man whom I frequently saw in her company was Lanskoy. He was nearly always with her. The whole Court hovered about him and made much of him. Needless to say I did not understand who Lanskoy was at the time, and liked him. I was attracted by his curly hair, his shapely legs in tight elk-skin breeches, his happy, lighthearted smile, his diamonds and jewels, glittering all over him.

It was a time full of gaieties. We were taken to Tsarskoye Selo, we rowed on the river, we busied ourselves in the garden, we went out walking and riding. Constantine, a chubby, red-haired little boy, un petit Bacchus as grandmother used to call him, kept us amused with his lively fun. He used to mimic everybody, including Sophia Ivanovna and even grandmother herself. One event of that time impressed itself on my memory. This was the death of Sophia Ivanovna Benkendorf. She died one evening at Tsarskoye in grandmother’s presence. Sophia Ivanovna had just brought us in to her and was talking and smiling, and suddenly her face changed, she reeled, leaned up against the door for support, and fell down senseless. People came running in and we were taken away. The next day we heard that she was dead. I cried very much, felt very miserable, and would not be comforted. They all thought that I was grieved about Sophia Ivanovna, but that was not true. I cried at the thought that people should have to die; that there should be such a thing as death in the world. I could not comprehend, could not believe, that it was the inevitable fate of all men. I remember how, in my five-year-old soul, there rose up questions about the meaning of death and the meaning of life that ends in death. Those vital questions confronting all men, to which the wise have tried to seek an answer in vain, and the foolish have tried to ignore and forget. As is natural to a child, particularly one in my position, I dismissed the terrifying idea of death from my mind; forgot about it as if it did not exist.

Another important event of that time which came as a consequence of Sophia Ivanovna’s death, was that we passed over into the charge of a tutor. He was Nicolai Ivanovich Saltikov⁠—not the Saltikov who, in all probability, was our grandfather, but Nicolai Ivanovich, who had been attached to my father’s Court. He was a little man, with an enormous head and a stupid-looking countenance, on which there was a constant grimace. Constantine used to imitate it beautifully. This change necessitated parting with my dear Praskovia Ivanovna, my old nurse.

Those who have not had the misfortune of being born in a royal house can hardly imagine the distorted view we have of people, nor our false attitude towards them. Instead of being instilled with a sense of dependence on our elders natural to children, or with a sense of gratitude for all the good we enjoyed, we were made to believe that we were some kind of superior beings whose every wish must be gratified. Beings who, by a single word or smile, not only paid for all the kindness showered upon them, but were even conferring some sort of favour, making others happy.

It is true that politeness was expected of us; but by a peculiar childish instinct, I soon saw that we were not meant to be polite for the benefit of others, but merely so as to enhance our own grandeur.

I remember one festive day. My brother, Saltikov and I were driving along the Nevsky. We sat on the front seat, with two powdered footmen in red livery standing behind. It was a beautiful day. Constantine and I were dressed in uniforms, unbuttoned in front, exposing our white waistcoats, on which lay the order of St. Andrew. We wore hats with feathers, which we kept raising all the time to people greeting us. The crowd stared and cheered, and ran after us⁠—“On vous salue.” Nicolai Ivanovich kept on saying, “A droite.” As we passed the guardhouse the sentinels came running out to have a look at us. I always liked to see them. From my earliest childhood I had a passion for soldiers and military manoeuvres.

It was always instilled into us, particularly by our grandmother, who believed it least of all, that we must always bear in mind that all men are equal. But I knew somehow that those who talked about equality did not believe in it.

Once when I was playing with Sasha Galitsin, he pushed me accidentally, and hurt me.

“How dare you!” I cried.

“I didn’t mean it. It’s all right!”

I was so outraged that my blood rushed to my heart. I complained to Nicolai Ivanovich, and was not ashamed when Galitsin was made to apologise.

Enough for today. My candle is nearly out, and I must break up some fagots. My axe is blunt, and I have nothing to sharpen it on. Besides, I don’t know how to do it.

I have not written anything for the last three days, because I have not been very well. I tried to read the Testament, but could not bring myself to that understanding of it, that communion with God that I formerly experienced. I used to think at one time that it was impossible for man to live without desire. I was always in a state of desire for something or other, and am not free from it now. At one time I desired to conquer Napoleon; I desired to be Europe’s peacemaker; I desired to free myself of my crown; but all these desires, whether fulfilled, or unfulfilled, soon ceased to attract me, and gave place to new ones. So it went on without end. Recently I longed for winter to come⁠—winter has come. I longed for solitude, and have almost attained it. Now I want to write the story of my life so that it may be a warning to others, but whether I accomplish it or not, new desires will spring up just the same. If life is nothing more than the begetting of desire, and happiness the fulfilment of desire, then is there not some sort of desire fundamental to every man that would always be fulfilled, or that would be possible of fulfilment? It became clear to me that such a desire must be death. The whole of life would then become a preparation for the fulfilment of this desire, and would inevitably be fulfilled.

The idea seemed strange to me at first, but meditating on it further, I was convinced that the only thing a wise man could wish for was death. Not death for its own sake, but for that stream of life leading from it. It would free the spiritual nature inherent in every man from all passions and temptations. I see this now, having been freed from the worst of that darkness that obscured my own soul from me, not letting me see its oneness with God⁠—nay, that obscured God Himself. The idea came to me unconsciously.

If I really believed that my highest good was to be delivered from passion and to be united with God, then I ought to welcome everything that brought me nearer death, such as old age and sickness. It would in a sense be a fulfilment of my one and only desire. I see this clearly when I am well, but when I am ill, as I have been for the last two days, I cannot see it in the same light, and though I do not rebel against death, yet do not long for its approach. This is a condition of spiritual inertia. I must be patient.

I will go on from where I left off yesterday.

Most of the things I have related about my childhood I have heard from others. Frequently the things that have been told me and my own impressions get mixed up one with another, so that I am sometimes unable to distinguish between the two.

The whole of my life from the very moment of my birth until my present old age, makes me think of a plain enveloped in a thick fog. Everything is hidden from view, when all at once the mist lifts itself in places, disclosing tiny little islands des éclaircies on which people and objects can be distinguished, quite disconnected with one another, surrounded by an impenetrable veil of mist.

In my childhood these éclaircies appeared very rarely in the interminable sea of fog and smoke surrounding me. As I grew older I could see them more often, but even now there are periods of my life that have left no trace on my memory. I have already given some of the events of my early childhood that have most impressed themselves on my mind, the death of Sophia Benkendorf, the parting scene with my parents, my lively brother Constantine, and there are other reminiscences that come crowding back as I think of the past. But, for instance, I have no recollection of when Constantine first appeared, nor when we came to live together, but I do remember one Christmas Eve when he was five and I was seven years old. It was after the midnight service when they put us to bed. We both got together as soon as we were left alone. Constantine, with nothing on but a nightshirt, climbed into my bed, and we began a lively game which consisted in slapping each other on our naked bodies. We laughed until our sides ached, and were feeling ever so happy, when suddenly Nicolai Ivanovich came into the room with his enormous powdered head, and in an embroidered coat. He was horror-stricken on catching sight of us, and flew at us in a perfect state of terror that I have never been able to fathom. He put Constantine back in his own bed, threatened to punish us and to tell our grandmother.

Another thing that impressed itself on my memory occurred somewhat later, when I was about nine. It was the quarrel between Alexei Gregorievich Orlov and Potemkin, which took place in my grandmother’s room in our presence. It happened a short time before our departure for the Crimea and our first visit to Moscow. Nicolai Ivanovich had taken us to see grandmother as usual. The large room with a carved and painted ceiling was full of people. My grandmother was sitting before a golden dressing-table, in a white dressing-jacket, surrounded by her maids, who were putting the finishing touches to her hair. It was tastefully dressed on the top of her head. She smiled on seeing us, and went on talking to a general decorated with the order of St. Andrew. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a terrible scar across his cheek from the mouth to the ear. It was Orlov, le Balafre. I had never seen him before.

My favourite little dog, Michot, sprang from the foot of grandmother’s dress, and began pawing me and ticking my face. We came up to grandmother and kissed her plump yellow hand. She put it under my chin, and began to caress me with her bent fingers. In spite of her perfumes, I felt that unpleasant odour about her. She continued talking to the Balafre. “Is he not a fine fellow?” she said, pointing to me. “You haven’t seen him before, have you, Count?”

“They are both fine fellows,” the Count replied, kissing our hands in turn.

“All right, all right!” she said to the maid, who was arranging a cap on her head. It was dear Marie Stepanovna, powdered and painted, who was always kind to me.

Lanskoy came up with an open snuffbox. Grandmother took some snuff, and smiled as she caught sight of Matriona Denisovna, her jester, who was just coming in.⁠ ⁠…

(Here the papers break off.)

Kornéy Vasílyef was fifty-four when he had last visited his village. There was no grey to be seen in his thick curly hair, and his black beard was only a little grizzly at the cheekbones. His face was smooth and ruddy, the nape of his neck broad and firm, and his whole strong body padded with fat as a result of town life and good fare.

He had finished army service twenty years ago, and had returned to the village with a little money. He first began shopkeeping, and then took to cattle-dealing. He went to Tcherkásy, in the province of Kiev, for his “goods”⁠—that is, cattle⁠—and drove them to Moscow.

In his iron-roofed brick house in the village of Gáyi lived his old mother, his wife and two children (a girl and a boy), and also his orphan nephew⁠—a dumb lad of fifteen⁠—and a labourer.

Kornéy had married twice. His first wife was a weak, sickly woman who died without having any children; and he, a middle-aged widower, had married a strong, handsome girl, the daughter of a poor widow from a neighbouring village. His children were by this second wife.

Kornéy had sold his last lot of cattle so profitably in Moscow that he had about three thousand roubles;309 and having learnt from a fellow-countryman that near their village a ruined landowner’s forest was for sale at a bargain, he thought he would go in for the timber trade also. He knew the business, for before serving in the army he had been assistant clerk to a timber merchant, and had managed a wood.

At the railway-station nearest to Gáyi, Kornéy met a fellow-villager, “one-eyed Kouzmá.” Kouzmá came from Gáyi with his pair of poor shaggy horses to meet every train, seeking for fares. Kouzmá was poor, and therefore disliked all rich folk, and especially Kornéy, of whom he spoke contemptuously.

Kornéy, in his cloth coat and sheepskin, came out of the station and stood in the porch, portmanteau in hand, a portly figure, puffing and looking about him. It was a calm, grey, slightly frosty morning.

“What, haven’t you got a fare, Daddy Kouzmá?” he asked. “Will you take me?”

“Yes, for a rouble I will.”

“Seventy kopecks is plenty.”

“There, now! He’s stuffed his own paunch, but wants to squeeze thirty kopecks out of a poor man!”

“Well, all right, then⁠ ⁠… drive up!” said Kornéy.

And, placing his portmanteau and bundle in the small sledge, he sat down, filling the whole of the back seat. Kouzmá remained on the box in front.

“All right, drive on.”

They drove across the ruts near the station and reached the smooth highroad.

“Well, and how go things in the village⁠—with you, I mean?” asked Kornéy.

“Why, not up to much.”

“How’s that?⁠ ⁠… And is my old mother still alive?”

“The old woman’s alive. She was at church t’other day. She’s alive, and so is your missis.⁠ ⁠… She’s right enough. She’s taken a new labourer.”

And Kouzmá laughed in a queer way, as it seemed to Kornéy.

“A labourer? Why, what’s become of Peter?”

“Peter fell ill. She’s taken Justin from Kámenka⁠—from her own village, you see.”

“Dear me!” said Kornéy.

When Kornéy was courting Martha, there had been some talk among the womenfolk about this Justin.

“Ah, yes, Kornéy Vasílyef!” Kouzmá went on; “the women have got quite out of hand nowadays.”

“No doubt about it,” muttered Kornéy. “But your grey horse has grown old,” he added, wishing to change the subject.

“I am not young myself. He matches his master,” answered Kouzmá, touching up the shaggy, bowlegged gelding with his whip.

Halfway to the village was an inn where Kornéy, having told Kouzmá to stop, went in. Kouzmá led his horses to an empty manger, and stood pulling the harness straight, without looking Kornéy’s way, but expecting to be called in to have a drink.

“Come in, won’t you, Daddy Kouzmá?” said Kornéy, coming out into the porch. “Come in and have a glass.”

“I don’t mind if I do,” answered Kouzmá, pretending not to be in a hurry.

Kornéy ordered a bottle of vodka, and offered some to Kouzmá. Kouzmá, who had eaten nothing since morning, soon got intoxicated; and immediately sidling up to Kornéy, began to repeat in a whisper what was being said in the village⁠—namely, that Kornéy’s wife, Martha, had taken on her former lover as labourer, and was now living with him.

“What’s it to me?⁠ ⁠… But I’m sorry for you,” said tipsy Kouzmá. “It’s not nice, and people are laughing. One sees she’s not afraid of sinning. ‘But,’ thinks I, ‘just you wait a bit! Presently your man will come back!’⁠ ⁠… That’s how it is, brother Kornéy.”

Kornéy listened in silence to Kouzmá’s words, and his thick eyebrows descended lower and lower over his sparkling jet-black eyes.

“Are you going to water your horses?” was all he said, when the bottle was empty. “No? Then let’s get on!”

He paid the landlord, and went out.

It was dusk before he reached home. The first person he met there was this same Justin, about whom he had not been able to help thinking all the way home. Kornéy said, “How do you do?” to this thin, pale-faced, bustling Justin, but then shook his head doubtfully.

“That old hound, Kouzmá, has been lying,” thought he. “But who knows? Anyhow, I’ll find out all about it.”

Kouzmá stood beside the horses, winking towards Justin with his one eye.

“So you are living here?” Kornéy inquired.

“Why not? One must work somewhere,” Justin replied.

“Is our room heated?”

“Why, of course! Martha Matvéyevna is there,” answered Justin.

Kornéy went up the steps of the porch. Hearing his voice, Martha came out into the passage, and, seeing her husband, she flushed, and greeted him hurriedly and with special tenderness.

“Mother and I had almost given up waiting for you,” she said, following him into the room.

“Well, and how have you been getting on without me?”

“We go on in the same old way,” she answered; and snatching up her two-year-old daughter, who was pulling at her skirts and asking for milk, she went with large firm strides back into the passage.

Kornéy’s mother (whose black eyes resembled her son’s) entered the room, dragging her feet in their thick felt boots.

“Glad you’ve come to see us,” said she, nodding her shaking head.

Kornéy told his mother what business had brought him, and remembering Kouzmá, went out to pay him.

Hardly had he opened the door into the passage, when, right in front of him by the door leading into the yard, he saw Martha and Justin. They were standing close together, and she was speaking to him. Seeing Kornéy, Justin scuttled into the yard, and Martha went up to the samovar standing there, and began adjusting the roaring chimney put on to make it draw.

Kornéy passed silently behind her stooping back, and, taking his portmanteau and bundle out of the sledge, asked Kouzmá into the house to drink tea. Before tea, Kornéy gave his family the presents he had brought from Moscow: for his mother, a woollen shawl; for his boy Fédka, a picture-book; for his dumb nephew, a waistcoat; and for his wife, print for a dress.

At the tea-table Kornéy sat sullen and silent, only now and then smiling reluctantly at the dumb lad, who amused everybody by his delight at the new waistcoat. He did not know what to do for joy. He put it away, unfolded it again, put it on, and smilingly kissed his hand, looking gratefully at Kornéy.

After tea and supper, Kornéy went at once to the part of the hut where he slept with Martha and their little daughter. Martha remained in the larger half of the hut to clear away the tea-things. Kornéy sat by himself at the table, leant his head on his hand, and waited. Rising anger towards his wife stirred within him. He took down a counting-frame from a nail in the wall, drew his notebook from his pocket, and to divert his thoughts began making up his accounts. He sat reckoning, looking towards the door, and listening to the voices in the other half of the house.

Several times he heard the door go, and steps in the passage, but not hers. At last he heard her step and a pull at the door, which yielded. She entered, rosy and handsome, with a red kerchief on her head, carrying her little girl in her arms.

“You must be tired out after your journey,” said she, smiling, as if not noticing his sullen looks.

Kornéy glanced at her, and, without replying, again began calculating, though he had nothing more to count.

“It’s getting late,” she said, and, setting down the child, she went behind the partition. He could hear her making the bed and putting her little daughter to sleep.

“People are laughing,” thought Kornéy, recalling Kouzmá’s words. “But just you wait a bit!” And, breathing hard, he rose slowly, put the stump of his pencil into his waistcoat pocket, hung the counting-frame on its nail, and went to the door of the partition. She was standing facing the icons and praying. He stopped and waited. She crossed herself many times, bowed down, and whispered her prayers. It seemed to him that she had already finished all her prayers, and was repeating them over and over again. But at last she bowed down to the ground, got up, whispered a few more words of prayer, and turned towards him.

“Agatha is already asleep,” said she, pointing to the little girl, and smilingly sat down on the creaking bed.

“Has Justin been here long?” said Kornéy, entering.

With a quiet movement she threw one of her heavy plaits over her bosom, and with deft fingers began unplaiting it. She looked straight at him and her eyes laughed.

“Justin?⁠ ⁠… Oh, I don’t know. Two or three weeks.⁠ ⁠…”

“You are living with him?” brought out Kornéy.

She let the plait drop from her hands, but immediately caught up her thick hard hair again, and began plaiting it.

“What won’t people invent? I⁠ ⁠… live with Justin!” She pronounced the name “Justin” with a peculiar ringing intonation. “What an idea! Who said so?”

“Tell me, is it true or not?” said Kornéy, clenching his powerful fists in his pockets.

“What’s the use of talking such rubbish?⁠ ⁠… Shall I help you off with your boots?”

“I am asking you a question⁠ ⁠…” he insisted.

“Dear me!⁠ ⁠… What a treasure! Fancy Justin proving a temptation to me!” she said. “Who’s been telling you lies?”

“What were you saying to him in the passage?”

“What was I saying? Why, that the tub wanted a new hoop.⁠ ⁠… But what are you bothering me for?”

“I command you: tell me the truth!⁠ ⁠… or I’ll kill you, you dirty slut!”

And he seized her by the plait. She pulled it out of his hand, and her face contracted with pain.

“Beating’s all I’ve ever had from you! What good have I had of you?⁠ ⁠… A life like mine’s enough to drive one to anything!”

“… To what?” uttered he, approaching her.

“What have you pulled half my plait out for? There⁠ ⁠… it’s coming out by handfuls!⁠ ⁠… What are you bothering for? And it’s true!⁠ ⁠…”

She did not finish. He seized her by the arm, pulled her off the bed, and began beating her head, her sides, and her breast. The more he beat her, the fiercer grew his anger. She screamed, defended herself, and tried to get away; but he would not let her go. The little girl woke up and rushed to her mother.

“Mammy!” she cried.

Kornéy seized the child’s arm, tore her from her mother, and threw her into a corner as though she were a kitten. The child gave a yell, and for some seconds became silent.

“Murderer!⁠ ⁠… You’ve killed the child!” shouted Martha, and tried to get to her daughter. But he caught her again, and struck her breast so that she fell back and also became silent. But the little girl was again screaming, desperately and unceasingly.

His old mother, without her kerchief, her grey hair all in disorder and her head shaking, tottered into the room, and, without looking either at Kornéy or at Martha, went to her granddaughter, who was weeping desperately, and lifted her up.

Kornéy stood breathing heavily, looking about as if he had just woke up and did not know where he was or who was with him.

Martha raised her head, and groaning, wiped some blood from her face with her sleeve.

“Hateful brute!” said she. “Yes, I am living with Justin, and have lived with him!⁠ ⁠… There, now, kill me outright!⁠ ⁠… And Agatha is not your daughter, but his!⁠ ⁠…” and she quickly covered her face with her elbow, expecting a blow.

But Kornéy seemed not to understand anything, and only sniffed and looked about him.

“See what you’ve done to the girl! You’ve put her arm out,” said his mother, showing him the dislocated, helpless arm of the girl, who did not cease screaming. Kornéy turned away, and silently went out into the passage and into the porch.

Outside it was still frosty and dull. Hoarfrost fell on his burning cheeks and forehead. He sat on the step and ate handfuls of snow, gathering it from the handrail. From indoors came Martha’s groans and the girl’s piteous cries. Then the door into the passage opened, and he heard his mother leave the bedroom with the child and go through the passage into the other half of the house. He rose and returned to the bedroom. The half-turned-down lamp on the table gave a dim light. From behind the partition came Martha’s groans, which grew louder when he entered.

In silence he put on his outdoor things, drew his portmanteau from under the bench, packed it, and tied it up with a cord.

“Why have you killed me? What for?⁠ ⁠… What have I done to you?” said Martha in a doleful voice.

Kornéy, without replying, lifted his portmanteau and carried it to the door.

“Felon!⁠ ⁠… Brigand!⁠ ⁠… Just you wait! Do you think there’s no law for the likes of you?” said she bitterly, and in quite a different voice.

