The Black Monk, and Other Stories (2025)

AND OTHER STORIES

By

ANTON TCHEKHOFF

Translated from the Russian by

R. E. C. Long

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

1915

PREFACE

Anton Tchekhoff, the writer of the stories and sketches heretranslated, although hardly known in this country, and but littlebetter known on the western continent of Europe, has during the lastfifteen years been regarded as the most talented of the youngergeneration of Russian writers. Even the remarkable popularity attainedduring the last few years by Maxim Gorky has not eclipsed his fame,though it has probably done much to prevent the recognition of histalents abroad. Tchekhoff's stories lack the striking incidents andlurid colouring of the younger writer's, and thus, while they appealmore strongly to the cultivated Russian, they are devoid of the moreobvious qualities that attract the translator and the public whichread translations. Though they have gone into numberless editions inRussia, they are almost unknown abroad, being, in fact, representedonly by a few scattered translations and small volumes published inFrance and Germany, and by a few critical articles in the reviews ofthose countries. In England, Tchekhoff is only a name to most of thoseinterested in Eastern literature, and not even a name to the generalpublic.

Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhoff was born in 1860, spent his infancy in SouthRussia, and was educated in the Medical Faculty of Moscow University.Although a doctor by profession, and actually practising for some yearsas a municipal medical officer, he began his literary career as a storywriter before completing his professional education, contributing, whena student, sketches to the weekly comic journals, and feuilletons tothe St. Petersburg newspapers. Tchekhoff's early stories turn largelyupon domestic misunderstandings; they are brief, avowedly humorous, andeven farcical. They attracted early attention by their irresponsiblegaiety, seldom untinged with a certain bitterness. The Steppe, apanorama of travel through the great plains of South Russia, publishedserially in the now extinct Sieverni Viestnik, was the first of hisproductions of sustained merit. It was followed by a series of storiesand sketches and one volume of dramas, which have, in the opinionof Russian critics, established the writer on a level with the bestnative fiction writers, and on a much higher level than any of hiscontemporaries.

Tchekhoff in his manner of thought is essentially a Russian; as anartist essentially Western, having perhaps only one thing in commonwith the writers of his own country. Russian novelists, with fewexceptions—Turgenieff, a man of Western training and sympathies,was one—have commonly lacked the instinct of coherency, the lack ofwhich in fiction is redeemed only by genius. The novels of Dostoyeffskyand Tolstoy are notoriously defective in this respect. Tchekhoff andGorky suffer from the same deficiency. Unlike Gorky, Tchekhoff hasnever essayed the long novel; and even his longer short stories, oneof which is included in this volume, are redeemed from failure chieflyby their humour and close observation of Russian life. With thisexception, Tchekhoff has little in common with other Russian writers.He is more objective, less diffuse, less inspiring, and less human. Hiscompatriots, Count Tolstoy among them, compare him with Maupassant Hismethod of treatment presents many parallels; he has the same brevity,the same remorselessness, the same insistence upon the significantlylittle.

But in his teaching, if teaching it can be called, Tchekhoff isthoroughly Russian. A French critic[1] has lately reviewed hisstories in a chapter called L'impuissance de vivre, and thisphrase summarises admirably what Tchekhoff has to say. The politicalcondition of modern Russia involves the repression of all intellectand initiative, or, at best, their diversion into unproductiveofficial channels; hence, the distaste for life. and intellectualstagnation which, represented here in "Ward No. 6," run through allTchekhoff's longer stories, and particularly through his dramas, mostof which end in disillusion and suicide. Russian life presents itselfto Tchekhoff as the unprofitable struggle of the exceptional fewagainst the trivial and insignificant many. His pages are peopled withpsychopaths, degenerates of genius and virtue, who succumb in feeblerevolt against the baseness and banality of life, and are quite unfitto combat the healthy, rude, but unintelligent forces around them.Kovrin, Likharyóff, and Doctor Andréi Yéfimitch, three heroes in thiscollection, are characteristic of Tchekhoff's outlook. All aspiringmen, he says, are predestined martyrs; only the base achieve immunityfrom ruin: and as martyrdom is the exception, not the rule, it resultsthat Tchekhoff's ordinary men, and the secondary characters in mostof his stories, are insignificant and mean. The life depicted is initself uninteresting; its colour is grey, its keynote tedium, its onlyhumour the humour of the satirist, not of the sympathiser, and its onlytragedy, failure. Tchekhoff is essentially an objective writer, andthis gives him an undue detachment from the life which he describes;he never points a moral, delays over an explanation, or shrinks fromthe incompleteness which, truthful to life, is often unsatisfactoryin art. But his attitude towards life is not the less unmistakablebecause never openly expressed; pessimism, inspired by fatalism anddenial of the will, but tempered by humour and apathy, is its note.That note appears perhaps less in this volume than it would in a morerepresentative collection of Tchekhoff's writings. But in choosingthese stories from among more than a hundred, I have been guided notmerely by what was best, but also by what seemed most likely to beunderstood by a public unfamiliar with Russian manners and Russianthought.

The stories "The Black Monk," "In Exile," "Rothschild's Fiddle," "AFather," and "At the Manor," have been translated from the volumePoviesti i Razskazni, St. Petersburg, 1898; "A Family Council," fromRazskazni, 12th edition, St. Petersburg, 1898; "Ward No. 6," fromPalata No. Shestoi, 6th edition, St. Petersburg, 1898; "On the Way,""At Home," "Two Tragedies," and "An Event," from V Sumerkakh, 13thedition, St. Petersburg, 1899; and "Sleepyhead," from Khmuriye Liudi,8th edition, St. Petersburg, 1898. "In Exile" was published in theFortnightly Review in September, 1903, and is reprinted here with theEditor's permission.

R. E. C. L.

[1] Ivan Strannik. La Pensée Russe Contemporaine. Paris,Librairie Armand Colin, 1903.

THE BLACK MONK

Andrei Vasilyevitch Kovrin, Magister, had worn himself out, andunsettled his nerves. He made no effort to undergo regular treatment;but only incidentally, over a bottle of wine, spoke to his friend thedoctor; and his friend the doctor advised him to spend all the springand summer in the country. And in the nick of time came a long letterfrom Tánya Pesótsky, asking him to come and stay with her father atBorisovka. He decided to go.

But first (it was in April) he travelled to his own estate, to hisnative Kovrinka, and spent three weeks in solitude; and only when thefine weather came drove across the country to his former guardian andsecond parent, Pesótsky, the celebrated Russian horti-culturist. FromKovrinka to Borisovka, the home of the Pesótskys, was a distance ofsome seventy versts, and in the easy, springed calêche the drive alongthe roads, soft in springtime, promised real enjoyment.

The house at Borisovka was, large, faced with a colonnade, and adornedwith figures of lions with the plaster falling off. At the door stooda servant in livery. The old park, gloomy and severe, laid out inEnglish fashion, stretched for nearly a verst from the house down tothe river, and ended there in a steep clay bank covered with pineswhose bare roots resembled shaggy paws. Below sparkled a desertedstream; overhead the snipe circled about with melancholy cries—all, inshort, seemed to invite a visitor to sit down and write a ballad. Butthe gardens and orchards, which together with the seed-plots occupiedsome eighty acres, inspired very different feelings. Even in the worstof weather they were bright and joy-inspiring. Such wonderful roses,lilies, camelias, such tulips, such a host of flowering plants of everypossible kind and colour, from staring white to sooty black,—such awealth of blossoms Kovrin had never seen before. The spring was onlybeginning, and the greatest rareties were hidden under glass; butalready enough bloomed in the alleys and beds to make up an empire ofdelicate shades. And most charming of all was it in the early hours ofmorning, when dewdrops glistened on every petal and leaf.

In childhood the decorative part of the garden, called contemptuouslyby Pesótsky "the rubbish," had produced on Kovrin a fabulousimpression. What miracles of art, what studied monstrosities, whatmonkeries of nature! Espaliers of fruit trees, a pear tree shaped likea pyramidal poplar, globular oaks and lindens, apple-tree houses,arches, monograms, candelabra—even the date 1862 in plum trees, tocommemorate the year in which Pesótsky first engaged in the art ofgardening. There were stately, symmetrical trees, with trunks erectas those of palms, which after examination proved to be gooseberry orcurrant trees. But what most of all enlivened the garden and gave itits joyous tone was the constant movement of Pesótsky's gardeners.From early morning to late at night, by the trees, by the bushes, inthe alleys, and on the beds swarmed men as busy as ants, with barrows,spades, and watering-pots.

Kovrin arrived at Borisovka at nine o'clock. He found Tánya and herfather in great alarm. The clear starlight night foretold frost, andthe head gardener, Ivan Karlitch, had gone to town, so that there wasno one who could be relied upon. At supper they spoke only of theimpending frost; and it was decided that Tánya should not go to bed atall, but should inspect the gardens at one o'clock and see if all werein order, while Yegor Semiónovitch should rise at three o'clock, oreven earlier.

Kovrin sat with Tánya all the evening, and after midnight accompaniedher to the garden. The air already smelt strongly of burning. In thegreat orchard, called "the commercial," which every year brought YegorSemiónovitch thousands of roubles profit, there already crept alongthe ground the thick, black, sour smoke which was to clothe the youngleaves and save the plants. The trees were marshalled like chessmen instraight rows—like ranks of soldiers; and this pedantic regularity,together with the uniformity of height, made the garden seem monotonousand even tiresome. Kovrin and Tánya walked up and down the alleys,and watched the fires of dung, straw, and litter; but seldom met theworkmen, who wandered in the smoke like shadows. Only the cherry andplum trees and a few apple trees were in blossom, but the whole gardenwas shrouded in smoke, and it was only when they reached the seed-plotsthat Kovrin was able to breathe.

"I remember when I was a child sneezing from the smoke," he said,shrugging his shoulders, "but to this day I cannot understand how smokesaves plants from the frost."

"Smoke is a good substitute when there are no clouds," answered Tánya.

"But what do you want the clouds for?"

"In dull and cloudy weather we have no morning frosts."

"Is that so?" said Kovrin.

He laughed and took Tánya by the hand. Her broad, very serious, chilledface; her thick, black eyebrows; the stiff collar on her jacket whichprevented her from moving her head freely; her dress tucked up out ofthe dew; and her whole figure, erect and slight, pleased him.

"Heavens! how she has grown!" he said to himself. "When I was herelast time, five years ago, you were quite a child. You were thin,long-legged, and untidy, and wore a short dress, and I used to teaseyou. What a change in five years!"

"Yes, five years!" sighed Tánya. "A lot of things have happened sincethen. Tell me, Andrei, honestly," she said, looking merrily into hisface, "do you feel that you have got out of touch with us? But why doI ask? You are a man, you live your own interesting life, you.... Someestrangement is natural. But whether that is so or not, Andrusha, Iwant you now to look on us as your own. We have a right to that."

"I do, already, Tánya."

"Your word of honour?"

"My word of honour."

"You were surprised that we had so many of your photographs. But surelyyou know how my father adores you, worships you. You are a scholar, andnot an ordinary man; you have built up a brilliant career, and he isfirmly convinced that you turned out a success because he educated you.I do not interfere with his delusion. Let him believe it!"

Already dawn. The sky paled, and the foliage and clouds of smoke beganto show themselves more clearly. The nightingale sang, and from thefields came the cry of quails.

"It is time for bed!" said Tánya. "It is cold too." She took Kovrinby the hand. "Thanks, Andrusha, for coming. We are cursed with mostuninteresting acquaintances, and not many even of them. With us it isalways garden, garden, garden, and nothing else. Trunks, timbers," shelaughed, "pippins, rennets, budding, pruning, grafting.... All ourlife goes into the garden, we never even dream of anything but applesand pears. Of course this is all very good and useful, but sometimes Icannot help wishing for change. I remember when you used to come andpay us visits, and when you came home for the holidays, how the wholehouse grew fresher and brighter, as if someone had taken the covers offthe furniture; I was then a very little girl, but I understood...."

Tánya spoke for a time, and spoke with feeling. Then suddenly it cameinto Kovrin's head that during the summer he might become attached tothis little, weak, talkative being, that he might get carried away,fall in love—in their position what was more probable and natural?The thought pleased him, amused him, and as he bent down to the kind,troubled face, he hummed to himself Pushkin's couplet:

"Oniégin; I will not conceal
That I love Tatyana madly."

By the time they reached the house Yegor Semiónovitch had risen.Kovrin felt no desire to sleep; he entered into conversation withthe old man, and returned with him to the garden. Yegor Semiónovitchwas tall, broad-shouldered, and fat. He suffered from shortness ofbreath, yet walked so quickly that it was difficult to keep up withhim. His expression was always troubled and hurried, and he seemed tobe thinking that if he were a single second late everything would bedestroyed.

"There, brother, is a mystery for you!" he began, stopping to recoverbreath. "On the surface of the ground, as you see, there is frost, butraise the thermometer a couple of yards on your stick, and it is quitewarm.... Why is that?"

"I confess I don't know," said Kovrin, laughing.

"No!... You can't know everything.... The biggest brain cannotcomprehend everything. You are still engaged with your philosophy?"

"Yes, ... I am studying psychology, and philosophy generally."

"And it doesn't bore you?"

"On the contrary, I couldn't live without it."

"Well, God grant ..." began Yegor Semiónovitch, smoothing his bigwhiskers thoughtfully. "Well, God grant ... I am very glad for yoursake, brother, very glad...."

Suddenly he began to listen, and making a terrible face, ran off thepath and soon vanished among the trees in a cloud of smoke.

"Who tethered this horse to the tree?" rang out a despairing voice."Which of you thieves and murderers dared to tether this horse to theapple tree? My God, my God! Ruined, ruined, spoiled, destroyed! Thegarden is ruined, the garden is destroyed! My God!"

When he returned to Kovrin his face bore an expression of injury andimpotence.

"What on earth can you do with these accursed people?" he asked in awhining voice, wringing his hands. "Stepka brought a manure cart herelast night and tethered the horse to an apple tree ... tied the reins,the idiot, so tight, that the bark is rubbed off in three places. Whatcan you do with men like this? I speak to him and he blinks his eyesand looks stupid. He ought to be hanged!"

When at last he calmed down, he embraced Kovrin and kissed him on thecheek.

"Well, God grant ... God grant!..." he stammered. "I am very, very gladthat you have come. I cannot say how glad. Thanks!"

Then, with the same anxious face, and walking with the same quick step,he went round the whole garden, showing his former ward the orangery,the hothouses, the sheds, and two beehives which he described as themiracle of the century.

As they walked about, the sun rose, lighting up the garden. It grewhot. When he thought of the long, bright day before him, Kovrinremembered that it was but the beginning of May, and that he had beforehim a whole summer of long, bright, and happy days; and suddenlythrough him pulsed the joyous, youthful feeling which he had felt whenas a child he played in this same garden. And in turn, he embraced theold man and kissed him tenderly. Touched by remembrances, the pair wentinto the house and drank tea out of the old china cups, with cream andrich biscuits; and these trifles again reminded Kovrin of his childhoodand youth. The splendid present and the awakening memories of the pastmingled, and a feeling of intense happiness filled his heart.

He waited until Tánya awoke, and having drunk coffee with her, walkedthrough the garden, and then went to his room and began to work. Heread attentively, making notes; and only lifted his eyes from his bookswhen he felt that he must look out of the window or at the fresh roses,still wet with dew, which stood in vases on his table. It seemed tohint that every little vein in his body trembled and pulsated with joy.

II

But in the country Kovrin continued to live the same nervous anduntranquil life as he had lived in town. He read much, wrote much,studied Italian; and when he went for walks, thought all the time ofreturning to work. He slept so little that he astonished the household;if by chance he slept in the daytime for half an hour, he could notsleep all the following night. Yet after these sleepless nights he feltactive and gay.

He talked much, drank wine, and smoked expensive cigars. Often, nearlyevery day, young girls from the neighbouring country-houses drove overto Borisovka, played the piano with Tánya, and sang. Sometimes thevisitor was a young man, also a neighbour, who played the violin well.Kovrin listened eagerly to their music and singing, but was exhaustedby it, so exhausted sometimes that his eyes closed involuntarily, andhis head drooped on his shoulder.

One evening after tea he sat upon the balcony, reading. In thedrawing-room Tánya—a soprano, one of her friends—a contralto,and the young violinist studied the well-known serenade of Braga.Kovrin listened to the words, but though they were Russian, could notunderstand their meaning. At last, laying down his book and listeningattentively, he understood. A girl with a disordered imagination heardby night in a garden some mysterious sounds, sounds so beautiful andstrange that she was forced to recognise their harmony and holiness,which to us mortals are incomprehensible, and therefore flew back toheaven. Kovrin's eyelids drooped. He rose, and in exhaustion walkedup and down the drawing-room, and then up and down the hall. When themusic ceased, he took Tánya by the hand and went out with her to thebalcony.

"All day—since early morning," he began, "my head has been taken upwith a strange legend. I cannot remember whether I read it, or where Iheard it, but the legend is very remarkable and not very coherent. Imay begin by saying that it is not very clear. A thousand years ago amonk, robed in black, wandered in the wilderness—somewhere in Syria orArabia ... Some miles away the fishermen saw another black monk movingslowly over the surface of the lake. The second monk was a mirage. Nowput out of your mind all the laws of optics, which legend, of course,does not recognise, and listen. From the first mirage was producedanother mirage, from the second a third, so that the image of theBlack Monk is eternally reflected from one stratum of the atmosphereto another. At one time it was seen in Africa, then in Spain, thenin India, then in the Far North. At last it issued from the limitsof the earth's atmosphere, but never came across conditions whichwould cause it to disappear. Maybe it is seen to-day in Mars or in theconstellation of the Southern Cross. Now the whole point, the veryessence of the legend, lies in the prediction that exactly a thousandyears after the monk went into the wilderness, the mirage will againbe cast into the atmosphere of the earth and show itself to the worldof men. This term of a thousand years, it appears, is now expiring....According to the legend we must expect the Black Monk to-day orto-morrow."

"It is a strange story," said Tánya, whom the legend did not please.

"But the most astonishing thing," laughed Kovrin, "is that I cannotremember how this legend came into my head. Did I read it? Did I hearit? Or can it be that I dreamed of the Black Monk? I cannot remember.But the legend interests me. All day long I thought of nothing else."

Releasing Tánya, who returned to her visitors, he went out of thehouse, and walked lost in thought beside the flower-beds. Already thesun was setting. The freshly watered flowers exhaled a damp, irritatingsmell. In the house the music had again begun, and from the distancethe violin produced the effect of a human voice. Straining his memoryin an attempt to recall where he had heard the legend, Kovrin walkedslowly across the park, and then, not noticing where he went, to theriver-bank.

By the path which ran down among the uncovered roots to the water'sedge Kovrin descended, frightening the snipe, and disturbing two ducks.On the dark pine trees glowed the rays of the setting sun, but onthe surface of the river darkness had already fallen. Kovrin crossedthe stream. Before him now lay a broad field covered with young rye.Neither human dwelling nor human soul was visible in the distance;and it seemed that the path must lead to the unexplored, enigmaticalregion in the west where the sun had already set—where still, vast andmajestic, flamed the afterglow.

"How open it is—how peaceful and free!" thought Kovrin, walkingalong the path. "It seems as if all the world is looking at me from ahiding-place and waiting for me to comprehend it."

A wave passed over the rye, and the light evening breeze blew softlyon his uncovered head. Yet a minute more and the breeze blew again,this time more strongly, the rye rustled, and from behind came thedull murmur of the pines. Kovrin stopped in amazement On the horizon,like a cyclone or waterspout, a great, black pillar rose up from earthto heaven. Its outlines were undefined; but from the first it mightbe seen that it was not standing still, but moving with inconceivablespeed towards Kovrin; and the nearer it came the smaller and smallerit grew. Involuntarily Kovrin rushed aside and made a path for it. Amonk in black clothing, with grey hair and black eyebrows, crossinghis hands upon his chest, was borne past. His bare feet were above theground. Having swept some twenty yards past Kovrin, he looked at him,nodded his head, and smiled kindly and at the same time slyly. His facewas pale and thin. When he had passed by Kovrin he again began to grow,flew across the river, struck inaudibly against the clay bank and pinetrees, and, passing through them, vanished like smoke.

"You see," stammered Kovrin, "after all, the legend was true!"

Making no attempt to explain this strange phenomenon; satisfied withthe fact that he had so closely and so plainly seen not only the blackclothing but even the face and eyes of the monk; agitated agreeably, hereturned home.

In the park and in the garden visitors were walking quietly; in thehouse the music continued. So he alone had seen the Black Monk. Hefelt a strong desire to tell what he had seen to Tánya and YegorSemiónovitch, but feared that they would regard it as a hallucination,and decided to keep his counsel. He laughed loudly, sang, danced amazurka, and felt in the best of spirits; and the guests and Tányanoticed upon his face a peculiar expression of ecstasy and inspiration,and found him very interesting.

III

When supper was over and the visitors had gone, he went to his ownroom, and lay on the sofa. He wished to think of the monk. But in a fewminutes Tánya entered.

"There, Andrusha, you can read father's articles ..." she said. "Theyare splendid articles. He writes very well."

"Magnificent!" said Yegor Semiónovitch, coming in after her, with aforced smile. "Don't listen to her, please!... Or read them only if youwant to go to sleep—they are a splendid soporific."

"In my opinion they are magnificent," said Tánya, deeply convinced."Read them, Andrusha, and persuade father to write more often. He couldwrite a whole treatise on gardening."

Yegor Semiónovitch laughed, blushed, and stammered out the conventionalphrases used by abashed authors. At last he gave in.

"If you must read them, read first these papers of Gauche's, and theRussian articles," he stammered, picking out the papers with tremblinghands. "Otherwise you won't understand them. Before you read my repliesyou must know what I am replying to. But it won't interest you ...stupid. And it's time for bed."

Tánya went out. Yegor Semiónovitch sat on the end of the sofa andsighed loudly.

"Akh, brother mine ..." he began after a long silence. As you see, mydear Magister, I write articles, and exhibit at shows, and get medalssometimes. ... Pesótsky, they say, has apples as big as your head....Pesótsky has made a fortune out of his gardens.... In one word:

"'Rich and glorious is Kotchubéi.'"