Kornéy, without answering, pushed the door with his foot, and slammed it so violently that the walls shook.

Going into the other part of the house, Kornéy roused the dumb lad and told him to harness the horse. The lad, half awake, looked at his uncle with astonishment, questioningly, and scratched his head with both hands. At last, understanding what was wanted of him, he jumped up, drew on his high felt boots and torn coat, took a lantern, and went to the door.

It was already quite light when Kornéy, in the small sledge, drove out of the gateway with the dumb lad, and went back along the same road he had driven over in the evening with Kouzmá.

He reached the station five minutes before the train started. The dumb lad saw how he bought his ticket, carried his portmanteau, and took his place in the carriage, and how he nodded to him, and the train moved out of sight.

Besides the blows on her face, Martha had two smashed ribs and a broken head. But the strong, healthy young woman recovered within six months, so that no trace of her injuries remained.

The girl, however, was maimed for life. Two bones were broken in her arm, and it remained twisted.

Of Kornéy, from the time he went away nothing more had been heard, and no one knew whether he was alive or dead.

Seventeen years had passed. It was late in autumn. The sun did not rise high all day, and twilight descended before four in the afternoon.

The communal herd of Andréyevo village was returning from pasture. The herdsman, hired for the summer, had completed his engagement and gone away, so that the village women and children were taking turns to drive the cattle.

The herd had just left the fields of oat-stubble where they had been grazing; and, continually bleating and lowing, moved slowly towards the village, along the black, unmetalled road indented all over with cloven hoof-prints and cut by deep ruts. Ahead of the herd walked a tall, grey-bearded old man, with curly grey hair and black eyebrows. His patched coat was black with moisture, and he had a leather wallet on his bent back. He walked heavily, dragging his feet in their clumsy, downtrodden, foreign-looking boots, and leaned on his oak staff at every other step. When the herd overtook him, he stopped and leant on his staff. The young woman who was driving the herd, her skirt tucked up, a piece of sacking over her head, and a man’s boots on her feet, kept running with quick steps from side to side of the road, urging on the sheep and pigs that lagged behind. When she overtook the old man she stopped, looked at him, and said in her sweet young voice:

“How do you do, daddy?”310

“How d’ye do, my dear?” replied the old man.

“You’ll be wanting a night’s lodging, eh?”

“Yes, it seems so⁠ ⁠… I’m tired,” said the old man in a hoarse voice.

“Don’t go and ask the Elder, daddy, but come straight to us,” she said kindly. “Ours is the third hut from the end. My mother-in-law lets pilgrims in free.”

“The third hut? That’s Zinóvyef’s?” said the old man, moving his black eyebrows expressively.

“Ah, do you know it?”

“I’ve been here before.”

“Fédya, what are you gaping at there? The lame one has stopped behind!” cried the young woman, pointing to a sheep limping on three legs and lagging behind the herd; and, swinging her switch with her right hand, she pulled the sacking well over her head, catching it from underneath with her left hand in a peculiar way as she ran back to drive the lame black sheep on.

The old man was Kornéy; the young woman was Agatha, whose arm he had broken seventeen years before. She had married into a well-to-do peasant family at Andréyevo, three miles from Gáyi.

From a strong prosperous proud man, Kornéy Vasílyef had become what he now was: an old beggar possessing nothing but the shabby clothes on his back, and two shirts and a soldier’s passport which he carried in his wallet. This change had come about so gradually that he could not tell when it began nor how it happened. The one thing he knew, and was sure of, was that his wicked wife had been the cause of all his misfortunes. It was strange and painful to him to remember what he had once been; and when he did remember it, he also remembered and hated her whom he considered to be the cause of all the evil he had suffered these seventeen years.

After that night when he beat his wife, he had gone to the landowner whose wood was for sale, but he was unsuccessful: the wood had already been sold. So he returned to Moscow, and there took to drink. Before this he used to drink at times, but now he drank for a fortnight on end. When he came to himself he went south to buy cattle. His purchase proved unlucky, and he lost money. He went again, but lost a second time; and in a year his three thousand roubles had dwindled to twenty-five, and he was obliged to work for an employer instead of being his own master. From that time onwards he drank more and more often. For a year he lived as assistant to a cattle-dealer, but had a drinking bout while on the road, and the dealer dismissed him. Then, through a friend, he got a place as shopman at a wine and spirit dealer’s, but did not stay there long, either, for his accounts got wrong, and he was dismissed. Shame and anger prevented his returning home.

“Let them live without me! Maybe the boy is not mine, either,” thought he.

Matters went from bad to worse. He could not live without drink, and could no longer get employment as a clerk, but only as a cattle-drover. At last no one would take him even for that.

The more wretched his own plight became, the more he blamed her, and the fiercer his anger against her burnt within him.

The last time Kornéy found a place as a drover was with a stranger. The cattle fell ill. It was not Kornéy’s fault, but his master got angry, and dismissed both him and the clerk over him. As he could get no employment, Kornéy resolved to go on pilgrimage.

He provided himself with a pair of boots and a good wallet, took some tea and sugar, and, with eight roubles in his pocket, started for Kiev. Kiev did not satisfy him, and he went on to New Athos, in the Caucasus; but, before reaching it, he fell ill with ague, and suddenly lost all his strength. He had only one rouble and seventy kopecks left, and he knew no one, so he decided to return home to his son.

“That wicked wife of mine may be dead by now,” thought he as he journeyed homewards; “or if she’s still alive, I’ll tell her everything before I die, that the wretch may know what she has done to me.”

The fever-attacks came on every other day. He grew weaker and weaker, so that he could not walk more than eight or ten miles. When still a hundred and fifty miles from home, he had no money at all left, and had to beg his way in Christ’s name, and to sleep where the village officials lodged him.

“Rejoice at what you have brought me to,” said he, mentally addressing his wife, and from habit he clenched his feeble old fists. But there was no one to strike, and his fists had no strength left in them.

It took him a fortnight to walk those last hundred and fifty miles. Quite ill and worn out, he reached the place three miles from home, where he met Agatha, who was wrongly considered to be his daughter, and whose arm he had broken.

He did as Agatha suggested. On reaching the Zinóvyefs’ house he asked leave to spend the night there. They let him in.

On entering the hut he, as usual, crossed himself before the icon, and greeted his hosts.

“You’re frozen, daddy! Get up onto the oven!” said the wrinkled cheerful old housewife, clearing away the things on the table.

Agatha’s husband, a young-looking peasant, sat on a bench by the table, trimming the lamp.

“How wet you are, daddy!” said he. “Well, it can’t be helped. Make haste and dry yourself!”

Kornéy took off his coat, bared his feet, hung his leg-bands up to dry near the oven, and himself climbed onto the top of it.

Agatha entered the hut, carrying a jug. She had already driven the herd home, and had attended to the cattle.

“Has an old pilgrim been here?” asked she. “I met one, and told him to call.”

“There he is,” said her husband, pointing to the oven, on which sat Kornéy, rubbing his lean and hairy legs.

When tea was ready, they asked Kornéy to join them. He climbed down, and seated himself at the end of a bench. They handed him a cup of tea and a piece of sugar.

The talk was about the weather and the harvest. There was no getting the corn in. The landowner’s sheaves were sprouting in the fields. As soon as one started carting them, down came the rain again. The peasants had pretty well got theirs in, but the landowner’s corn was rotting like mad. And the mice in the sheaves were just dreadful!

Kornéy told of a field he had seen as he came along which was still full of sheaves.

The young housewife poured him out a fifth cup of the weak, pale yellow tea, and handed it to him.

“Never mind if it is your fifth, daddy, it will do you good,” said she, when he made as if to refuse it.

“How is it your arm is not all right?” he asked her, twitching his eyebrows, and carefully taking the full cup she handed him.

“It was broken when she was still a baby⁠—her father wanted to kill our Agatha,” said the talkative old mother-in-law.

“What was that for?” asked Kornéy. And, looking at the young housewife’s face, he suddenly remembered Justin with his light blue eyes, and the hand in which he held his cup shook so that he spilt half the tea before he could set it on the table.

“Why, her father⁠—who lived at Gáyi⁠—was a man named Kornéy Vasílyef. He was well-to-do; and high and mighty with his wife. He beat her and injured the child.”

Kornéy was silent, glancing, from under his continually twitching black eyebrows, first at the husband and then at Agatha.

“What did he do that for?” asked he, biting a morsel off his piece of sugar.

“Who knows? Tales of all sorts get told about us women, and we have to answer for them all,” said the old woman. “They had some row about their labourer.⁠ ⁠… The man was a good fellow from our village. He died afterwards at their house.”

“He died?” asked Kornéy, and cleared his throat.

“Died long ago. From them we took my daughter-in-law. They were well off. When the husband was alive they were the richest folk in the village.”

“And what became of him?” asked Kornéy.

“He died, too, I suppose. He disappeared at the time⁠—some fifteen years ago now.”

“It must be more. Mother used to tell me she had not long weaned me when it happened.”

“And don’t you bear a grudge against him, because of your arm?” began Kornéy⁠—with a sob.

“No! Wasn’t he my father? It’s not as if some stranger had done it.⁠ ⁠… Have another cup, after being so cold. Shall I pour it out for you?”

Kornéy did not reply, but burst into tears and sobs.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s nothing⁠—nothing. May Christ reward you!”

And with trembling hands Kornéy took hold of the bunk and the post supporting it, and with his long thin legs climbed onto the oven.

“There, now!” said the old housewife to her son, making a sign in the direction of their visitor.

Next day Kornéy was the first to rise. He climbed down from the top of the oven, rubbed his dried and stiffened leg-bands, painfully drew on his mud-clogged boots, and slung the wallet onto his back.

“Why, daddy, you’d better have some breakfast,” said the old housewife.

“The Lord bless you!⁠ ⁠… I’ll be going.”

“Well, then, at least take some of yesterday’s cakes with you. I’ll put them into your wallet.”

Kornéy thanked her, and took his leave.

“Call in when you return. If we are still alive⁠ ⁠…”

Outside everything was wrapped in dense autumn fog, but Kornéy knew the way well; he knew every descent and ascent, every bush, and all the willows along the road, right and left⁠—though during the last seventeen years some had been cut down and from old had become young again, while others that had been young had grown old.

The village of Gáyi was still the same, though some new houses had been built at the end, where none stood before; and some of the wooden houses had been replaced by brick ones. His own brick house had not changed except to grow older. The iron roof had long needed repainting, some bricks had been knocked away at one corner, and the porch leaned to one side.

As he approached the house that had been his, the gates creaked, and out came a mare with its foal, a roan gelding, and a two-year-old colt. The old roan was just like the mare Kornéy had bought at the fair the year before he left home.

“It must be the very one she was in foal with at the time. It’s got just her slanting haunches, broad chest, and shaggy legs,” thought he.

A black-eyed boy, wearing new bark shoes, was taking the horses to water.

“It must be Fédka’s boy⁠—my grandson⁠—he’s got just his black eyes,” thought Kornéy.

The boy glanced at the old stranger and ran after the colt that was frisking in the mud. A dog as black as old Wolfey followed the boy.

“Can it be Wolfey?” thought he, and remembered that Wolfey would have been twenty by now. He came to the porch, ascended with difficulty the steps on which he had sat that night swallowing snow from the handrail, and opened the door leading into the passage.

“Where are you shoving to, without leave?” came a woman’s voice from inside. He recognized her voice. And then she herself, a withered, sinewy, wrinkled woman, looked out of the room. Kornéy had expected to see the young and handsome Martha, who had offended him so deeply. He hated her, and wished to reproach her, but now this old woman appeared in her stead.

“If it’s alms you want, ask at the window,” she said, in a shrill, harsh voice.

“No, it’s not alms,” said Kornéy.

“Well, what is it you do want? Eh?”

She stopped suddenly; and by her face he saw that she recognized him.

“There are plenty of the likes of you loafing about! Go away, go away⁠ ⁠… in Heaven’s name!”

Kornéy fell back against the wall, supporting himself with his staff, and looked intently at her. He was surprised to find that he no longer felt the anger he had nursed against her all these years, but that a mixed feeling of tenderness and languor had suddenly overcome him.

“Martha!⁠ ⁠… We shall have to die soon⁠ ⁠…”

“Go⁠ ⁠… go, in Heaven’s name!” said she, rapidly and angrily.

“Is that all you have to say?”

“I have nothing to say,” she answered. “Go⁠ ⁠… for Heaven’s sake! Go, go!⁠ ⁠… There are plenty of you ne’er-do-well devils loafing about!”

She hurriedly re-entered the room, and slammed the door.

“Why scold?” he heard a man say; and a dark peasant⁠—such as Kornéy had been forty years before, only shorter and thinner, but with the same sparkling black eyes⁠—came out, with an axe stuck in his belt.

This was that same Fédka to whom, seventeen years before, he had given a picture-book. It was he who was now reproaching his mother for showing no pity to the beggar. With him came the dumb nephew, also with an axe at his belt. He was now a grown man, wrinkled and sinewy, with a thin beard, long neck, and a determined, penetrating glance. Both men had just finished their breakfast, and were going to the woods.

“Wait a bit, daddy,” said Fédka, and, turning to his dumb companion, he pointed first to the old man and then to the room, and made a movement as if cutting bread.

Fédka went into the street, and the dumb man returned to the room. Kornéy, his head hanging down, still stood in the passage, leaning against the wall and supporting himself on his staff. He felt quite weak, and could hardly check his sobs. The dumb man returned from the room with a large chunk of fresh, sweet-smelling black bread, which he gave to Kornéy. When Kornéy, having crossed himself, took the bread, the dumb man turned towards the room door, passed his hands before his face, and made as though he spat⁠—thereby expressing his disapproval of his aunt’s conduct. Suddenly he stopped dead, opened his mouth, and fixed his eyes on Kornéy as though he recognized him. Kornéy could no longer restrain his tears; and, wiping his eyes, nose, and grey beard on the skirt of his coat, turned away and went out into the porch.

He was overcome by a strange feeling of tenderness, elation, humility and meekness towards all men: to her, to his son, to everybody; and this feeling rent his soul with pain and joy.

Martha looked out of the window, and breathed freely only when she saw the old man disappear behind the corner of the house.

When she was sure he had gone, she sat down at her loom and began weaving. Some ten times she struck with the batten, but her hands would not obey her. She stopped, and began thinking, and recalling Kornéy as she had just seen him. She knew it was he who had nearly killed her, and who, before that, had loved her; and she was frightened at what she had just done. She had not done right. But how should she have treated him? He had not even said that he was Kornéy, and that he had come home. And she again took the shuttle, and went on weaving till evening.

Kornéy with difficulty dragged himself back to Andréyevo by the evening, and again asked permission to stay the night at the Zinóvyefs’. They let him in.

“So you’ve not gone on, daddy?”

“No, I felt too weak. It seems I shall have to go back. Will you let me stay the night?”

“Oh yes! You’ll not wear out the spot you lie on. Come in and get dry.”

All night Kornéy shivered with fever. Towards morning he dozed off, and when he awoke the family had all gone out to work. Only Agatha remained in the hut.

He was lying on the shelf-bed, on a dry coat the old woman had spread for him.

Agatha was taking bread out of the oven.

“My dear,” he said, in a feeble voice, “come here!”

“Coming, daddy,” she answered, getting out the loaves. “Want a drink? A drop of kvass?”

He did not answer.

When she had taken out all the loaves, she brought him a bowl of kvass. He did not turn towards her, and did not drink, but lay, face upwards, and began speaking without looking at her.

“Agatha,” he said, “my time has come. I am going to die. So forgive me, for Christ’s sake!”

“God will forgive you. You have done me no harm.”

He was silent awhile.

“One thing more. Go to your mother, my dear. Tell her, ‘The pilgrim’⁠ ⁠… say, ‘yesterday’s pilgrim’⁠ ⁠… say⁠ ⁠…”

He broke into sobs.

“Then have you been to my home?”

“Yes. Say, ‘Yesterday’s pilgrim⁠ ⁠… the pilgrim’⁠ ⁠… say⁠ ⁠…”

Again he broke off, sobbing; but at last, gathering strength, he finished:

“Say I wished to make peace,” he said, and began feeling on his chest for something.

“I’ll tell her⁠ ⁠… I’ll go and tell her! But what are you searching for?” said Agatha.

Without answering, the old man, frowning with the effort, drew a paper from his breast with his thin, hairy hand, and gave it to her.

“Give this to him who asks for it. It’s my soldier’s passport.⁠ ⁠… God be thanked, my sins are over now!” And his face took on a triumphant expression. His brows rose, his eyes were fixed on the ceiling, and he was quiet.

“A candle⁠ ⁠…” he uttered, without moving his lips. Agatha understood, took a half-burnt wax taper from before the icon, lit it, and put it in his hand. He held it up with his thumb.

Agatha went to put the passport in her box, and when she returned to him the candle was falling from his hand, his fixed eyes no longer saw anything, and his chest was motionless.

Agatha crossed herself, put out the candle, took a clean towel, and covered his face with it.

All that night Martha had not slept, but kept thinking about Kornéy. In the morning she put on her coat, threw a shawl over her head, and went to find out where the old man had gone to. She soon learnt that he was at Andréyevo. Martha took a stick from the fence and went towards Andréyevo. The farther she went, the more frightened she grew.

“I’ll make it up with him, and we’ll take him home. Let the sin be ended. Let him at least die at home, with his son near him,” thought she.

When Martha approached her daughter’s house, she saw a large crowd collected there. Some had entered the passage, others stood outside the windows. It had already got about that the well-known, rich Kornéy Vasílyef, who had been so much talked of in the district twenty years before, had died, a poor wanderer, in his daughter’s house. The house was full of people. The women whispered to one another, sighed and moaned.

When Martha entered, they made room for her to pass, and under the icons she saw the body⁠—already washed, laid out, and covered with a piece of linen. At its side Philip Kanónitch (who had had some education) was chanting the words of a psalm in Slavonic, in a voice like a deacon’s.

Neither to forgive nor to ask forgiveness was any longer possible; and from the stern, beautiful old face of Kornéy she could not tell whether he had forgiven her or not.

1905.

In the spring of 1830 Pan Jaczéwski, at his family estate of Rozánka, received a visit from Joseph Migoúrski, the only son of a deceased friend.

Jaczéwski, a patriot of the days of the second partition of Poland, was a broad-browed, broad-shouldered, broad-chested man of sixty-five, with a long white moustache on his brick-red face. As a youth he had served with Migoúrski’s father under the banner of Kosciúszko; and with all the strength of his patriotic soul he hated the “Apocalyptic Adulteress” (as he called Catherine II) and her abominable paramour, the traitor Poniatówski; and he believed in the reestablishment of the Polish State as firmly as he believed that tomorrow’s sun would rise. In 1812 he had commanded a regiment in the army of Napoleon, whom he adored. Napoleon’s fall distressed him, but he did not despair of the reestablishment of the Polish kingdom, even though in a mutilated form. His hopes were reawakened when Alexander I opened the Diet in Warsaw; but the Holy Alliance, the general reaction in Europe, and the obstinacy of Constantine,312 deferred the realization of this cherished hope.

Since 1825 Jaczéwski had settled in the country and lived there, never leaving Rozánka, spending his time in farming, hunting, and reading the papers and letters, by means of which he still eagerly followed the political events of his native land. His second marriage, to a pretty but poor gentlewoman, was not happy. He did not love or respect her, considered her a burden, and treated her harshly and rudely, as if to revenge himself for the mistake he had made in remarrying. He had no children by this second wife. By his first wife he had two daughters: Wánda, the eldest, a stately beauty who knew the value of her good looks, and found country life tiresome; and a younger one, Albína, her father’s pet, a lively, bonny little girl, with fair curly hair, and large sparkling grey eyes set far apart like her father’s.

Albína was fifteen when Joseph Migoúrski came to stay with them. As a student he used to visit the Jaczéwskis in Vilna, where they wintered, and paid attentions to Wánda; but this was the first time that he, now a full-grown and independent man, had come to see them in the country. Everyone at Rozánka was pleased when young Migoúrski came. Jaczéwski was pleased because Josy reminded him of the companion of his youth, Migoúrski’s father, and because he spoke warmly and with the rosiest hopes of the revolutionary movement⁠—not in Poland alone, but also abroad, whence he had just returned. Pani Jaczéwski, the lady of the house, was pleased because old Jaczéwski restrained himself in the presence of visitors, and did not scold her for everything as he usually did. Wánda was pleased, because she felt sure Migoúrski had come for her sake, and intended to propose to her. She was preparing to accept him, but (as she expressed it to herself) meant lui tenir la dragée haute!313 and Albína was pleased because everybody else was pleased. Wánda was not alone in thinking that Migoúrski had come intending to propose to her. All the household⁠—from old Jaczéwski to Ludwíka, the old nurse⁠—thought the same, although no one spoke of it.

And it was quite true. Migoúrski came with that intention; but after a week’s stay, confused and upset by something, he left without having proposed. Everyone was surprised by his strange and unexpected departure, and no one but Albína understood its cause. Albína knew that she herself was the cause.