"But I should like to ask you what is going to be the end of all this?The gardens—there is no question of that—are splendid, they aremodels.... Not gardens at all, in short, but a whole institution ofhigh political importance, and a step towards a new era in Russianagriculture and Russian industry.... But for what purpose? Whatultimate object?"

"That question is easily answered."

"I do not mean in that sense. What I want to know is what will happenwith the garden when I die? As things are, it would not last withoutme a single month. The secret does not lie in the fact that the gardenis big and the workers many, but in the fact that I love the work—youunderstand? I love it, perhaps, more than I love myself. Just look atme! I work from morning to night. I do everything with my own hands.All grafting, all pruning, all planting—everything is done by me.When I am helped I feel jealous, and get irritated to the point ofrudeness. The whole secret is in love, in a sharp master's eye, in amaster's hands, and in the feeling when I drive over to a friend andsit down for half an hour, that I have left my heart behind me and amnot myself—all the time I am in dread that something has happened tothe garden. Now suppose I die to-morrow, who will replace all this? Whowill do the work? The head gardeners? The workmen? Why the whole burdenof my present worries is that my greatest enemy is not the hare or thebeetle or the frost, but the hands of the stranger."

"But Tánya?" said Kovrin, laughing. "Surely she is not more dangerousthan a hare?... She loves and understands the work."

"Yes, Tánya loves it and understands it. If after my death the gardenshould fall to her as mistress, then I could wish for nothing better.But suppose—which God forbid—she should marry!" Yegor Semiónovitchwhispered and look at Kovrin with frightened eyes. "That's the wholecrux. She might marry, there would be children, and there would be notime to attend to the garden. That is bad enough. But what I fear mostof all is that she may marry some spendthrift who is always in want ofmoney, who will lease the garden to tradesmen, and the whole thing willgo to the devil in the first year. In a business like this a woman, isthe scourge of God."

Yegor Semiónovitch sighed and was silent for a few minutes.

"Perhaps you may call it egoism. But I do not want Tánya to marry. I amafraid! You've seen that fop who comes along with a fiddle and makes anoise. I know Tánya would never marry him, yet I cannot bear the sightof him.... In short, brother, I am a character ... and I know it."

Yegor Semiónovitch rose and walked excitedly up and down the room. Itwas plain that he had something very serious to say, but could notbring himself to the point.

"I love you too sincerely not to talk to you frankly," he said,thrusting his hands into his pockets. "In all delicate questions Isay what I think, and dislike mystification. I tell you plainly,therefore, that you are the only man whom I should not be afraid ofTánya marrying. You are a clever man, you have a heart, and you wouldnot see my life's work ruined. And what is more, I love you as my ownson ... and am proud of you. So if you and Tánya were to end ... in asort of romance ... I should be very glad and very happy. I tell youthis straight to your face, without shame, as becomes an honest man."

Kovrin smiled. Yegor Semiónovitch opened the door, and was leaving theroom, but stopped suddenly on the threshold.

"And if you and Tánya had a son, I could make a horti-culturist out ofhim," he added. "But that is an idle fancy. Good night!"

Left alone, Kovrin settled himself comfortably, and took up his host'sarticles. The first was entitled "Intermediate Culture," the second "AFew Words in Reply to the Remarks of Mr. Z. about the Treatment of theSoil of a New Garden," the third "More about Grafting." The others weresimilar in scope. But all breathed restlessness and sickly irritation.Even a paper with the peaceful title of "Russian Apple Trees" exhaledirritability. Yegor Semiónovitch began with the words "Audi alterampartem," and ended it with "Sapienti sat"; and between these learnedquotations flowed a whole torrent of acid words directed against "thelearned ignorance of our patent horticulturists who observe nature fromtheir academic chairs," and against M. Gauche, "whose fame is foundedon the admiration of the profane and dilletanti" And finally Kovrincame across an uncalled-for and quite insincere expression of regretthat it is no longer legal to flog peasants who are caught stealingfruit and injuring trees.

"His is good work, wholesome and fascinating," thought Kovrin, "yet inthese pamphlets we have nothing but bad temper and war to the knife.I suppose it is the same everywhere; in all careers men of ideas arenervous, and victims of this kind of exalted sensitiveness. I supposeit must be so."

He thought of Tánya, so delighted with her father's articles, andthen of Yegor Semiónovitch. Tánya, small, pale, and slight, with hercollar-bone showing, with her widely-opened, her dark and clevereyes, which it seemed were always searching for something. And YegorSemiónovitch with his little, hurried steps. He thought again of Tánya,fond of talking, fond of argument, and always accompanying even themost insignificant phrases with mimicry and gesticulation. Nervous—shemust be nervous in the highest degree. Again Kovrin began to read,but he understood nothing, and threw down his books. The agreeableemotion with which he had danced the mazurka and listened to the musicstill held possession of him, and aroused a multitude of thoughts.It flashed upon him that if this strange, unnatural monk had beenseen by him alone, he must be ill, ill to the point of suffering fromhallucinations. The thought frightened him, but not for long.

He sat on the sofa, and held his head in his hands, curbing theinexplicable joy which filled his whole being; and then walked up anddown the room for a minute, and returned to his work. But the thoughtswhich he read in books no longer satisfied him. He longed for somethingvast, infinite, astonishing. Towards morning he undressed and wentunwillingly to bed; he felt that he had better rest. When at last heheard Yegor Semiónovitch going to his work in the garden, he rang, andordered the servant to bring him some wine. He drank several glasses;his consciousness became dim, and he slept.

IV

Yegor Semiónovitch and Tánya often quarrelled and said disagreeablethings to one another. This morning they had both been irritated, andTánya burst out crying and went to her room, coming down neither todinner nor to tea At first Yegor Semiónovitch marched about, solemn anddignified, as if wishing to give everyone to understand that for himjustice and order were the supreme interests of life. But he was unableto keep this up for long; his spirits fell, and he wandered about thepark and sighed, "Akh, my God!" At dinner he ate nothing, and at last,tortured by his conscience, he knocked softly at the closed door, andcalled timidly:

"Tánya! Tánya!"

Through the door came a Weak voice, tearful but determined:

"Leave me alone!... I implore you."

The misery of father and daughter reacted on the whole household,even on the labourers in the garden. Kovrin, as usual, was immersedin his own interesting work, but at last even he felt tired anduncomfortable. He determined to interfere, and disperse the cloudbefore evening. He knocked at Tánya's door, and was admitted.

"Come, come! What a shame!" he began jokingly; and then looked withsurprise at her tear-stained and afflicted face covered with red spots."Is it so serious, then? Well, well!"

"But if you knew how he tortured me!" she said, and a flood oftears gushed out of her big eyes. "He tormented me!" she continued,wringing her hands. "I never said a word to him.... I only said therewas no need to keep unnecessary labourers, if ... if we can get dayworkmen.... You know the men have done nothing for the whole week. I... I only said this, and he roared at me, and said a lot of things ...most offensive ... deeply insulting. And all for nothing."

"Never mind!" said Kovrin, straightening her hair. "You have had yourscoldings and your cryings, and that is surely enough. You can't keepup this for ever ... it is not right ... all the more since you know heloves you infinitely."

"He has ruined my whole life," sobbed Tánya. "I never hear anything butinsults and affronts. He regards me as superfluous in his own house.Let him! He will have cause! I shall leave here to-morrow, and studyfor a position as telegraphist.... Let him!"

"Come, come. Stop crying, Tánya. It does you no good.... You are bothirritable and impulsive, and both in the wrong. Come, and I will makepeace!"

Kovrin spoke gently and persuasively, but Tánya continued to cry,twitching her shoulders and wringing her hands as if she had beenovertaken by a real misfortune. Kovrin felt all the sorrier owing tothe smallness of the cause of her sorrow. What a trifle it took to makethis little creature unhappy for a whole day, or, as she had expressedit, for a whole life! And as he consoled Tánya, it occurred to himthat except this girl and her father there was not one in the worldwho loved him as a kinsman; and had it not been for them, he, leftfatherless and motherless in early childhood, must have lived his wholelife without feeling one sincere caress, or tasting ever that simple,unreasoning love which we feel only for those akin to us by blood. Andhe felt that his tired, strained nerves, like magnets, responded to thenerves of this crying, shuddering girl. He felt, too, that he couldnever love a healthy, rosy-cheeked woman; but pale, weak, unhappy Tányaappealed to him.

He felt pleasure in looking at her hair and her shoulders; and hepressed her hand, and wiped away her tears.... At last she ceasedcrying. But she still continued to complain of her father, and of herinsufferable life at home, imploring Kovrin to try to realise herposition. Then by degrees she began to smile, and to sigh that God hadcursed her with such a wicked temper; and in the end laughed aloud,called herself a fool, and ran out of the room. A little later Kovrinwent into the garden. Yegor Semiónovitch and Tánya, as if nothing hadhappened, We were walking side by side up the alley, eating rye-breadand salt, we both were very hungry.

V

Pleased with his success as peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park. Ashe sat on a bench and mused, he heal'd the rattle of a carnage and awoman's laugh—visitors evidently again. Shadows fell in the garden,the sound of a violin, the music of a woman's voice reached him almostinaudibly; and this reminded him of the Black Monk. Whither, to whatcountry, to what planet, had that optical absurdity flown? Hardly hadhe called to mind the legend and painted in imagination the blackapparition in the rye-field when from behind the pine trees oppositeto him, walked inaudibly—without the faintest rustling—a man ofmiddle height. His grey head was uncovered, he was dressed in black,and barefooted like a beggar. On his pallid, corpse-like face stood outsharply a number of black spots. Nodding his head politely the strangeror beggar walked noiselessly to the bench and sat down, and Kovrinrecognised the Black Monk. For a minute they looked at one another,Kovrin with astonishment, but the monk kindly and, as before, with asly expression on his face.

"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin. "Why are you here, and why do yousit in one place? That is not in accordance with the legend."

"It is all the same," replied the monk softly, turning his face towardsKovrin. "The legend, the mirage, I—all are products of your ownexcited imagination. I am a phantom."

"That is to say you don't exist?" asked Kovrin. "Think as you like,"replied the monk, smiling faintly. "I exist in your imagination, and asyour imagination is a part of Nature, I must exist also in Nature."

"You have a clever, a distinguished face—it seems to me as if inreality you had lived more than a thousand years," said Kovrin. "I didnot know that my imagination was capable of creating such a phenomenon.Why do you look at me with such rapture? Are you pleased with me?"

"Yes. For you are one of the few who can justly be named the electedof God. You serve eternal truth. Your thoughts, your intentions, yourastonishing science, all your life bear the stamp of divinity, aheavenly impress; they are dedicated to the rational and the beautiful,and that is, to the Eternal."

"You say, to eternal truth. Then can eternal truth be accessible andnecessary to men if there is no eternal life?"

"There is eternal life," said the monk.

"You believe in the immortality of men."

"Of course. For you, men, there awaits a great and a beautiful future.And the more the world has of men like you the nearer will this futurebe brought. Without you, ministers to the highest principles, livingfreely and consciously, humanity would be nothing; developing in thenatural order it must wait the end of its earthly history. But you,by some thousands of years, hasten it into the kingdom of eternaltruth—and in this is your high service. You embody in yourself theblessing of God which rested upon the people."

"And what is the object of eternal life?" asked Kovrin.

"The same as all life—enjoyment. True enjoyment is in knowledge,and eternal life presents innumerable, inexhaustible fountains ofknowledge; it is in this sense it was said: 'In My Father's house aremany mansions....'"

"You cannot conceive what a joy it is to me to listen to you," saidKovrin, rubbing his hands with delight.

"I am glad."

"Yet I know that when you leave me I shall be tormented by doubt asto your reality. You are a phantom, a hallucination. But that meansthat I am psychically diseased, that I am not in a normal state?""What if you are? That need not worry you. You are ill because youhave overstrained your powers, because you have borne your health insacrifice to one idea, and the time is near when you will sacrifice notmerely it but your life also. What more could you desire? It is whatall gifted and noble natures aspire to."

"But if I am psychically diseased, how can I trust myself?"

"And how do you know that the men of genius whom all the world trustshave not also seen visions? Genius, they tell you now, is akin toinsanity. Believe me, the healthy and the normal are but ordinarymen—the herd. Fears as to a nervous age, over-exhaustion anddegeneration can trouble seriously only those whose aims in life lie inthe present—that is the herd."

"The Romans had as their ideal: mens sana in corpore sano."

"All that the Greeks and Romans said is not true. Exaltations,aspirations, excitements, ecstacies—all those things which distinguishpoets, prophets, martyrs to ideas from ordinary men are incompatiblewith the animal life, that is, with physical health. I repeat, if youwish to be healthy and normal go with the herd."

"How strange that you should repeat what I myself have so oftenthought!" said Kovrin. "It seems as if you had watched me and listenedto my secret thoughts. But do not talk about me. What do you imply bythe words: eternal truth?"

The monk made no answer. Kovrin looked at him, but could not make outhis face. His features clouded and melted away; his head and armsdisappeared; his body faded into the bench and into the twilight, andvanished utterly.

"The hallucination has gone," said Kovrin, laughing. "It is a pity."

He returned to the house lively and happy. What the Black Monk had saidto him flattered, not his self-love, but his soul, his whole being. Tobe the elected, to minister to eternal truth, to stand in the ranks ofthose who hasten by thousands of years the making mankind worthy ofthe kingdom of Christ, to deliver humanity from thousands of years ofstruggle, sin, and suffering, to give to one idea everything, youth,strength, health, to die for the general welfare—what an exalted, whata glorious ideal! And when through his memory flowed his past life, alife pure and chaste and full of labour, when he remembered what he hadlearnt and what he had taught, he concluded that in the words of themonk there was no exaggeration. Through the park, to meet him, cameTánya. She was wearing a different dress from that in which he had lastseen her.

"You here?" she cried. "We were looking for you, looking.... Butwhat has happened?" she asked in surprise, looking into his glowing,enraptured face, and into his eyes, now full of tears. "How strange youare, Andrusha!"

"I am satisfied, Tánya," said Kovrin, laying his hand upon hershoulder. "I am more than satisfied; I am happy! Tánya, dear Tánya, youare inexpressibly dear to me. Tánya, I am so glad!"

He kissed both her hands warmly, and continued: "I have just livedthrough the brightest, most wonderful, most unearthly moments.... ButI cannot tell you all, for you would call me mad, or refuse to believeme.... Let me speak of you! Tánya, I love you, and have long lovedyou. To have you near me, to meet you ten times a day, has become anecessity for me. I do not know how I shall live without you when I gohome."

"No!" laughed Tánya. "You will forget us all in two days. We are littlepeople, and you are a great man."

"Let us talk seriously," said he. "I will take you with me, Tánya! Yes?You will come? You will be mine?"

Tánya cried "What?" and tried to laugh again. But the laugh did notcome, and, instead, red spots stood out on her cheeks. She breathedquickly, and walked on rapidly into the park.

"I did not think ... I never thought of this ... never thought," shesaid, pressing her hands together as if in despair.

But Kovrin hastened after her, and, with the same glowing, enrapturedface, continued to speak.

"I wish for a love which will take possession of me altogether, andthis love only you, Tánya, can give me. I am happy! How happy!"

She was overcome, bent, withered up, and seemed suddenly to have agedten years. But Kovrin found her beautiful, and loudly expressed hisecstacy: "How lovely she is!"

VI

When he learned from Kovrin that not only had a romance resulted, butthat a wedding was to follow, Yegor Semiónovitch walked from cornerto corner, and tried to conceal his agitation. His hands shook, hisneck seemed swollen and purple; he ordered the horses to be put intohis racing droschky, and drove away. Tánya, seeing how he whipped thehorses and how he pushed his cap down over his ears, understood hismood, locked herself into her room, and cried all day.

In the orangery the peaches and plums were already ripe. The packingand despatch to Moscow of such a delicate load required muchattention, trouble, and bustle. Owing to the heat of the summerevery tree had to be watered; the process was costly in time andworking-power; and many caterpillars appeared, which the workmen, andeven Yegor Semiónovitch and Tánya, crushed with their fingers, tothe great disgust of Kovrin. The autumn orders for fruit and treeshad to be attended to, and a vast correspondence carried on. And atthe very busiest time, when it seemed no one had a free moment, workbegan in the fields and deprived the garden of half its workers. YegorSemiónovitch, very sunburnt, very irritated, and very worried, gallopedabout, now to the garden, now to the fields; and all the time shoutedthat they were tearing him to bits, and that he would put a bulletthrough his brain.

On top of all came the bustle over Tánya's trousseau, to which thePesótskys attributed infinite significance. With the eternal snippingof scissors, rattle of sewing-machines, smell of flat-irons, and thecaprices of the nervous and touchy dressmaker, the whole house seemedto spin round. And, to make matters worse, visitors arrived every day,and these visitors had to be amused, fed, and lodged for the night.Yet work and worry passed unnoticed in a mist of joy. Tánya felt as iflove and happiness had suddenly burst upon her, although ever since herfourteenth year she had been certain that Kovrin would marry nobodybut herself. She was eternally in a state of astonishment, doubt,and disbelief in herself. At one moment she was seized by such greatjoy that she felt she must fly away to the clouds and pray to God;but a moment later she remembered that when August came she wouldhave to leave the home of her childhood and forsake her father; andshe was frightened by the thought—God knows whence it came—that shewas trivial, insignificant, and unworthy of a great man like Kovrin.When such thoughts came she would run up to her room, lock herself in,and cry bitterly for hours. But when visitors were present, it brokein upon her that Kovrin was a singularly handsome man, that all thewomen loved him and envied her; and in these moments her heart was asfull of rapture and pride as if she had conquered the whole world.When he dared to smile on any other woman she trembled with jealousy,went to her room, and again—tears. These new feelings possessed heraltogether; she helped her father mechanically, noticing neither pearsnor caterpillars, nor workmen, nor how swiftly time was passing by.

Yegor Semiónovitch was in much the same state of mind. He still workedfrom morning to night, Hew about the gardens, and lost his temper;but all the while he was wrapped in a magic reverie. In his sturdybody contended two men, one the real Yegor Semiónovitch, who, when helistened to the gardener, Ivan Karlovitch's report of some mistake ordisorder, went mad with excitement, and tore his hair; and the otherthe unreal Yegor Semiónovitch—a half-intoxicated old man, who brokeoff an important conversation in the middle of a word, seized thegardener by the shoulder, and stammered:

"You may say what you like, but blood is thicker than water. Hismother was an astonishing, a most noble, a most brilliant woman. Itwas a pleasure to see her good, pure, open, angel face. She paintedbeautifully, wrote poetry, spoke five foreign languages, and sang....Poor thing, Heaven rest her soul, she died of consumption!"

The unreal Yegor Semiónovitch sighed, and after a moment's silencecontinued:

"When he was a boy growing up to manhood in my house he had just suchan angel face, open and good. His looks, his movements, his words wereas gentle and graceful as his mother's. And his intellect It is notfor nothing he has the degree of Magister. But you just wait, IvanKarlovitch; you'll see what he'll be in ten years' time. Why, he'll beout of sight!" But here the real Yegor Semiónovitch remembered himself,seized his head and roared:

"Devils! Frost-bitten! Ruined, destroyed! The garden is ruined; thegarden is destroyed!" Kovrin worked with all his former ardour, andhardly noticed the bustle about him. Love only poured oil on theflames. After every meeting with Tánya, he returned to his rooms inrapture and happiness, and set to work with his books and manuscriptswith the same passion with which he had kissed her and sworn his love.What the Black Monk had told him of his election by God, of eternaltruth, and of the glorious future of humanity, gave to all his work apeculiar, unusual significance. Once or twice every week, either inthe park or in the house, he met the monk, and talked with him forhours; but this did not frighten, but on the contrary delighted him,for he was now assured that such apparitions visit only the elect andexceptional who dedicate themselves to the ministry of ideas.

Assumption passed unobserved. Then came the wedding, celebrated by thedetermined wish of Yegor Semiónovitch with what was called éclat,that is, with meaningless festivities which lasted for two days. Threethousand roubles were consumed in food and drink; but what with thevile music, the noisy toasts, the fussing servants, the clamour, andthe closeness of the atmosphere, no one appreciated the expensive winesor the astonishing hors d'oeuvres specially ordered from Moscow.

VII

One of the long winter nights. Kovrin lay in bed, reading a Frenchnovel. Poor Tánya, whose head every evening ached as the result of theunaccustomed life in town, had long been sleeping, muttering incoherentphrases in her dreams.

The dock struck three. Kovrin put out the candle and lay down, layfor a long time with dosed eyes unable to sleep owing to the heat ofthe room and Tánya's continued muttering. At half-past four he againlighted the candle. The Black Monk was sitting in a chair beside hisbed.

"Good night!" said the monk, and then, after a moment's silence, asked,"What are you thinking of now?"

"Of glory," answered Kovrin. "In a French novel which I have just beenreading, the hero is a young man who does foolish things, and dies froma passion for glory. To me this passion is inconceivable."

"Because you are too clever. You look indifferently on fame as a toy which cannotinterest you."

"That is true."

"Celebrity has no attractions for you. What flattery, joy, orinstruction can a man draw from the knowledge that his name will begraven on a monument, when time will efface the inscription sooner orlater? Yes, happily there are too many of you for brief human memoryto remember all your names."

"Of course," said Kovrin. "And why remember them?... But let us talk ofsomething else. Of happiness, for instance. What is this happiness?"

When the clock struck five he was sitting on the bed with his feettrailing on the carpet and his head turned to the monk, and saying:

"In ancient times a man became frightened at his happiness, so great itwas, and to placate the gods laid before them in sacrifice his belovedring. You have heard? Now I, like Polycrates, am a little frightenedat my own happiness. From morning to night I experience only joy—joyabsorbs me and stifles all other feelings. I do not know the meaning ofgrief affliction, or weariness. I speak seriously, I am beginning todoubt."

"Why?" asked the monk in an astonished tone. "Then you think joy isa supernatural feeling? You think it is not the normal conditionof things? No! The higher a man has climbed in mental and moraldevelopment the freer he is, the greater satisfaction he draws fromlife. Socrates, Diogenes, Marcus Aurelius knew joy and not sorrow. Andthe apostle said, 'rejoice exceedingly.' Rejoice and be happy!"