During the whole of Migoúrski’s stay in Rozánka, she had noticed that he was especially animated and bright only when with her. He treated her as a child, joked with her and teased her; but her feminine instinct told her that his relation to her was not that of a grown-up person to a child, but that of a man to a woman. She could see this in the look of love and the tender smile with which he greeted her when she entered the room, and followed her when she went out. She did not clearly explain to herself what this meant; but these relations between them gladdened her, and she involuntarily tried to do what pleased him. And as everything she did pleased him, all her actions in his presence were done with especial elation. It pleased him to see her running races with a beautiful wolfhound that jumped up and licked her flushed and radiant face; it pleased him when, on the smallest provocation, she burst into infectiously ringing peals of laughter; it pleased him when, with her eyes still laughing, she assumed a serious expression during the priest’s dull sermons. It pleased him when, with extraordinary exactitude and drollery, she imitated⁠—now her old nurse, now a tipsy neighbour, and now Migoúrski himself⁠—passing instantaneously from one character to another. But what pleased him most of all was her happiness, her rapturous joy of life. It was as if she had only now fully discovered the delight of living, and hastened to make the most of it. This peculiar joy of life pleased him, and it was evoked and intensified by the very fact that she knew that her joy of life delighted him. So Albína alone knew why Migoúrski, having come to propose to Wánda, left without having done so. Though she would never have ventured to tell this to anyone, and did not even acknowledge it to herself, yet in the depth of her soul she knew that he had wished to fall in love with her sister, but had fallen in love with her⁠—Albína. She was very much surprised at this, regarding herself as quite insignificant beside the clever, well-educated, beautiful Wánda; but she could not help knowing that it was true, and could not help being glad of it, for she herself loved Migoúrski with her whole soul: loved him as one can only love for the first time, and only once in a lifetime.

Towards the end of the summer the papers brought the news of the revolution in Paris. This was followed by news of preparations for an insurrection in Warsaw. Jaczéwski, with hope and fear, was expecting by every post news of the assassination of Constantine and of the commencement of a revolution. At last, in November, tidings came of the attack on the Belvedere and the flight of Constantine; and, later, news that the Diet had declared the Románof dynasty deposed from the throne of Poland; that Chlopícki had been proclaimed Dictator, and that Poland once more was free! The rebellion had not yet reached Rozánka, but all its inmates followed its progress, expecting it to come and preparing for it. Old Jaczéwski corresponded with a former acquaintance, one of the leaders of the rebellion; received mysterious Jewish agents on business relating, not to farming, but to the revolution; and was ready to join the rising when the time should come. Pani Jaczéwski concerned herself more than ever about her husband’s physical comforts, and thereby, as usual, irritated him more and more. Wánda sent her diamonds to a friend in Warsaw, that the money they fetched might go to the Revolutionary Committee. Albína was only interested in what Migoúrski was doing. She knew, through her father, that he had joined Dwerníczki’s forces. Migoúrski wrote twice: first, to say that he had joined the army; and later, in the middle of February, he sent an enthusiastic letter about the victory near Stóczek, where the Poles captured six Russian guns and some prisoners.

His letter ended with the words: “The Poles are victorious and the Russians are defeated! Hurrah!” Albína was in raptures. She examined the map, calculated where and when the Russians would be finally beaten, and grew pale and trembled when her father slowly opened the packets that arrived by post. One day her stepmother, happening to enter Albína’s room, found her standing before the looking-glass, dressed in a pair of trousers and a man’s hat. Albína was getting ready to run away from home in male attire to join the Polish army. Her stepmother told her father. He called his daughter to him, and (hiding his feeling of sympathy and even admiration) rebuked her sternly, demanding that she should give up her foolish idea of taking part in the war. “Women have other duties: to love and comfort those who sacrifice themselves for their country,” said he. Now he had need of her and she was his joy and solace; and the time would come when she would be needed by a husband. He knew how to influence her. He hinted at his loneliness and sorrows, and she pressed her face against him, hiding the tears which, for all that, wetted the sleeves of his dressing-gown; and she promised to undertake nothing without his consent.

Only those who experienced what the Poles endured after the partition of Poland and the subjugation of one part of it by the hated Germans, and of another part by the even more hated Russians, can understand the delight the Poles felt in 1830 and 1831 when, after their previous unfortunate attempts to regain independence, its attainment seemed again within reach. But these hopes did not last long. The forces were too unequal; and once more the revolution was crushed. Again tens of thousands of unreasoningly submissive Russians were driven into Poland. Under the leadership first of Diebitsch and then of Paskévitch⁠—subject to the supreme command of Nicholas I⁠—these Russians, without knowing why, saturated the ground with their own blood and with that of their brothers the Poles, whom they crushed and again placed under the power of weak, insignificant men who cared neither for the freedom nor the subjugation of Poland, but sought only to gratify their own avarice and childish vanity.

Warsaw was captured, and the separate Polish detachments were defeated. Hundreds and thousands of men were shot, flogged to death, or exiled. Among the latter was young Migoúrski. His estate was confiscated, and he himself sent as a common soldier in a line regiment, to Urálsk.

The Jaczéwskis spent the winter of 1832 in Vilna on account of the old man’s health; for after 1831 he began to suffer from heart disease. Here they received a letter from Migoúrski. He wrote from prison, saying that, hard as what he had gone through and had yet to undergo might be, he still was glad to have had an opportunity to suffer for his native land, and did not despair of the holy cause to which he had given part of his life, and for which he was prepared to give the remainder; and that if another chance occurred tomorrow, he would again act as he had done.

Reading the letter aloud, the old man broke down at this passage, sobbed, and was long unable to continue. In the latter part of the letter, which Wánda read out, Migoúrski wrote that whatever plans and dreams he might have had at the time of his last visit to them (which would ever remain the brightest spot in his life), he now neither could, nor would, speak of them.

Wánda and Albína each understood these words in her own way, and they spoke to no one of how they understood them. At the end of the letter Migoúrski sent messages to everyone, and among the rest⁠—in the playful tone he had adopted towards Albína during his visit⁠—he addressed her too, asking her whether she still ran as swiftly, outrunning the dogs? Did she still mimic everybody so well? He wished the old man good health; the mother, success in household matters; Wánda, a worthy husband; and Albína, the continuance of her joy of life.

Old Jaczéwski’s health grew worse and worse, and in 1833 the whole family went abroad. In Baden, Wánda met a rich Polish emigrant, and married him. The old man’s illness progressed rapidly, and he died abroad early in 1833, in Albína’s arms. He would not let his wife nurse him, and to the last moment could not forgive her the mistake he had made in marrying her. Pani Jaczéwski returned to the country with Albína.

Albína’s chief interest in life was Migoúrski. In her eyes he was the greatest of heroes and martyrs, and to him she decided to devote her life. Even before going abroad she began to correspond with him, at first commissioned thereto by her father, and then on her own account. When she returned to Russia after her father’s death, she continued to correspond with him, and when she reached the age of eighteen she announced to her stepmother that she had decided to go to Migoúrski in Urálsk, and there to marry him.

Her stepmother began to blame Migoúrski for, as she said, selfishly wishing to improve his sad lot by inducing a wealthy girl, whose affections he had secured, to share his misfortunes. Albína thereupon became angry, and told her stepmother that no one but she could ascribe such low motives to a man who had sacrificed everything for his native land; that, on the contrary, Migoúrski had refused the help she had offered him; but that she had irrevocably decided to go to him and marry him, if only he would allow her that happiness. Albína was legally of age, and she had money: 300,000 zloty,314 a sum that an uncle had left to each of his two nieces; so no one could interfere.

In November, 1833, Albína bade farewell to the household (who saw her start for barbarous Russia as though she were going to her death), seated herself with her old and devoted nurse Ludwíka, whom she took with her, in her father’s old carriage⁠—newly repaired for the great journey⁠—and started on her long road.

Migoúrski did not live in barracks, but had a lodging of his own. Nicholas I decreed that the exiled Polish officers should not only bear all the hardships of rough army life, but should be made to suffer all the degradations to which common soldiers at that time were subjected. But the majority of the plain men with whom it lay to execute these orders, disobeyed them as far as they could. The half-educated commander of the battalion in which Migoúrski was placed (a man who had risen from the ranks) understood the position of the educated, formerly wealthy, young man who had lost everything; and, pitying and respecting him, made all sorts of concessions in his favour. Migoúrski could not help appreciating the good-nature of this Lieutenant-Colonel, with white whiskers on his puffy, military face; and to repay him, he agreed to teach mathematics and French to his sons, who were preparing to enter a military college.

Migoúrski’s life in Urálsk, which had now lasted nearly seven months, was not only monotonous, dull and wearisome, but was also hard. Except the commander of the battalion, from whom as much as possible he tried to keep at a distance, his only acquaintance was an exiled Pole, a sly, unpleasant man of little education, who traded in fish. But the chief hardship of Migoúrski’s life lay in the fact that he found it difficult to accustom himself to privation. After the confiscation of his property he had no means whatever left, and struggled on by selling what jewellery he still possessed.

The great and only joy of his life, after his deportation, was his correspondence with Albína. A sweet, poetic image of her had remained in his mind since his visit to Rozánka, and now, in his exile, grew more and more beautiful. In one of her first letters to him she asked, among other things, what he had meant in his former letter by the words, “Whatever plans and dreams I may have had.” He replied that he could now tell her that his dream had been to call her his wife. She wrote back saying that she loved him. He answered that she should not have written that, because it was terrible to think of what might have been, but was now impossible. She replied that it was not only possible, but would surely be! He wrote that he could not accept such a sacrifice, and that in his present circumstances it was impossible. Soon after this letter he received a money-order for 2,000 zloty.315 By the postmark on the envelope and by the writing he knew that it came from Albína, and he remembered how in one of his first letters he had jokingly described to her the pleasure he now experienced in earning all he required by giving lessons: money to buy tobacco, tea, and even books. Putting the money-order into a fresh envelope, he returned it with a letter in which he begged her not to spoil their sacred friendship with money. He wrote that he had all he required, and was perfectly happy in the knowledge that he had such a friend⁠—and so their correspondence ended.

In November, Migoúrski was sitting at the Lieutenant-Colonel’s teaching the latter’s two boys, when he heard the approaching sound of the post-bell, and the snow creaked under the runners of a sledge, which stopped at the front-door. The children jumped up to see who had come. Migoúrski remained in the room, looking at the door, and expecting the children to return, when the Lieutenant-Colonel’s wife herself entered.

“Oh, Pan! Here are some ladies asking for you,” she said. “They must be from your parts⁠ ⁠… they seem to be Poles.”

Had anyone asked Migoúrski if he thought it possible that Albína might come to him, he would have said that it was quite out of the question; yet at the bottom of his heart he expected her. The blood rushed to his heart now, and he ran breathless into the hall. There a fat, pockmarked woman was unwrapping a shawl from her head. Another woman was entering the door of the Lieutenant-Colonel’s rooms. Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned round. From under the hood, eyes, set far apart and full of the joy of life, beamed beneath their frozen lashes⁠—the eyes of Albína.

He was stupefied, and did not know how to welcome her, or how to greet her.

“Josy!” she cried, giving him the name her father called him by, and by which she thought of him herself⁠—and she threw her arms round his neck, pressing her cold, reddened face to his, and began to laugh and cry.

Having heard who Albína was, and why she had come, the Lieutenant-Colonel’s kindhearted wife received her into her house, and kept her there till the wedding.

The good-natured Lieutenant-Colonel obtained the necessary permission from the authorities. A Polish priest was procured from Órenburg. The battalion-commander’s wife took the place of the bride’s mother, one of Migoúrski’s pupils carried the icon, and Brzozówski, the exiled Pole, acted as best man.

Strange as it may seem, Albína loved her husband passionately, but did not know him at all. She only now began to make his acquaintance. Of course, she found in the living man of flesh and blood much that was ordinary and prosaic, and had not existed in the image she had borne and nurtured in her mind. But, on the other hand, just because he was a man of flesh and blood, she found in him much that was simple and good, and had not existed in the abstract image. She had heard from friends and acquaintances of his courage in the war, and knew how bravely he had borne the loss of his property and freedom, and she had imagined him a hero always living an exalted and heroic life. In reality, with all his extraordinary physical strength and courage, he turned out to be as mild and gentle as a lamb, an artless fellow, making good-natured jokes; his sensuous lips, surrounded by a fair moustache and small beard, showed the same childlike smile that had attracted her at Rozánka, and he carried an ever-smoking pipe, specially unpleasant to her when she was pregnant.

Migoúrski, too, only now learnt to know Albína, and in her he first learnt to know women in general. From the women he had met before his marriage he could not have known women. And what he found in Albína as a type of women in general surprised him, and might have tended to disenchant him with them, had he not felt towards Albína, as Albína, a peculiarly tender and grateful feeling. Towards Albína as a woman he entertained a tender and rather ironical condescension; but towards Albína as Albína not only tender love, but rapture, and the sense of an irredeemable obligation for the sacrifice she had made, which had given him undeserved happiness.

The Migoúrskis were happy in their love. Directing all their power of love to one another, among strangers they felt like two people who, having lost their way in winter, are in danger of being frozen, and warm one another. The devotion of the old nurse, Ludwíka, good-naturedly grumbling, comical, always falling in love with every man she met, but slavishly and self-sacrificingly attached to her young mistress, contributed to the Migoúrskis’ happiness. They were also happy in their children. A year after their marriage, a boy was born; and eighteen months later, a girl. The boy was the very image of his mother: the same eyes, the same vivacity and grace. The girl was a healthy pretty little animal.

The Migoúrskis’ misfortune was their exile from home, and especially the unpleasant humiliation of their position. Albína, in particular, suffered from this degradation. He, her Josy, her hero⁠—that ideal man⁠—had to draw himself up erect before every officer he met, go through manual exercises, stand sentinel, and obey every order without demur.

Then, too, the letters they received from Poland were most depressing. Almost all their nearest friends and relations were either banished or had fled abroad after losing everything they possessed. For themselves, the Migoúrskis had no prospect of an improvement in their situation. All attempts to petition for pardon, or even for an amelioration of their lot, or for him to be made an officer, were vain. Nicholas I held reviews, parades and manoeuvres; went to masquerades and amused himself with the masks; rushed needlessly across Russia from Tchougoúef to Novorossíysk, to Petersburg and to Moscow, frightening people and using up horses; and when anyone was courageous enough to address him, begging for a mitigation of the fate of any exiled Decembrists,316 or of the Poles who were suffering for love of their native land (the very quality he himself extolled), he expanded his chest, fixed his leaden eyes on anything they happened to rest on, and said: “Too soon! Let them continue to serve⁠ ⁠…” as if he knew the right time, and when it would cease to be too soon. And all about him⁠—Generals and Chamberlains and their wives, who got their living from him⁠—went into raptures at the extraordinary penetration and wisdom of this great man.

On the whole, however, there was more joy than pain in the Migoúrskis’ lives.

They lived thus for five years. Suddenly they were overwhelmed by a terrible and unexpected sorrow. First, their little girl fell ill, and two days later their boy also. For three days he lay burning with fever, and on the fourth he died, without medical aid (no doctor was within reach). Two days later, the little girl died too.

If Albína did not drown herself in the Urál River, it was only because she could not think without terror of the state her husband would be in when he heard of her suicide. But it was hard for her to live. Formerly always active and busy, she now left all her duties to Ludwíka, and sat for hours listlessly and silently gazing at anything her eyes fell upon; or she would start up and run into her own little room, and there⁠—regardless of her husband’s or Ludwíka’s condolences⁠—would weep softly, only shaking her head and asking them to go away and leave her alone.

When summer came, she would go to her children’s grave and sit there, rending her heart with memories of what had been, and with thoughts of what might have been. She was specially tortured by the idea that the children might have remained alive had they lived in a town where they could have received medical aid. “Why? What for?” thought she. “Josy and I want nothing from anyone, except that he should be allowed to live the life he was born to, and which his grandfathers and great-grandfathers lived; and that I should be allowed to live with him and love him, and love my little ones, and bring them up. But they must needs come and torment him and banish him, and rob me of what is dearer to me than all the world. Why? What for?”

She put the question to men and to God, and could not imagine the possibility of any answer. And without an answer there was no life for her; and so her life came to a standstill. Their poor existence in exile, which she with her feminine taste and refinement had formerly known how to adorn, now became intolerable, not only to her but also to Migoúrski, who suffered on her account, and did not know how to help her.

At this, the most unhappy time for the Migoúrskis, a Pole named Rosolówski arrived at Urálsk. He had been concerned in a widespread plot organized in Siberia by the exiled Polish priest Sirocínski, to raise an insurrection and escape from exile.

Rosolówski, who, like Migoúrski and thousands of others, was being punished with exile in Siberia for wishing to remain what he had been born⁠—a Pole⁠—had taken part in this plot and had been flogged for it; and he was now sent as a common soldier to serve in Migoúrski’s battalion. Rosolówski, who had been a teacher of mathematics, was a tall, thin, round-shouldered man, with hollow cheeks and wrinkled brows.

On the first evening after his arrival, as he sat at tea with the Migoúrskis, he naturally began to tell them, in his slow quiet bass voice, about the affair for which he had suffered so cruelly.

It was this: Sirocínski had organized a secret society all over Siberia, the aim of which was, by the aid of the Poles serving in the Cossack and line regiments, to incite the soldiers and convicts to mutiny, to get the exiles to rise, to seize the artillery at Omsk, and to liberate everybody.

“Would that have been possible?” asked Migoúrski.

“Certainly it would⁠ ⁠… everything was ready,” said Rosolówski, frowning gloomily. And slowly and calmly he explained the whole plan of liberation, and all the measures taken to secure success, or, in case of failure, to save the conspirators. If two scoundrels had not betrayed the plan, success was assured. According to Rosolówski, Sirocínski was a man of genius and great spiritual power. He died like a hero and a martyr. And Rosolówski, in his calm, steady deep voice, told them the details of the execution, which, by order of the Authorities, he and all who had been tried for this affair were compelled to witness.

“Two battalions of soldiers stood in two rows, forming a long passage. Every soldier held a flexible switch, of a thickness which, by regulations Imperially confirmed, allowed three of them to go into the muzzle of a musket. The first man to be led out was Doctor Szakálski. Two soldiers led him, and the men beat him with the switches on his bare back as he passed. I only saw this when he passed the place where I stood. At first I could hear only the beating of the drum, but when I heard the swishing of the sticks and the sound of the strokes on the flesh, I knew he was approaching. I saw how the soldiers dragged him along by the musket to which he was tied, and how he went shuddering and turning his head from side to side. And once, as they led him past us, I heard a Russian doctor say to the soldiers: ‘Don’t hit hard; have some pity!’ But they continued to beat him, and when he passed me the second time, he could no longer walk, but was simply being dragged along. It was dreadful to see his back; and I closed my eyes. He fell, and was carried away. Then another prisoner was brought out, then a third, and then a fourth. They all sank under it, and were all carried away, some dead, some just alive⁠—and we had to stand by and witness it. It lasted six hours, from early morning till two in the afternoon. The last to be brought out was Sirocínski himself. I had not seen him for a long time, and should hardly have recognized him, he had aged so. His clean-shaven face was all wrinkled and livid. His bare body was thin and yellow, the ribs protruded above his shrunken stomach. He went, as they all did, shuddering at each stroke and jerking back his head, yet he did not groan, but loudly repeated the prayer, Miserere mei, Deus, secundam magnam misericordiam tuam.

“I heard it myself,” muttered Rosolówski quickly and hoarsely; and, shutting his mouth firmly, he sniffed.

Ludwíka, sitting at the window, sobbed, hiding her face in her handkerchief.

“Why do you describe it? Beasts⁠—beasts that they are!” shouted Migoúrski; and, throwing down his pipe, he sprang from his chair and strode rapidly into his dark bedroom.

Albína sat as if petrified, her eyes fixed on a dark corner.

On returning home after drill next day, Migoúrski was surprised and delighted to notice a great change in his wife. She came to meet him with a light step and beaming face as of old, and led him into their bedroom.

“Now, Josy, listen!⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes; what is it?”

“I have been thinking all night of what Rosolówski told us, and I have made up my mind. I can’t live like this⁠—I can’t live here, I can’t! I’ll die rather than remain here!”

“But what can we do?”

“Run away!”

“Run away? How?”

“I have thought it all out. Listen.⁠ ⁠…”

And she told him the plan she had devised during the night. It was this: Migoúrski was to go away one evening and leave his overcoat on the banks of the Urál, and with it a letter saying he was going to take his life. It would be supposed that he had drowned himself. He would be searched for, and then the fact would be notified. But in reality he would be hidden. She would hide him so that no one would find him. It would be possible to live like that for a month, say, and when all had blown over, they would escape.