"And suddenly the gods will be angered," said Kovrin jokingly. "But itwould hardly be to my taste if they were to steal my happiness andforce me to shiver and starve."

Tánya awoke, and looked at her husband with amazement and terror. Hespoke, he turned to the chair, he gesticulated, and laughed; his eyesglittered and his laughter sounded strange.

"Andrusha, whom are you speaking to?" she asked, seizing the hand whichhe had stretched out to the monk. "Andrusha, who is it?"

"Who?" answered Kovrin. "Why, the monk!... He is sitting there."He pointed to the Black Monk.

"There is no one there, ... no one, Andrusha; you are ill."

Tánya embraced her husband, and, pressing against him as if to defendhim against the apparition, covered his eyes with her hand.

"You are ill," she sobbed, trembling all over. "Forgive me, darling,but for a long time I have fancied you were unnerved in some way....You are ill, ... psychically, Andrusha."

The shudder communicated itself to him. He looked once more at thechair, now empty, and suddenly felt weakness in his arms and legs. Hebegan to dress. "It is nothing, Tánya, nothing, ..." he stammered, andstill shuddered. "But I am a little unwell.... It is time to recogniseit."

"I have noticed it for a long time, and father noticed it," she said,trying to restrain her sobs. "You have been speaking so funnily toyourself, and smiling so strangely, ... and you do not sleep. O, myGod, my God, save us!" she cried in terror. "But do not be afraid,Andrusha, do not fear, ... for God's sake do not be afraid...."

She also dressed.... It was only as he looked at her that Kovrinunderstood the danger of his position, and realised the meaning of theBlack Monk and of their conversations. It became plain to him that hewas mad.

Both, themselves not knowing why, dressed and went into the hall;she first, he after her. There they found Yegor Semiónovitch in hisdressing-gown. He was staying with them, and had been awakened byTánya's sobs.

"Do not be afraid, Andrusha," said Tánya, trembling as if in fever. "Donot be afraid ... father, this will pass off ... it will pass off."

Kovrin was so agitated that he could hardly speak. But he triedto treat the matter as a joke. He turned to his father-in-law andattempted to say: "Congratulate me ... it seems I have gone out of mymind." But his lips only moved, and he smiled bitterly.

At nine o'clock they put on his overcoat and a fur cloak, wrapped himup in a shawl, and drove him to the doctor's. He began a course oftreatment.

VIII

Again summer. By the doctor's orders Kovrin returned to the country.He had recovered his health, and no longer saw the Black Monk. It onlyremained for him to recruit his physical strength. He lived with hisfather-in-law, drank much milk, worked only two hours a day, nevertouched wine, and gave up smoking.

On the evening of the 19th June, before Elijah's day, a vesper servicewas held in the house. When the priest took the censor from the sexton,and the vast hall began to smell like a church, Kovrin felt tired. Hewent into the garden. Taking no notice of the gorgeous blossoms aroundhim he walked up and down, sat for a while on a bench, and then walkedthrough the park. He descended the sloping bank to the margin of theriver, and stood still, looking questioningly at the water. The greatpines, with their shaggy roots, which a year before had seen him soyoung, so joyous, so active, no longer whispered, but stood silentand motionless, as if not recognising him.... And, indeed, with hisshort-dipped hair, his feeble walk, and his changed face, so heavy andpale and changed since last year, he would hardly have been recognisedanywhere.

He crossed the stream. In the field, last year covered with rye, layrows of reaped oats. The sun had set, and on the horizon flamed abroad, red afterglow, fore-telling stormy weather. All was quiet; and,gazing towards the point at which a year before he had first seen theBlack Monk, Kovrin stood twenty minutes watching the crimson fade. Whenhe returned to the house, tired and unsatisfied, Yegor Semiónovitch andTánya were sitting on the steps of the terrace, drinking tea. They weretalking together, and, seeing Kovrin, stopped. But Kovrin knew by theirfaces that they had been speaking of him.

"It is time for you to have your milk," said Tánya to her husband.

"No, not yet," he answered, sitting down on the lowest step. "You drinkit. I do not want it." Tánya timidly exchanged glances with her father,and said in a guilty voice:

"You know very well that the milk does you good."

"Yes, any amount of good," laughed Kovrin. "I congratulate you, I have gained a pound inweight since last Friday." He pressed his hands to his head and saidin a pained voice: "Why ... why have you cured me? Bromide mixtures,idleness, warm baths, watching in trivial terror over every mouthful,every step ... all this in the end will drive me to idiocy. I had goneout of my mind ... I had the mania of greatness. ... But for all that Iwas bright, active, and even happy.... I was interesting and original.Now I have become rational and solid, just like the rest of the world.I am a mediocrity, and it is tiresome for me to live.... Oh, howcruelly... how cruelly you have treated me! I had hallucinations ...but what harm did that cause to anyone? I ask you what harm?"

"God only knows what you mean!" sighed Yegor Semiónovitch. "It isstupid even to listen to you."

"Then you need not listen."

The presence of others, especially of Yegor Semiónovitch, now irritatedKovrin; he answered his father-in-law drily, coldly, even rudely,and could not look on him without contempt and hatred. And YegorSemiónovitch felt confused, and coughed guiltily, although he could notsee how he was in the wrong. Unable to understand the cause of such asudden reversal of their former hearty relations, Tánya leaned againsther father, and looked with alarm into his eyes. It was becoming plainto her that their relations every day grew worse and worse, that herfather had aged greatly, and that her husband had become irritable,capricious, excitable, and uninteresting. She no longer laughed andsang, she ate nothing, and whole nights never slept, but lived underthe weight of some impending terror, torturing herself so much thatshe lay insensible from dinner-time till evening. When the service wasbeing held, it had seemed to her that her father was crying; and now asshe sat on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.

"How happy were Buddha and Mahomet and Shakespeare that theirkind-hearted kinsmen and doctors did not cure them of ecstacy andinspiration!" said Kovrin. "If Mahomet had taken potassium bromidefor his nerves, worked only two hours a day, and drunk milk, thatastonishing man would have left as little behind him as his dog.Doctors and kind-hearted relatives only do their best to make humanitystupid, and the time will come when mediocrity will be consideredgenius, and humanity will perish. If you only had some idea," concludedKovrin peevishly, "if you only had some idea how grateful I am!" Hefelt strong irritation, and to prevent himself saying too much, roseand went into the house. It was a windless night, and into the windowwas borne the smell of tobacco plants and jalap. Through the windows ofthe great dark hall, on the floor and on the piano, fell the moonrays.Kovrin recalled the raptures of the summer before, when the air, asnow, was full of the smell of jalap and the moonrays poured through thewindow.... To awaken the mood of last year he went to his room, lighteda strong cigar, and ordered the servant to bring him wine. But now thecigar was bitter and distasteful, and the wine had lost its flavourof the year before. How much it means to get out of practice! From asingle cigar, and two sips of wine, his head went round, and he wasobliged to take bromide of potassium.

Before going to bed Tánya said to him:

"Listen. Father worships you, but you are annoyed with him aboutsomething, and that is killing him. Look at his face; he is growingold, not by days but by hours! I implore you, Andrusha, for the love ofChrist, for the sake of your own dead father, for the sake of my peaceof mind—be kind to him again!"

"I cannot, and I do not want to."

"But why?" Tánya trembled all over. "Explain to me why!"

"Because I do not like him; that is all," answered Kovrin carelessly,shrugging his shoulders. "But better not talk of that; he is yourfather."

"I cannot, cannot understand," said Tánya. She pressed her hands toher forehead and fixed her eyes on one point. "Something terrible,something incomprehensible is going on in this house. You, Ahdrusha,have changed; you are no longer yourself.... You—a clever, anexceptional man—get irritated over trifles. ... You are annoyed bysuch little things that at any other time you yourself would haverefused to believe it. No ... do not be angry, do not be angry," shecontinued, kissing his hands, and frightened by her own words. "You areclever, good, and noble. You will be just to father. He is so good."

"He is not good, but merely good-humoured. These vaudeville uncles—ofyour father's type—with well-fed, easy-going faces, are characters intheir way, and once used to amuse me, whether in novels, in comedies,or in life. But they are now hateful to me. They are egoists to themarrow of their bones.... Most disgusting of all is their satiety, andthis stomachic, purely bovine—or swinish—optimism."

Tánya sat on the bed, and laid her head on a pillow. "This is torture!"she said; and from her voice it was plain that she was utterly wearyand found it hard to speak. "Since last winter not a moment of rest.... It is terrible, my God! I suffer ..."

"Yes, of course! I am Herod, and you and your papa the massacredinfants. Of course!"

His face seemed to Tánya ugly and disagreeable. The expression ofhatred and contempt did not suit it. She even observed that somethingwas lacking in his face; ever since his hair had been cut off, itseemed changed. She felt an almost irresistible desire to say somethinginsulting, but restrained herself in time, and overcome with terror,went out of the bedroom.

IX

Kovrin received an independent chair. His inaugural address was fixedfor the 2nd of December, and a notice to that effect was posted inthe corridors of the University. But when the day came a telegram wasreceived by the University authorities that he could not fulfil theengagement, owing to illness.

Blood came from his throat. He spat it up, and twice in one month itflowed in streams. He felt terribly weak, and fell into a somnolentcondition. But this illness did not frighten him, for he knew that hisdead mother had lived with the same complaint more than ten years. Hisdoctors, too, declared that there was no danger, and advised him merelynot to worry, to lead a regular life, and to talk less.

In January the lecture was postponed for the same reason, and inFebruary it was too late to begin the course. It was postponed till thefollowing year.

He no longer lived with Tánya, but with another woman, older thanhimself, who looked after him as if he were a child. His temperwas calm and obedient; he submitted willingly, and when VarvaraNikolaievna—that was her name—made arrangements for taking him to theCrimea, he consented to go, although he felt that from the change nogood would come.

They reached Sevastopol late one evening, and stopped there to rest,intending to drive to Yalta on the following day. Both were tired bythe journey. Varvara Nikolaievna drank tea, and went to bed. But Kovrinremained up. An hour before leaving home for the railway station he hadreceived a letter from Tánya, which he had not read; and the thoughtof this letter caused him unpleasant agitation. In the depths of hisheart he knew that his marriage with Tánya had been a mistake. He wasglad that he was finally parted from her; but the remembrance of thiswoman, who towards the last had seemed to turn into a walking, livingmummy, in which all had died except the great, clever eyes, awakened inhim only pity and vexation against himself. The writing on the envelopereminded him that two years before he had been guilty of cruelty andinjustice, and that he had avenged on people in no way guilty hisspiritual vacuity, his solitude, his disenchantment with life.... Heremembered how he had once torn into fragments his dissertation andall the articles written by him since the time of his illness, andthrown them out of the window, how the fragments flew in the wind andrested on the trees and flowers; in every page he had seen strange andbaseless pretensions, frivolous irritation, and a mania for greatness.And all this had produced upon him an impression that he had written adescription of his own faults. Yet when the last copybook had been tomup and thrown out of the window, he felt bitterness and vexation, andwent to his wife and spoke to her cruelly. Heavens, how he had ruinedher life! He remembered how once, wishing to cause her pain, he hadtold her that her father had played in their romance an unusual role,and had even asked him to marry her; and Yegor Semiónovitch, happeningto overhear him, had rushed into the room, so dumb with consternationthat he could not utter a word, but only stamped his feet on one spotand bellowed strangely as if his tongue had been cut out. And Tánya,looking at her father, cried out in a heartrending voice, and fellinsensible on the floor. It was hideous.

The memory of all this returned to him at the sight of the well-knownhandwriting. He went out on to the balcony. It was warm and calm, anda salt smell came to him from the sea. The moonlight, and the lightsaround, were imaged on the surface of the wonderful bay—a surfaceof a hue impossible to name. It was a tender and soft combination ofdark blue and green; in parts the water resembled copperas, and inparts, instead of water, liquid moonlight filled the bay. And all thesecombined in a harmony of hues which exhaled tranquillity and exaltation.

In the lower story of the inn, underneath the balcony, the windows wereevidently open, for women's voices and laughter could plainly be heard.There must be an entertainment.

Kovrin made an effort over himself, unsealed the letter, and, returningto his room, began to read:

"My father has just died. For this I am indebted to you, for it was youwho killed him. Our garden is being ruined; it is managed by strangers;what my poor father so dreaded is taking place. For this also I amindebted to you. I hate you with all my soul, and wish that you mayperish soon! Oh, how I suffer I My heart bums with an intolerablepain!... May you be accursed! I took you for an exceptional man, for agenius; I loved you, and you proved a madman...."

Kovrin could read no more; he tore up the letter and threw the piecesaway.... He was overtaken by restlessness—almost by terror.... On theother side of the screen, slept Varvara Nikolaievna; he could hear herbreathing. From the story beneath came the women's voices and laughter,but he felt that in the whole hotel there was not one living soulexcept himself. The fact that wretched, overwhelmed Tánya had cursedhim in her letter, and wished him ill, caused him pain; and he lookedfearfully at the door as if fearing to see again that unknown powerwhich in two years had brought about so much ruin in his own life andin the lives of all who were dearest to him.

By experience he knew that when the nerves give way the best refugelies in work. He used to sit at the table and concentrate his mindupon some definite thought. He took from his red portfolio a copybookcontaining the conspect of a small work of compilation which heintended to carry out during his stay in the Crimea, if he became tiredof inactivity.... He sat at the table, and worked on this conspect, andit seemed to him that he was regaining his former peaceful, resigned,impersonal mood. His conspect led him to speculation on the vanity ofthe world. He thought of the great price which life demands for themost trivial and ordinary benefits which it gives to men. To reacha chair of philosophy under forty years of age; to be an ordinaryprofessor; to expound commonplace thoughts—and those thoughts thethoughts of others—in feeble, tiresome, heavy language; in oneword, to attain the position of a learned mediocrity, he had studiedfifteen years, worked day and night, passed through a severe psychicaldisease, survived an unsuccessful marriage—been guilty of many folliesand injustices which it was torture to remember. Kovrin now clearlyrealised that he was a mediocrity, and he was willingly reconciled toit, for he knew that every man must be satisfied with what he is.

The conspect calmed him, but the tom letter lay upon the floor andhindered the concentration of his thoughts. He rose, picked up thefragments, and threw them out of the window. But a light wind blew fromthe sea, and the papers fluttered back on to the window sill. Again hewas overtaken by restlessness akin to terror, and it seemed to him thatin the whole hotel except himself there was not one living soul.... Hewent on to the balcony. The bay, as if alive, stared up at him from itsmultitude of light-and dark-blue eyes, its eyes of turquoise and fire,and beckoned him. It was warm and stifling; how delightful, he thought,to bathe!

Suddenly beneath the balcony a violin was played, and two women'svoices sang. All this was known to him. The song which they sang toldof a young girl, diseased in imagination, who heard by night in agarden mysterious sounds, and found in them a harmony and a holinessincomprehensible to us mortals. ... Kovrin held his breath, his heartceased to beat, and the magical, ecstatic rapture which he had longforgotten trembled in his heart again.

A high, black pillar, like a cyclone or waterspout, appeared on theopposite coast. It swept with incredible swiftness across the baytowards the hotel; it became smaller and smaller, and Kovrin steppedaside to make room for it.... The monk, with uncovered grey head, withblack eyebrows, barefooted, folding his arms upon his chest, swept pasthim, and stopped in the middle of the room.

"Why did you not believe me?" he asked in a tone of reproach, lookingcaressingly at Kovrin. "If you had believed me when I said you were agenius, these last two years would not have been passed so sadly and sobarrenly."

Kovrin again believed that he was the elected of God and a genius; hevividly remembered all his former conversation with the Black Monk,and wished to reply. But the blood flowed from his throat on to hischest, and he, not knowing what to do, moved his hands about his chesttill his cuffs were red with the blood. He wished to call VarvaraNikolaievna, who slept behind the screen, and making an effort to doso, cried: "Tánya!"

He fell on the floor, and raising his hands, again cried:

"Tánya!"

He cried to Tánya, cried to the great garden with the miraculousflowers, cried to the park, to the pines with their shaggy roots, tothe rye-field, cried to his marvellous science, to his youth, hisdaring, his joy, cried to the life which had been so beautiful. He sawon the floor before him a great pool of blood, and from weakness couldnot utter a single word. But an inexpressible, infinite joy filled hiswhole being. Beneath the balcony the serenade was being played, and theBlack Monk whispered to him that he was a genius, and died only becausehis feeble, mortal body had lost its balance, and could no longer serveas the covering of genius.

When Varvara Nikolaievna awoke, and came from behind her screen, Kovrinwas dead. But on his face was frozen an immovable smile of happiness.

ON THE WAY

In the room which the innkeeper, the Cossack Semión Tchistoplui,called "The Traveller,"—meaning thereby, "reserved exclusivelyfor travellers,"—at a big, unpainted table, sat a tall andbroad-shouldered man of about forty years of age. With his elbows onthe table and his head lasting on his hands, he slept. A fragment ofa tallow candle, stuck in a pomade jar, illumined his fair hair, histhick, broad nose, his sunburnt cheeks, and the beetling brows thathung over his closed eyes.... Taken one by one, all his features—hisnose, his cheeks, his eyebrows—were as rude and heavy as the furniturein "The Traveller" taken together they produced an effect of singularharmony and beauty. Such, indeed, is often the character of the Russianface; the bigger, the sharper the individual features, the softer andmore benevolent the whole. The sleeper was dressed as one of goodclass, in a threadbare jacket bound with new wide braid, a plushwaistcoat, and loose black trousers, vanishing in big boots.

On a bench which stretched the whole way round the room slept a girlsome eight years of age. She lay upon a foxskin overcoat, and wore abrown dress and long black stockings. Her face was pale, her hair fair,her shoulders narrow, her body slight and frail; but her nose ended injust such an ugly lump as the man's. She slept soundly, and did notseem to feel that the crescent comb which had fallen from her hair wascutting into her cheek.

"The Traveller" had a holiday air. The atmosphere smelt of newly-washedfloors; there were no rags on the line which stretched diagonallyacross the room; and in the ikon corner, casting a red reflection uponthe image of St. George the Victory-Bringer, burned a lamp. With asevere and cautious gradation from the divine to the earthly, therestretched from each side of the image row of gaudily-painted pictures.In the dim light thrown from the lamp and candle-end these picturesseemed to form a continuous belt covered with black patches; but whenthe tiled stove, wishing to sing in accord with the weather, drew inthe blast with a howl, and the logs, as if angered, burst into ruddyflames and roared with rage, rosy patches quivered along the walls; andabove the head of the sleeping man might be seen first the faces ofseraphim, then the Shah Nasr Edin, and finally a greasy, sunburnt boy,with staring eyes, whispering something into the ear of a girl with asingularly blunt and indifferent face.

The storm howled outside. Something wild and angry, but deeplymiserable, whirled round the inn with the fury of a beast, and stroveto burst its way in. It banged against the doors, it beat on thewindows and roof, it tore the walls, it threatened, it implored, itquieted down, and then with the joyous howl of triumphant treachery itrushed up the stove pipe; but here the logs burst into flame, and thefire, like a chained hound, rose up in rage to meet its enemy. Therewas a sobbing, a hissing, and an angry roar. In all this might bedistinguished both irritated weariness and unsatisfied hate, and theangered impotence of one accustomed to victory.

Enchanted by the wild, inhuman music, "The Traveller" seemed numbedinto immobility for ever. But the door creaked on its hinges, and intothe inn came the potboy in a new calico shirt He walked with a limp,twitched his sleepy eyes, snuffed the candle with his fingers, and wentout The bells of the village church of Rogatchi, three hundred yardsaway, began to strike twelve. It was midnight The storm played withthe sounds as with snowflakes, it chased them to infinite distances,it cut some short and stretched some into long undulating notes; andit smothered others altogether in the universal tumult But suddenly achime resounded so loudly through the room that it might have been rungunder the window. The girl on the foxskin overcoat started and raisedhex head. For a moment she gazed vacantly at the black window, thenturned her eyes upon Nasr Edin, on whose face the firelight gleamed,and finally looked at the sleeping man.

"Papa!" she cried.

But her father did not move. The girl peevishly twitched her eyebrows,and lay down again with her legs bent under her. A loud yawn soundedoutside the door. Again the hinges squeaked, and indistinct voices wereheard. Someone entered, shook the snow from his coat, and stamped hisfeet heavily.

"Who is it?" drawled a female voice.

"Mademoiselle Ilováisky," answered a bass.

Again the door creaked. The storm tore into the cabin and howled.Someone, no doubt the limping boy, went to the door of "The Traveller,"coughed respectfully, and raised the latch.

"Come in, please," said the female voice. "It is all quite clean,honey!"

The door flew open. On the threshold appeared a bearded muzhik, dressedin a coachman's caftan, covered with snow from head to foot. He stoopedunder the weight of a heavy portmanteau. Behind him entered a littlefemale figure, not half his height, faceless and handless, rolled intoa shapeless bundle, and covered also with snow. Both coachman andbundle smelt of damp. The candle-flame trembled.

"What nonsense!" cried the bundle angrily. "Of course we can go on!It is only twelve versts more, chiefly wood. There is no fear of ourlosing the way."

"Lose our way or not, it's all the same ... the horses won't go an inchfarther," answered the coachman. "Lord bless you, miss.... As if I haddone it on purpose!"

"Heaven knows where you've landed me!..."

"Hush! there's someone asleep. You may go!"

The coachman shook the caked snow from his shoulders, set down theportmanteau, snuffled, and went out And the little girl, watching, sawtwo tiny hands creeping out of the middle of the bundle, stretchingupward, and undoing the network of shawls, handkerchiefs, and scarfs.First on the floor fell a heavy shawl, then a hood, and after it awhite knitted muffler. Having freed its head, the bundle removed itscloak, and shrivelled suddenly into half its former size. Now itappeared in a long, grey ulster, with immense buttons and yawningpockets. From one pocket it drew a paper parcel. From the other camea bunch of keys, which the bundle put down so incautiously that thesleeping man started and opened his eyes. For a moment he looked aroundhim vacantly, as if not realising where he was, then shook his head,walked to the corner of the room, and sat down. The bundle took off itsulster, again reduced itself by half, drew off its shoes, and also satdown.

It no longer resembled a bundle. It was a woman, a tiny, fragilebrunette of some twenty years of age, thin as a serpent, with a longpale face, and curly hair. Her nose was long and sharp, her chin longand sharp, her eyelashes long; and thanks to a general sharpness theexpression of her face was stinging. Dressed in a tight-fitting blackgown, with lace on the neck and sleeves, with sharp elbows and long,rosy fingers, she called to mind portraits of English ladies of themiddle of the century. The serious, self-centred expression of her faceserved only to increase the resemblance.

The brunette looked around the room, glanced sidelong at the man andgirl, and, shrugging her shoulders, went over and sat at the window.The dark windows trembled in the damp west wind. Outside great flakesof snow, flashing white, darted against the glass, clung to it for asecond, and were whirled away by the storm. The wild music grew louder.

There was a long silence. At last the little girl rose suddenly, and,angrily ringing out every word, exclaimed:

"Lord! Lord! How unhappy I am! The most miserable being in the world!"

The man rose, and with a guilty air, ill-suited to his gigantic statureand long beard, went to the bench.

"You're not sleeping, dearie? What do you want?" He spoke in the voiceof a man who is excusing himself.

"I don't want anything! My shoulder hurts! You are a wicked man,father, and God will punish you. Wait! You'll see how he'll punish you!"

"I know it's painful, darling ... but what can I do?" He spoke inthe tone employed by husbands when they make excuses to their angrywives. "If your shoulder hurts it is the long journey that is guilty.To-morrow it will be over, then we shall rest, and the pain will stop."...

"To-morrow! To-morrow!... Every day you say to-morrow! We shall go onfor another twenty days!"

"Listen, friend, I give you my word of honour that this is the lastday. I never tell you untruths. If the storm delayed us, that is not myfault."

"I can bear it no longer! I cannot! I cannot!"

Sasha pulled in her leg sharply, and filled the room with adisagreeable whining cry. Her father waved his arm, and lookedabsent-mindedly at the brunette. The brunette shrugged her shoulders,and walked irresolutely towards Sasha.

"Tell me, dear," she said, "why are you crying? It is very nasty tohave a sore shoulder ... but what can be done?"

"The fact is, mademoiselle," said the man apologetically, "we have hadno sleep for two nights, and drove here in a villainous cart. No wondershe is ill and unhappy. A drunken driver ... the luggage stolen ...all the time in a snowstorm ... but what's the good of crying?... I,too, am tired out with sleeping in a sitting position, so tired that Ifeel almost drunk. Listen, Sasha ... even as they are things are badenough ... yet you must cry!"

He turned his head away, waved his arm, and sat down.

"Of course, you mustn't cry!" said the brunette. "Only babies cry. Ifyou are ill, dearie, you must undress and go to sleep.... Come, let meundress you!"

With the girl undressed and comforted, silence again took possession ofthe room. The brunette sat at the window, and looked questioningly atthe wall, the ikon, and the stove. Apparently things around seemed verystrange to her, the room, the girl with her fat nose and boy's shortnightgown, and the girl's father. That strange man sat in the corner,looking vacantly about him like a drunken man, and nibbing his facewith his hands. He kept silence, blinked his eyes; and judging fromhis guilty figure no one would expect that he would be the first tobreak the silence. Yet it was he who began. He smoothed his trousers,coughed, laughed, and said:

"A comedy, I swear to God!.. I look around, and can't believe my eyes.Why did destiny bring us to this accursed inn P What did she mean toexpress by it? But life sometimes makes such a salto mortale, that youlook and can't believe your eyes. Are you going far, miss?"

"Not very far," answered the brunette. "I was going from home, abouttwenty versts away, to a farm of ours where my father and brother arestaying. I am Mademoiselle Ilováisky, and the farm is Ilováisk. It istwelve versts from this. What disagreeable weather!"

"It could hardly be worse."

The lame pot-boy entered the room, and stuck a fresh candle end in thepomade jar.

"Get the samovar!" said the man.

"Nobody drinks tea at this hour," grinned the boy. "It is a sin beforeMass."

"Don't you mind ... it is not you that'll burn in hell, but we...."

While they drank their tea the conversation continued. Mdlle. Ilováiskylearned that the stranger's name was Grigóri Petróvitch Likharyóff,that he was a brother of Likharyóff, the Marshal of the Nobility inthe neighbouring district, that he had himself once been a landedproprietor, but had gone through everything. And in turn Likharyófflearned that his companion was Márya Mikháilovna Ilováisky, that herfather had a large estate, and that all the management fell upon hershoulders, as both father and brother were improvident, looked at lifethrough their fingers, and thought of little but greyhounds....

"My father and brother are quite alone on the farm," said Mdlle.Ilováisky, moving her fingers (she had a habit in conversation ofmoving her fingers before her stinging face, and after every phrase,licking her lips with a pointed tongue); "they are the mast helplesscreatures on the face of the earth, and can't lift a finger to helpthemselves. My father is muddle-headed, and my brother every eveningtired off his feet. Imagine!... who is to get them food after theFast? Mother is dead, and our servants cannot lay a cloth without mysupervision. They will be without proper food, while I spend all nighthere. It is very funny!"

Mdlle. Ilováisky shrugged her shoulders, sipped her tea, and said:

"There are certain holidays which have a peculiar smell. Easter,Trinity, and Christinas each has its own smell. Even atheists lovethese holidays. My brother, for instance, says there is no God, but atEaster he is the first to run off to the morning service." Likharyófflifted his eyes, turned them on his companion and laughed.

"They say that there is no God," continued Mdlle. Ilováisky, alsolaughing, "but why then, be so good as to tell me, do all celebratedwriters, scholars, and clever men generally, believe at the close oftheir lives?"

"The man who in youth has not learnt to believe does not believe in oldage, be he a thousand times a writer."

Judged by his cough, Likharyóff had a bass voice, but now either fromfear of speaking too loud, or from a needless bashfulness, he spoke ina tenor. After a moment's silence, he sighed and continued:

"This is how I understand it. Faith is a quality of the soul. It is thesame as talent ... it is congenital. As far as I can judge from my owncase, from those whom I have met in life, from all that I see aroundme, this congenital faith is inherent in all Russians to an astonishingdegree.... May I have another cup? ... Russian life presents itselfas a continuous series of faiths and infatuations, but unbelief ornegation it has not—if I may so express it—even smelt. That a Russiandoes not believe in God is merely a way of saying that he believes insomething else."

Likharyóff took from Mdlle. Ilováisky another cup of tea, gulped downhalf of it at once, and continued: "Let me tell you about myself. In mysoul Nature planted exceptional capacity for belief. Half my life haveI lived an atheist and a Nihilist, yet never was there a single momentwhen I did not believe. Natural gifts display themselves generally inearly childhood, and my capacity for faith showed itself at a time whenI could walk upright underneath the table. My mother used to make uschildren eat a lot, and when she gave us our meals, she had a habit ofsaying, 'Eat, children; there's nothing on earth like soup!' I believedthis; I ate soup ten times a day, swallowed it like a shark to thepoint of vomiting and disgust. My nurse used to tell me fairy tales,and I believed in ghosts, in fairies, in wood-demons, in every kindof monster. I remember well! I used to steal corrosive sublimate fromfather's room, sprinkle it on gingerbread, and leave it in the attic,so that the ghosts might eat it and die. But when I learned to readand to understand what I read, my beliefs got beyond description. Ieven ran away to America, I joined a gang of robbers, I tried to entera monastery, I hired boys to torture me for Christ's sake. When I ranaway to America I did not go alone, but took with me just such anotherfool, and I was glad when we froze nearly to death, and when I wasflogged. When I ran away to join the robbers, I returned every timewith a broken skin. Most untranquil childhood! But when I was sent toschool, and learned that the earth goes round the sun, and that whitelight so far from being white is composed of seven primary colours,my head went round entirely. At home everything seemed hideous, mymother, in the name of Elijah, denying lightning conductors, my fatherindifferent to the truths I preached. My new enlightenment inspiredme! Like a madman I rushed about the house; I preached my truths tothe stable boys, I was driven to despair by ignorance, I flamed withhatred against all who saw in white light only white.... But this isnonsense.... Serious, so to speak, manly infatuations began with meonly at college.... Have you completed a university course?"

"At Novotcherkask—in the Don Institute."

"But that is not a university course. You can hardly know what thisscience is. All sciences, whatever they may be, have only one and thesame passport, without which they are meaningless—an aspiration totruth! Every one of them—even your wretched pharmacology—has its end,not in profit, not in convenience and advantage to life, but in truth.It is astonishing! When you begin the study of any science you arecaptivated from the first. I tell you, there is nothing more seductiveand gracious, nothing so seizes and overwhelms the human soul, as thebeginning of a science. In the first five or six lectures you areexalted by the very brightest hopes—you seem already the master ofeternal truth.... Well, I gave myself to science passionately, as toa woman loved. I was its slave, and, except it, would recognise noother sun. Day and night, night and day, without unbending my back, Istudied. I learnt off formulas by heart; I ruined myself on books; Iwept when I saw with my own eyes others exploiting science for personalaims. ... But I got over my infatuation soon. The fact is, everyscience has a beginning, but it has no end—it is like a recurringdecimal. Zoology discovered thirty-five thousand species of insects;chemistry counts sixty elementary substances. If, as time goes by,you add to these figures ten ciphers, you will be just as far fromthe end as now, for all contemporary scientific research consists inthe multiplication of figures.... This I began to understand when Imyself discovered the thirty-five-thousand-and-first species, andgained no satisfaction. But I had no disillusion to outlive, for anew faith immediately appeared. I thrust myself into Nihilism withits proclamations, its hideous deeds, its tricks of all sorts. I wentdown to the people; I served as factory-hand; I greased the axlesof railway carriages; I turned myself into a bargee. It was whilethus wandering all over the face of Russia that I first saw Russianlife. I became an impassioned admirer of that life. I loved theRussian people to distraction; I loved and trusted in its God, in itslanguage, in its creations.... And so on eternally.... In my time Ihave been a Slavophile, and bored Aksakoff with my letters; and anUkrainophile, and an archaeologist, and a collector of specimens ofpopular creative art ... I have been earned away by ideas, by men, byevents, by places.... I have been carried away unceasingly.... Fiveyears ago I embodied as the negation of property; my latest faith wasnon-resistance to evil."

Sasha sighed gustily and moved. Likharyóff rose and went over to her.

"Will you have some tea, darling?" he asked tenderly

"Drink it yourself!" answered Sasha.

"You have lived a varied life," said Márya Mikháilovna. "You havesomething to remember."

"Yes, yes; it is all very genial when you sit at the tea-table andgossip with a good companion; but you do not ask me what has all thisgaiety cast me. With what have I paid for the diversity of my life? Youmust remember, in the first place, that I did not believe like a GermanDoctor of Philosophy. I did not live as a hermit, but my every faithbent me as a bow, and tore my body to pieces. Judge for yourself! OnceI was as rich as my brother: now I am a beggar. Into this whirlpool ofinfatuation I cast my own estate, the property of my wife, the moneyof many others. I am forty-two to-day, with old age staring me in theface, and I am homeless as a dog that has lost his master by night.In my whole life I have never known repose. My soul was in constanttorment; I suffered even from my hopes.... I have worn myself outwith heavy unregulated work; I have suffered deprivation; five timesI have been in prison. I have wandered through Archangel and Tobolsk... the very memory sickens me. I lived, but in the vortex never feltthe process of life. Will you believe it, I never noticed how my wifeloved me—when my children were born. What more can I tell you? To allwho loved me I brought misfortune.... My mother has mourned for me nowfifteen years, and my own brothers, who through me have been made toblush, who have been made to bend their backs, whose hearts have beensickened, whose money has been wasted, have grown at last to hate melike poison."

Likharyóff rose and again sat down.

"If I were only unhappy I should be thankful to God," he continued,looking at Mdlle. Ilováisky. "But my personal unhappiness fades awaywhen I remember how often in my infatuations I was ridiculous, farfrom the truth, unjust, cruel, dangerous! How often with my whole soulhave I hated and despised those whom I ought to have loved, and lovedthose whom I ought to have hated! To-day, I believe; I fall down onmy face and worship: to-morrow, like a coward, I flee from the godsand friends of yesterday, and silently swallow some scoundrel! Godalone knows how many times I have wept with shame for my infatuations!Never in my life have I consciously lied or committed a wrong, yet myconscience is unclean! I cannot even boast that my hands are unstainedwith blood, for before my own eyes my wife faded to death—worn outby my improvidence. My own wife!... Listen; there are now in fashiontwo opposing opinions of woman. One class measures her skull to provethat she is lower than man, to determine her defects, to justify theirown animality. The other would employ all their strength in liftingwoman to their own level—that is to say, force her to learn by heartthirty-five thousand species of insects, to talk and write the samenonsense as they themselves talk and write." Likharyóff's face darkened.

"But I tell you that woman always was and always will be the slave ofman!" he said in a bass voice, thumping his fist upon the table. "Sheis wax—tender, plastic wax—from which man can mould what he will.Lord in heaven! Yet out of some trumpery infatuation for manhood shecuts her hair, forsakes her family, dies in a foreign land.... Of allthe ideas to which she sacrifices herself not one is feminine!...Devoted, unthinking slave! Skulls I have never measured; but this I sayfrom bitter, grievous experience: The proudest, the most independentwomen—once I had succeeded in communicating to them my inspiration,came after me, unreasoning, asking no questions, obeying my everywish. Of a nun I made a Nihilist, who, as I afterwards learned, killeda gendarme. My wife never forsook me in all my wanderings, and likea weathercock changed her faith as I changed my infatuations." Withexcitement Likharyóff jumped up, and walked up and down the room.

"Noble, exalted slavery!" he exclaimed, gesticulating. "In this, inthis alone, is hidden the true significance of woman's life.... Out ofall the vile nonsense which accumulated in my head during my relationswith women, one thing, as water from a filter, has come out pure, andthat is neither ideas, nor philosophy, nor clever phrases, but thisextraordinary submissiveness to fate, this uncommon benevolence, thisall-merciful kindness."

Likharyóff clenched his fists, concentrated his eyes upon a singlepoint, and, as if tasting every word, filtered through his clenchedteeth:

"This magnanimous endurance, faith to the grave, the poetry of theheart. It is in this ... yes, it is in this that the meaning of life isfound, in this unmurmuring martyrdom, in the tears that soften stone,in the infinite all-forgiving love, which sweeps into the chaos of lifein lightness and warmth...."

Márya Mikháilovna rose slowly, took a step towards Likharyóff, and sether eyes piercingly upon his face. By the tears which sparkled on hiseyelashes, by the trembling, passionate voice, by the flushed cheeks,she saw at a glance that women were not the accidental theme of hisconversation. No, they were the object of his new infatuation, or, ashe had put it, of his new belief. For the first time in her life shesaw before her a man in the ecstacy of a burning, prophetic faith.Gesticulating—rolling his eyes, he seemed insane and ecstatical;but in the fire of his eyes, in the torrent of his words, in all themovements of his gigantic body, she saw only such beauty, that, herselfnot knowing what she did, she stood silently before him as if rootedto the ground, and looked with rapture into his face.

"Take my mother, for example!" he said, with an imploring look,stretching out his arms to her. "I poisoned her life, I disgraced inher eyes the race of Likharyóff, I brought her only such evil as isbrought by the bitterest foe, and ... what? My brothers give her oddkopecks for wafers and collections, and she, violating her religiousfeeling, hoards up those kopecks, and sends them secretly to me! Suchdeeds as this educate and ennoble the soul more than all your theories,subtle phrases, thirty-five thousand species!... But I might give youa thousand instances! Take your own case! Outside storm and darkness,yet through storm and darkness and cold, you drive, fearless, to yourfather and brother, that their holidays may be warmed by your caresses,although they, it may well be, have forgotten your existence. But wait!The day will come when you will learn to love a man, and you will goafter him to the North Pole.... You would go!"

"Yes ... if I loved him."

"You see!" rejoiced Likharyóff, stamping his feet. "Oh, God, how happyI am to have met you here! ... Such has always been my good fortune... everywhere I meet with kind acquaintances. Not a day passes thatI do not meet some man for whom I would give my own soul! In thisworld there are many more good people than evil! Already you and I havespoken frankly and out of the heart, as if we had known one another athousand years. It is possible for a man to live his own life, to keepsilent for ten years, to be reticent with his own wife and friends,and then some day suddenly he meets a cadet in a railway carriage, andreveals to him his whole soul. ... You ... I have the honour to see youfor the first time, but I have confessed myself as I never did before.Why?"

Likharyóff rubbed his hands and smiled gaily. Then he walked up anddown the room and talked again of women. The church bell chimed for themorning service.

"Heavens!" wept Sasha. "He won't let me sleep with his talk!"

"Akh, yes!" stammered Likharyóff. "Forgive me, darling. Sleep,sleep.... In addition to her, I have two boys," he whispered. "Theylive with their uncle, but she cannot bear to be a day without herfather.... Suffers, grumbles, but sticks to me as a fly to honey. ...But I have been talking nonsense, mademoiselle, and have prevented youalso from sleeping. Shall I make your bed?"

Without waiting for an answer, he shook out the wet cloak, andstretched it on the bench with the fur on top, picked up the scatteredmufflers and shawls, and rolled the ulster into a pillow—all thissilently, with an expression of servile adoration, as though he weredealing not with women's rags, but with fragments of holy vessels.His whole figure seemed-to express guilt and confusion, as if inthe presence of such a tiny being he were ashamed of his height andstrength....

When Mdlle. Ilováisky had lain down he extinguished the candle, and saton a stool near the stove....

"Yes," he whispered, smoking a thick cigarette, and puffing the smokeinto the stove. "Nature has set in every Russian an enquiring mind, atendency to speculation, and extraordinary capacity for belief; but allthese are broken into dust against our improvidence, indolence, andfantastic triviality...."

Márya Mikháilovna looked in astonishment into the darkness, but shecould see only the red spot on the ikon, and the quivering glare fromthe stove on Likharyóff's face. The darkness, the clang of the churchbells, the roar of the storm, the limping boy, peevish Sasha andunhappy Likharyóff—all these mingled, fused in one great impression,and the whole of God's world seemed to her fantastic, full of mysteryand magical forces. The words of Likharyóff resounded in her ears, andhuman life seemed to her a lovely, poetical fairy-tale, to which therewas no end.

The great impression grew and grew, until it absorbed all consciousnessand was transformed into a sweet sleep. Mdlle. Ilováisky slept. But insleep she continued to see the lamp, and the thick nose with the redlight dancing upon it. She was awakened by a cry.

"Papa, dear," tenderly implored a child's voice. "Let us go back touncle's! There is a Christmas tree. Stepa and Kolya are there!"

"What can I do, darling?" reasoned a soft, male bass. "Try andunderstand me...."

And to the child's crying was added the man's. The cry of this doublemisery breaking through the howl of the storm, touched upon the earsof the girl with such soft, human music, that she could not withstandthe emotion, and wept also. And she listened as the great black shadowwalked across the room, lifted up the fallen shawl and wrapped it roundher feet.

Awakened again by a strange roar, she sprang up and looked around her.Through the windows, covered half-way up in snow, gleamed the bluedawn. The room itself was full of a grey twilight, through which shecould see the stove, the sleeping girl, and Nasr Edin. The lamp andstove had both gone out. Through the wide-opened door of the room couldbe seen the public hall of the inn with its tables and benches. A manwith a blunt, gipsy face and staring eyes stood in the middle of theroom in a pool of melted snow, and held up a stick with a red star onthe top. Around him was a throng of boys, immovable as statues, andcovered with snow. The light of the star, piercing though its red papercovering, flushed their wet faces. The crowd roared in discord, and outof their roar Mdlle. Ilováisky understood only one quatrain:—

"Hey, boy, bold and fearless,
Take a knife sharp and shiny.
Come, kill and kill the Jew,
The sorrowing son ..."

At the counter stood Likharyóff, looking with emotion at the singers,and tramping his feet in time. Seeing Márya Mikháilovna he smiledbroadly, and entered the room. She also smiled.

"Congratulations!" he said. "I see you have slept well."

Mdlle. Ilováisky looked at him silently, and continued to smile.

After last night's conversation he seemed to her no monger tall andbroad-shouldered, but a little man. A big steamer seems small to thosewho have crossed the ocean.

"It is time for me to go," she said. "I must get ready. Tell me, whereare you going to?"

"I? First to Klinushka station, thence to Siergievo, and from Sergievoa drive of forty versts to the coalmines of a certain GeneralShashkovsky. My brothers have got me a place as manager.... I will digcoal."

"Allow me ... I know these mines. Shashkovsky is my uncle. But ... whyare you going there?" asked Márya Mikháilovna in surprise.

"As manager. I am to manage the mines."

"I don't understand." She shrugged her shoulders. "You say you aregoing to these mines. Do you know what that means? Do you know that itis all bare steppe, that there is not a soul near ... that the tediumis such that you could not live there a single day? The coal is bad,nobody buys it, and my uncle is a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt.... Hewill not even pay your salary."

"It is the same," said Likharyóff indifferently. "Even for the mines,thanks!"

Mdlle. Ilováisky again shrugged her shoulders, and walked up and downthe room in agitation. "I cannot understand, I cannot understand,"she said, moving her fingers before her face. "This is inconceivable... it is madness. Surely you must realise that this ... it is worsethan exile. It is a grave for a living man. Akh, heavens!" she saidpassionately, approaching Likharyóff and moving her fingers before hissmiling face. Her upper lip trembled, and her stinging face grew pale."Imagine it, a bare steppe ... and solitude. Not a soul to say a wordto ... and you ... infatuated with women! Mines and women!"

Mdlle. Ilováisky seemed ashamed of her warmth, and, turning away fromLikharyóff, went over to the window.