At first Migoúrski thought her scheme impracticable; but towards evening, after her passionate and confident persuading, he began to agree with her. He was the more inclined to do so because the punishment for an unsuccessful attempt to desert⁠—such punishment as Rosolówski had described⁠—would fall on him; while success would set her free, and he knew how hard life there had become for her since the children died.

Rosolówski and Ludwíka were taken into their confidence; and after long discussions, alterations and improvements, a plan was finally adopted. Their first idea was that when Migoúrski’s death should have become an accepted fact, he should run away alone and on foot. Albína would follow in a vehicle, and meet him at some appointed place. Such was the first plan. But when Rosolówski told them of all the unsuccessful attempts that had been made to escape from Siberia during the last five years (during which time only one lucky fellow had managed to get away alive), Albína proposed another plan. This was that Josy should travel to Sarátof with her and Ludwíka, hidden in their vehicle. From Sarátof he was to go disguised along the bank of the Vólga, on foot, to an appointed place where he was to meet a boat Albína would hire at Sarátof. On this they would sail down the Vólga to Astrakhán, and cross the Caspian Sea to Persia. This plan was approved by all, including the expert, Rosolówski; but there was the difficulty of arranging, in a conveyance, a place which would not attract the attention of the officials and yet could conceal a man. When, after a visit to her children’s grave, Albína told Rosolówski how hard it was for her to leave their bodies in a strange land, he, after thinking awhile, said:

“Petition the Authorities to let you take the children’s coffins with you. They will allow it.”

“No, I don’t want to.⁠ ⁠… I can’t do that,” said Albína.

“You only ask, that’s all! We won’t really take the coffins, but will make a box big enough to hold them, and will put Joseph into it.”

At first Albína rejected this proposal, so unpleasant was it to her to connect deceit with the memory of her children; but when Migoúrski cheerfully approved the scheme, she agreed.

So the final plan was worked out as follows:

Migoúrski would do all that was necessary to convince the Authorities that he had drowned himself. After his death had been accepted as a fact, Albína would present a petition for leave to return home and to take her children’s bodies with her⁠—her husband being dead. When she received this permission, the graves would be made to look as if they had been opened and the coffins exhumed; but they would be left where they were, and, instead of them, Migoúrski would get into the box. The box would be placed in a tarantass,317 and in this way they would travel to Sarátof. At Sarátof they would take a boat, and on the boat Josy would be released from the box, and they would sail down to the Caspian Sea, and thence to Persia or Turkey and to freedom.

First of all, on the pretext of sending Ludwíka back to her native land, the Migoúrskis bought a tarantass. Then began the construction in the tarantass of a box, in which, without suffocation, a man could lie huddled up, and which he could easily enter and leave. The three of them⁠—Albína, Rosolówski, and Migoúrski himself⁠—planned and arranged this box, Rosolówski’s help being specially valuable, for he was a good carpenter.

The box was arranged to rest upon the poles behind the tarantass, and the side touching the vehicle (from which part of the back had been removed) was made to open, so that a man could lie partly in the box and partly on the bottom of the vehicle. Besides all this, air-holes were drilled in the box (which was to be covered with matting and corded round the top and sides). He could get in and out of the box through the tarantass, which was furnished with a seat hiding the connection.

When the tarantass and the box were ready, before her husband’s disappearance, Albína, to prepare the Authorities, went to the Colonel and announced that her husband was suffering from melancholia, and had attempted to commit suicide, and that she was anxious about him; and begged for leave of absence for him. Her dramatic talent came in useful here. Anxiety and fear for her husband were so naturally expressed that the Colonel was touched, and promised to do what he could. After that Migoúrski composed a letter, which was to be found in the cuff of his overcoat on the bank of the Urál; and on the appointed evening he went down to the river, waited till dark, left some clothing, with his overcoat and a letter, on the bank, and returned home secretly.

In the garret, which was fitted with a lock, a place had been prepared for him. In the night Albína sent Ludwíka to the Colonel to inform him that her husband had been absent from home for twenty hours, and had not yet returned. In the morning her husband’s letter was brought to her; and, her face bathed in tears, and with an appearance of utter despair, she took it to the Colonel.

A week later Albína presented a petition to be allowed to return to her home. The grief shown by Madame Migoúrski affected everyone who saw her. They all pitied the unfortunate, widowed mother. When she had received permission to leave, she presented another petition: to be allowed to disinter the bodies of her children and to take them with her.

The Authorities were surprised at this sentimentality, but gave this permission also.

The evening after she had received this second permission, Rosolówski, Albína, and Ludwíka, taking the box in which the coffins were to be placed, drove off in a hired cart. At the cemetery where the children were buried, Albína, falling on her knees by their grave, prayed awhile, but soon rose, dried her eyes, and saying to Rosolówski, “Do what is necessary⁠ ⁠… I can’t!” stepped aside.

Rosolówski and Ludwíka moved the gravestone and dug up the top of the grave with spades, so that it looked as if it had been opened. When this was done they called Albína; and returned home with the box full of earth.

The day fixed for their departure arrived. Rosolówski rejoiced at the success of the enterprise now so nearly accomplished. Ludwíka had baked pastry and cakes for the journey, and, repeating her usual asseveration, “By my mother!” declared her heart was bursting with fear and joy. Migoúrski was glad of his deliverance from the garret where he had spent more than a month, but yet gladder at Albína’s animation and joy of life. She seemed to have forgotten all former griefs and all danger, and came running to him in the garret, beaming with rapturous delight as in the days of her girlhood.

At three in the morning came a Cossack escort, and brought a driver with three horses. Albína and Ludwíka, with their little dog, got into the tarantass and sat down on cushions covered with a rug. The Cossack and the driver got onto the box; Migoúrski, dressed as a peasant, lay at the bottom of the vehicle.

They drove out of the town, and the three good horses drew the tarantass along the smooth road, hard as a stone, that ran through an endless uncultivated steppe covered with last year’s dry, silvery feather-grass.

Albína’s heart swelled with hope and elation. Wishing to impart her feelings to someone, she occasionally, smiling slightly, drew Ludwíka’s attention by a movement of her head⁠—first to the Cossack’s broad back, and then to the bottom of the tarantass. Ludwíka sat looking before her fixedly, with a significant expression, and only slightly twitched her lips.

The day was bright. All around spread the boundless desert steppe, its silvery feather-grass glittering in the slanting rays of the morning sun. First on one and then on the other side of the hard road⁠—on which the brisk unshod hoofs of the Bashkir horses resounded as on asphalt⁠—appeared little mounds of earth thrown up by Siberian marmots, with one of the little creatures sitting up erect and keeping watch. At the approach of danger it would raise the alarm by a shrill whistle, and disappear down its burrow. They met but few travellers: only a Cossack train of carts laden with wheat, or a mounted Bashkir with whom their Cossack briskly bandied Tartar words. At each post-station they got fresh and well-fed horses, and the half-roubles Albína gave to the drivers made them gallop full speed all the way⁠—“State-messenger style,” as they expressed it.

At the first station, when the first driver had gone away with the horses and his successor had not yet come with the fresh ones, and the Cossack had gone into the yard, Albína bent down and asked her husband how he felt, and whether he needed anything.

“Splendid!⁠ ⁠… Quite comfortable! I want nothing; I can easily lie here for two days, if necessary.”

Towards evening they reached the large village of Dergátchi. That her husband might stretch his limbs and refresh himself, Albína did not put up at the post-station, but stopped in an inn-yard; and, giving some money to the Cossack, sent him at once to buy her some milk and eggs. The tarantass stood in a shed, and it was dark in the yard. Setting Ludwíka to watch the Cossack, Albína let her husband out and fed him; and before the Cossack returned he was again in his hiding-place. Albína’s spirits rose higher and higher, and she could not restrain her gaiety and delight. Having no one to talk to but Ludwíka, the Cossack, and her dog, Trezórka, she amused herself with them. Ludwíka, in spite of her plainness, suspected all the men she ever met of having amorous designs upon herself; and on this occasion she had the same suspicions of their escort, the sturdy, good-natured Urál Cossack, with unusually bright and kind blue eyes, whose simplicity and good-natured adroitness made him very agreeable to both the women.

Besides Trezórka (at whom Albína shook her finger, not allowing him to sniff under the seat), she now amused herself with Ludwíka’s comical coquetting with the Cossack; who, never suspecting the designs attributed to him, smiled at all that was said. Albína, excited by the danger, the success that was attending the accomplishment of her plan, and the air of the steppes, experienced a long-forgotten feeling of childlike joy and happiness. Migoúrski heard her talking merrily, and forgetting himself⁠—in spite of the physical discomfort of his position, which he concealed from her (he was especially tormented by thirst and heat)⁠—he rejoiced at her joy.

Towards the evening of the second day, something began to appear in the distance, through the mist. It was Sarátof and the Vólga. The Cossack, whose eyes were used to the steppes, could see the Vólga and a mast, and pointed them out to Ludwíka⁠—who said she could see them too; but Albína could see nothing, and only repeated loudly, that her husband should hear, “Sarátof⁠ ⁠… Vólga⁠ ⁠…” as if she were talking to Trezórka; and so she informed her husband of all she saw.

Not entering the town, Albína stopped on the left bank of the Vólga, in the Pokróvsky suburb, just opposite Sarátof itself. Here she hoped to be able to speak to her husband during the night, and even to let him out of his box. But the Cossack never left the tarantass during the whole of the short spring night, but sat near it in a cart that stood under the same shed. Ludwíka, by Albína’s orders, remained in the tarantass, and feeling sure it was because of her that the Cossack remained near it, she winked, laughed, and hid her pockmarked face in her kerchief. But Albína saw nothing amusing in this now, and became more and more anxious; wondering why the Cossack remained so persistently near the tarantass.

Several times during that short night, in which the evening twilight melted into the twilight of dawn, Albína left the inn, and, passing through a passage which smelt foully, came out into the back porch. The Cossack did not sleep, but sat in the empty cart beside the tarantass, with his legs hanging down. Only just before daybreak, when the cocks were already awake and crowing to one another from yard to yard, Albína went down and found time to speak to her husband. The Cossack, lying stretched out in the cart, was snoring. She came carefully up to the tarantass, and knocked at the box.

“Josy!”

No answer.

“Josy! Josy!” she said louder, quite frightened.

“What’s the matter?” asked Migoúrski, in a sleepy voice, inside the box.

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“I was asleep,” he said, and by the sound of his voice she knew that he was smiling.

“Well, can I get out?” he asked.

“No! the Cossack is here;” and, saying this, she glanced at the Cossack sleeping in the cart.

And, strange to say, though the Cossack was snoring, his kind blue eyes were open. He looked at her, and only when their glances met did he shut his eyes again.

“Was it only my fancy, or was he really awake?” Albína asked herself. “It must have been my fancy,” she thought, and again turned to the box.

“Bear it a bit longer,” she said. “Do you want something to eat?”

“No; I want to smoke.”

Albína looked at the Cossack. He was asleep.

“Yes, I only fancied it,” she thought.

“Now I shall go and see the Governor.”

“Well, then, good luck to you!”

Albína took a dress from her portmanteau and went into the inn to change the one she was wearing.

Dressed in her best widow’s mourning, Albína crossed the Vólga. Hiring an isvóztchik318 on the quay, she drove to the Governor’s. The Governor received her. The pretty, smiling Polish widow, speaking excellent French, pleased the would-be-young old Governor very much. He granted all she asked, and bade her call again next day, to receive an order to the Mayor of Tsarítsin.

Pleased at the success of her application, and by the effect she noticed that her attractiveness produced on the Governor’s manners, Albína returned happy and hopeful. She descended the hill in a tarantass, driving along the unpaved street back to the landing. The sun had risen above the forest, and its slanting rays played on the rippling waters of the wide overflow of the river. Apple-trees, covered with sweet blossoms, appeared like white clouds to right and left. A forest of masts was seen along the banks, and white sails gleamed on the surface of the broad overflow, ruffled by a gentle breeze. At the landing, after some talk with her driver, Albína inquired whether she could hire a boat to take her to Astrakhán; and dozens of noisy, merry boatmen offered her their services and boats. She came to an agreement with a man she liked better than the rest, and went to look at his boat, that lay among a crowd of others near the landing. The boat had a small movable mast with a sail, and also oars for calm weather. Two healthy-looking bourlák rowers sat in the boat, sunning themselves. The merry, kindly boatman advised her not to leave her tarantass behind, but to take off the wheels and place it in the boat. “There will be just enough room, and it will be more comfortable for you to sit in it. If God gives us good weather, we’ll run down to Astrakhán in five days or so.”

Having come to terms with the boatman, Albína bade him come to Lóginof’s inn, in the Pokróvsky suburb, to see the tarantass and to receive hand-money. Everything was succeeding beyond her expectations. In a rapturously happy mood she crossed the Vólga, paid her driver, and went towards the inn-yard.

The Cossack, Daniel Lifánof, belonged to the Strelétsky Settlement, on the watershed of the Vólga and the Urál. He was thirty-four, and was completing the last month of the term of his army service. At home he had a grandfather, a man of ninety (who could remember Pougatchéf319); two brothers; a sister-in-law (the wife of an elder brother who had been sent to the mines for being an Old Believer); a wife; and two sons. His father had been killed in the war with the French. He was the head of the family. In his homestead they had sixteen horses and two yoke of oxen, and they had a good deal of land sown with wheat. Daniel had served in Órenburg and Kazán. He kept strictly to the Old Faith, did not smoke, would neither eat nor drink out of a vessel used by the Orthodox, and considered his oath sacred. In all his actions he was deliberately, firmly exact; and giving his whole attention to whatever his superiors set him to do, he never forgot it for a moment until he had done his duty as he understood it. Now he was ordered to escort two Polish women and two coffins to Sarátof, so that no evil should befall them on the way, and they were to travel quietly and not be up to any mischief; and at Sarátof he was to hand them over honourably to the Authorities.

And so he had brought them safely to Sarátof⁠—little dog, coffins and all. The women, though Poles, were harmless agreeable women, and they did nothing wrong. But here in the Pokróvsky suburb, towards evening, passing by the tarantass, he noticed that the little dog jumped inside and whined and wagged its tail, and he thought he heard someone’s voice coming from under the seat of the tarantass. One of the Polish women⁠—the old one⁠—grew frightened on seeing the dog in the tarantass, and caught it and carried it away.

“There’s something wrong there,” thought the Cossack, and remained on the lookout. When the young Polish woman came out in the night to the tarantass, he pretended to be asleep, and distinctly heard a man’s voice coming from the box. Early in the morning he went to the police to let them know that the Polish women entrusted to his care were not travelling honestly, but were carrying, instead of coffins, a live man in their box.

When Albína⁠—in her rapturously happy mood, sure that all was now finished, and that in a few days they would be free⁠—came to the inn-yard, she was surprised to see an elegant pair of horses and two Cossacks at the gates. A crowd had collected round the gates, and were gazing into the yard.

So full of hope and energy was she, that it did not occur to her that the pair of horses and the crowd of people had any connection with her. She entered the yard, and glancing at once towards the shed where her tarantass stood, she saw that it was just there that the people were crowding, and at the same moment she heard Trezórka barking desperately.

The most terrible thing that could possibly have happened had actually come to pass! In front of the tarantass, in his clean uniform, with buttons, shoulder-straps and patent-leather boots glittering in the sunshine, stood an imposing-looking man, with black whiskers, speaking in a loud, hoarse, commanding voice. In front of him, between two soldiers, dressed as a peasant, and with bits of hay in his tangled hair, stood her Josy, raising and lowering his powerful shoulders as if perplexed by what was going on around him. Trezórka, his hair bristling, quite unconscious that he was the cause of all this misfortune, was barking angrily at the Police Master. When he saw Albína, Migoúrski gave a start and wished to approach her, but the soldiers prevented him.

“Never mind, Albína, never mind!” uttered Migoúrski, with his usual gentle smile.

“Ah! Here’s the little lady herself!” said the Police Master. “Come here, please.⁠ ⁠… The coffins of your infants, eh?” he added, winking towards Migoúrski. Albína did not answer, but clutching at her breast, stared open-mouthed and horror-stricken at her husband.

As happens at the moment of death, and in general at the decisive moments of life, a crowd of feelings and thoughts passed through her mind in a single instant, before she had yet realized or quite believed in her misfortune. The first feeling was one already long familiar to her⁠—a feeling of offended pride at seeing her hero-husband humiliated by these coarse, savage people who now had him in their power. “How dare they hold him⁠—the best of all men⁠—in their power?” At the same time another feeling⁠—the consciousness of misfortune⁠—seized her. This consciousness of her misfortune awoke the memory of the greatest misfortune of her life⁠—her children’s death. And at once the question arose: “Why⁠—why were the children taken?” And this question suggested another: “Why is he now perishing and being tormented⁠—he, my beloved, my husband, the best of men?” And then she remembered the shameful punishment awaiting him, and that it was all her doing.

“What is he to you? Is he your husband?” the Police Master repeated.

“Why? What for?” she cried; and bursting into hysterical laughter, she fell on the box, which had been removed from the tarantass and now stood on the ground beside it. Shaking with sobs, her face bathed in tears, Ludwíka approached her.

“Mistress⁠ ⁠… dear, darling mistress!⁠ ⁠… By God, nothing will come of it⁠—nothing!⁠ ⁠…” she said, mechanically passing her hand over Albína.

Migoúrski was handcuffed and led out of the yard. Seeing this, Albína ran after him.

“Forgive me! Forgive me!” she said. “It is my fault⁠—my fault alone!”

“They’ll soon find out whose fault it is! Your turn will come, too,” said the Police Master, and he pushed her aside with his arm.

Migoúrski was taken to the ferry, and Albína followed him without knowing why, paying no heed to Ludwíka’s dissuasions.

The Cossack, Daniel Lifánof, stood all this while by the wheels of the tarantass, looking gloomily now at the Police Master, now at Albína, now at his own feet. After Migoúrski had been led away, Trezórka, who had got used to Lifánof on the journey, began wagging his tail and caressing him. The Cossack suddenly moved away from the tarantass, pulled off his cap, threw it violently on the ground, shoved Trezórka aside with his boot, and went into the inn. There he demanded vodka, and drank day and night till he had drunk all the money he had, and all his clothes as well. Only when he came to himself in a ditch, during the second night, did he stop thinking about the tormenting problem: Whether he had done well to report to the Authorities about the Polish woman’s husband inside the box?

Migoúrski was tried for attempting to escape, and was condemned to run the gauntlet through a line of 1,000 men. By the intercession of his relations and of Wánda (who had influential connections in Petersburg), his sentence was commuted to one of exile for life to Siberia. Albína followed him. As to Nicholas I, he rejoiced at having crushed the hydra of revolution⁠—not only in Poland, but throughout Europe⁠—and prided himself on having benefited the Russian people by keeping Poland under Russian rule. And men in gold-embroidered uniforms, wearing stars, so applauded him for this, that he sincerely believed himself to be a great man, and his life a great blessing to humanity⁠—especially to the Russian people, to whose perversion and stupefaction he unconsciously directed all his powers.

1906.

It happened in Russia in the ’seventies, when the struggle between the Revolutionists and the Government was at its height.

The General-Governor of a district in South Russia, a healthy-looking German with drooping moustaches and a cold look on his expressionless face, dressed in a military uniform, with a white cross at his neck, sat one evening in his cabinet, at a table on which were placed four candles with green shades, looking through and signing papers left for him by his secretary.

Among those papers was the death-warrant of Anatole Svetlogoúb, a graduate of the Novorossíysk University, sentenced for taking part in a conspiracy to overthrow the then existing Government. The General, frowning deeply, signed that paper, too. With his white, well-kept fingers, wrinkled by old age and the use of much soap, he carefully adjusted the edges of the sheets and laid them aside. The next paper dealt with the sums assigned for the carriage of provender. He read this attentively, considering whether the amounts were correctly or wrongly calculated, when suddenly he remembered a talk he had had with his assistant about Svetlogoúb’s case. The General thought that the dynamite found in Svetlogoúb’s possession was not sufficient proof of criminal intentions; while the assistant insisted that besides the dynamite there was sufficient evidence to prove that Svetlogoúb was the leader of the gang. And, remembering this, the General became thoughtful; and his heart, under the padded coat with facings as stiff as cardboard, began to beat nervously; and he breathed so hard that the large white cross⁠—the object of his joy and pride⁠—visibly rose and sank on his breast. The secretary might still be called back, and the sentence might at least be delayed, if not remitted.

“Shall I call him back, or shall I not?”

His heart beat more irregularly. He rang; and the courier entered with quick, nervous footsteps.

“Has Iván Matvéitch gone?”

“No, your Excellency; he is in the office.”

The General’s heart now stopped, now beat quickly. He remembered the warnings of the doctor who had examined him a few days before.

“Above all,” the doctor had said, “if you begin to feel that you have a heart, stop working⁠—divert your mind. There is nothing so bad as agitation. On no account allow yourself to be agitated.”

“Shall I call him, your Excellency?”

“No, it is not necessary,” answered the General. “Yes,” said he to himself, “nothing is so agitating as indecision. It is signed and done with.⁠ ⁠… ‘Ein jeder macht sich sein Bett und muss d’rauf schlafen’ ”:320 he repeated his favourite proverb. “Besides, it is not my business. I only fulfil the Supreme Will,321 and must stand above that kind of consideration,” he added, frowning to awaken in himself the cruelty which was not natural to him.

And here he remembered his last interview with the Tsar⁠—how the latter had fixed his cold, icy look on him and had said: “I trust you! As in war you did not spare yourself, so you must act with the same firmness now in the fight with the ‘red ones,’ and must not allow yourself to be either deceived or frightened.⁠ ⁠… Goodbye!” Then the Tsar had embraced him, offering his shoulder to the General to kiss. The General recalled the words with which he had answered the Tsar: “My one desire is to give my life to serve my Emperor and my country!”

And as he recalled the feeling of servile emotion which the consciousness of his self-sacrificing loyalty to his Sovereign had evoked in him, he drove from his mind the thought which for a moment had disturbed him⁠—signed the rest of the papers, and rang again.

“Is tea ready?” he asked.

“It is just being served, your Excellency.”

“All right⁠ ⁠… you may go.”

The Governor sighed deeply, and rubbed the place where his heart was. Then, heavily treading through the large empty hall, with its freshly polished parquet-floor, he went towards the drawing-room, whence came the sound of voices.

The General’s wife had visitors: the Governor and his wife; an old Princess, an ardent patriot; and an officer of the Guards⁠—the fiancé of his last unmarried daughter. His wife, a thin-lipped, cold-faced woman, sat at a low table, on which tea was laid, a silver teapot standing on the top of the samovar. She was speaking with affected sadness of her anxiety about her husband’s health, to the Governor’s wife⁠—a lady who gave herself the airs of a young woman.

“Every day fresh information brings to light conspiracies and all sorts of dreadful things.⁠ ⁠… And it all falls on Basil⁠—he has to decide everything.”

“Oh, don’t mention it!” said the Princess. “Je deviens féroce quand je pense à cette maudite engeance!”322

“Yes, yes⁠ ⁠… it’s awful! Will you believe it? He works twelve hours a day, and with his weak heart, too. I really am afraid.⁠ ⁠…”

Seeing her husband enter, she did not finish the sentence.

“Oh yes, you must hear him! Barbini is a wonderful tenor,” she said, smiling amiably at the Governor’s wife. She referred to a singer newly arrived in Russia, and did so as naturally as though he had been the sole subject of their conversation.

The General’s daughter, a plump, pretty young girl, was sitting with her fiancé behind a Chinese screen at the other end of the drawing-room. They both rose and went up to her father.

“Dear me! Why, we have not yet seen one another today!” said the General, kissing his daughter and pressing her fiancé’s hand.

After greeting his guests, the General sat down at a small table, and began talking with the Governor about the latest news.

“No, no! You must not talk business⁠—it is forbidden!” the General’s wife said, interrupting the Governor. “Ah⁠ ⁠… and, as luck will have it, here is Kópyef: he will tell us something amusing!”

And Kópyef, noted for his gaiety and wit, did tell them the latest anecdote, which made everybody laugh.

“No, no! It cannot be, it cannot!⁠ ⁠… Let me go!” Svetlogoúb’s mother shouted piercingly, struggling to free herself from the grasp of the schoolmaster⁠—her son’s friend⁠—and of the doctor, who were trying to keep her back.

Svetlogoúb’s mother was a nice-looking middle-aged woman, with grey curls and a star of wrinkles near each eye.

The schoolmaster, when he heard that the death-warrant was signed, wanted to prepare her gently for the terrible news; but he had hardly begun to speak about her son when, by the tone of his voice and his timid look, she guessed that what she dreaded had really happened. This took place in a small room in the best hotel in the town.

“Oh dear! Why do you hold me? Let go!” she shouted, freeing herself from the doctor⁠—an old friend of the family, who with one hand held her by her thin elbow, and with the other put a bottle of medicine on the table which stood before the sofa. She was glad they held her, because she felt that she ought to do something, but did not know what to do, and was afraid of herself.

“Don’t be so agitated.⁠ ⁠… Here, take these valerian drops,” said the doctor, handing her a glass of turbid liquid.

She suddenly grew quiet, and, bent almost double, her head drooping onto her hollow chest, she closed her eyes and sank onto the sofa.

She remembered how, three months ago, her son had taken leave of her with a look of mystery and sorrow on his face. Then she recalled him as an eight-year-old boy, dressed in a velvet jacket, with bare legs and long fair ringlets.

“And him⁠ ⁠… him, that very boy⁠ ⁠… they are going to destroy!⁠ ⁠…”

She jumped up, pushing away the table, and tore herself from the doctor; but on reaching the door she again sank onto a chair.

“And they say there is a God!⁠ ⁠… What God is He, if He allows it?⁠ ⁠… May the devil take Him, that God!” she screamed, now sobbing, now breaking into hysterical laughter. “To hang him⁠ ⁠… who gave up all⁠—his whole career, all his property⁠—to others⁠ ⁠… gave it all to the people!⁠ ⁠…” She, who had formerly reproached her son for this, was now speaking of his self-abnegation as a merit. “And him⁠—him⁠ ⁠… they will do it to him!⁠ ⁠… And you say there is a God!” she cried.

“But I do not say anything: I only ask you to take these drops.”

“I want nothing.⁠ ⁠… Ha, ha, ha!” she laughed and sobbed, beside herself with despair.

Towards night she was so exhausted with suffering that she could neither speak nor weep, but only stared in front of her with a fixed, insane gaze. The doctor injected morphia, and she fell asleep.

It was a dreamless sleep, but the awakening was worse than what had gone before. What appeared most terrible was that people could be so cruel: not only those dreadful Generals with their shaved cheeks, and the gendarmes, but everybody, everybody: the maid who came to do the room, with her quiet face, and the people in the next room, who greeted one another cheerfully, and laughed as if nothing had happened.

Svetlogoúb had lived through a great deal during the three months of his solitary confinement. From his very childhood he had unconsciously felt the injustice of the exceptional position he held as a rich man; and though he tried to stifle this feeling, often when he came in contact with the poverty of the common people⁠—or sometimes even when he was particularly happy and comfortable himself⁠—he felt rather ashamed of his relation to the people: to peasants, old men, women, and children, who were born, grew up and died, not only without knowing the pleasures he enjoyed, but without even understanding them, and never free from toil and hardship. When he had finished his studies at the University⁠—in order to liberate himself from the consciousness of this injustice⁠—he organized a school in the village on his estate: a model school, a Cooperative Store, and a Home for the aged poor. Yet, strange to say, when occupied with all this, he felt even more ashamed than when he was at supper with his comrades or when he purchased an expensive riding horse. He felt that it was not the right thing, and, even worse than that: there seemed to be something bad about it, something morally impure.

In one of these fits of disillusionment about his village activities he went to Kiev, where he met a fellow-University student. Three years later that fellow-student was shot in the moat of Kiev fortress.

That comrade, an ardent and extremely gifted young man, drew Svetlogoúb into a society the object of which was to enlighten the people, to awaken them to a consciousness of their rights, and to form them into federated groups aiming at freeing the people from the landlords and the Government. His conversation with this man and this man’s friends, seemed to ripen into a clear perception all that Svetlogoúb had been vaguely feeling. He understood now what he had to do. Without breaking off his intercourse with his new comrades, he returned to the country, and there began quite a fresh line of activity. He himself took the place of schoolmaster, arranged adult classes, read books and pamphlets to the peasants, and explained to them their true position. Besides all this, he published illegal323 books and pamphlets for the people, and gave all that, without taking anything from his mother, he could give for the formation of similar centres in other villages.

From the first, Svetlogoúb was faced in this activity by two unexpected obstacles: the first was the fact that the majority of the people treated his preaching with indifference, or even with a certain contempt. Only exceptional men (often men of doubtful morality) listened and sympathized with him. The other obstacle came from the side of the Government. They closed his school; and the police searched his house and the dwellings of all who were connected with him, and confiscated books and papers.

Svetlogoúb was too indignant with the second obstacle⁠—the senseless and humiliating oppression of the Government⁠—to pay much attention to the first. The same was felt by his comrades who were active in other centres, and the feeling of irritation they fomented in one another reached such a pitch of intensity that the great majority of their Group decided to fight the Government by force. The head of that Group was a certain Mezhenétsky, regarded by everybody as a man of indomitable power, incontestable logic, and entirely devoted to the cause of Revolution.

Svetlogoúb submitted to this man’s influence, and with the same energy with which he had worked among the people, now gave himself up to terrorist activity. That activity was dangerous, but the danger more than anything else attracted Svetlogoúb.

He said to himself: “Victory or martyrdom⁠ ⁠… and if it is to be martyrdom it will still be victory in the future!” And the fire that had been kindled within him, remained not only unextinguished during the seven years of his revolutionary activity, but fanned by the affection and esteem of those among whom he moved, burned more and more fiercely.

He attached no importance to the fact that he had given away for the cause almost all his fortune (inherited from his father), nor to the hardships and privations which he often had to encounter in the course of his activity. The only thing that grieved him was the sorrow he was causing to his mother and her ward⁠—a girl who lived with her and loved him.

At last one of his comrades⁠—a terrorist whom he did not much like, a disagreeable man⁠—when tracked by the police, asked Svetlogoúb to hide some dynamite in his house. Just because he did not like that comrade, Svetlogoúb agreed; and the next day the police searched the house and found the dynamite. When asked how the dynamite had come into his possession, Svetlogoúb refused to answer.

And now the martyrdom he expected began. At that time, after so many of his friends had been executed, imprisoned, or exiled, and so many women had suffered, Svetlogoúb almost desired martyrdom. During the first moments after his arrest and examination he felt a peculiar exultation and almost joy.

He felt this while he was being undressed and searched, and while he was being led to prison, and when the iron doors were locked upon him. But when one day passed, and another, and a third, a week, two weeks, three weeks, in the dirty, damp, vermin-infested cell, in loneliness and enforced idleness, varied only by cheerless or bad news, which his comrades and fellow-prisoners communicated by tapping on the walls of their cells; and by occasional examinations by cold, hostile men who tried to torment him into incriminating his comrades, his moral⁠—and with it his physical⁠—strength gradually began to give way. He became despondent and, as he said to himself, longed for this insufferable position to end one way or another. His despondency was aggravated by doubts of his own endurance. In the second month of his incarceration he detected himself thinking of revealing the whole truth: anything to be free! He was appalled at this weakness, but could no longer find in himself his former strength; and, hating and despising himself, became more despondent than ever. But what was most terrible was the fact that, in prison, he began to regret the youthful powers and pleasures he had sacrificed so lightly when he was free, and which now appeared so enchanting that he almost repented of doing what he had once considered right, and sometimes even of the whole of his activity. Thoughts came to him of how happy he would be if he had liberty, living in the country or abroad, free, among loving and beloved friends; how he might marry her, or perhaps another, and with her might live a simple, joyous, bright life.

On one of the painfully monotonous days of the second month of Svetlogoúb’s imprisonment, the inspector, while making his daily round, handed him a little book with a gilt cross on its brown binding, saying that the Governor’s wife had visited the prison and had left some Testaments, and that permission had been granted to distribute them among the prisoners. Svetlogoúb thanked him, and smiled slightly as he put the book on the little table screwed fast to the wall. When the inspector had gone, Svetlogoúb informed his neighbour by tapping that the inspector had been, and had said nothing new, but had left a Testament. The neighbour replied that he also had received one.

After dinner Svetlogoúb opened the book, the pages of which stuck together from the damp, and began to read. He had never before read the gospels as a book, and knew them only as he had gone through them with the Scripture teacher at school, and as the priests and deacons chanted them in church.

“Chapter 1: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham⁠ ⁠… Isaac begat Jacob, Jacob begat Judah⁠ ⁠…” and he went on to read: “Zorubbabel begat Abiud.⁠ ⁠…”

All this was just what he expected⁠—some kind of involved, worthless jargon. Had he not been in prison he could not have read a single page to the end; but here he went on reading for the sake of the mechanical act of reading⁠—“Just like Gógol’s Petroúsha,” he thought to himself. He read the first chapter, about the Virgin Birth and the prophecy which said that the newborn child would be named Emmanuel, which meant “God with us.”

“But where does the prophecy come in?” he thought, and went on reading the second chapter, about the wandering star; and the third, about John who ate locusts; and the fourth, about some devil who suggested to Christ a gymnastic performance from a roof. All this seemed so uninteresting to him that, in spite of the dullness of the prison, he was about to close the book and start on his usual evening occupation⁠—flea-hunting on the shirt he took off⁠—when suddenly he remembered how at an examination of the fifth class at school he had forgotten one of the Beatitudes, and how the rosy-faced, curly-headed priest had suddenly grown angry and given him a bad mark. He could not recollect the text, so he began reading the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” he read. “This might relate also to us,” he thought. “Blessed are they that have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you, and persecute you.⁠ ⁠… Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men.”

“This quite plainly refers to us,” he thought, and read farther. When he had read the whole of the fifth chapter, he became thoughtful. “Do not be angry, don’t commit adultery, bear with evil, love your enemies.⁠ ⁠… Yes, if all men lived so,” he thought, “there would be no need of revolutions.” As he read farther he entered more and more into the spirit of the passages which were quite comprehensible; and the longer he read the more the idea grew on him that something very important was said in that book⁠—something important, simple and touching; something he had never heard before, and which yet seemed to have long been familiar.

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:24⁠–⁠26).

“Yes, yes⁠—that is it!” he suddenly exclaimed, with tears in his eyes. “That is just what I wished to do.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I wished just that: just to give my soul, not to keep it safe, but to give it.⁠ ⁠… That is where joy lies⁠—that is life!⁠ ⁠… I have done a great deal for other people’s sake, for the sake of human approbation⁠—not the approbation of the crowd, but for the good opinion of those I respected and loved: Natásha and Dmítry Shelómof. And then I doubted and was agitated. I felt at ease only when I did something my soul demanded⁠—when I wished to give myself, my whole self.”

From that moment Svetlogoúb spent most of his time reading and pondering what he read in that book. This reading not only evoked in him a glow of tender emotion which carried him beyond the conditions in which he found himself, but also evoked an activity of mind such as he had never before experienced. He wondered why people did not all live as they were told to in that book. “After all, to live so, is good not for one only, but for all. We only need live like that, and there will be no sorrow and no want, only blessedness.”

“If only this would end⁠—if only I could be free once more,” he sometimes thought. “After all, they will let me out sooner or later, or send me to penal servitude⁠—no matter which. It is possible to live like that anywhere⁠ ⁠… and I will live so! I can and must live so⁠ ⁠… not to live so is madness!”

One day when he was in that joyous, exalted state, the inspector came into his cell at an unusual hour, and asked him if he was comfortable, or if he wanted anything. Svetlogoúb was surprised, and unable to understand what this change of manner meant. He asked for a packet of cigarettes and some matches, expecting a refusal. But the inspector replied that he would send some at once, and a watchman really brought him a packet of cigarettes and some matches. “Someone has probably interceded for me,” thought Svetlogoúb; and, having lit a cigarette, began to pace up and down the cell, considering what this change might portend.

Next day he was taken up to the court, where he had been several times before. This time, however, he was not examined, but one of the judges, without looking at him, rose from his chair with a paper in his hand. The others also rose. The judge began to read in an unnaturally expressionless voice. Svetlogoúb listened and looked at the judges’ faces. They all avoided looking at him, and listened with a significant and depressed expression on their faces. The document said that Anatole Svetlogoúb, for his participation in Revolutionary activity which had for its aim the overthrow, in the near or more distant future, of the existing Government, was sentenced to be deprived of all his rights, and to death by hanging.

Svetlogoúb listened and understood the words spoken by the official. He noticed the absurdity of the wording, “in the near or more distant future,” and the depriving of a man sentenced to death of all his rights; but he did not in the least understand the significance to himself of what had been read.

Only much later, when he was told that he might go, and was out in the street with a gendarme, did the meaning of the declaration he had just heard begin to dawn upon him.

“That’s not it⁠ ⁠… that’s not it.⁠ ⁠… It can’t be true! It’s absurd!” he said to himself, as he sat in the carriage that was taking him back to prison. He felt so full of vitality that he could not imagine death, could not connect the consciousness of his “I” with death⁠—with the absence of that “I.”

When he returned to his cell he sat down on his bed, and closing his eyes, tried to imagine what awaited him, and could not manage to do so. He could not at all imagine that he would not be, nor that people could wish to kill him. “Me, young, kind, happy, loved by so many,” he thought, remembering his mother’s and Natásha’s affection for him, as well as that of his friends. “And they will kill me, hang me!⁠ ⁠… Who will do it? Why?⁠ ⁠… And then what will there be when I am not?⁠ ⁠… It’s impossible⁠ ⁠…” he said to himself.

The inspector came in. Svetlogoúb did not hear him enter.

“Who is it? What do you want?” asked Svetlogoúb, not recognizing him. “Ah, it’s you!⁠ ⁠… When is it to be?” he asked.

“I do not know,” answered the inspector, and, having stood still for a moment, suddenly began, in an insinuating, gentle voice:

“The priest is here⁠ ⁠… he would like to⁠ ⁠… to prep⁠ ⁠… he would like to see you.”

“I don’t want to⁠—it is unnecessary! I want nothing.⁠ ⁠… Go away!” exclaimed Svetlogoúb.

“Don’t you want to write to anybody?⁠ ⁠… You can,” said the inspector.

“Yes, yes! Send what is necessary. I will write.”

The inspector went away.

“That means tomorrow morning,” thought Svetlogoúb. “They always behave like that. Tomorrow morning I shall not be⁠ ⁠… no, it is impossible! It’s a dream!”

But the watchman came in⁠—the real, familiar watchman⁠—and brought two pens, an inkstand, a packet of notepaper, and some blue envelopes, and moved the stool to the table. All this was reality, and not a dream.

“I must not think⁠ ⁠… only not think. Yes, I will write to Mother,” thought Svetlogoúb, and sat down on the stool and at once began.

“My own dear!” he wrote, and burst into tears. “Forgive me⁠—forgive me all the grief I have caused you. Whether I was deluded or not, I could not act otherwise. I only ask you to forgive me!”⁠—“But I have already written this.⁠ ⁠… Well, anyhow, there is no time to alter it now.”⁠—“Do not sorrow on my account,” he continued. “A little sooner or a little later, is it not all the same? I am not frightened, nor do I repent of what I have done. I could not act otherwise. Only do you forgive me! And do not be angry with them⁠—neither with those with whom I worked nor with those who are executing me. Neither the former nor the latter could act otherwise. Forgive them, for they know not what they do! I dare not say these words about myself, but they are in my soul, and lift me up and calm me. Forgive me! I kiss your dear, wrinkled, old hands!”

Two tears fell one after another and spread on the paper.

“I am crying, not with grief or fear, but with deep emotion before the most solemn moment of my life, and because I love you. Do not reproach my friends, but love them⁠—especially Próhorof, because he was the cause of my death. It is so joyful to love one who is not exactly guilty, but whom one might reproach and hate! To learn to love a man of that kind⁠—an enemy⁠—is such happiness! Tell Natásha that her love was my comfort and joy. I did not fully realize it, but was conscious of it in the depths of my soul. It was easier for me to live, knowing that she existed and loved me. Now I have said everything. Goodbye!”

He folded the letter, sealed it, and sat down on his bed, folding his hands on his knees and swallowing his tears.

He could still not believe he was about to die. He asked himself several times whether he was not asleep, and vainly tried to wake up. And this thought gave rise to another: Whether life in this world is not all a dream, out of which the awaking is death? And if this be so, whether consciousness in this life is not merely an awakening out of the sleep of a former, unremembered life? So that this existence does not begin here, but is only a new form of life. “I shall die and enter into a new form.” He liked this idea, but when he tried to use it as a support, he felt that neither it, nor any kind of idea whatever, could remove the fear of death. At last he grew tired of thinking; his brain would no longer work. He shut his eyes and long sat without thinking.

He read his letter over again, and, seeing the name of Próhorof at the end, he remembered that his letter might be read by the officials⁠—would in all probability be read⁠—and would lead to Próhorof’s destruction.

“O God, what have I done?” he suddenly exclaimed; and, tearing the letter into strips, he began carefully burning them over the lamp.

He was in despair when he sat down to write; but now he felt calm⁠—almost happy. He took another sheet of paper, and again began writing. Thoughts came thronging one after another into his head.

“Dear, darling mother,” he wrote, and his eyes were again misty with tears so that he had to wipe them with the sleeve of his prison coat in order to see what he was writing. “How little I knew myself and all the strength of love and gratitude to you which always dwelt in my heart! Now I know and feel it, and always when I recall our differences, and the unkind words I have said to you, I am pained and ashamed, and can hardly understand it. Forgive me, and remember only the good, if there was any in me! I am not afraid of death. To speak frankly, I do not understand it or believe in it. After all, if death⁠—annihilation⁠—exists, is it not all the same whether we die thirty years or thirty minutes sooner or later? And if there is no death, then it is quite indifferent whether it happens sooner or later.”