"No ... no ... you cannot go there!" she said, rubbing her finger downthe window-pane. Not only through her head, but through her wholebody ran a feeling that here behind her stood an unhappy, forsaken,perishing man. But he, as if unconscious of his misery, as if he hadnot wept the night before, looked at her and smiled good-humouredly. Itwould have been better if he had continued to cry. For a few minutesin agitation she walked up and down the room, and then stopped in thecorner and began to think. Likharyóff said something, but she did nothear him. Turning her back to him, she took a credit note from herpurse, smoothed it in her hand, and then, looking at him, blushed andthrust it into her pocket.

Outside the inn resounded the coachman's voice. Silently, with asevere, concentrated expression, Mdlle. Ilováisky began to put on herwraps. Likharyóff rolled her up in them, and chattered gaily. But everyword caused her intolerable pain. It is not pleasant to listen to thejests of the wretched or dying.

When the transformation of a living woman into a formless bundle wascomplete, Mdlle. Ilováisky, looked for the last time around "TheTraveller," stood silent a moment, and then went out slowly. Likharyóffescorted her.

Outside, God alone knows why, the storm still raged. Great cloudsof big, soft snowflakes restlessly whirled over the ground, findingno abiding place. Horses, sledge, trees, the bull tethered to thepost—all were white, and seemed made of down.

"Well, God bless you!" stammered Likharyóff, as he helped MáryaMikháilovna into the sledge. "Don't think ill of me!"

Mdlle. Ilováisky said nothing. When the sledge started and began tocircle round a great snowdrift, she looked at Likharyóff as if shewished to say something. Likharyóff ran up to the sledge, but she saidnot a word, and only gazed at him through her long eyelashes to whichthe snowflakes already clung.

Whether it be that his sensitive mind read this glance aright, orwhether, as it may have been, that his imagination led him astray, itsuddenly struck him that but a little more and this girl would haveforgiven him his age, his failures, his misfortunes, and followed him,neither questioning nor reasoning, to the ends of the earth. For a longtime he stood as if rooted to the spot, and gazed at the track leftby the sledge-runners. The snowflakes settled swiftly on his hair,his beard, his shoulders. But soon the traces of the sledge-runnersvanished, and he, covered with snow, began to resemble a white boulder,his eyes all the time continuing to search for something through theclouds of snow.

A FAMILY COUNCIL

To prevent the skeleton in the Uskoff family cup-board escaping intothe street, the most rigorous measures were taken. One half of theservants was packed off to the theatre and circus, and the otherhalf sat imprisoned in the kitchen. Orders were given to admit noone. The wife of the culprit's uncle, her sister, and the governess,although initiated into the mystery, pretended that they knew nothingwhatever about it; they sat silently in the dining-room, and darednot show their faces in the drawing-room or hall. Sasha Uskoff, agedtwenty-five, the cause of all this upheaval, arrived some time ago; andon the advice of kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, his maternal uncle, satdemurely in the corridor outside the study door, and prepared himselffor sincere, open-hearted confession. On the other side of the door thefamily council was being held. The discussion ran on a ticklish andvery disagreeable subject. The facts of the matter were as follows.Sasha Uskoff had discounted at a bankers a forged bill of exchange,the term of which expired three days before; and now his two paternaluncles, and Ivan Markovitch, an uncle on his mother's side, werediscussing the solemn problem: should the money be paid and the familyhonour saved, or should they wash their hands of the whole matter, andleave the law to take its course?

To people unconcerned and uninterested such questions seem verytrivial, but for those with whom the solution lies they areextraordinarily complex. The three uncles had already had their say,yet the matter had not advanced a step.

"Heavens!" cried the Colonel, a paternal uncle, in a voice betrayingboth weariness and irritation. "Heavens! who said that family honourwas a prejudice? I never said anything of the kind. I only wanted tosave you from looking at the matter from a false standpoint—to pointout how easily you may make an irremediable mistake. Yet you don't seemto understand me! I suppose I am speaking Russian, not Chinese!"

"My dear fellow, we understand you perfectly," interposed IvanMarkovitch soothingly.

"Then why do you say that I deny family honour? I repeat what I havesaid! Fam—ily hon—our falsely under—stood is a pre—ju—dice!Falsely under—stood, mind you! That is my point of view. From anyconviction whatever, to screen and leave unpunished a rascal, no matterwho he is, is both contrary to law and unworthy of an honourable man.It is not the saving of the family honour, but civic cowardice. Takethe Army, for example! The honour of the Army is dearer to a soldierthan any other honour. But we do not screen our guilty members ... wejudge them! Do you imagine that the honour of the Army suffers thereby?On the contrary!"

The other paternal uncle, an official of the Crown Council, arheumatic, taciturn, and not very intelligent man, held his peace allthe time, or spoke only of the fact that if the matter came into courtthe name of the Uskoffs would appear in the newspapers; in his opinion,therefore, to avoid publicity it would be better to hush up the matterwhile there was still time. But with the exception of this reference tothe newspapers, he gave no reason for his opinion.

But kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, the maternal uncle, spoke fluentlyand softly with a tremula in his voice. He began with the argument thatyouth has its claims and its peculiar temptations. Which of us was notonce young, and which of us did not sometimes go a step too far? Evenleaving aside ordinary mortals, did not history teach that the greatestminds in youth were not always able to avoid infatuations and mistakes.Take for instance the biographies of great writers. What one of themdid not gamble and drink, and draw upon himself the condemnation ofall right-minded men? While on the one hand we remembered that Sasha'serrors had overstepped the boundary into crime, on the other wemust take into account that Sasha hardly received any education; hewas expelled from the gymnasium when in the fifth form; he lost hisparents in early childhood, and thus at the most susceptible age wasdeprived of control and all beneficent influences. He was a nervousboy, easily excited, without any naturally strong moral convictions,and he had been spoiled by happiness. Even if he were guilty, still hedeserved the sympathy and concern of all sympathetic souls. Punished,of course, he must be; but then, had he not already been punished byhis conscience, and the tortures which he must now be feeling as heawaited the decision of his relatives. The comparison with the Armywhich the Colonel had made was very flattering, and did great honour tohis generous mind; the appeal to social feelings showed the nobility ofhis heart. But it must not be forgotten that the member of society inevery individual was closely bound up with the Christian.

"And how should we violate our social duty," asked Ivan Markovitch,"if instead of punishing a guilty boy we stretch out to him the handof mercy?" Then Ivan Markovitch reverted to the question of the familyhonour. He himself had not the honour to belong to the distinguishedfamily of Uskoff, but he knew very well that that illustrious racedated its origin from the thirteenth century, and he could not forgetfor a moment that his beloved, unforgotten sister was the wife ofa scion of the race. In one word—the Uskoff family was dear to himfor many reasons, and he could not for a moment entertain the thoughtthat for a paltry fifteen hundred roubles a shadow should be cast forever upon the ancestral tree. And if all the arguments already adducedwere insufficiently convincing then he, in conclusion, asked hisbrothers-in-law to explain the problem: What is a crime? A crime wasan immoral action, having its impulse in an evil will. So most peoplethought. But could we affirm that the human will was free to decide?To this important question science could give no conclusive answer.Metaphysicians maintained various divergent theories. For instance, thenew school of Lombroso refused to recognise free-will, and held thatevery crime was the product of purely anatomical peculiarities in theindividual.

"Ivan Markovitch!" interrupted the Colonel imploringly. "Do, forHeaven's sake, talk sense. We are speaking seriously about a seriousmatter ... and you, about Lombroso! You are a clever man, but think fora moment—how can all this rattle-box rhetoric help us to decide thequestion?"

Sasha Uskoff sat outside the door and listened. He felt neither fearnor shame nor tedium—only weariness and spiritual vacuity. He feltthat it did not matter a kopeck whether he was forgiven or not; he hadcome here to await his sentence and to offer a frank explanation, onlybecause he was begged to do so by kindly Ivan Markovitch. He was notafraid of the future. It was all the same to him, here in the corridor,in prison, or in Siberia.

"Siberia is only Siberia—the devil take it!"

Life has wearied Sasha, and has become insufferably tedious. He isinextricably in debt, he has not a kopeck in his pocket, his relativeshave become odious to him; with his friends and with women he mustpart sooner or later, for they are already beginning to look at himcontemptuously as a parasite. The future is dark.

Sasha, in fact, is indifferent, and only one thing affects him. Thatis, that through the door he can hear himself being spoken of as ascoundrel and a criminal. All the time he is itching to jump up, burstinto the room, and, in answer to the detestable metallic voice of theColonel, to cry:

"You are a liar!"

A criminal—it is a horrid word. It is applied as a rule to murderers,thieves, robbers, and people incorrigibly wicked and morally hopeless.But Sasha is far from this.... True, he is up to his neck in debts,and never attempts to pay them. But then indebtedness is not a crime,and there are very few men who are not in debt. The Colonel and IvanMarkovitch are both in debt.

"What on earth am I guilty of?" asked Sasha. He had obtained moneyby presenting a forged bill. But this was done by every young man heknew. Khandrikoff and Von Burst, for instance, whenever they wantedmoney, discounted bills with forged acceptance of their parents andfriends, and when their own money came in met them. Sasha did exactlythe same thing, and only failed to meet his bill owing to Khandrikoff'sfailure to lend the money which he had promised. It was not he, butcircumstance which was at fault. ... It was true that imitating anotherman's signature was considered wrong, but that did not make it a crimebut merely an ugly formality, a manoeuvre constantly adopted whichinjured nobody; and Sasha when he forged the Colonel's name had nointention of causing loss to anyone.

"It is absurd to pretend that I have been guilty of a crime," thoughtSasha. "I have not the character of men who commit crimes. On thecontrary, I am easy-going and sensitive ... when I have money I helpthe poor...."

While Sasha reasoned thus, the discussion continued on the other sideof the door.

"But, gentlemen, this is only the beginning!" cried the Colonel."Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we let him off and pay themoney! He will go on still in the same way and continue to lead hisunprincipled life. He will indulge in dissipation, run into debt, goto our tailors and order clothes in our names. What guarantee have wethat this scandal will be the last? As far as I am concerned, I tellyou frankly that I do not believe in his reformation for one moment."

The official of the Crown Council muttered something in reply. ThenIvan Markovitch began to speak softly and fluently. The Colonelimpatiently shifted his chair, and smothered Ivan Markovitch's argumentwith his detestable, metallic voice. At last the door opened, andout of the study came Ivan Markovitch with red spots on his meagre,clean-shaven face. "Come!" he said, taking Sasha by the arm. "Come inand make an open-hearted confession. Without pride, like a good boy ...humbly and from the heart."

Sasha went into the study. The official of the Crown Council continuedto sit, but the Colonel, hands in pockets, and with one knee restingon his chair, stood before the table. The room was full of smokeand stiflingly hot. Sasha did not look at either the Colonel or hisbrother, but suddenly feeling ashamed and hurt, glanced anxiously atIvan Markovitch and muttered:

"I will pay ... I will give...."

"May I ask you on what you relied when you obtained the money on thisbill?" rang out the metallic voice.

"I ... Khandrikoff promised to lend me the money in time."

Sasha said nothing more. He went out of the study and again sat on thechair outside the door. He would have gone away at once had he not beenstifled with hatred and with a desire to tear the Colonel to piecesor at least to insult him to his face. But at this moment in the dimtwilight around the dining-room door appeared a woman's figure. It wasthe Colonel's wife. She beckoned Sasha, and, wringing her hands, saidwith tears in her voice:

"Alexandre, I know that you do not love me, but ... listen for amoment! My poor boy, how can this have happened P It is awful, awful!For Heaven's sake beg their forgiveness ... justify yourself, implorethem!"

Sasha looked at her twitching shoulders, and at the big tears whichflowed down her cheeks; he heard behind him the dull, nervous voices ofhis exhausted uncles, and shrugged his shoulders. He had never expectedthat his aristocratic relatives would raise such a storm over a paltryfifteen hundred roubles. And he could understand neither the tears northe trembling voices.

An hour later he heard indications that the Colonel was gaining theday. The other uncles were being won over to his determination to leavethe matter to the law.

"It is decided!" said the Colonel stiffly. "Basta!" But having decidedthus, the three uncles, even the inexorable Colonel, perceptibly lostheart.

"Heavens!" sighed Ivan Markovitch. "My poor sister!"

And he began in a soft voice to announce his conviction that hissister, Sasha's mother, was invisibly present in the room. He felt inhis heart that this unhappy, sainted woman was weeping, anguishing,interceding for her boy. For the sake of her repose in the otherworld it would have been better to spare Sasha. Sasha heard someonewhimpering. It was Ivan Markovitch. He wept and muttered somethinginaudible through the door. The Colonel rose and walked from corner tocorner. The discussion began anew....

The clock in the drawing-room struck two. The council was over at last.The Colonel, to avoid meeting a man who had caused him so much shame,left the room through the antechamber. Ivan Markovitch came into thecorridor. He was plainly agitated, but rubbed his hands cheerfully. Histear-stained eyes glanced happily around him, and his mouth was twistedinto a smile.

"It is all right, my boy!" he said to Sasha. "Heaven be praised! Youmay go home, child, and sleep quietly. We have decided to pay themoney, but only on the condition that you repent sincerely, and agreeto come with me to the country to-morrow, and set to work."

A minute afterwards, Ivan Markovitch and Sasha, having put on theirovercoats and hats, went downstairs together. Uncle Ivan mutteredsomething edifying. But Sasha didn't listen; he felt only thatsomething heavy and painful had fallen from his shoulders. He wasforgiven—he was free! Joy like a breeze burst into his breast andwrapped his heart with refreshing coolness. He wished to breathe, tomove, to live. And looking at the street lamps and at the black sky heremembered that to-day at "The Bear," Von Burst would celebrate hisname-day. A new joy seized his soul.

"I will go!" he decided.

But suddenly he remembered that he had not a kopeck, and that hisfriends already despised him for his penuriousness. He must get moneyat all cost. "Uncle, lend me a hundred roubles!" he said to IvanMarkovitch.

Ivan Markovitch looked at him in amazement, and staggered back againsta lamp-post.

"Lend me a hundred roubles!" cried Sasha, impatiently shifting fromfoot to foot, and beginning to lose his temper. "Uncle, I beg of you... lend me a hundred roubles!"

His face trembled with excitement, and he nearly rushed at his uncle.

"You won't give them?" he cried, seeing that his uncle was toodumfounded to understand. "Listen, if you refuse to lend them, I'llinform on myself to-morrow. I'll refuse to let you pay the money. I'llforge another to-morrow!"

Thunderstruck, terror-stricken, Ivan Markovitch muttered somethingincoherent, took from his pocket a hundred-rouble note, and handed itsilently to Sasha. And Sasha took it and hurriedly walked away. Andsitting in a droschky, Sasha grew cool again, and felt his heart expandwith renewed joy. The claims of youth of which kind-hearted uncle Ivanhad spoken at the council-table had inspired and taken possession ofhim again. He painted in imagination the coming feast, and in his mind,among visions of bottles, women, and boon companions, twinkled a littlethought:

"Now I begin to see that I was in the wrong."

AT HOME

"They sent over from Grigorievitch's for some book, but I said thatyou were not at home. The postman has brought the newspapers andtwo letters. And, Yevgéniï Petróvitch, I really must ask you to dosomething in regard to Serózha. I caught him smoking the day beforeyesterday, and again to-day. When I began to scold him, in his usualway he put his hands over his ears, and shouted so us to drown myvoice."

Yevgéniï Petróvitch Buikovsky, Procurer of the District Court, who hadonly just returned from the Session House and was taking off his glovesin his study, looked for a moment at the complaining governess andlaughed:

"Serózha smoking!" He shrugged his shoulders. "I can imagine thatwhipper-snapper with a cigarette! How old is he?"

"Seven. Of course you may not take it seriously, but at his age smokingis a bad and injurious habit, and bad habits should be rooted out intheir beginning."

"Very true. But where does he get the tobacco?"

"On your table."

"On my table! Ask him to come here."

When the governess left the room, Buikovsky sat in his armchair infront of his desk, shut his eyes, and began to think. He picturedin imagination his Serózha with a gigantic cigarette a yard long,surrounded by clouds of tobacco smoke. The caricature made him laughin spite of himself; but at the same time the serious, worriedface of his governess reminded him of a time, now long passed by,a half-forgotten time, when smoking in the schoolroom or nurseryinspired in teachers and parents a strange and not quite comprehensiblehorror. No other word but horror would describe it. The culpritswere mercilessly flogged, expelled from school, their lives marred,and this, although not one of the schoolmasters or parents could saywhat precisely constitutes the danger and guilt of smoking. Even veryintelligent men did not hesitate to fight a vice which they did notunderstand. Yevgéniï Petróvitch remembered the director of his ownschool, a benevolent and highly educated old man, who was struck withsuch terror when he caught a boy with a cigarette that he became pale,immediately convoked an extraordinary council of masters, and condemnedthe offender to expulsion. Such indeed appears to be the law of life;the more intangible the evil the more fiercely and mercilessly is itcombated.

The Procurer remembered two or three cases of expulsion, and recallingthe subsequent lives of the victims, he could not but conclude thatsuch punishment was often a much greater evil than the vice itself....But the animal organism is gifted with capacity to adapt itselfrapidly, to accustom itself to changes, to different atmospheres,otherwise every man would feel that his rational actions were basedupon an irrational foundation, and that there was little reasonedtruth and conviction even in such responsibilities—responsibilitiesterrible in their results—as those of the schoolmaster, and lawyer,the writer....

And such thoughts, light and inconsequential, which enter only a tiredand resting brain, wandered about in Yevgéniï Petróvitch's head; theyspring no one knows where or why, vanish soon, and, it would seem,wander only on the outskirts of the brain without penetrating far. Formen who are obliged for whole hours, even for whole days, to thinkofficial thoughts all in the same direction, such free, domesticspeculations are an agreeable comfort.

It was nine o'clock. Overhead from the second story came the footfallsof someone walking from corner to corner; and still higher, on thethird story, someone was playing scales. The footsteps of the man who,judging by his walk, was thinking tensely or suffering from toothache,and the monotonous scales in the evening stillness, combined to createa drowsy atmosphere favourable to idle thoughts. From the nursery camethe voices of Serózha and his governess.

"Papa has come?" cried the boy, "Papa has co-o-me! Papa! papa!"

"Votre père vous appelle, allez vite," cried the governess, pipinglike a frightened bird.... "Do you hear?"

"What shall I say to him?" thought Yevgéniï Petróvitch.

And before he had decided what to say, in came his son Serózha, a boyof seven years old. He was one of those little boys whose sex can bedistinguished only by their clothes—weakly, pale-faced, delicate....Everything about him seemed tender and soft; his movements, his curlyhair, his looks, his velvet jacket.

"Good evening, papa," he began in a soft voice, climbing on hisfather's knee, and kissing his neck. "You wanted me?"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, Sergéï Yevgénitch," answered theProcuror, pushing him off. "Before I allow you to kiss me I want totalk to you, and to talk seriously.... I am very angry with you, and donot love you any more ... understand that, brother; I do not love you,and you are not my son.... No!"

Serózha looked earnestly at his father, turned his eyes on to thechair, and shrugged his shoulders.

"What have I done?" he asked in doubt, twitching his eyes. "I have notbeen in your study all day and touched nothing."

"Natálya Semiónovna has just been complaining to me that she caughtyou smoking.... Is it true? Do you smoke?"

"Yes, I smoked once, father.... It is true."

"There, you see, you tell lies also," said the Procurer, frowning, andtrying at the same time to smother a smile. "Natálya Semiónovna sawyou smoking twice. That is to say, you are found out in three acts ofmisconduct—you smoke, you take another person's tobacco, and you lie.Three faults!"

"Akh, yes," remembered Serózha, with smiling eyes. "It is true. Ismoked twice—to-day and once before."

"That is to say you smoked not once but twice. I am very, verydispleased with you! You used to be a good boy, but now I see you arespoiled and have become naughty."

Yevgéniï Petróvitch straightened Serózha's collar, and thought: "Whatelse shall I say to him?"

"It is very bad," he continued. "I did not expect this from you. Inthe first place you have no right to go to another person's table andtake tobacco which does not belong to you. A man has a right to enjoyonly his own property, and if he takes another's then he is a wickedman." (This is not the way to go about it, thought the Procuror.) "Forinstance, Natálya Semiónovna has a boxful of dresses. That is her box,and we have not, that is neither you nor I have, any right to touchit, as it is not ours.... Isn't that plain? You have your horses andpictures ... I do not take them. Perhaps I have often felt that Iwanted to take them ... but they are yours, not mine!"

"Please, father, take them if you like," said Serózha, raising hiseyebrows. "Always take anything of mine, father. This yellow dog whichis on your table is mine, but I don't mind...."

"You don't understand me," said Buikovsky. "The dog you gave me, itis now mine, and I can do with it what I like; but the tobacco I didnot give to you. The tobacco is mine." (How can I make him understand?thought the Procurer. Not in this way). "If I feel that I want to smokesomeone else's tobacco I first of all ask for permission...."

And idly joining phrase to phrase, and imitating the language ofchildren, Buikovsky began to explain what is meant by property. Serózhalooked at his chest, and listened attentively (he loved to talk tohis father in the evenings), then set his elbows on the table edgeand began to concentrate his short-sighted eyes upon the papers andinkstand. His glance wandered around the table, and paused on a bottleof gum-arabic. "Papa, what is gum made of?" he asked, suddenly liftingthe bottle to his eyes.

Buikovsky took the bottle, put it back on the table, and continued:

"In the second place, you smoke.... That is very bad! If I smoke,then ... it does not follow that everyone may. I smoke, and know ...that it is not clever, and I scold myself, and do not love myself onaccount of it ... (I am a nice teacher, thought the Procurer.) Tobaccoseriously injures the health, and people who smoke die sooner thanthey ought to. It is particularly injurious to little boys like you.You have a weak chest, you have not yet got strong, and in weak peopletobacco smoke produces consumption and other complaints. Uncle Ignatiusdied of consumption. If he had not smoked perhaps he would have beenalive to-day."

Serózha looked thoughtfully at the lamp, touched the shade with hisfingers, and sighed. "Uncle Ignatius played splendidly on the fiddle!"he said. "His fiddle is now at Grigorievitch's."

Serózha again set his elbows on the table and lost himself in thought.On his pale face was the expression of one who is listening intentlyor following the course of his own thoughts; sorrow and something likefright showed themselves in his big, staring eyes. Probably he wasthinking of death, which had so lately carried away his mother andUncle Ignatius. Death is a tiling which carries away mothers and unclesand leaves on the earth only children and fiddles. Dead people live inthe sky somewhere, near the stars, and thence look down upon the earth.How do they bear the separation?

"What shall I say to him?" asked the Procuror. "He is not listening.Apparently he thinks there is nothing serious either in his faults orin my arguments. How can I explain it to him?"

The Procurer rose and walked up and down the room.

"In my time these questions were decided very simply," he thought."Every boy caught smoking was flogged. The cowards and babies,therefore, gave up smoking, but the brave and cunning bore theirfloggings, carried the tobacco in their boots and smoked in the stable.When they were caught in the stable and again flogged, they smoked onthe river-bank ... and so on until they were grown up. My own motherin order to keep me from smoking used to give me money and sweets.Nowadays all these methods are regarded as petty or immoral. Takinglogic as his standpoint, the modern teacher tries to inspire in thechild good principles not out of fear, not out of wish for distinctionor reward, but consciously."

While he walked and talked, Serózha climbed on the chair next the tableand began to draw. To prevent the destruction of business papers andthe splashing of ink, his father had provided a packet of paper, cutespecially for him, and a blue pencil. "To-day the cook was choppingcabbage and cut her finger," he said, meantime sketching a house andtwitching his eyebrows. "She cried so loud that we were all frightenedand ran into the kitchen. Such a stupid! Natálya Semiónovna ordered herto bathe her finger in cold water, but she sucked it.... How could sheput her dirty finger in her mouth! Papa, that is bad manners!"

He further told how during dinner-time an organ-grinder came into theyard with a little girl who sang and danced to his music.

"He has his own current of thoughts," thought the Procuror. "In hishead he has a world of his own, and he knows better than anyone elsewhat is serious and what is not. To gain his attention and conscienceit is no use imitating his language ... what is wanted is to understandand reason also in his manner. He would understand me perfectly if Ireally disliked tobacco, if I were angry, or cried.... For that reasonmothers are irreplaceable in bringing up children, for they alone canfeel and cry and laugh like children.... With logic and morals nothingcan be done. What shall I say to him?"

And Yevgéniï Petróvitch found it strange and absurd that he, anexperienced jurist, half his life struggling with all kinds ofinterruptions, prejudices, and punishments, was absolutely at a lossfor something to say to his son.

"Listen, give me your word of honour that you will not smoke!" he said.

"Word of honour!" drawled Serózha, pressing hard on his pencil andbending down to the sketch. "Word of honour!"

"But has he any idea what 'word of honour' means?" Buikovsky askedhimself. "No, I am a bad teacher! If a schoolmaster or any of ourlawyers were to see me now, he would call me a rag, and suspect me ofsuper-subtlety.... But in school and in court all these stupid problemsare decided much more simply than at home when you are dealing withthose whom you love. Love is exacting and complicates the business.If this boy were not my son, but a pupil or a prisoner at the bar, Ishould not be such a coward and scatterbrains...."

Yevgéniï Petróvitch sat at the table and took up one of Serózha'ssketches. It depicted a house with a crooked roof, and smoke which,like lightning, zigzagged from the chimney to the edge of the paper;beside the house stood a soldier with dots for eyes, and a bayonetshaped like the figure four.

"A man cannot be taller than a house," said the Procuror. "Look! theroof of your house only goes up to the soldier's shoulder."

Serózha climbed on his father's knee, and wriggled for a long timebefore he felt comfortable. "No, papa," he said, looking at thedrawing. "If you drew the soldier smaller you wouldn't be able to seehis eyes."

Was it necessary to argue? From daily observation the Procuror hadbecome convinced that children, like savages, have their own artisticoutlook, and their own requirements, inaccessible to the understandingof adults. Under close observation Serózha to an adult seemed abnormal.He found it possible and reasonable to draw men taller than houses,and to express with the pencil not only objects but also his ownsentiments. Thus, the sound of an orchestra he drew as a round, smokyspot; whistling as a spiral thread.... According to his ideas, soundswere closely allied with forms and colour, and when painting letters healways coloured L yellow, M red, A black, and so on. Throwing away hissketch, Serózha again wriggled, settled himself more comfortably, andoccupied himself with his father's beard. First he carefully smoothedit down, then divided it in two, and arranged it to look like whiskers.

"Now you are like Iván Stepánovitch," he muttered; "but wait, in aminute you will be like ... like the porter. Papa, why do porters standin doorways? Is it to keep out robbers?"

The Procurer felt on his face the child's breath, touched with hischeek the child's hair. In his heart rose a sudden feeling of warmthand softness, a softness that made it seem that not only his hands butall his soul lay upon the velvet of Serózha's coat. He looked into thegreat, dark eyes of his child, and it seemed to him that out of theirbig pupils looked at him his mother, and his wife, and all whom he hadever loved.

"What is the good of thrashing him?" he asked. "Punishment is ...and why turn myself into a schoolmaster?... Formerly men were simple;they thought less, and solved problems bravely.... Now, we think toomuch; logic has eaten us up.... The more cultivated a man, the more hethinks, the more he surrenders himself to subtleties, the less firm ishis will, the greater his timidity in the face of affairs. And, indeed,if you look into it, what a lot of courage and faith in one's self doesit need to teach a child, to judge a criminal, to write a big book...."

The clock struck ten.

"Now, child, time for bed," said the Procuror. "Say good night, and go."

"No, papa," frowned Serózha. "I may stay a little longer. Talk to meabout something. Tell me a story."

"I will, only after the story you must go straight to bed."

Yevgéniï Petróvitch sometimes spent his free evenings telling Serózhastories. Like most men of affairs he could not repeat by heart a singleverse or remember a single fairy tale; and every time was obliged toimprovise. As a rule he began with the jingle, "Once upon a time, and avery good time it was," and followed this up with all kinds of innocentnonsense, at the beginning having not the slightest idea of what wouldbe the middle and the end. Scenery, characters, situations all came athazard, and fable and moral flowed out by themselves without regard tothe teller's will Serózha dearly loved these improvisations, and theProcuror noticed that the simpler and less pretentious the plots, themore they affected the child.

"Listen," he began, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "Once upon a time,and a very good time it was, there lived an old, a very, very oldtsar, with a long grey beard, and ... this kind of moustaches. Well!He lived in a glass palace which shone and sparkled in the sun like abig lump of clean ice.... The palace ... brother mine ... the palacestood in a great garden where, you know, grew oranges ... pears, cherrytrees .,. and blossomed tulips, roses, water lilies ... and birdsof different colours sang.... Yes.... On the trees hung glass bellswhich, when the breeze blew, sounded so musically that it was a joy tolisten. Glass gives out a softer and more tender sound than metal. ...Well? Where was I? In the garden were fountains. ... You remember yousaw a fountain in the country, at Aunt Sonia's. Just the same kind offountains stood in the king's garden, only they were much bigger, andthe jets of water rose as high as the tops of the tallest poplars."

Yevgéniï Petróvitch thought for a moment and continued:

"The old tsar had an only son, the heir to his throne—a little boyabout your size. He was a good boy. He was never peevish, went to bedearly, never touched anything on the table ... and in all ways was amodel. But he had one fault—he smoked."

Serózha listened intently, and without blinking looked straight in hisfather's eyes. The Procuror continued, and thought: "What next?" Hehesitated for a moment, and ended his story thus:

"From too much smoking, the tsarevitch got ill with consumption, anddied ... when he was twenty years old. His sick and feeble old fatherwas left without any help. There was no one to govern the kingdomand defend the palace. His enemies came and killed the old man, anddestroyed the palace, and now in the garden are neither cherry treesnor birds nor bells.... So it was, brother."

The end of the plot seemed to Yevgéniï Petróvitch naive and ridiculous.But on Serózha the whole story produced a strong impression. Again hiseyes took on an expression of sorrow and something like fright; helooked thoughtfully at the dark window, shuddered, and said in a weakvoice:

"I will not smoke any more."

"They will tell me that this parable acted by means of beauty andartistic form," he speculated. "That may be so, but that is noconsolation.... That does not make it an honest method.... Why is itmorals and truth cannot be presented in a raw form, but only withmixtures, always sugared and gilded like a pill. This is not normal....It is falsification, deception ... a trick."

And he thought of those assessors who find it absolutely necessary tomake a "speech of the public which understands history only throughepics and historical novels; and of himself drawing a philosophy oflife not from sermons and laws, but from fables, romances, poetry....

"Medicine must be sweetened, truth made beautiful. ... And this goodfortune man has taken advantage of from the time of Adam.... And afterall maybe it is natural thus, and cannot be otherwise ... there are innature many useful and expedient deceits and illusions...."

He sat down to his work, but idle, domestic thoughts long wandered inhis brain. From the third story no longer came the sound of the scales.But the occupant of the second story long continued to walk up anddown....

IN EXILE

Old Semión, nicknamed Wiseacre, and a young Tartar, whom nobody knewby name, sat by the bonfire at the side of the river. The other threeferrymen lay in the hut. Semión, an old man of sixty, gaunt andtoothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy in appearance, was drunk;he would have been asleep long ago if it had not been for the flagonin his pocket, and his fear that his companions in the hut might askhim for vodka. The Tartar was ill and tired; and sat there, wrappedup in his rags, holding forth on the glories of life in Simbirsk, andboasting of the handsome and clever wife he had left behind him. He wasabout twenty-five years old, but now in the light of the camp fire hispale face, with its melancholy and sickly expression, seemed the faceof a lad.

"Yes, you can hardly call it paradise," said Wiseacre. "You can take itall in at a glance—water, bare banks, and clay about you, and nothingmore. Holy Week is over, but there is still ice floating down theriver, and this very morning snow."

"Misery, misery!" moaned the Tartar, looking round him in terror.

Ten paces below them lay the river, dark and cold, grumbling, itseemed, at itself, as it clove a path through the steep clay banks,and bore itself swiftly to the sea. Up against the bank lay one of thegreat barges which the ferrymen call karbases. On the opposite side,far away, rising and falling, and mingling with one another, creptlittle serpents of fire. It was the burning of last year's grass. Andbehind the serpents of fire darkness again. From the river came thenoise of little ice floes crashing against the barge. Darkness only,and cold!

The Tartar looked at the sky. There were as many stars there as inhis own country, just the same blackness above him. But something waslacking. At home in Simbirsk government there were no such stars and nosuch heaven.

"Misery, misery!" he repeated.

"You'll get used to it," said Wiseacre, grinning. "You're young andfoolish now—your mother's milk is still wet on your lips, only youthand folly could make you imagine there's no one more miserable thanyou. But the time'll come when you'll say, 'God grant every one sucha life as this!' Look at me, for instance. In a week's time the waterwill have fallen, we'll launch the small boat, you'll be off to Siberiato amuse yourselves, and I'll remain here and row from one side toanother. Twenty years now I've been ferrying. Day and night! Salmon andpike beneath the water and I above it! And God be thanked! I don't wantfor anything! God grant everyone such a life!"

The Tartar thrust some brushwood into the fire, lay closer to it, andsaid:

"My father is ill. When he dies my mother and wife are coming. Theypromised me."

"What do you want with a mother and wife?" asked Wiseacre, "put thatout of your head, it's all nonsense, brother! It's the devil's doingto make you think such thoughts. Don't listen to him, accursed! Ifhe begins about women, answer him back, 'Don't want them.' If hecomes about freedom, answer him back, 'Don't want it.' You don't wantanything. Neither father, nor mother, nor wife, nor freedom, nor house,nor home. You don't want anything, d——n them!"

Wiseacre took a drink from his flask and continued: "I, brother, am nosimple mujik, but a sexton's son, and when I lived in freedom in Kurskwore a frockcoat, yet now I have brought myself to such a point thatI can sleep naked on the earth and eat grass. And God grant everyonesuch a life! I don't want anything, and I don't fear anyone, and I knowthere is no one richer and freer than I in the world. The first day Icame here from Russia I persisted,41 don't want anything.' The deviltook me on also about wife, and home, and freedom, but I answeredhim back 'I don't want anything.' I tired him out, and now, as yousee, I live well, and don't complain. If any one bates an inch to thedevil, or listens to him even once, he's lost—there's no salvation forhim—he sinks in the bog to the crown of his head, and never gets out.

"Don't think it's only our brother, the stupid mujik, that gets lost.The well-born and educated lose themselves also. Fifteen years ago theysent a gentleman here from Russia. He wouldn't share something withhis brothers, and did something dishonest with a will. Belonged, theysaid, to a prince's or a baron's family—maybe he was an official, whocan tell? Well, anyway he came, and the first thing he did was to buyhimself a house and land in Mukhortinsk. 'I want,' he says, 'to live bymy work, by the sweat of my brow, because,' he says, 'I am no longer agentleman, but a convict.' 'Well,' I said, 'may God help him, he can donothing better.' He was a young man, fussy, and fond of talking; mowedhis own grass, caught fish, and rode on horseback sixty versts a day.That was the cause of the misfortune. From the first year he used toride to Guirino, to the post office. He would stand with me in the boatand sigh: 'Akh, Semión, how long they are sending me money from home.''You don't want it, Vassili Sergeyitch,' I answered,' what good ismoney to you? Give up the old ways, forget them as if they never were,as if you had dreamt them, and begin to live anew. Pay no attention,'I said, 'to the devil, he'll bring you nothing but ill. At present, youwant only money, but in a little time you'll want something more. Ifyou want to be happy, don't wish for anything at all. Yes.... Already,'I used to say to him, 'fortune has done you and me a bad turn—there'sno good begging charity from her, and bowing down to her—you mustdespise and laugh at her. Then she'll begin to laugh herself.' So Iused to talk to him.

"Well, two years after he came, he drove down to the ferry in goodspirits. He was rubbing his hands and laughing. 'I am going toGuirino,' he says, 'to meet my wife. She has taken pity on me, and iscoming. She is a good wife.' He was out of breath from joy.

"The next day he came back with his wife. She was a young woman, agood-looking one, in a hat, with a little girl in her arms. And myVassili Sergeyitch bustles about her, feasts his eyes on her, andpraises her up to the skies, 'Yes, brother Semión, even in Siberiapeople live.' 'Well,' I thought, 'he won't always think so.' From thattime out, every week, he rode to Guirino to inquire whether money hadbeen sent to him from Russia. Money he wanted without end. 'For mysake,' he used to say, 'she is burying her youth and beauty in Siberia,and sharing my miserable life. For this reason I must procure her everyenjoyment.' And to make things gayer for her, he makes acquaintancewith officials and all kinds of people. All this company, of course,had to be fed and kept in drink, a piano must be got, and a shaggydog for the sofa—in one word, extravagance, luxury.... She didn'tlive with him long. How could she? Mud, water, cold, neither vegetablenor fruit, bears and drunkards around her, and she a woman fromPetersburg, petted and spoiled.... Of course, she got sick of it....Yes, and a husband, too, no longer a man, but a convict.... Well,after three years, I remember, on Assumption Eve, I heard shoutingfrom the opposite bank. When I rowed across I saw the lady all wrappedup, and with her a young man, one of the officials. A troika! I rowedthem across, they got into the troika and drove off. Towards morning,Vassili Sergeyitch drives up in hot haste. 'Did my wife go by,' heasked, 'with a man in spectacles?' 'Yes,' I said, 'seek the wind inthe field.' He drove after them, and chased them for five days. When Iferried him back, he threw himself into the bottom of the boat, beathis head against the planks, and howled. I laughed and reminded him,'even in Siberia people live!' But that only made him worse.

"After this he tried to regain his freedom. His wife had gone back toRussia, and he thought only of seeing her, and getting her to returnto him. Every day he galloped off to one place or another, one day tothe post office, the next to town to see the authorities. He sent inpetitions asking for pardon and permission to return to Russia—ontelegrams alone, he used to say, he spent two hundred roubles. He soldhis land and mortgaged his house to a Jew. He got grey-haired and bent,and his face turned yellow like a consumptive's. He could not speakwithout tears coming into his eyes. Eight years he spent sending inpetitions. Then he came to life again; he had got a new consolation.The daughter, you see, was growing up. He doted on her. And to tell thetruth, she wasn't bad-looking—pretty, black-browed, and high-spirited.Every Sunday he rode with her to the church at Guirino. They wouldstand side by side in the boat, she laughing, and he never lifting hiseyes from her. 'Yes,' he said, 'Semión, even in Siberia people live,and are happy. See what a daughter I've got! you might go a thousandversts and never see another like her.' The daughter, as I said, wasreally good-looking. 'But wait a little,' I used to say to myself,'the girl is young, the blood flows in her veins, she wants to live;and what is life here?' Anyway, brother, she began to grieve. Pinedand declined, dwindled away, got ill, and now can't stand on herlegs. Consumption! There's your Siberian happiness! That's the waypeople live in Siberia!... And my Vassili Sergeyitch spends his timedriving about to doctors and bringing them home. Once let him hearthere's a doctor or a magic curer within two or three hundred versts,and after him he must go.... It's terrible to think of the amount ofmoney he spends, he might as well drink it.... She'll die all thesame, nothing'll save her, and then he'll be altogether lost. Whetherhe hangs himself from grief or runs off to Russia it's all the same.If he runs away they'll catch him, then we'll have a trial and penalservitude, and the rest of it...."

"It was very well for him," said the Tartar, shuddering with the cold.

"What was well?"

"Wife and daughter.... Whatever he suffers, whatever punishment he'llhave, at any rate he saw them.... You say you don't want anything.But to have nothing is bad. His wife lived with him three years, Godgranted him that. To have nothing is bad, but three years is good. Youdon't understand."

Trembling with cold, finding only with painful difficulty the properRussian words, the Tartar began to beg that God might save him fromdying in a strange land, and being buried in the cold earth. If hiswife were to come to him, even for one day, even for one hour, for suchhappiness he would consent to undergo the most frightful tortures, andthank God for them. Better one day's happiness than nothing!

And he again told the story of how he had left at home a handsome andclever wife. Then, putting both his hands to his head, he began to cry,and to assure Semión that he was guilty of nothing, and was sufferingunjustly. His two brothers and his uncle had stolen a peasant's horses,and beaten the old man half to death. But society had treated himunfairly, and sent the three brothers to Siberia, while the uncle, arich man, remained at home.

"You'll get used to it!" said Semión.

The Tartar said nothing, and only turned his wet eyes on the fire; hisface expressed doubt and alarm, as if he did not yet understand why helay there in darkness and in cold among strangers, and not at Simbirsk.Wiseacre lay beside the fire, laughed silently at something, and hummeda tune.

"What happiness can she have with her father?" he began after a fewminutes' silence. "He loves her, and finds her a consolation, that'strue But you can't put your finger in his eyes; he's a cross old man, astern old man. And with young girls you don't want sternness. What theywant is caresses, and ha! ha! ha! and ho! ho! ho!—perfume and pomade.Yes ... Akh, business, business!" He sighed, lifting himself clumsily."Vodka all gone—means it's time to go to bed. Well, I'm off, brother."

The Tartar added some more brushwood to the fire, lay down again, andbegan to think of his native village and of his wife; if his wife wouldonly come for a week, for a day, let her go back if she liked! Better afew days, even a day, than nothing! But if his wife kept her promiseand came, what would he feed her with? Where would she live?

"How can you live without anything to eat?" he asked aloud.

For working day and night at an oar they paid him only ten kopecks aday. True, passengers sometimes gave money for tea and vodka, but theothers shared this among themselves, gave nothing to the Tartar, andonly laughed at him. From poverty he was hungry, cold, and frightened.His whole body ached and trembled. If he went into the hut there wouldbe nothing for him to cover himself with. Here, too, he had nothing tocover himself with, but he might keep up the fire.

In a week the waters would have fallen, and the ferrymen, with theexception of Semión, would no longer be wanted. The Tartar must beginhis tramp from village to village asking for bread and work. His wifewas only seventeen years old; she was pretty, modest, and spoiled. Howcould she tramp with uncovered face through the villages and ask forbread? It was too horrible to think of.

When next the Tartar looked up it was dawn. The barge, the willows, andthe ripples stood out plainly. You might turn round and see the clayeyslope, with its brown thatched hut at the bottom, and above it the hutsof the village. In the village the cocks already crowed.

The clayey slope, the barge, the river, the strange wicked people,hunger, cold, sickness—in reality there was none of this at all. Itwas only a dream, thought the Tartar. He felt that he was sleeping, andheard himself snore. Of course, he was at home in Simbirsk, he had onlyto call his wife by name and she would call bock; in the next room layhis old mother.... What terrible things are dreams!... Where do theycome from?... The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes. What river wasthis? The Volga?

It began to snow.

"Ahoy!" came a voice from the other side, "boatman!"

The Tartar shook himself, and went to awaken his companions. Draggingon their sheepskin coats on the way, swearing in voices hoarse fromsleep, the ferrymen appeared on the bank. After sleep, the river, withits piercing breeze, evidently seemed to them a nightmare. They tumbledlazily into the boat. The Tartar and three ferrymen took up the long,wide-bladed oars which looked in the darkness like the claws of a crab.Semión threw himself on his stomach across the helm. On the oppositebank the shouting continued, and twice revolver shots were heal'd. Thestranger evidently thought that the ferrymen were asleep or had goneinto the village to the kabak.

"You'll get across in time," said Wiseacre in the tone of a man who isconvinced that in this world there is no need for hurry. "It's all thesame in the end; you'll gain nothing by making a noise."

The heavy, awkward barge parted from the bank, cleaving a path throughthe willows, and only the slow movement of the willows backward showedthat it was moving at all. The ferrymen slowly raised their oars intime. Wiseacre lay on his stomach across the helm, and, describinga bow in the air, swung slowly from one side to the other. In thedim light it seemed as if the men were sitting on some long-clawedantediluvian animal, floating with it into the cold desolate land thatis sometimes seen in nightmares.

The willows soon were passed and the open water reached. On the otherbank the creak and measured dipping of the oars were already audible,and cries of "Quicker, quicker!" came back across the water. Tenminutes more and the barge struck heavily against the landing-stage.

"It keeps on falling, it keeps on falling," grumbled Semión, rubbingthe snow from his face. "Where it all comes from God only knows!"