“But why am I philosophizing?” he thought. “I must say what I said in the other letter⁠—something good at the end. Yes.⁠ ⁠… ‘Do not reproach my friends, but love them⁠—especially the one who was the involuntary cause of my death. Kiss Natásha for me, and tell her that I have always loved her.’ ”

“What is it? What is going to happen?” he thought again, remembering. “Nothing? No, not nothing.⁠ ⁠… What, then?”

And suddenly it grew quite clear to him that for a living man there were, and could be, no answers to these questions.

“Then why am I putting these questions to myself? Why? Yes, why? I must not question, but live⁠—live, as I was living just now while writing this letter. Have we not all been sentenced to death long ago, and yet we go on living? We live happily⁠ ⁠… joyfully⁠ ⁠… when we love. Yes, when we love.⁠ ⁠… While I was writing, I loved and felt happy, and I must go on living so. That is possible everywhere and always⁠—when free and when in prison, today and tomorrow, till the end.”

He longed to speak to someone gently and lovingly at once, and knocked at the door. When the sentinel looked in at his window, he asked him what the time was, and if he would soon be relieved; but the sentinel did not answer. Then he asked for the inspector.

The inspector came, and wanted to know what he desired. “Here⁠—I have written to my mother. Please let her have it;” and at the thought of his mother the tears again filled his eyes.

The inspector took the letter, promising to forward it, and was going away; but Svetlogoúb stopped him.

“Wait a minute!” he said, holding him affectionately by his sleeve. “You are kind⁠—why do you stay in such a dismal service?”

The inspector smiled an unnatural, piteous smile, and hanging his head, he said:

“One has to live.”

“Give up this post! It is always possible to find something.⁠ ⁠… You are so kind⁠—perhaps I might⁠ ⁠…”

The inspector suddenly sobbed, quickly turned away, and went out, banging the door after him.

This agitation increased Svetlogoúb’s loving emotion, and forcing back tears of joy, he began pacing up and down the cell⁠—no longer experiencing any fear, but only a feeling of tenderness which lifted him above the world. The question of what would happen to him after death, which he had tried so hard and yet had been unable to solve, now seemed solved for him, and not by any decided, reasoned answer, but by the realization of the real life within himself.

He recalled the words of the Gospels: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”⁠—“Here am I also falling into the earth⁠—yes, ‘verily, verily,’ ” he repeated.

“I’d better sleep,” he suddenly thought, “that my strength may not fail me tomorrow;” and he lay down, closed his eyes, and immediately fell asleep.

At six o’clock he woke up, still under the influence of a bright, merry dream. He had dreamt that he was with a little fair-haired girl, climbing wide-spreading trees covered with ripe, black cherries, which he picked into a large brass basin. The cherries missed the basin and rolled on the ground, and some sort of strange animals⁠—something like cats⁠—ran after them and threw them up into the air; while the little girl looked on, shaking with ringing, infectious laughter, so that Svetlogoúb also laughed merrily in his sleep, without knowing why. Suddenly the basin slipped out of the girl’s hands, and Svetlogoúb tried to catch it, but missed it. The brass basin, clanging as it knocked against the branches, fell to the ground, and he awoke smiling and listening to the still-continued clanging of the basin. This clanging was the noise made by the drawing of the iron bolts in the corridor. He heard the sound of footsteps, and the clanking of rifles outside, and suddenly he remembered everything. “Oh, to fall asleep again!” thought Svetlogoúb; but that was no longer possible. The steps approached his door. He heard the grating of the key feeling for the keyhole, and the creaking of the door as it opened.

A gendarme officer, the inspector, and the convoy soldiers came in.

“Death? Well, what of it? I will go.⁠ ⁠… It is a good thing⁠—everything is good,” thought Svetlogoúb, and he felt the tenderly solemn mood returning, which he had experienced the evening before.

An old man belonging to a “Priestless” sect, who had lost faith in his leaders and was seeking the truth, was confined in the same prison as Svetlogoúb. He denied not only the Church of Níkon,324 but also the Government that had existed since the days of Peter the Great, whom he regarded as Antichrist. He called the Tsar’s Government, “Snuff-rule,”325 and boldly denounced priests and officials. For this he had been tried, kept in gaol, and sent from prison to prison. He was not disturbed by the fact that he had lost his liberty, that the inspectors abused him, that he was manacled, that his fellow-prisoners mocked him, that they⁠—as well as the Authorities⁠—denied God, quarrelled with one another, and denied His image within themselves in all sorts of ways: he had seen all that when he was free, everywhere in the world outside. He knew that it all resulted from people having lost the true faith and gone astray, like blind puppies away from their mother. And yet he knew that a true faith existed, because he felt it in his heart. He sought it everywhere, but was most hopeful of finding it in the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be” (Revelation 22:11⁠–⁠12).

And he was always reading this mystic book and expecting every moment him who was to come, who would not only reward every man according to his works, but would reveal Divine truth to man.

On the day of Svetlogoúb’s execution this man heard the drums beat, and, having climbed to the window, saw a car arrive, and a youth with waving curls and eyes full of light, who smilingly mounted the car.

The youth held a book in his small white hand. He pressed the book to his heart, and the sectarian knew it was a Testament, and as he nodded to the prisoners at the windows he exchanged a look with the old man. The horses started, and the car, with the youth who appeared bright as an angel, and the guard who surrounded him, rattling over the stones, passed out of the gate.

The sectarian got down from the window and sat on his bunk, meditating. “That one knows the truth,” he thought. “Antichrist’s servants will strangle him with a rope for it, that he should not reveal it to anyone.”

It was a dull autumn morning. The sun was invisible, and a warm, moist breeze came from the sea.

The fresh air, the sight of houses, the town, the horses, the people who looked at him, all distracted Svetlogoúb. Sitting on the bench of the car, with his back to the driver, he involuntarily examined the faces of the convoy soldiers and of the people in the streets.

It was early morning. The streets along which he was driven were almost empty, and they only met a few workmen. Some bricklayers with aprons on, all bespattered with mortar, who met the car, stopped and turned back again as it passed, as though to accompany it. One of them said something, then waved his hand, and then they all turned back again and went to their work. Some carters, carting loads of rattling iron bars, moved their heavy horses to let the car pass, and stood looking at Svetlogoúb with perplexed curiosity. One of them took off his cap and crossed himself. A cook with a white apron, a cap on her head and a basket on her arm, came out of a gate; but, seeing the car, she quickly turned back and ran out again with another woman, and they breathlessly followed the car with very wide-open eyes as long as it was in sight. A tattered, unshaven, grey-haired man explained something with energetic and evidently disapproving gestures to a porter, as he pointed to Svetlogoúb. Two boys ran after the car at a trot, caught up with it, and with their faces turned towards it, went along the pavement without looking where they were going. The older one walked with big strides, the little one, bareheaded, clung to the elder, looking at the car with frightened eyes, stumbling on his short legs, and keeping up with the other with difficulty. When Svetlogoúb’s eyes met those of the little boy, Svetlogoúb nodded to him. This action of the terrible man in the car staggered the boy so much that, staring with wide-open eyes and open mouth, he was just beginning to cry. Then Svetlogoúb kissed his hand to him with a kind smile, and the boy suddenly and unexpectedly answered with a sweet, kindly smile.

During the whole of the drive the consciousness of what awaited him did not disturb Svetlogoúb’s calm and solemn state of mind.

Only when the car approached the gallows and he was helped out, and saw the posts with the crossbeam, and the cord that hung from it slightly swinging in the breeze, he experienced an almost physical blow on his heart. He suddenly felt sick. But this did not last long. Beneath the scaffold he saw black rows of soldiers with guns; officers were walking in front of them; and as soon as they began helping him down from the car, he heard an unexpected rattle of beating drums, which made him start. Behind the rows of soldiers Svetlogoúb perceived carriages with ladies and gentlemen, who had come to see the sight. All this surprised him for a moment, but he immediately recollected himself as he had been before his imprisonment, and felt sorry these people did not know what he now knew. “But they will know.⁠ ⁠… I shall die, but truth will not die. They too will know! And how happy everybody⁠—not I⁠—but they all might be, and will be!”

They led him onto the scaffold, an officer following. The drums became silent, and the officer, in an unnatural tone, which sounded peculiarly weak amid the open fields and after the rattle of the drums, read the same stupid words of the sentence that had been read to him in court: about his being deprived of all his rights⁠—he whom they were about to kill!⁠—and about the near and more distant future. “Oh, why, why do they do all this?” thought Svetlogoúb. “What a pity it is that they don’t know, and that I can no longer tell them of it! But they will know⁠—everyone will know.⁠ ⁠…”

A lean priest, with thin long hair, in a lilac cassock, with a small gilt cross on his breast and a large silver one in his weak white thick-veined hand encircled by a black velvet cuff, drew near to Svetlogoúb.

“Merciful Lord!⁠ ⁠…” he began, changing the cross from his left to his right hand, and holding it out to Svetlogoúb. Svetlogoúb shuddered and moved aside. He was on the point of saying some angry words to this priest, who was taking part in the deed that was being done to him and was at the same time speaking of mercy; but, recollecting the words of the Gospels, “they know not what they do,” he made an effort and mildly uttered the words: “Excuse me, I do not want it. Please forgive me, but really I don’t want it, thank you!”

He held out his hand to the priest, who changed the cross back into his left hand, and after pressing Svetlogoúb’s hand, descended from the scaffold, trying not to look him in the face. The drums began to roll again, deafening every other sound. After the priest, a man of medium height with sloping shoulders and muscular arms, and wearing a pea-jacket over his Russian shirt, approached Svetlogoúb with rapid steps, shaking the boards of the scaffold. This man glanced rapidly at Svetlogoúb, came quite close up to him, enveloping him in a disagreeable odour of spirits and perspiration, and with clutching fingers took him by the arms just above the wrists, and pressing them together so that they hurt, twisted them behind Svetlogoúb’s back and tied them there tightly. After that, the hangman stood for a moment or two as if considering something, looking first at Svetlogoúb, then at some things he had brought with him and had put down on the scaffold, and then at the rope dangling above. Having made his observations, he went up to the rope, did something to it, and moved Svetlogoúb forward, nearer to it and to the edge of the scaffold.

Just as, at the time when the sentence had been pronounced on him, Svetlogoúb could not realize the importance of what was being said, so now he could not comprehend the full meaning of the moment that awaited him, and looked on with wonder at the hangman, who was fulfilling his terrible task hurriedly, deftly, and in a preoccupied manner. The hangman had a most ordinary Russian workman’s face; not cruel, but engrossed, like that of a man trying to do a necessary and complicated job as accurately as possible.

“Move a bit nearer here⁠ ⁠…” he muttered in a hoarse voice, pushing Svetlogoúb towards the gallows. Svetlogoúb moved closer.

“Lord, help⁠—have mercy on me!” he said.

Svetlogoúb had not believed in God, and had often even laughed at people who did; nor did he believe in Him now, for he was unable not only to express Him in words, but even to comprehend Him with his mind. But what he now meant, and addressed himself to, he knew to be the most real of all that he did know. He also knew that to address himself to It was necessary and important, and he knew this, because It instantly strengthened and calmed him.

He moved towards the gallows, and involuntarily cast a look round at the soldiers and at the motley crowd of onlookers, and again he thought: “Why, why do they do it?” And he pitied them and himself, and tears came to his eyes.

“And are you not sorry for me?” he said, his glance meeting the executioner’s bold grey eyes.

The executioner stopped for a moment. His face suddenly turned cruel.

“Get along! Talking!⁠ ⁠…” he muttered, and quickly stooping down to where his coat and a linen bag lay, with an adroit movement of his arms he embraced Svetlogoúb from behind and threw a linen sack over his head, and drew it hurriedly halfway down his back and chest.

“Into Thy hands I commit my spirit,” thought Svetlogoúb, recalling the words of the Gospels.

His spirit did not struggle against death, but his strong young body would not accept it, would not submit, and wanted to rebel.

He wished to shout and to tear himself away, but at that very moment he felt a push, lost his equilibrium, felt animal terror and choking, and a noise in his head, and then everything vanished.

Svetlogoúb’s body hung swinging by the cord. His shoulders twice rose and fell.

After waiting a minute or two, the executioner, frowning gloomily, put both hands on the shoulders of the corpse and pushed it downwards with a powerful movement. And the corpse became perfectly still, except for a slow swinging movement of the big doll, with the unnaturally forward-stooping head inside the sack and the outstretched legs in prison stockings.

Descending from the scaffold, the executioner told his chief that the body might now be taken down and buried.

In an hour’s time the body was taken down from the gallows, and removed to the unconsecrated cemetery. The executioner had done what he wished and what he had undertaken to do. But it had not been an easy task to fulfil. Svetlogoúb’s words, “And are you not sorry for me?” would not leave his head. He was a murderer and a convict, and the post of hangman gave him comparative freedom and luxury; but from that day he refused to fulfil the duties he had undertaken, and drank not only all the money he had received for the execution, but also his comparatively good clothing, and finished by being put into a penitentiary and afterwards into the hospital.

One of the leaders of the Revolutionary Terrorist party, Ignatius Mezhenétsky, the same who had drawn Svetlogoúb into his terrorist activity, was being transported from the Province where he had been arrested, to Petersburg. The old man who had seen Svetlogoúb taken to execution happened to be in the same prison. He was being transported to Siberia. He still continued to seek for the true faith, and sometimes remembered the bright-faced youth who had smiled so joyfully on his way to death.

When he heard that a comrade of that youth⁠—a man holding the same faith⁠—had been brought to the prison, the sectarian was very glad, and persuaded the watchman to let him see Svetlogoúb’s friend.

In spite of the rigorous prison discipline, Mezhenétsky never ceased intercourse with the members of his party, and was every day expecting news about the progress of a plot he himself had originated, to undermine and blow up the Emperor’s train. Calling to mind some details he had omitted, he was now trying to find means to communicate them to his adherents. When the watchman came into his cell and guardedly whispered in his ear that one of the convicts wished to see him, he was very pleased, thinking that that interview might furnish him with a chance of communicating with his party.

“Who is he?” he asked.

“A peasant.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants to have a talk about faith.”

Mezhenétsky smiled. “All right; send him to me,” he said. “These sectarians,” he thought, “also hate the Government.⁠ ⁠… He may be of use.”

The watchman went away, and a few minutes later opened the door and let in a rather short, lean old man with thick hair, a thin, grizzly goat’s beard, and kindly weary blue eyes.

“What do you want?” asked Mezhenétsky.

The old man glanced at him, and quickly dropping his eyes again, held out his small, thin but energetic hand.

“What do you want?”

“I want a word with thee.”

“What word?”

“About faith.”

“What faith?”

“They say thou art of the same faith as that youth that Antichrist’s servants strangled with a rope in Odessa.”

“What youth?”

“Him as they strangled in Odessa in the autumn.”

“Svetlogoúb, I suppose?”

“Yes, the same.⁠ ⁠… Thy friend?” At every question the old man gave Mezhenétsky’s face a searching glance with his kind eyes, and at once dropped them again.

“Yes, we were closely bound to each other.”

“And of the same faith?⁠ ⁠…”

“The same, I expect⁠ ⁠…” Mezhenétsky answered, with a smile.

“It’s about that I want a word with thee.”

“And what is it you want exactly?”

“To know your faith.”

“Our faith. Well, sit down,” said Mezhenétsky, shrugging his shoulders. “This is our faith: We believe that there are men who, having seized all the power, torment and deceive the people, and that we must not spare ourselves, but must struggle against them in order to save the people they exploit.” From habit Mezhenétsky used the word “exploit,” but correcting himself, he substituted the word “torment”; “and so they must be destroyed. They kill, and so they must be killed, until they come to their senses.”

The old sectarian sighed, without raising his eyes.

“Our faith lies in not sparing ourselves, and in abolishing despotic Government, and establishing a free, elected, popular Government.”

The old man heaved a deep sigh; rose, smoothed the skirts of his gown, sank down on his knees, and knocking his forehead on the dirty floor, lay at Mezhenétsky’s feet.

“Why are you bowing?”

“Do not deceive me! Reveal to me wherein your faith lies,” said the old man, without rising or lifting his head.

“I have told you wherein our faith lies. But get up, or else I won’t talk.”

The old man rose.

“And did that youth hold the same faith?” he said, standing before Mezhenétsky and glancing at him now and then with his kind eyes, and immediately dropping them again.

“Yes, it was⁠ ⁠… just that. That is why they hanged him. And me, you see, they are taking to the Petropávlof Fortress for the same faith.”

The old man made a deep bow and went out of the cell. “Not therein lay that youth’s faith,” he thought. “That youth knew the true faith, but this one either just boasts that he holds the same faith, or he won’t reveal it.⁠ ⁠… Well, what of that? I will go on striving.⁠ ⁠… Here or in Siberia, and everywhere, there is God, and everywhere there are men. If you’ve lost your way, ask it;” and the old man took the New Testament, which opened of itself at the pages of Revelation; and, having put on his spectacles, he sat down by the window and began to read.

Another seven years passed. Mezhenétsky had served his sentence of solitary confinement in the Petropávlof Fortress, and was being transported to penal servitude in Siberia.

During those seven years he had lived through a great deal, but the trend of his thoughts had not changed, nor had his energy weakened. When cross-examined before his imprisonment in the Fortress, he had astonished the magistrates and judges by his firmness and his scornful attitude with regard to the people in whose power he found himself. In the depths of his soul he suffered because he had been caught and was unable to finish the work he had begun; but he did not show it. As soon as he was face to face with people, the energy of anger awoke in him. He remained silent when questioned, except when an opportunity presented itself to say something that would wound one of the examiners: a gendarme officer, or the Public Prosecutor.

When the usual phrase, “You can materially better your position by a frank confession,” was repeated to him, he smiled contemptuously and said, after a short pause:

“If you expect to make me betray my comrades, through fear or for profit, you are judging me by yourselves. Can you possibly imagine that when doing what you are now trying me for, I was not prepared for the worst? So you cannot surprise or frighten me by anything you do; you can do to me what you like, but I shall not speak.”

He was pleased to see how, quite abashed, they glanced at one another.

In the Petropávlof Fortress he was put into a small damp cell with a window high up in the wall, and he knew that it was not for months, but for years, and was seized with terror at the well-ordered, dead silence and by the consciousness that he was not alone, but that behind these impenetrable walls were other prisoners, sentenced to ten or twenty years’ confinement, committing suicide, being hanged, going out of their minds, or slowly dying of consumption. Here were men and women and friends, perhaps.⁠ ⁠… “Years will pass, and I too shall lose my reason, hang myself, or die. And no one will ever hear of it,” he thought.

Anger rose in his soul, against everybody, but especially against those who were the cause of his imprisonment. This anger demanded objects to wreck itself on, demanded action and noise⁠—but here was dead silence, or the soft footsteps of silent men who answered no questions, and the sound of doors being locked or unlocked, food brought at appointed hours, visits from the silent men, the light of the rising sun shining through the dim panes, then darkness; and the same silence, and the same footsteps, and the same sounds, today and tomorrow.⁠ ⁠… And his anger, unable to vent itself, ate into his heart.

He tried to tap, but was not answered, and his tapping was followed only by the same soft footsteps, and the calm voice of a man threatening him with the punishment cell.

Only sleep brought rest and relief; but the awakening was all the more dreadful. In his dreams he always saw himself free, and generally absorbed in actions he considered incompatible with Revolutionary activity. Sometimes he was playing some strange kind of violin, sometimes courting girls, or rowing in a boat, or hunting, or having a doctor’s degree conferred on him by some foreign University for a strange scientific discovery, and returning thanks in a speech at a dinner-party. These dreams were so distinct, and the reality so dull and monotonous, that they differed little from actuality.

The only painful thing about his dreams was that he always woke up at the very moment that what he was striving for and longing for was on the point of being realized. With a sudden heart-pang all the pleasant circumstances would vanish, and only the torment of unfulfilled desires remained. And again there was the grey wall with the damp marks, lit up by a small lamp, and under his body the hard plank bed, with the hay all pushed to one side in the sack which served for a mattress. The pleasantest time was when he was asleep; but the longer he was in prison, the less he slept. He waited for sleep as for the greatest happiness: he longed for it, and the more he longed, the wider awake he became. He needed only to ask himself, “Am I falling asleep?” for his drowsiness to vanish.

Running about and jumping in his cage did not help. Active exercise only brought on weakness and excited his nerves; the crown of his head began to ache, and he had but to shut his eyes to see faces appearing on a dark, spangled background⁠—shaggy, bald, large-mouthed, crooked-mouthed⁠—each more horrible than the rest. These faces made most terrifying grimaces. Later on they began to appear when his eyes were open, and not only the faces, but whole figures chattering and dancing. He grew terrified, jumped up, knocked his head against the wall, and screamed. Then the slot in the door would open:

“Screaming is forbidden!” a calm, monotonous voice would remark.

“Call the inspector!” shouted Mezhenétsky. He received no answer, and the slot was again closed. And such despair would seize him that he longed for one thing only⁠—death. Once, when in such a state, he decided to take his life. There was a ventilator in the cell, to which a rope with a noose could be fastened, and by getting onto the bedstead it would be possible to hang oneself. But he had no rope. He began to tear his sheet into strips, but there were not enough of them.

Then he decided to starve himself, and did not eat for two days; but on the third he became quite weak, and had a worse fit of hallucinations. When food was brought him he lay with open eyes, but unconscious, on the floor. The doctor came, laid him on the bed, and gave him rum and morphia, and he fell asleep.

When he awoke next morning, the doctor was standing by him, shaking his head. And suddenly Mezhenétsky was seized by the stimulating sensation of anger, which he had long not felt.

“How is it you are not ashamed to serve here?” he said, as the doctor, with bowed head, counted his pulse. “Why are you doctoring me, only to torment me again? Why, it is just the same as standing at a flogging and giving permission to repeat the operation!”

“Be so good as to turn round on your back,” the doctor said, quite unruffled, and, without looking at him, took out of his side-pocket the instruments for sounding him.

“They used to heal the wounds, in order that the remaining five thousand strokes could be given!⁠ ⁠… Go to the devil! Go to hell!” he suddenly exclaimed, taking his legs off the bed. “Be off!⁠ ⁠… I’ll die without you!”

“That’s not right, young man.⁠ ⁠… We know an answer for rudeness.⁠ ⁠…”

“To the devil, to the devil!” and Mezhenétsky was so terrible that the doctor hurried away.

Whether it was a result of the medicine he took, or that he had passed a crisis, or that his anger against the doctor cured him, at any rate from then onwards Mezhenétsky took himself in hand and started quite a new life.

“They can’t and won’t keep me here forever,” he thought. “After all, they will liberate me some time. Perhaps⁠—and very likely⁠—there will be a change of Administration (our people are working), and therefore I must take care of my life, to go out strong, healthy, and able to continue the work.”

He took a long time to consider the best way of living to attain his object; and this was how he arranged matters. He went to bed at nine, and whether he slept or not, remained in bed till 5 a.m. Then he got up, made himself tidy, washed, did gymnastics, and then, as he said to himself, went to business. In imagination he walked through the streets of Petersburg, from the Névsky to the Nadézhdinsky, trying to picture to himself all he was likely to see on his way: signboards, houses, policemen, carriages, and the people he might meet. In the Nadézhdinsky Street he entered the house of an acquaintance and fellow-worker, and there, with him and other comrades who dropped in, discussed prospects for the future. They argued, disputed: Mezhenétsky speaking for himself and the others. Sometimes he spoke aloud, and then the sentinel made remarks to him through the window in the door; but Mezhenétsky paid no heed to him, and continued his imaginary day in Petersburg. After spending a couple of hours with his comrade, he returned home to dinner, dined⁠—first in imagination and then in reality, on the food that was brought him⁠—and always ate moderately. Then, again in imagination, he sat at home, sometimes studying history and sometimes mathematics, and sometimes on Sundays literature. Studying history meant choosing a certain period and nation, and recalling all the facts and the chronology belonging to them. The study of mathematics meant working out and mentally solving problems. (He was particularly fond of this occupation.) On Sundays he recalled Poúshkin, Gógol, Shakespeare, or himself composed something.

Before going to bed, he again went for a short imaginary walk; carried on amusing, merry and sometimes serious conversations with comrades, both men and women⁠—some that had really taken place and some that were newly invented. And so it went on till bedtime; and just before lying down he really walked two thousand steps backwards and forwards in his cage for exercise, and when in bed he generally slept.

It was the same the next day. Sometimes he travelled south, and went about inciting the people and arranging riots, and with the people, expelled the landlords and divided the land among the peasants. All this, however, he did not imagine all at once, but gradually, going into every detail. In his fancy the Revolutionary parties always triumphed; the power of the Government grew weaker, and it was obliged to call together a Council. The Imperial family and all the oppressors of the people disappeared, and a Republic was established, and he, Mezhenétsky, was chosen President. Sometimes he reached this climax too quickly, and then he began again from the beginning, and attained his end by other means.

So he lived one, two, three years: occasionally discontinuing this rigorous order of life for a time, but always returning to it again. Fits of insomnia and visions of horrible faces rarely troubled him now, and when they did, he looked at the ventilator and pictured to himself how he would fasten a rope to it, make a noose, and hang himself. He managed to master these fits, and they never lasted long.

Thus he spent nearly seven years. When his term of imprisonment came to an end, and he started on his way to penal servitude in Siberia, he was quite healthy, fresh, and in perfect possession of his mental faculties.

As he was a criminal of special importance, he was conveyed separately, and not allowed to communicate with others; and it was only in the prison at Krasnoyársk that he first succeeded in having some intercourse with other political prisoners who were also being sent to penal servitude. There were six of them: two women and four men. They were all young people of a new type unfamiliar to Mezhenétsky. They were Revolutionists of a newer generation⁠—his successors⁠—and therefore of special interest to him. Mezhenétsky expected to find them following in his footsteps, and therefore valuing very highly what had been done by their forerunners, and especially by himself, Mezhenétsky. He was prepared to treat them with kindness and condescension, but he had the unpleasant surprise of discovering that these young people not only did not regard him as a pioneer and teacher, but treated him with something like condescension, evading and excusing his superannuated opinions. According to the views of these new Revolutionists, all that Mezhenétsky and his friends had done⁠—all their attempts to rouse the peasants, and especially their terroristic methods and their assassinations of the Governor Kropótkin, Mezentsóf, and even of Alexander II, had been a series of mistakes. They had all merely contributed to the triumph of the reaction under Alexander III, which put society back almost to the days of serfdom. According to them, the true path was a quite different one.

For two days and the greater part of two nights the disputes between Mezhenétsky and his new acquaintances hardly ceased. Especially one of them, their leader, Román (everybody called him by his Christian name), pained and grieved Mezhenétsky by his unwavering assurance of being right, and by a contemptuous and even sarcastic rejection of all the old methods of Mezhenétsky and his comrades.

According to Román, the peasants were a rough mob, a rabble. And with the peasants in their present stage of development, nothing could be done. All efforts to raise the Russian people were like attempts to set a stone or a piece of ice alight. The people had to be educated and trained for solidarity, and only large industries, and the growth of a Socialistic organization based thereon, could accomplish this.

The land was not only unnecessary to the people, but it was just the land that, both in Russia and in the rest of Europe, made them Conservatives and slaves. And he quoted the opinion of various authorities and gave statistics, which he knew by heart. The people must be liberated from the land, and the sooner this is done the better. The more of them go into factories, and the more land the capitalists get into their hands, and the more they oppress the people, the better. Despotism⁠—and especially capitalism⁠—can only be brought to an end by the solidarity of the workers, and this can be attained only by trade-unions and corporations of working men⁠—i.e., only when the masses cease to own land, and become proletarians.

Mezhenétsky argued, and grew excited. A dark, rather good-looking brunette, with much hair and very brilliant eyes, irritated him particularly, as, sitting on the windowsill and hardly taking any direct part in the conversation, she occasionally put in a few words confirming Román’s arguments, or merely smiled contemptuously at Mezhenétsky’s remarks.

“Is it possible to change all the country labourers into factory hands?” said Mezhenétsky.

“Why not?” retorted Román. “It is a general economic law.”

“How do we know it to be general?” said Mezhenétsky.

“Read Kautsky!” remarked the dark woman, with a contemptuous smile.

“Even granting (though I don’t grant it) that the people will be changed into proletarians,” said Mezhenétsky, “what makes you suppose that they will take the form you have foreordained?”

“Because it is a scientific deduction,” put in the dark woman, turning away from the window.

When the kind of activity necessary to attain their aim came under discussion, their differences became even more accentuated. Román and his friends insisted on the necessity of educating an army of workmen to help in the transformation of the peasants into factory workers, and to preach Socialism among them, and not only to refrain from openly fighting the Government, but to use it for the attainment of their aims. Mezhenétsky, on the contrary, declared that one must fight the Government openly and terrorize it; since the Government was both stronger and more cunning than they. “It is not you that will deceive the Government⁠—but you that will be deceived by it. We carried on propaganda work among the people and resisted the Government as well.”

“And much good you did!” said the dark woman.

“Yes, I do think that open warfare with the Government is a waste of energy,” remarked Román.

“March the First326 a waste of energy!” shouted Mezhenétsky. “We sacrificed ourselves, our lives⁠—and you sit quietly at home, enjoying yourselves, and only preach!”

“We don’t enjoy ourselves very much,” said Román, glancing round at his comrades, and burst into a fit of not infectious but loud, clear and self-assured laughter.

The brunette shook her head, smiling ironically.

“We don’t enjoy ourselves much,” repeated Román; “and if we sit here we owe it to the reaction, and the reaction is the outcome of that very First of March!”

Mezhenétsky was silent. He felt himself choking with anger, and went out into the corridor.

Trying to master his excitement, Mezhenétsky began pacing up and down the corridor. The doors of the cells were left open till the evening roll-call. A tall, fair-haired convict, with a face the kindly expression of which was not destroyed by the shaving of half his head, approached Mezhenétsky.

“There’s a convict here in our cell⁠—he has seen your Honour, and he says to me: ‘Call him here’!”

“What convict?”

“ ‘Snuff-rule’ is what we call him⁠—an old man, a sectarian. He says: ‘Tell that man to come to me.’ He means your Honour.”

“Where is he?”

“Why, here, in our cell. ‘Call that gentleman!’ he says.”

Mezhenétsky followed the convict into a rather small cell, where several prisoners were sitting and lying on the bunks.

There at the edge of the bunk on the bare boards, under his grey prison cloak, lay the same old sectarian who, seven years before, had come to ask Mezhenétsky about Svetlogoúb. The old man’s face was pale, emaciated and quite shrivelled up; his hair was still just as thick; his upturned, thin, short beard quite white; and his blue eyes kindly and attentive. He lay on his back, evidently feverish, and his cheekbones were an unhealthy red.

Mezhenétsky came up to him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

The old man painfully raised himself on his elbow and held out his small, thin, trembling hand. Preparing to speak, he first breathed heavily, and drawing breath with difficulty, began in a low voice:

“Thou wouldst not reveal it to me that time⁠ ⁠… may God be with thee, but I reveal it to everybody!”

“Reveal what?”

“About the Lamb.⁠ ⁠… I reveal about the Lamb⁠ ⁠… that youth had the Lamb. And it is written that the Lamb will overcome⁠—overcome all. And those that are with him, they are the chosen, and the faithful.⁠ ⁠…”

“I do not understand,” said Mezhenétsky.

“Thou must understand in the spirit. The kings and the beast⁠ ⁠… the Lamb shall overcome them.”

“What kings?” Mezhenétsky asked.

“There are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other one is not yet come; and when he cometh he must continue a short space.⁠ ⁠… That means, his end will come soon. Have you understood?”

Mezhenétsky shook his head, thinking the old man was delirious and his words meaningless. His fellow-convicts thought so too. The shaven convict, who had called Mezhenétsky, came up, and nudging his elbow to draw his attention, looked at the old man with a wink.

“Always chattering, always chattering, our ‘Snuff-rule’! What about, he don’t know himself!”

So thought Mezhenétsky and the old man’s fellow-convicts, as they looked at him; yet the old man knew very well what he was saying, and for him it had a clear, deep meaning. He meant that evil was not to reign much longer, but that the Lamb was overcoming all by righteousness and meekness, and that the Lamb would dry every tear, and there would be no more hangmen, nor sickness, nor death. And he felt that this was already happening⁠—happening all over the world, that it was happening in his soul, enlightened by the nearness of death.

“Ay, come quickly.⁠ ⁠… Amen! Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” said he, with a faint, significant, and as Mezhenétsky thought, insane smile.

“And that’s a representative of the people!” thought Mezhenétsky, as he left the old man. “And he is one of the best of them⁠—and such ignorance!⁠ ⁠… They say” (he was thinking of Román and his friends) “that with the people as they are now, nothing can be done.”

At one time Mezhenétsky had carried on his Revolutionary activity among the peasants, and was therefore aware of the “inertia,” as he called it, of the Russian folk. He had met soldiers, some in service and some discharged, and knew their tenacious, obtuse belief in the validity of oaths and the necessity of submission; as well as the impossibility of influencing them by arguments. He knew all this, but had never arrived at the conclusion which should have been the evident outcome of that knowledge.

His talk with the Revolutionists had troubled and irritated him. “They say that all we have done⁠—what Haltoúrin, Kibáltchitch, Sophie Peróvsky did⁠—was unnecessary, and even harmful; and that we caused the reaction of Alexander III’s time⁠ ⁠… that, thanks to us, the people are convinced that the whole Revolutionary movement comes from landlords, who killed the Tsar because he took the serfs from them! What rubbish! What a want of understanding, and what insolence to imagine it!” he thought, continuing to pace the corridor. All the cells had now been closed, except the one where the new Revolutionists were. As he drew near he heard the laughter of the dark woman who was so antipathetic to him, and the rasping, determined sound of Román’s voice. Román was saying:

“… unable to understand the laws of economy, they took no account of what they were doing. And in a great measure it was⁠ ⁠…”

Mezhenétsky could not, and did not wish to, hear what was “in a great measure,” nor did he need to know it. The tone of voice of the man was sufficient to show in what utter contempt they held him, Mezhenétsky, the hero of the Revolution, who had sacrificed twelve years of his life to the cause.

And in Mezhenétsky’s heart there arose such dreadful hatred as he had never experienced before⁠—hatred of everybody and everything⁠—of all this senseless world in which only people who are like animals can live⁠—people such as the old man with his “Lamb,” and semi-animal hangmen and gaolers, and insolent, self-assured, stillborn dogmatists.

The warder on duty came in and led the women away to the women’s quarters. Mezhenétsky went to the other end of the corridor so as not to meet him. The warder came back and locked the cell of the new political prisoners, and suggested to Mezhenétsky that he should go back to his own. Mezhenétsky obeyed mechanically, but asked that his door should not be locked.

In his cell, Mezhenétsky lay down on the bunk with his face to the wall.

Was it possible that all his powers had been wasted: his energy, his strength of will, his genius (he did not consider anyone above him in mental qualities) wasted for nothing? He remembered the letter he had received quite lately, when already on his way to Siberia, from Svetlogoúb’s mother, reproaching him (“like a woman,” stupidly, as he thought) for having led her son to perdition by drawing him into the terrorist activity. When he received that letter he had only smiled contemptuously; what could that stupid woman understand of the aims that stood before him and Svetlogoúb? But now, when he recalled the letter and Svetlogoúb’s sweet, trusting, affectionate nature, he began to muse: first about Svetlogoúb, and then about himself. Could his whole life have been a mistake? He closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep, but was horrified to find that the state he had been in during his first month in the Petropávlof Fortress had again returned. Again he felt the pain in the crown of his head, again he saw faces with enormous mouths, shaggy and terrible, on a dark background, speckled with little stars; and again forms appeared before his open eyes. There was only this new about it: he saw a criminal with shaved head and grey trousers swinging before him, and by a sequence of ideas he began to look for a ventilator to which he could attach a rope. Intolerable hatred that demanded expression, burned in Mezhenétsky’s heart. He could not lie still, could not grow calm, and could not get rid of his thoughts.

“How?” he began to ask himself. “By cutting an artery? I might not succeed.⁠ ⁠… Hanging?⁠ ⁠… Of course! That’s the simplest!” He remembered that he had seen a bundle of logs tied together by a cord in the corridor. “Get up on the logs, or on a stool?⁠ ⁠… The watchman is pacing up and down the corridor, but he will fall asleep or go away.⁠ ⁠… I shall have to wait, and then take the rope and fasten it to the ventilator.”

Standing at his door, Mezhenétsky listened to the watchman’s steps, and now and then, when the latter was at the far end of the corridor, he looked out through the chink. But the watchman did not go away nor fall asleep, and still Mezhenétsky listened eagerly to the sound of his footsteps, and waited.

At the same time, in the cell where the sick old man lay in complete darkness but for a smoky lamp, amid the sleepy sounds of night⁠—breathing, groaning, snoring, coughing⁠—the greatest of life’s events was taking place. The old sectarian was dying; and to his spiritual vision was revealed all that he had so desired during his whole life. In the midst of dazzling light he saw the Lamb in the shape of a radiant youth, and a great multitude of people of all nations standing before him clothed in white; and they all rejoiced that there was no more evil on earth. All this was happening in his own soul and in the whole world, as the old man knew, and he was filled with a great joy and peace.

But the others in the cell knew nothing of it, and heard only the death-rattle in the old man’s throat; and his neighbour awoke and roused the others, and when the rattle ceased and the old man’s body grew cold, his fellow-inmates knocked at the door.

The watchman came in, and ten minutes later two convicts carried the lifeless body out of the cell and down to the mortuary. The watchman followed them out and locked the outside door after him. The corridor was left empty.

“Lock up, lock up!” thought Mezhenétsky, who from his door had followed all that went on. “You will not prevent me from escaping from all these horrors!”

Mezhenétsky no longer felt the inward terror that had hitherto oppressed him; he was absorbed by only one thought: the fear of being prevented from carrying out his intention.

With beating heart he went out, and reaching the logs, undid the cord that bound them together, and drew it from under the bundle; then, looking round at the outer door, he took the cord into his cell. There he got onto the stool, threw the cord over the ventilator, and, having tied the ends together, made a noose out of the double cord. It hung too low. He altered this and again made a noose, measured it round his neck, and anxiously listening and looking towards the door, again got onto the stool, put his head into the noose, adjusted it, kicked away the stool, and remained hanging.

It was only when making his morning round that the warder noticed Mezhenétsky standing, with his legs bent at the knees, beside the stool, which lay on its side.

He was taken down, and the prison inspector came running, and, hearing that Román was a physician, called him to give his aid to the strangled man.

All the usual remedies were administered to bring him back to life, but Mezhenétsky did not come to.

His body was carried down to the mortuary, and laid beside the body of the old sectarian.

1906.

Mine is a strange and wonderful lot! The chances are that there is not a single wretched beggar suffering under the luxury and oppression of the rich who feels anything like as keenly as I do either the injustice, the cruelty, and the horror of their oppression of and contempt for the poor; or the grinding humiliation and misery which befall the great majority of the workers, the real producers of all that makes life possible. I have felt this for a long time, and as the years have passed by the feeling has grown and grown, until recently it reached its climax. Although I feel all this so vividly, I still live on amid the depravity and sins of rich society; and I cannot leave it, because I have neither the knowledge nor the strength to do so. I cannot. I do not know how to change my life so that my physical needs⁠—food, sleep, clothing, my going to and fro⁠—may be satisfied without a sense of shame and wrongdoing in the position which I fill.

There was a time when I tried to change my position, which was not in harmony with my conscience; but the conditions created by the past, by my family and its claims upon me, were so complicated that they would not let me out of their grasp, or rather, I did not know how to free myself. I had not the strength. Now that I am over eighty and have become feeble, I have given up trying to free myself; and, strange to say, as my feebleness increases I realise more and more strongly the wrongfulness of my position, and it grows more and more intolerable to me.

It has occurred to me that I do not occupy this position for nothing: that Providence intended that I should lay bare the truth of my feelings, so that I might atone for all that causes my suffering, and might perhaps open the eyes of those⁠—or at least of some of those⁠—who are still blind to what I see so clearly, and thus might lighten the burden of that vast majority who, under existing conditions, are subjected to bodily and spiritual suffering by those who deceive them and also deceive themselves. Indeed, it may be that the position which I occupy gives me special facilities for revealing the artificial and criminal relations which exist between men⁠—for telling the whole truth in regard to that position without confusing the issue by attempting to vindicate myself, and without rousing the envy of the rich and feelings of oppression in the hearts of the poor and downtrodden. I am so placed that I not only have no desire to vindicate myself; but, on the contrary, I find it necessary to make an effort lest I should exaggerate the wickedness of the great among whom I live, of whose society I am ashamed, whose attitude towards their fellow-men I detest with my whole soul, though I find it impossible to separate my lot from theirs. But I must also avoid the error of those democrats and others who, in defending the oppressed and the enslaved, do not see their failings and mistakes, and who do not make sufficient allowance for the difficulties created, the mistakes inherited from the past, which in a degree lessens the responsibility of the upper classes.

Free from desire for self-vindication, free from fear of an emancipated people, free from that envy and hatred which the oppressed feel for their oppressors, I am in the best possible position to see the truth and to tell it. Perhaps that is why Providence placed me in such a position. I will do my best to turn it to account.