On the bank stood a frail old man of low stature in a short foxskincoat and white lambskin cap. He stood immovable at some distance fromthe horses; his face had a gloomy concentrated expression, as if hewere trying to remember something, and were angry with his disobedientmemory. When Semión approached him, and, smiling, took off his cap, hebegan:

"I am going in great haste to Anastasevki. My daughter is worse. InAnastasevka, I am told, a new doctor has been appointed."

The ferrymen dragged the cart on to the barge, and started back.The man, whom Semión called Vassili Sergeyitch, stood all the timeimmovable, tightly compressing his thick fingers, and when the driverasked for permission to smoke in his presence, answered nothing, as ifhe had not heard. Semión, lying on his stomach across the helm, lookedat him maliciously, and said:

"Even in Siberia people live! Even in Siberia!" Wiseacre's face borea triumphant expression, as if he had demonstrated something, andrejoiced that things had justified his prediction. The miserable,helpless expression of the man in the foxskin coat evidently onlyincreased his delight.

"It's muddy travelling at this time, Vassili Sergeyitch," he said, asthey harnessed the horses on the river bank. "You might have waitedanother week or two till it got drier. For the matter of that, youmight just as well not go at all.... If there was any sense in going itwould be another matter, but you yourself know that you might go on forever and nothing would come of it.... Well?"

Vassili Sergeyitch silently handed the men some money, climbed into thecart, and drove off.

"After that doctor again," said Semión, shuddering from the cold."Yes, look for a real doctor—chase the wind in the field, seize thedevil by the tail, damn him. Akh, what characters these people are!Lord forgive me, a sinner!"

The Tartar walked up to Semión, and looked at him with hatred andrepulsion. Then, trembling, and mixing Tartar words with his brokenRussian, he said:

"He is a good man, a good man, and you are bad. You are bad. He is agood soul, a great one, but you are a beast.... He is living, but youare dead.... God made men that they might have joys and sorrows, butyou ask for nothing.... You are a stone,—earth! A stone wants nothing,and you want nothing. ... You are a stone, and God has no love for you.But him He loves!"

All laughed; the Tartar alone frowned disgustedly, shook his hand,and, pulling his rags more closely round him, walked back to the fire.Semión and the ferrymen returned to the hut.

"Cold!" said one ferryman in a hoarse voice, stretching himself on thestraw with which the floor was covered.

"Yes, it's not warm," said another. "A galley-slave's life!"

All lay down. The door opened before the wind, and snowflakes whirledthrough the hut. But no one rose to shut it, all were too cold andlazy.

"I, for one, am all right," said Semión. "God grant everyone such alife."

"You, it is known, were born a galley-slave—the devil himself wouldn'ttake you."

From the yard came strange sounds like the whining of a dog.

"What's that? Who's there?"

"It's the Tartar crying."

"Well ... what a character!"

"He'll get used to it," said Semión, and went off to sleep.

Soon all the others followed his example. But the door remainedunshut.

ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLE

He town was small—no better than a village—and it was inhabitedalmost entirely by old people who died so seldom that it was positivelypainful. In the hospital, and even in the prison, coffins were requiredvery seldom. In one word, business was bad. If Yacob Ivanof had beencoffin-maker in the government town, he would probably have owned hisown house, and called himself Yakob Matvieitch; but, as it was, he wasknown only by the name of Yakob, with the street nickname given forsome obscure reason of "Bronza"; and lived as poorly as a simple muzhikin a little, ancient cabin with only one room; and in this room livedhe, Marfa, the stove, a double bed, the coffins, a joiner's bench, andall the domestic utensils.

Yet Yakob made admirable coffins, durable and good. For muzhiks andpetty tradespeople he made them all of one size, taking himself asmodel; and this method never failed him, for though he was seventyyears of age, there was not a taller or stouter man in the town, noteven in the prison. For women and for men of good birth he made hiscoffins to measure, using for this purpose an iron yardwand. Ordersfor children's coffins he accepted very unwillingly, made them withoutmeasurement, as if in contempt, and every time when paid for his workexclaimed:

"Thanks. But I confess I don't care much for wasting time on trifles."

In addition to coffin-making Yakob drew a small income from hisskill with the fiddle. At weddings in the town there usually playeda Jewish orchestra, the conductor of which was the tinsmith MosesHitch Shakhkes, who kept more than half the takings for himself. AsYakob played very well upon the fiddle, being particularly skilfulwith Russian songs, Shakhkes sometimes employed him in the orchestra,paying him fifty kopecks a day, exclusive of gifts from the guests.When Bronza sat in the orchestra he perspired and his face grew purple;it was always hot, the smell of garlic was suffocating; the fiddlewhined, at his right ear snored the double-bass, at his left wept theflute, played by a lanky, red-haired Jew with a whole network of redand blue veins upon his face, who bore the same surname as the famousmillionaire Rothschild. And even the merriest tunes this accursed Jewmanaged to play sadly. Without any tangible cause Yakob had becomeslowly penetrated with hatred and contempt for Jews, and especially forRothschild; he began with irritation, then swore at him, and once evenwas about to hit him; but Rothschild flared up, and, looking at himfuriously, said:

"If it were not that I respect you for your talents, I should send youflying out of the window."

Then he began to cry. So Bronza was employed in the orchestra veryseldom, and only in cases of extreme need when one of the Jews wasabsent.

Yakob had never been in a good humour. He was always overwhelmed by thesense of the losses which he suffered. For instance, on Sundays andsaints' days it was a sin to work, Monday was a tiresome day—and soon; so that in one way or another, there were about two hundred daysin the year when he was compelled to sit with his hands idle. Thatwas one loss! If anyone in the town got married without music, or ifShakhkes did not employ Yakob, that was another loss. The Inspectorof Police was ill for two years, and Yakob waited with impatience forhis death, yet in the end the Inspector transferred himself to thegovernment town for the purpose of treatment, where he got worse anddied. There was another loss, a loss at the very least of ten roubles,as the Inspector's coffin would have been an expensive one lined withbrocade. Regrets for his losses generally overtook Yakob at night; helay in bed with the fiddle beside him, and, with his head full of suchspeculations, would take the bow, the fiddle giving out through thedarkness a melancholy sound which made Yakob feel better.

On the sixth of May last year Marfa was suddenly taken ill. Shebreathed heavily, drank much water and staggered. Yet next morning shelighted the stove, and even went for water. Towards evening she laydown. All day Yakob had played on the fiddle, and when it grew dark hetook the book in which every day he inscribed his losses, and from wantof something better to do, began to add them up. The total amounted tomore than a thousand roubles. The thought of such losses so horrifiedhim that he threw the book on the floor and stamped his feet. Then hetook up the book, snapped his fingers, and sighed heavily. His face waspurple, and wet with perspiration. He reflected that if this thousandroubles had been lodged in the bank the interest per annum would haveamounted to at least forty roubles. That meant that the forty roubleswere also a loss. In one word, whenever you turn, everywhere you meetwith loss, and profits none.

"Yakob," cried Marfa unexpectedly, "I am dying."

He glanced at his wife. Her face was red from fever and unusually clearand joyful; and Bronza, who was accustomed to see her pale, timid, andunhappy-looking, felt confused. It seemed as if she were indeed dying,and were happy in the knowledge that she was leaving for ever thecabin, the coffins, and Yakob. And now she looked at the ceiling andtwitched her lips, as if she had seen Death her deliverer, and werewhispering with him.

Morning came; through the window might be seen the rising of the sun.Looking at his old wife, Yakob somehow remembered that all his life hehad never treated her kindly, never caressed her, never pitied her,never thought of buying her a kerchief for her head, never carried awayfrom the weddings a piece of tasty food, but only roared at her, abusedher for his losses, and rushed at her with shut fists. True, he hadnever beaten her, but he had often frightened her out of her life andleft her rooted to the ground with terror. Yes, and he had forbiddenher to drink tea, as the losses without that were great enough; so shedrank always hot water. And now, beginning to understand why she hadsuch a strange, enraptured face, he felt uncomfortable.

When the sun had risen high he borrowed a cart from a neighbour, andbrought Marfa to the hospital. There were not many patients there, andhe had to wait only three hours. To his joy he was received not by thedoctor but by the feldscher, Maxim Nikolaitch, an old man of whom itwas said that, although he was drunken and quarrelsome, he knew morethan the doctor.

"May your health be good!" said Yakob, leading the old woman into thedispensary. "Forgive me, Maxim Nikolaitch, for troubling you with myempty affairs. But there, you can see for yourself my object is ill.The companion of my life, as they say, excuse the expression...."

Contracting his grey brows and smoothing his whiskers, the feldscherbegan to examine the old woman, who sat on the tabouret, bent, skinny,sharp-nosed, and with open mouth so that she resembled a bird that isabout to drink.

"So ..." said the feldscher slowly, and then sighed. "Influenza and maybe a bit of a fever. There is typhus now in the town ... What can I do?She is an old woman, glory be to God.... How old?"

"Sixty-nine years, Maxim Nikolaitch."

"An old woman. It's high time for her."

"Of course! Your remark is very just," said Yakob, smiling out ofpoliteness. "And I am sincerely grateful for your kindness; but allowme to make one remark; every insect is fond of life."

The feldscher replied in a tone which implied that upon him alonedepended her life or death. "I will tell you what you'll do, friend;put on her head a cold compress, and give her these powders twice aday. And good-bye to you."

By the expression of the feldscher's face, Yacob saw that it was a badbusiness, and that no powders would make it any better; it was quiteplain to him that Marfa was beyond repair, and would assuredly die, ifnot to-day then to-morrow. He touched the feldscher on the arm, blinkedhis eyes, and said in a whisper: "Yes, Maxim Nikolaitch, but you willlet her blood."

"I have no time, no time, friend. Take your old woman, and God be withyou!"

"Do me this one kindness!" implored Yakob. "You yourself know that ifshe merely had her stomach out of order, or some internal organ wrong,then powders and mixtures would cure; but she has caught cold. In casesof cold the first tiling is to bleed the patient."

But the feldscher had already called for the next patient, and into thedispensary came a peasant woman with a little boy.

"Be off!" he said to Yakob, with a frown.

"At least try the effect of leeches. I will pray God eternally for you."

The feldscher lost his temper, and roared: "Not another word."

Yakob also lost his temper, and grew purple in the face; but he saidnothing more and took Marfa under his arm and led her out of theroom. As soon as he had got her into the cart, he looked angrily andcontemptuously at the hospital and said:

"What an artist! He will let the blood of a rich man, but for a poorman grudges even a leech. Herod!"

When they arrived home, and entered the cabin, Marfa stood for a momentholding on to the stove. She was afraid that if she were to lie downYakob would begin to complain about his losses, and abuse her for lyingin bed and doing no work. And Yakob looked at her with tedium in hissoul and remembered that to-morrow was John the Baptist, and the dayafter Nikolai the Miracle-worker, and then came Sunday, and after thatMonday—another idle day. For four days no work could be done, andMarfa would be sure to die on one of these days. Her coffin must bemade to-day. He took the iron yardwand, went up to the old woman andtook her measure. After that she lay down, and Yakob crossed himself,and began to make a coffin.

When the work was finished, Bronza put on his spectacles and wrote inhis book of losses:

"Marfa Ivanova's coffin—2 roubles, 40 kopecks."

And he sighed. All the time Marfa had lain silently with her eyesclosed. Towards evening, when it was growing dark, she called herhusband:

"Rememberest, Yakob?" she said, looking at him joyfully. "Rememberest,fifty years ago God gave us a baby with yellow hair. Thou and I thensat every day-by the river ... under the willow ... and sang songs."And laughing bitterly she added: "The child died."

"That is all imagination," said Yakob.

Later on came the priest, administered to Marfa the Sacrament andextreme unction. Marfa began to mutter something incomprehensible, andtowards morning, died.

The old-women neighbours washed her, wrapped her in her winding sheet,and laid her out. To avoid having to pay the deacon's fee, Yakobhimself read the psalms; and escaped a fee also at the graveyard,as the watchman there was his godfather. Four peasants carried thecoffin free, out of respect for the deceased. After the coffin walkeda procession of old women, beggars, and two cripples. The peasants onthe road crossed themselves piously. And Yakob was very satisfied thateverything passed off in honour, order, and cheapness, without offenceto anyone. When saying good-bye for the last time to Marfa, he tappedthe coffin with his fingers, and thought "An excellent piece of work."

But while he was returning from the graveyard he was overcome withextreme weariness. He felt unwell, he breathed feverishly and heavily,he could hardly stand on his feet. His brain was full of unaccustomedthoughts. He remembered again that he had never taken pity on Marfa andnever caressed her. The fifty-two years during which they had lived inthe same cabin stretched back to eternity, yet in the whole of thateternity he had never thought of her, never paid any attention to her,but treated her as if she were a cat or a dog. Yet every day she hadlighted the stove, boiled and baked, fetched water, chopped wood, sleptwith him on the same bed; and when he returned drunk from weddings, shehad taken his fiddle respectfully, and hung it on the wall, and put himto bed—all this silently with a timid, worried expression on her face.And now he felt that he could take pity on her, and would like to buyher a present, but it was too late....

Towards Yakob smiling and bowing came Rothschild. "I was looking foryou, uncle," he said. "Moses Ilitch sends his compliments, and asks youto come across to him at once."

Yakob felt inclined to cry.

"Begone!" he shouted, and continued his path.

"You can't mean that," cried Rothschild in alarm, running after him."Moses Hitch will take offence! He wants you at once."

The way in which the Jew puffed and blinked, and the multitude ofhis red freckles awoke in Yakob disgust. He felt disgust, too, forhis green frock-coat, with its black patches, and his whole fragile,delicate figure.

"What do you mean by coming after me, garlic?" he shouted. "Keep off!"

The Jew also grew angry, and cried:

"If you don't take care to be a little politer I will send you flyingover the fence."

"Out of my sight!" roared Yakob, rushing on him with clenched fists."Out of my sight, abortion, or I will beat the soul out of your cursedbody! I have no peace with Jews."

Rothschild was frozen with terror; he squatted down and waved his armsabove his head, as if warding off blows, and then jumped up and ranfor his life. While running he hopped, and flourished his hands; andthe twitching of his long, fleshless spine could plainly be seen. Theboys in the street were delighted with the incident, and rushed afterhim, crying, "Jew! Jew!" The dogs pursued him with loud barks. Someonelaughed, then someone whistled, and the dogs barked louder and louder.Then, it must have been, a dog bit Rothschild, for there rang out asickly, despairing cry.

Yakob walked past the common, and then along the outskirts of the town;and the street boys cried, "Bronza! Bronza!" With a piping note snipeflew around him, and ducks quacked. The sun baked everything, and fromthe water came scintillations so bright that it was painful to look at.Yakob walked along the path by the side of the river, and watched astout, red-cheeked lady come out of the bathing-place. Not far from thebathing-place sat a group of boys catching crabs with meat; and seeinghim they cried maliciously, "Bronza! Bronza!" And at this moment beforehim rose a thick old willow with an immense hollow in it, and on it araven's nest.... And suddenly in Yakob's mind awoke the memory of thechild with the yellow hair of whom Marfa had spoken.... Yes, it was thesame willow, green, silent, sad.... How it had aged, poor thing!

He sat underneath it, and began to remember. On the other bank, wherewas now a flooded meadow, there then stood a great birch forest, andfarther away, where the now bare hill glimmered on the horizon, was anold pine wood. Up and down the river went barges. But now everythingwas flat and smooth; on the opposite bank stood only a single birch,young and shapely, like a girl; and on the river were only ducks andgeese where once had floated barges. It seemed that since those dayseven the geese had become smaller. Yakob closed his eyes, and inimagination saw flying towards him an immense flock of white geese.

He began to wonder how it was that in the last forty or fifty yearsof his life he had never been near the river, or if he had, hadnever noticed it. Yet it was a respectable river, and by no meanscontemptible; it would have been possible to fish in it, and the fishmight have been sold to tradesmen, officials, and the attendant atthe railway station buffet, and the money could have been lodgedin the bank; he might have used it for rowing from country-house tocountry-house and playing on the fiddle, and everyone would have paidhim money; he might even have tried to act as bargee—it would havebeen better than making coffins; he might have kept geese, killed themand sent them to Moscow in the winter-time—from the feathers alonehe would have made as much as ten roubles a year. But he had yawnedaway his life, and done nothing. What losses! Akh, what losses! and ifhe hod done all together—caught fish, played on the fiddle, acted asbargee, and kept geese—what a sum he would have amassed! But he hadnever even dreamed of this; life had passed without profits, withoutany satisfaction; everything had passed away unnoticed; before himnothing remained. But look backward—nothing but losses, such lossesthat to think of them it makes the blood run cold. And why cannot a manlive without these losses? Why had the birch wood and the pine forestboth been cut down? Why is the common pasture unused? Why do peopledo exactly what they ought not to do? Why did he all his life scream,roar, clench his fists, insult his wife? For what imaginable purposedid he frighten and insult the Jew? Why, indeed, do people prevent oneanother living in peace? All these are also losses! Terrible losses! Ifit were not for hatred and malice people would draw from one anotherincalculable profits.

Evening and night, twinkled in Yakob's brain the willow, the fish, thedead geese, Marfa with her profile like that of a bird about to drink,the pale, pitiable face of Rothschild, and an army of snouts thrustingthemselves out of the darkness and muttering about losses. He shiftedfrom side to side, and five times in the night rose from his bed andplayed on the fiddle.

In the morning he rose with an effort and went to the hospital.The same Maxim Nikolaitch ordered him to bind his head with a coldcompress, and gave him powders; and by the expression of his face andby his tone Yakob saw that it was a bad business, and that no powderswould make it any better. But upon his way home he reflected thatfrom death at least there would be one profit; it would no longer benecessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to injure others; and asa man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands ofyears, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss,and only his death a profit. Yet this consideration, though entirelyjust, was offensive and bitter; for why in this world is it so orderedthat life, which is given to a man only once, passes by without profit?

He did not regret dying, but as soon as he arrived home and saw hisfiddle, his heart fell, and he felt sorry. The fiddle could not betaken to the grave; it must remain an orphan, and the same thing wouldhappen with it as had happened with the birch wood and the pineforest.Everything in this world decayed, and would decay! Yakob went to thedoor of the hut and sat upon the thresholdstone, pressing his fiddleto his shoulder. Still thinking of life, full of decay and full oflosses, he began to play, and as the tune poured out plaintivelyand touchingly, the tears flowed down his cheeks. And the harder hethought, the sadder was the song of the fiddle.

The latch creaked twice, and in the wicket door appeared Rothschild.The first half of the yard he crossed boldly, but seeing Yakob, hestopped short, shrivelled up, and apparently from fright began to makesigns as if he wished to tell the time with his fingers.

"Come on, don't be afraid," said Yakob kindly, beckoning him. "Come!"

With a look of distrust and terror Rothschild drew near and stoppedabout two yards away. "Don't beat me, Yakob, it is not my fault!" hesaid, with a bow. "Moses Hitch has sent me again. 'Don't be afraid!'he said, 'go to Yakob again and tell him that without him we cannotpossibly get on.' The wedding is on Wednesday. Shapovaloff's daughteris marrying a wealthy man.... It will be a first-class wedding," addedthe Jew, blinking one eye.

"I cannot go," answered Yakob, breathing heavily. "I am ill, brother."

And again he took his bow, and the tears burst from his eyes and fellupon the fiddle. Rothschild listened attentively, standing by his sidewith arms folded upon his chest. The distrustful, terrified expressionupon his face little by little changed into a look of sufferingand grief, he rolled his eyes as if in an ecstacy of torment, andejaculated "Wachchch!" And the tears slowly rolled down his cheeks andmade little black patches on his green frock-coat.

All day long Yakob lay in bed and worried. With evening came thepriest, and, confessing him, asked whether he had any particular sinwhich he would like to confess; and Yakob exerted his fading memory,and remembering Marfa's unhappy face, and the Jew's despairing cry whenhe was bitten by the dog, said in a hardly audible voice:

"Give the fiddle to Rothschild."

And now in the town everyone asks: Where did Rothschild get such anexcellent fiddle? Did he buy it or steal it ... or did he get it inpledge? Long ago he abandoned his flute, and now plays on the fiddleonly. From beneath his bow issue the same mournful sounds as formerlycame from the flute; but when he tries to repeat the tune that Yakobplayed when he sat on the threshold stone, the fiddle emits sounds sopassionately sad and full of grief that the listeners weep; and hehimself rolls his eyes and ejaculates "Wachchch!" ... But this new songso pleases everyone in the town that wealthy traders and officialsnever fail to engage Rothschild for their social gatherings, and evenforce him to play it as many as ten times.

A FATHER

"I don't deny it; I have had a drop too much. ... Forgive me; the factis I happened to pass by the public, and, all owing to the heat, Idrank a couple of bottles. It's hot, brother!"

Old Musátoff took a rag from his pocket, and wiped the sweat from hisclean-shaven, dissipated face.

"I have come to you, Bórenka, angel mine, just for a minute," hecontinued, looking at his son, "on very important business. Forgiveme if I am in the way. Tell me, my soul ... do you happen to have tenroubles to spare till Tuesday? You understand me ... yesterday I oughtto have paid for the rooms, but the money question ... you understand.Not a kopeck!"

Young Musátoff went out silently, and behind the door began a whisperedconsultation with his housekeeper and the colleagues in the CivilService with whom he shared the villa. In a minute he returned, andsilently handed his father a ten-rouble note. The old gentleman took itcarelessly, and without looking at it thrust it into his pocket, andsaid:

"Merci! And how is the world using you? We haven't met for ages."

"Yes, it is a long time—since All Saints' Day."

"Five times I did my best to get over to you, but never could get time. First one matter,then another ... simply ruination. But, Boris, I may confess it, I amnot telling the truth.... I lie.... I always lie. Don't believe me,Bórenka. I promised to let you have the ten roubles back on Tuesday;don't believe that either! Don't believe a single word I say! I haveno business matters at all, simply idleness, drink, and shame to showmyself in the street in this get-up. But you, Bórenka, will forgive me.Three times I sent the girl for money, and wrote you piteous letters.For the money, thanks! But don't believe the letters.... I lied. Ithurts me to plunder you in this way, angel mine; I know that you canhardly make both ends meet, and live—so to say—on locusts. But withimpudence like mine you can do nothing. A rascal who only shows hisface when he wants money!... Forgive me, Bórenka, I tell you the plaintruth, because I cannot look with indifference upon your angel face...."