Alexander Ivanovich Volgin, a bachelor and a clerk in a Moscow bank at a salary of eight thousand roubles a year, a man much respected in his own set, was staying in a country-house. His host was a wealthy landowner, owning some twenty-five hundred acres, and had married his guest’s cousin. Volgin, tired after an evening spent in playing vint327 for small stakes with members of the family, went to his room and placed his watch, silver cigarette-case, pocketbook, big leather purse, and pocket-brush and comb on a small table covered with a white cloth, and then, taking off his coat, waistcoat, shirt, trousers, and underclothes, his silk socks and English boots, put on his nightshirt and dressing-gown. His watch pointed to midnight. Volgin smoked a cigarette, lay on his face for about five minutes reviewing the day’s impressions; then, blowing out his candle, he turned over on his side and fell asleep about one o’clock, in spite of a good deal of restlessness. Awaking next morning at eight he put on his slippers and dressing-gown, and rang the bell.

The old butler, Stephen, the father of a family and the grandfather of six grandchildren, who had served in that house for thirty years, entered the room hurriedly, with bent legs, carrying in the newly blackened boots which Volgin had taken off the night before, a well-brushed suit, and a clean shirt. The guest thanked him, and then asked what the weather was like (the blinds were drawn so that the sun should not prevent anyone from sleeping till eleven o’clock if he were so inclined), and whether his hosts had slept well. He glanced at his watch⁠—it was still early⁠—and began to wash and dress. His water was ready, and everything on the washing-stand and dressing-table was ready for use and properly laid out⁠—his soap, his tooth and hair brushes, his nail scissors and files. He washed his hands and face in a leisurely fashion, cleaned and manicured his nails, pushed back the skin with the towel, and sponged his stout white body from head to foot. Then he began to brush his hair. Standing in front of the mirror, he first brushed his curly beard, which was beginning to turn grey, with two English brushes, parting it down the middle. Then he combed his hair, which was already showing signs of getting thin, with a large tortoiseshell comb. Putting on his underlinen, his socks, his boots, his trousers⁠—which were held up by elegant braces⁠—and his waistcoat, he sat down coatless in an easy chair to rest after dressing, lit a cigarette, and began to think where he should go for a walk that morning⁠—to the park or to Littleports (what a funny name for a wood!). He thought he would go to Littleports. Then he must answer Simon Nicholaevich’s letter; but there was time enough for that. Getting up with an air of resolution, he took out his watch. It was already five minutes to nine. He put his watch into his waistcoat pocket, and his purse⁠—with all that was left of the hundred and eighty roubles he had taken for his journey, and for the incidental expenses of his fortnight’s stay with his cousin⁠—and then he placed into his trouser pocket his cigarette-case and electric cigarette-lighter, and two clean handkerchiefs into his coat pockets, and went out of the room, leaving as usual the mess and confusion which he had made to be cleared up by Stephen, an old man of over fifty. Stephen expected Volgin to “remunerate” him, as he said, being so accustomed to the work that he did not feel the slightest repugnance for it. Glancing at a mirror, and feeling satisfied with his appearance, Volgin went into the dining-room.

There, thanks to the efforts of the housekeeper, the footman, and under-butler⁠—the latter had risen at dawn in order to run home to sharpen his son’s scythe⁠—breakfast was ready. On a spotless white cloth stood a boiling, shiny, silver samovar (at least it looked like silver), a coffeepot, hot milk, cream, butter, and all sorts of fancy white bread and biscuits. The only persons at table were the second son of the house, his tutor (a student), and the secretary. The host, who was an active member of the Zemstvo and a great farmer, had already left the house, having gone at eight o’clock to attend to his work. Volgin, while drinking his coffee, talked to the student and the secretary about the weather, and yesterday’s vint, and discussed Theodorite’s peculiar behaviour the night before, as he had been very rude to his father without the slightest cause. Theodorite was the grown-up son of the house, and a ne’er-do-well. His name was Theodore, but someone had once called him Theodorite either as a joke or to tease him; and, as it seemed funny, the name stuck to him, although his doings were no longer in the least amusing. So it was now. He had been to the university, but left it in his second year, and joined a regiment of horse guards; but he gave that up also, and was now living in the country, doing nothing, finding fault, and feeling discontented with everything. Theodorite was still in bed: so were the other members of the household⁠—Anna Mikhailovna, its mistress; her sister, the widow of a general; and a landscape painter who lived with the family.

Volgin took his panama hat from the hall table (it had cost twenty roubles) and his cane with its carved ivory handle, and went out. Crossing the veranda, gay with flowers, he walked through the flower garden, in the centre of which was a raised round bed, with rings of red, white, and blue flowers, and the initials of the mistress of the house done in carpet bedding in the centre. Leaving the flower garden Volgin entered the avenue of lime trees, hundreds of years old, which peasant girls were tidying and sweeping with spades and brooms. The gardener was busy measuring, and a boy was bringing something in a cart. Passing these Volgin went into the park of at least a hundred and twenty-five acres, filled with fine old trees, and intersected by a network of well-kept walks. Smoking as he strolled Volgin took his favourite path past the summerhouse into the fields beyond. It was pleasant in the park, but it was still nicer in the fields. On the right some women who were digging potatoes formed a mass of bright red and white colour; on the left were wheat fields, meadows, and grazing cattle; and in the foreground, slightly to the right, were the dark, dark oaks of Littleports. Volgin took a deep breath, and felt glad that he was alive, especially here in his cousin’s home, where he was so thoroughly enjoying the rest from his work at the bank.

“Lucky people to live in the country,” he thought. “True, what with his farming and his Zemstvo, the owner of the estate has very little peace even in the country, but that is his own lookout.” Volgin shook his head, lit another cigarette, and, stepping out firmly with his powerful feet clad in his thick English boots, began to think of the heavy winter’s work in the bank that was in front of him. “I shall be there every day from ten to two, sometimes even till five. And the board meetings.⁠ ⁠… And private interviews with clients.⁠ ⁠… Then the Duma. Whereas here.⁠ ⁠… It is delightful. It may be a little dull, but it is not for long.” He smiled. After a stroll in Littleports he turned back, going straight across a fallow field which was being ploughed. A herd of cows, calves, sheep, and pigs, which belonged to the village community, was grazing there. The shortest way to the park was to pass through the herd. He frightened the sheep, which ran away one after another, and were followed by the pigs, of which two little ones stared solemnly at him. The shepherd boy called to the sheep and cracked his whip. “How far behind Europe we are,” thought Volgin, recalling his frequent holidays abroad. “You would not find a single cow like that anywhere in Europe.” Then, wanting to find out where the path which branched off from the one he was on led to and who was the owner of the herd, he called to the boy.

“Whose herd is it?”

The boy was so filled with wonder, verging on terror, when he gazed at the hat, the well-brushed beard, and above all the gold-rimmed eyeglasses, that he could not reply at once. When Volgin repeated his question the boy pulled himself together, and said, “Ours.” “But whose is ‘ours’?” said Volgin, shaking his head and smiling. The boy was wearing shoes of plaited birch bark, bands of linen round his legs, a dirty, unbleached shirt ragged at the shoulder, and a cap the peak of which had been torn.

“Whose is ‘ours’?”

“The Pirogov village herd.”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you read?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Didn’t you go to school?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Couldn’t you learn to read?”

“No.”

“Where does that path lead?”

The boy told him, and Volgin went on towards the house, thinking how he would chaff Nicholas Petrovich about the deplorable condition of the village schools in spite of all his efforts.

On approaching the house Volgin looked at his watch, and saw that it was already past eleven. He remembered that Nicholas Petrovich was going to drive to the nearest town, and that he had meant to give him a letter to post to Moscow; but the letter was not written. The letter was a very important one to a friend, asking him to bid for him for a picture of the Madonna which was to be offered for sale at an auction. As he reached the house he saw at the door four big, well-fed, well-groomed, thoroughbred horses harnessed to a carriage, the black lacquer of which glistened in the sun. The coachman was seated on the box in a kaftan, with a silver belt, and the horses were jingling their silver bells from time to time.

A bareheaded, barefooted peasant in a ragged kaftan stood at the front door. He bowed. Volgin asked what he wanted.

“I have come to see Nicholas Petrovich.”

“What about?”

“Because I am in distress⁠—my horse has died.”

Volgin began to question him. The peasant told him how he was situated. He had five children, and this had been his only horse. Now it was gone. He wept.

“What are you going to do?”

“To beg.” And he knelt down, and remained kneeling in spite of Volgin’s expostulations.

“What is your name?”

“Mitri Sudarikov,” answered the peasant, still kneeling.

Volgin took three roubles from his purse and gave them to the peasant, who showed his gratitude by touching the ground with his forehead, and then went into the house. His host was standing in the hall.

“Where is your letter?” he asked, approaching Volgin; “I am just off.”

“I’m awfully sorry, I’ll write it this minute, if you will let me. I forgot all about it. It’s so pleasant here that one can forget anything.”

“All right, but do be quick. The horses have already been standing a quarter of an hour, and the flies are biting viciously. Can you wait, Arsenty?” he asked the coachman.

“Why not?” said the coachman, thinking to himself, “why do they order the horses when they aren’t ready? The rush the grooms and I had⁠—just to stand here and feed the flies.”

“Directly, directly,” Volgin went towards his room, but turned back to ask Nicholas Petrovich about the begging peasant.

“Did you see him?⁠—He’s a drunkard, but still he is to be pitied. Do be quick!”

Volgin got out his case, with all the requisites for writing, wrote the letter, made out a cheque for a hundred and eighty roubles, and, sealing down the envelope, took it to Nicholas Petrovich.

“Goodbye.”

Volgin read the newspapers till luncheon. He only read the Liberal papers: The Russian Gazette, Speech, sometimes The Russian Word⁠—but he would not touch The New Times, to which his host subscribed.

While he was scanning at his ease the political news, the Tsar’s doings, the doings of President, and ministers and decisions in the Duma, and was just about to pass on to the general news, theatres, science, murders and cholera, he heard the luncheon bell ring.

Thanks to the efforts of upwards of ten human beings⁠—counting laundresses, gardeners, cooks, kitchen-maids, butlers and footmen⁠—the table was sumptuously laid for eight, with silver waterjugs, decanters, kvass, wine, mineral waters, cut glass, and fine table linen, while two menservants were continually hurrying to and fro, bringing in and serving, and then clearing away the hors d’oeuvre and the various hot and cold courses.

The hostess talked incessantly about everything that she had been doing, thinking, and saying; and she evidently considered that everything that she thought, said, or did was perfect, and that it would please everyone except those who were fools. Volgin felt and knew that everything she said was stupid, but it would never do to let it be seen, and so he kept up the conversation. Theodorite was glum and silent; the student occasionally exchanged a few words with the widow. Now and again there was a pause in the conversation, and then Theodorite interposed, and everyone became miserably depressed. At such moments the hostess ordered some dish that had not been served, and the footman hurried off to the kitchen, or to the housekeeper, and hurried back again. Nobody felt inclined either to talk or to eat. But they all forced themselves to eat and to talk, and so luncheon went on.

The peasant who had been begging because his horse had died was named Mitri Sudarikov. He had spent the whole day before he went to the squire over his dead horse. First of all he went to the knacker, Sanin, who lived in a village near. The knacker was out, but he waited for him, and it was dinnertime when he had finished bargaining over the price of the skin. Then he borrowed a neighbour’s horse to take his own to a field to be buried, as it is forbidden to bury dead animals near a village. Adrian would not lend his horse because he was getting in his potatoes, but Stephen took pity on Mitri and gave way to his persuasion. He even lent a hand in lifting the dead horse into the cart. Mitri tore off the shoes from the forelegs and gave them to his wife. One was broken, but the other one was whole. While he was digging the grave with a spade which was very blunt, the knacker appeared and took off the skin; and the carcass was then thrown into the hole and covered up. Mitri felt tired, and went into Matrena’s hut, where he drank half a bottle of vodka with Sanin to console himself. Then he went home, quarrelled with his wife, and lay down to sleep on the hay. He did not undress, but slept just as he was, with a ragged coat for a coverlet. His wife was in the hut with the girls⁠—there were four of them, and the youngest was only five weeks old. Mitri woke up before dawn as usual. He groaned as the memory of the day before broke in upon him⁠—how the horse had struggled and struggled, and then fallen down. Now there was no horse, and all he had was the price of the skin, four roubles and eighty kopecks. Getting up he arranged the linen bands on his legs, and went through the yard into the hut. His wife was putting straw into the stove with one hand, with the other she was holding a baby girl to her breast, which was hanging out of her dirty chemise.

Mitri crossed himself three times, turning towards the corner in which the icons hung, and repeated some utterly meaningless words, which he called prayers, to the Trinity and the Virgin, the Creed and our Father.

“Isn’t there any water?”

“The girl’s gone for it. I’ve got some tea. Will you go up to the squire?”

“Yes, I’d better.” The smoke from the stove made him cough. He took a rag off the wooden bench and went into the porch. The girl had just come back with the water. Mitri filled his mouth with water from the pail and squirted it out on his hands, took some more in his mouth to wash his face, dried himself with the rag, then parted and smoothed his curly hair with his fingers and went out. A little girl of about ten, with nothing on but a dirty shirt, came towards him. “Good morning, Uncle Mitri,” she said; “you are to come and thrash.” “All right, I’ll come,” replied Mitri. He understood that he was expected to return the help given the week before by Kumushkir, a man as poor as he was himself, when he was thrashing his own corn with a horse-driven machine.

“Tell them I’ll come⁠—I’ll come at lunch time. I’ve got to go to Ugrumi.” Mitri went back to the hut, and changing his birch-bark shoes and the linen bands on his legs, started off to see the squire. After he had got three roubles from Volgin, and the same sum from Nicholas Petrovich, he returned to his house, gave the money to his wife, and went to his neighbour’s. The thrashing machine was humming, and the driver was shouting. The lean horses were going slowly round him, straining at their traces. The driver was shouting to them in a monotone, “Now, there, my dears.” Some women were unbinding sheaves, others were raking up the scattered straw and ears, and others again were gathering great armfuls of corn and handing them to the men to feed the machine. The work was in full swing. In the kitchen garden, which Mitri had to pass, a girl, clad only in a long shirt, was digging potatoes which she put into a basket.

“Where’s your grandfather?” asked Mitri. “He’s in the barn.” Mitri went to the barn and set to work at once. The old man of eighty knew of Mitri’s trouble. After greeting him, he gave him his place to feed the machine.

Mitri took off his ragged coat, laid it out of the way near the fence, and then began to work vigorously, raking the corn together and throwing it into the machine. The work went on without interruption until the dinner-hour. The cocks had crowed two or three times, but no one paid any attention to them; not because the workers did not believe them, but because they were scarcely heard for the noise of the work and the talk about it. At last the whistle of the squire’s steam thrasher sounded three miles away, and then the owner came into the barn. He was a straight old man of eighty. “It’s time to stop,” he said; “it’s dinnertime.” Those at work seemed to redouble their efforts. In a moment the straw was cleared away; the grain that had been thrashed was separated from the chaff and brought in, and then the workers went into the hut.

The hut was smoke-begrimed, as its stove had no chimney, but it had been tidied up, and benches stood round the table, making room for all those who had been working, of whom there were nine, not counting the owners. Bread, soup, boiled potatoes, and kvass were placed on the table.

An old one-armed beggar, with a bag slung over his shoulder, came in with a crutch during the meal.

“Peace be to this house. A good appetite to you. For Christ’s sake give me something.”

“God will give it to you,” said the mistress, already an old woman, and the daughter-in-law of the master. “Don’t be angry with us.” An old man, who was still standing near the door, said, “Give him some bread, Martha. How can you?” “I am only wondering whether we shall have enough.” “Oh, it is wrong, Martha. God tells us to help the poor. Cut him a slice.”

Martha obeyed. The beggar went away. The man in charge of the thrashing-machine got up, said grace, thanked his hosts, and went away to rest.

Mitri did not lie down, but ran to the shop to buy some tobacco. He was longing for a smoke. While he smoked he chatted to a man from Demensk, asking the price of cattle, as he saw that he would not be able to manage without selling a cow. When he returned to the others, they were already back at work again; and so it went on till the evening.

Among these downtrodden, duped, and defrauded men, who are becoming demoralised by overwork, and being gradually done to death by underfeeding, there are men living who consider themselves Christians; and others so enlightened that they feel no further need for Christianity or for any religion, so superior do they appear in their own esteem. And yet their hideous, lazy lives are supported by the degrading, excessive labour of these slaves, not to mention the labour of millions of other slaves, toiling in factories to produce samovars, silver, carriages, machines, and the like for their use. They live among these horrors, seeing them and yet not seeing them, although often kind at heart⁠—old men and women, young men and maidens, mothers and children⁠—poor children who are being vitiated and trained into moral blindness.

Here is a bachelor grown old, the owner of thousands of acres, who has lived a life of idleness, greed, and overindulgence, who reads The New Times, and is astonished that the government can be so unwise as to permit Jews to enter the university. There is his guest, formerly the governor of a province, now a senator with a big salary, who reads with satisfaction that a congress of lawyers has passed a resolution in favor of capital punishment. Their political enemy, N. P., reads a liberal paper, and cannot understand the blindness of the government in allowing the union of Russian men to exist.

Here is a kind, gentle mother of a little girl reading a story to her about Fox, a dog that lamed some rabbits. And here is this little girl. During her walks she sees other children, barefooted, hungry, hunting for green apples that have fallen from the trees; and, so accustomed is she to the sight, that these children do not seem to her to be children such as she is, but only part of the usual surroundings⁠—the familiar landscape.

Why is this?

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

Mother

Boy

• Karlchen Schmidt, nine years
• Petia Orlov, ten years
• Masha Orlov, eight years

Karlchen

Petia

Masha

Petia

Karlchen

Masha

Petia

Masha

Petia

Karlchen

Petia

Masha

Petia

Masha

Petia

Masha

Petia

Masha

Karlchen

Masha

Petia

• Gavrila, a soldier in the reserve, a servant
• Misha, his master’s young son

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

Misha

Gavrila

• The Bailiff
• Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

Grushka

Bailiff

• Mitia, a boy of ten
• Iliusha, a boy of nine
• Sonia, a girl of six

Mitia

Iliusha

Mitia

Sonia

Iliusha

Mitia

Iliusha

Sonia

Mitia

Sonia

Iliusha

Sonia

Misha

An Old Woman

Misha

Old Woman

Misha

Old Woman

Masha

Old Woman

Misha

Masha

Misha

Masha

Misha

Masha

Misha

Masha

Misha

• The Father
• Katia, a girl of nine
• Fedia, a boy of eight

Katia

Father

Katia

Father

Fedia

Father

Fedia

Father

Fedia

Father

Fedia

Father

Fedia

Father

Fedia

Father

Fedia

Father

Fedia

Father

Katia

Father

An evening in the autumn.

Pavlushka

Makarka

Pavlushka

Makarka

Marfutka

Makarka

Pavlushka

Marfutka

Pavlushka

Marfutka

Pavlushka

Makarka

Pavlushka

Marfutka

Makarka

Pavlushka

Makarka

Schoolmaster

Makarka

Schoolmaster

Makarka

Schoolmaster

Makarka

Schoolmaster

• Peter Petrovich, a professor
• Maria Ivanovna, his wife Sewing.
• Fedia, their son, a boy of nine Listening to his father’s conversation.
• Ivan Vasilievich, counsel for the prosecution in the court martial

Ivan Vasilievich

Peter Petrovich

Ivan Vasilievich

Peter Petrovich

Ivan Vasilievich

Peter Petrovich

Ivan Vasilievich

Peter Petrovich

Ivan Vasilievich

Peter Petrovich

Ivan Vasilievich

Peter Petrovich

Fedia

Maria Ivanovna

Fedia

Maria Ivanovna

Fedia

Peter Petrovich

Fedia

Peter Petrovich

Fedia

Peter Petrovich

Fedia

Peter Petrovich

Fedia

Peter Petrovich

• Semka, a boy of thirteen
• Aksutka, a girl of ten
• Palashka, a girl of nine
• Vanka, a boy of eight

Aksutka

Vanka

Palashka

Vanka

Aksutka

Semka

Aksutka

Semka

Mitka

Semka

Mitka

Semka

Vanka

Aksutka

Vanka

Semka

Vanka

Semka

Aksutka

Semka

Aksutka

Vanka

Semka

Vanka

Semka

Palashka

Aksutka

Palashka

Aksutka

Palashka

Semka

Palashka

Mitka

Semka

The Landlord, his Wife, their Daughter and their son Vasia, six years old, are having tea on the veranda. The grown-up children are playing tennis. A Young Beggar comes up to the veranda.

Landlord

Beggar

Landlord

Beggar

Landlord

Beggar

Landlord

Beggar

Landlord

His Wife

The Wife

Vasia

Vasia

Landlord

Landlord

His Wife

Landlord

Landlord

Beggar

Landlord

Beggar

Vasia

Landlord

Vasia

Landlord

Vasia

Father

Vasia

Mother

Vasia

Father

Vasia

Father

Vasia

Father

Mother

• Masha, a girl of ten
• Vania, a boy of eight

Masha

Vania

Masha

Vania

Masha

Vania

Masha