A minute passed in silence. The old man sighed deeply, and began:

"Let us make the supposition, brother, that you were to treat me to aglass of beer."

Without a word, Boris again went out and whispered outside the door.The beer was brought in. At the sight of the bottle Musátoff enlivened,and suddenly changed his tone.

"The other day I was at the races," he began, making frightened faces."There were three of us, and together we put in the totalisator athree-rouble note on Shustri.[1] And good luck to Shustri! With therisk of one rouble we each got back thirty-two. It is a noble sport.The old woman always pitches into me about the races, but I go. I loveit!"

Boris, a young fair-haired man, with a sad, apathetic face, walked fromcorner to corner, and listened silently. When Musátoff interrupted hisstory in order to cough, he went up to him and said:

"The other day, papa, I bought myself a new pair of boots, but theyturned out too small. I wish you would take them off my hands. I willlet you have them cheap!"

"I shall be charmed!" said the old man, with a grimace. "Only for thesame price—without any reduction."

"Very well.... We will regard that as a loan also."

Boris stretched his arm under the bed, and pulled out the new boots.Old Musátoff removed his own awkward brown shoes—plainly someoneelse's—and tried the new boots on.

"Like a shot!" he exclaimed. "Your hand on it. ... I'll take them.On Tuesday, when I get my pension, I'll send the money.... But I mayas well confess, I lie." He resumed his former piteous tone. "Aboutthe races I lied, and about the pension I lie. You are deceiving me,Bórenka.... I see very well through your magnanimous pretext. I can seethrough you! The boots are too small for you because your heart is toolarge! Akh, Borya, Borya, I understand it ... and I feel it!"

"You have gone to your new rooms?" asked Boris, with the object ofchanging the subject. "Yes, brother, into the new rooms.... Everymonth we shift. With a character like the old woman's we cannot stayanywhere."

"I have been at the old rooms. But now I want to ask you to come tothe country. In your state of health it will do you good to be in thefresh air." Musátoff waved his hand. "The old woman wouldn't let mego, and myself I don't care to. A hundred times you have tried to dragme out of the pit.... I have tried to drag myself ... but the devil animprovement! Give it up! In the pit I'll die as I have lived. At thismoment I sit in front of you and look at your angel face ... yet I ambeing dragged down into the pit. It's destiny, brother! You can't getflies from a dunghill to a rose bush. No. ... Well, I'm off ... it'sgetting dark."

"If you wait a minute, well go together. I have business in townmyself."

Musátoff and his son put on their coats, and went out. By the time theyhad found a droschky it was quite dark, and the windows were lighted up.

"I know I'm ruining you, Bórenka," stammered the father. "My poor, poorchildren! What an affliction to be cursed with such a father! Bórenka,angel mine, I cannot lie when I see your face. Forgive me!... To whata pass, my God, has impudence brought me! This very minute I havetaken your money, and shamed you with my drunken face; your brothersalso I spunge on and put to shame. If you had seen me yesterday!I won't hide anything, Bórenka. Yesterday our neighbours—all therascality, in short—came in to see the old woman. I drank with them,and actually abused you behind your back, and complained that youhad neglected me. I tried, you understand, to get the drunken oldwomen to pity me, and played the part of an unhappy father. That's mybesetting sin; when I want to hide my faults, I heap them on the headsof my innocent children.... But I cannot lie to you, Bórenka, or hidethings. I came to you in pride, but when I had felt your kindness andall-mercifulness, my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and all myconscience turned upside down."

"Yes, father, but let us talk about something else."

"Mother of God, what children I have!" continued the old man, payingno attention to his son, "What a glory the Lord has sent me! Suchchildren should be sent not to me, a good-for-nothing, but to a realman with a soul and a heart. I am not worthy of it!"

Musátoff took off his cap and crossed himself piously thrice.

"Glory be to Thee, O God!" he sighed, looking around as if seeking anikon. "Astonishing, priceless children! Three sons I have, and all ofthem the same! Sober, serious, diligent—and what intellects! Cabman,what intellects! Gregory alone has as much brains as ten ordinary men.French ... and German ... he speaks both ... and you never get tiredof listening. Children, children mine, I cannot believe that you aremine at all! I don't believe it! You, Bórenka, are a very martyr! I amruining you ... before long I shall have mined you. You give me moneywithout end, although you know very well that not a kopeck goes onnecessaries. Only the other day I sent you a piteous letter about myillness.... But I lied; the money was wanted to buy rum. Yet you gaveit to me sooner than offend your old father with a refusal. All this Iknow ... and feel ... Grisha also is a martyr. On Thursday, angel mine,I went to his office, drunk, dirty, ragged ... smelling of vodka like acellar. I went straight up to him and began in my usual vulgar slang,although he was with the other clerks, the head of the department—andpetitioners all around! Disgraced him for his whole life!.. Yet henever got the least confused, only a little pale; he smiled, and gotup from his desk as if nothing were wrong—even introduced me to hiscolleagues. And he brought me the whole way home, without a word ofreproach! I spunge on him even worse than on you!

"Then take your brother, Sasha! There's another martyr! Married to acolonel's daughter, moving in a circle of aristocrats, with a dot ...and everything else.... He, at any rate, you would think would havenothing to do with me. Well, brother, what does he do? When he getsmarried the very first thing after the wedding he comes to me with hisyoung wife, and pays me the first visit ... to my lair, to the lair ...I swear to God!"

The old man began to sob, but soon laughed again.

"At the very moment, as the fates would have it, when we were eatingscraped radishes and kvas, and frying fish, with a stench in the roomenough to stink out the devil. I was lying drunk as usual, and the oldwoman jumps up and greets them with a face the colour of beefsteak ...in one word, a scandal. But Sasha bore it all."

"Yes, our Sasha is a good man," said Boris.

"Incomparable! You are all of you gold, both you and Grisha, and Sashaand Sonia. I torture, pester, disgrace, and spunge on you, yet in mywhole life I have never heard a word of reproach, or seen a singlesidelong look. If you had a decent father it would be different, but... You have never had anything from me but evil. I am a wicked,dissolute man.... Now, thank God, I have quieted down, and have nocharacter left in me, but formerly, when you were little children, Ihad a character and no mistake. Whatever I said or did seemed to megospel! I remember! I used to come back late from the club, drunk andirritated, and begin to abuse your poor mother about the householdexpenses. I would keep on at her all night, and imagine that she was inthe wrong; in the morning you would get up and go to school, but allthe time I would keep on showing her that I had a character. Heavenrest her soul, how I tortured the poor martyr! And when you came backfrom school and found me asleep you weren't allowed your dinner until Igot up. And after dinner the same music! Primps you remember. May Godforbid that anyone else should be cursed with such a father! He sentyou to me as a blessing. A blessing! Continue in this way, children, tothe end. Honour thy father that thy days may be long in the land! Foryour goodness Heaven will reward you with long life! Cabman, stop!"

Musátoff alighted and ran into a beerhouse. After a delay of half anhour he returned, grunted tipsily, and took his seat.

"And where is Sonia now?" he asked. "Still at the boarding-school?"

"No, she finished last May. She lives now with Sasha's aunt."

"What?" exclaimed the old man. "Left school? And a glorious girl, Godbless her—went with her brothers. Akh, Bórenka, no mother, no one toconsole her! Tell me, Bórenka, does she know ... does she know that Iam alive? Eh?"

Boris did not answer. Five minutes passed in deep silence. The old mansobbed, wiped his face with a rag, and said:

"I love her, Bórenka! She was the only daughter, and in old age thereis no consolation like a daughter. If I could only see her for amoment. Tell me, Bórenka, may I?"

"Of course, whenever you like."

"And she won't object?"

"Of course not; she herself went to look for you."

"I swear to God! There is a nest of angels! Cabman, eh? Arrange it,Bórenka, angel! Of course she is a young lady now, délicatesse ...consommé, and all that sort of thing in the noble style. So I can'tsee her in this get-up. But all this, Bórenka, we can arrange. Forthree days I won't taste a drop—that'll bring my accursed drunkensnout into shape. Then I will go to your place and put on a suit ofyour clothes, and get a shave and have my hair cut. Then you willdrive over and take me with you? Is it agreed?"

"All right."

"Cabman, stop!"

The old man jumped out of the carriage and ran into another beershop.Before they reached his lodgings he visited two more; and every timehis son waited silently and patiently. When, having dismissed thecabman, they crossed the broad, muddy yard to the rooms of the "oldwoman," Musátoff looked contused and guilty, grunted timidly, andsmacked his lips.

"Bórenka," he began, in an imploring voice, "if the old woman saysanything of that kind to you—you understand—don't pay any attentionto her. And be polite to her. She is very ignorant and impertinent, butnot a bad sort at bottom. She has a good, warm heart."

They crossed the yard and entered a dark hall. The door squeaked, thekitchen smelt, the samovar smoked, and shrill voices were heard....While they passed through the kitchen Boris noticed only the blacksmoke, a rope with washing spread out, and the chimney of a samovar,through the chinks of which burst golden sparks.

"This is my cell," said Musátoff, bowing his head, and showing his soninto a little, low-ceilinged room, filled with atmosphere unbearablefrom proximity to the kitchen. At a table sat three women, helpingone another to food. Seeing the guest, they looked at one another andstopped eating.

"Well, did you get it?" asked one, apparently "the old woman," roughly.

"Got it, got it," stammered the old man. "Now, Boris, do us the honour!Sit down! With us, brother—young man—everything is simple.... We livein a simple way."

Musátoff fussed about without any visible reason. He was ashamed beforehis son, and at the same time apparently wished to bear himself beforethe women as a man of importance and a forsaken, unhappy father.

"Yes, brother mine—young man—we live simply, without show-off," hestammered. "We are plain folk, young man.... We are not like you ... wedo, not trouble to throw dust in other people's eyes. No!... A drop ofvodka, eh?"

One of the women, ashamed of drinking before a stranger, sighed andsaid:

"I must have another glass after these mushrooms. After mushrooms,whether you like it or not, you have to drink.... Ivan Gerasiuitch, askhim ... perhaps he'll have a drink."

"Drink, young man!" said Musátoff, without looking at his son. "Winesand liqueurs we don't keep, brother, we live plainly."

"I'm afraid our arrangements don't suit him," sighed the old woman.

"Leave him alone, leave him alone, he'll drink all right."

To avoid giving offence to his father, Boris took a glass, and drainedit in silence. When the samovar was brought in he, silently and with amelancholy air—again to please his father—drank two cups of atrocioustea. And without a word he listened while the "old woman" lamentedthe fact that in this world you will sometimes find cruel and godlesschildren who forsake their parents in their old age.

"I know what you are thinking," said the drunken old man, fallinginto his customary state of excitement. "You are thinking that I havefallen in the world, that I have dirtied myself, that I am an object ofpity! But in my mind this simple life is far more natural than yours,young man. I do not need for anything ... and I have no intention ofhumiliating myself ... I can stand a lot ... but tolerance is at an endwhen a brat of a boy looks at me with pity."

When he had drunk his tea, he cleaned a herring, and squeezed onionon it with such vigour that tears of emotion sprang into his eyes.He spoke again of the totalisator, of his winnings, and of a hat ofPanama straw for which he had paid sixteen roubles the day before. Helied with the same appetite with which he had drunk and devoured theherring. His son sat silently for more than an hour, and then rose totake leave.

"I wouldn't think of detaining you," said Musátoff stiffly. "I askyour pardon, young man, for not living in the way to which you areaccustomed."

He bristled up, sniffed with dignity, and winked to the women.

"Good-bye, young man!" he said, escorting his son into the hall."Attendez!"

But in the hall, where it was quite dark, he suddenly pressed his faceto his son's arm, and sobbed. "If I could only see Sóniushka!" hewhispered. "Arrange it, Bórenka, angel mine! I will have a shave, andput on one of your suits ... and make a severe face. I won't open mymouth while she's present I won't say a word. I swear to God!"

He glanced timidly at the door, from behind which came the shrillvoices of the women, smothered his sobs, and said in a loud voice:

"Well, good-bye, young man! Attendez!"

TWO TRAGEDIES

At ten o'clock on a dark September evening six-year-old Andrei, theonly son of Dr. Kiríloff, a Zemstvo physician, died from diphtheria.The doctor's wife had just thrown herself upon her knees at the bedsideof her dead child, and was giving way to the first ecstacy of despair,when the hall-door bell rang loudly. Owing to the danger of infectionall the servants had been sent out of the house that morning; andKiríloff, in his shirtsleeves, with unbuttoned waistcoat, with sweatingface, and hands burned with carbolic acid, opened the door himself. Thehall was dark, and the stranger who entered it was hardly visible. Allthat Kiríloff could distinguish was that he was of middle height, thathe wore a white muffler, and had a big, extraordinarily pale face—aface so pale that at first it seemed to illumine the darkness of thehall.

"Is the doctor at home?" he asked quickly.

"I am the doctor," answered Kiríloff, "What do you want?"

"Ah, it is you. I am glad!" said the stranger. He stretched out throughthe darkness for the doctor's hand, found it, and pressed it tightly."I am very ... very glad. We are acquaintances. My name is Abógin....I had the pleasure of meeting you last summer at Gnutcheffs. I am veryglad that you are in.... For the love of Christ do not refuse to comewith me at once.... My wife is dangerously ill.... I have brought atrap."

From Abógin's voice and movements it was plain that he was greatlyagitated. Like a man frightened by a fire or by a mad dog, he couldnot contain his breath. He spoke rapidly in a trembling voice, andsomething inexpressibly sincere and childishly imploring sounded inhis speech. But, like all men frightened and thunderstruck, he spokein short abrupt phrases, and used many superfluous and inconsequentialwords.

"I was afraid I should not find you at home," he continued. "While Iwas driving here I was in a state of torture.... Dress and come atonce, for the love of God ... It happened thus. Paptchinski—AlexanderSemionevitch—whom you know, had driven over.... We talked for awhile... then we had tea; suddenly my wife screamed, laid her hand uponher heart, and fell against the back of the chair. We put her on thebed.... I bathed her forehead with ammonia, and sprinkled her withwater ... she lies like a corpse.... It is aneurism.... Come.... Herfather died from aneurism...."

Kiríloff listened and said nothing. It seemed he had forgotten his ownlanguage. But when Abógin repeated what he had said about Paptchinskiand about his wife's father, the doctor shook his head, and saidapathetically, drawling every word:

"Excuse me, I cannot go.... Five minutes ago ... my child died."

"Is it possible?" cried Abógin, taking a step hack. "Good God, at whatan unlucky time I have come! An amazingly unhappy day ... amazing! Whata coincidence ... as if on purpose."

Abógin put his hand upon the door-handle, and inclined his head as ifin doubt. He was plainly undecided as to what to do; whether to go, oragain to ask the doctor to come.

"Listen to me," he said passionately, seizing Kiríloff by the arm; "Ithoroughly understand your position. God is my witness that I feelshame in trying to distract your attention at such a moment, but ...what can I do? Judge yourself—whom can I apply to? Except you, thereis no doctor in the neighbourhood. Come! For the love of God! It is notfor myself I ask.... It is not I who am ill."

A silence followed. Kiríloff turned his back to Abógin, for a momentstood still, and went slowly from the anteroom into the hall.Judging by his uncertain, mechanical gait, by the care with which hestraightened the shade upon the unlit lamp, and looked into a thickbook which lay upon the table—in this moment he had no intentions,no wishes, thought of nothing; and probably had even forgotten thatin the anteroom a stranger was waiting. The twilight and silence ofthe hall apparently intensified his stupor. Walking from the hall intohis study, he raised his right leg high, and sought with his hands thedoorpost. All his figure showed a strange uncertainty, as if he were inanother's house, or for the first time in life were intoxicated, andwere surrendering himself questioningly to the new sensation. Along thewall of the study and across the bookshelves ran a long zone of light.Together with a heavy, close smell of carbolic and ether, this lightcame from a slightly opened door which led from the study into thebedroom. The doctor threw himself into an armchair before the table. Aminute he looked drowsily at the illumined books, and then rose, andwent into the bedroom.

In the bedroom reigned the silence of the grave. All, to the smallesttrifle, spoke eloquently of a struggle just lived through, ofexhaustion, and of final rest. A candle standing on the stool amongphials, boxes, and jars, and a large lamp upon the dressing-tablelighted the room. On the bed beside the window lay a boy with open eyesand an expression of surprise upon his face. He did not move, but hiseyes, it seemed, every second grew darker and darker, and vanished intohis skull. With her hands upon his body, and her face hidden in thefolds of the bedclothes, knelt the mother. Like the child, she made nomovement; life showed itself alone in the bend of her back and in theposition of her hands. She pressed against the bed with all her being,with force and eagerness, us if she feared to destroy the tranquil andconvenient pose which she had found for her weary body. Counterpane,dressings, jars, pools on the floor, brashes and spoons scattered hereand there, the white bottle of lime-water, the very air, heavy andstifling—all were dead and seemed immersed in rest.

The doctor stopped near his wife, thrust his hands into his trouserpockets, and turning his head, bent his gaze upon his son. His faceexpressed indifference; only by the drops upon his beard could it beseen that he had just been crying.

The repellent terror which we conceive when we speak of death wasabsent from the room. The general stupefaction, the mother's pose, thefather's indifferent face, exhaled something attractive and touching;exhaled that subtle, intangible beauty of human sorrow which cannotbe analysed or described, and which music alone can express. Beautybreathed even in the grim tranquillity of the mourners. Kiríloff andhis wife were silent; they did not weep, as if in addition to theweight of their sorrow they were conscious also of the poetry oftheir position. It seemed that they were thinking how in its timetheir youth had passed, how now with this child had passed even theirright to have children at all. The doctor was forty-four years old,already grey, with the face of an old man; his faded and sickly wife,thirty-five. Andreï was not only their only son, but also their last.

In contrast with his wife, Kiríloff belonged to those natures which intime of spiritual pain feel a need for movement. After standing fiveminutes beside his wife, he, again lifting high his right leg, wentfrom the bedroom into a little room half taken up by a long, broadsofa, and thence into the kitchen. After wandering about the stove andthe cook's bed he bowed his head and went through a little door back tothe anteroom. Here again he saw the white muffler and the pale face.

"At last!" sighed Abógin, taking hold of the door-handle. "Come,please!"

The doctor shuddered, looked at him, and remembered.

"Listen to me; have I not already told you I cannot come?" he said,waking up. "How extraordinary!"

"Doctor, I am not made of stone.... I thoroughly understand yourposition.... I sympathise with you!" said Abógin, with an imploringvoice, laying one hand upon his muffler. "But I am not asking thisfor myself.... My wife is dying! If you had heard her cry, if youhad seen her face, then you would understand my persistence! My God!and I thought that you had gone to get ready! Dr. Kiríloff, time isprecious. Come, I implore you!"

"I cannot go," said Kiríloff with a pause between each word. Then hereturned to the hall.

Abógin went after him, and seized him by the arm.

"You are overcome by your sorrow—that I understand. But remember ...I am not asking you to come and cure a toothache ... not as an adviser... but to save a human life," he continued, in the voice of a beggar."A human life should be supreme over every personal sorrow.... I beg ofyou manliness, an exploit!... In the name of humanity!"

"Humanity is a stick with two ends," said Kiríloff with irritation."In the name of the same humanity I beg of you not to drag me away. Howstrange this seems! Here I am hardly standing on my legs, yet you worryme with your humanity! At the present moment I am good for nothing....I will not go on any consideration! And for whom should I leave mywife? No.... No."

Kiríloff waved his hands and staggered back.

"Do not ... do not ask me," he continued in a frightened voice. "Excuseme.... By the Thirteenth Volume of the Code I am bound to go, and youhave the right to drag me by the arm.... If you will have it, dragme ... but I am useless.... Even for conversation I am not in a fitstate.... Excuse me."

"It is useless, doctor, for you to speak to me in that tone," saidAbógin, again taking Kiríloff's arm. "The devil take your ThirteenthVolume!... To do violence to your will I have no right. If you will,come; if you don't, then God be with you; but it is not to your willthat I appeal, but to your heart!... A young woman is at the point ofdeath! This moment your own son has died, and who if not you shouldunderstand my terror?"

Abógin's voice trembled with agitation; in tremble and in tone wassomething more persuasive than in the words. He was certainly sincere;but it was remarkable that no matter how well chosen his phrases, theyseemed to come from him stilted, soulless, inappropriately ornate, tosuch an extent that they seemed an insult to the atmosphere of thedoctor's house and to his own dying wife. He felt this himself, andtherefore, fearing to be misunderstood, he tried with all his force tomake his voice sound soft and tender, so as to win if not with wordsat least by sincerity of tone. In general, phrases, however beautifuland profound, act only on those who are indifferent, and seldom satisfythe happy or unhappy; it is for this reason that the most touchingexpression of joy or sorrow is always silence; sweethearts understandone another best when they are silent; and a burning passionate eulogyspoken above a grave touches only the strangers present, and seems towidow and child inexpressive and cold.

Kiríloff stood still and said nothing. When Abógin used some morephrases about the high vocation of a physician, self-sacrifice, and soon, the doctor asked gloomily:

"Is it far?"

"Something between thirteen and fourteen versts. I have excellenthorses. I give you my word of honour to bring you there and back in anhour. In a single hour!"

The last words aided on the doctor more powerfully than the referencesto humanity and the vocation of a doctor. He thought for a moment andsaid, with a sigh:

"All right.... I will go."

With a rapid, steady gait he went into his study, and after a moment'sdelay returned with a long overcoat. Moving nervously beside him,shuffling his feet, and overjoyed, Abógin helped him into his coat.Together they left the house.

It was dark outside, but not so dark as in the anteroom. In thedarkness was clearly defined the outline of the tall, stooping doctor,with his long, narrow beard and eagle nose. As for Abógin, in additionto his pale face the doctor could now distinguish a big head, and alittle student's cap barely covering the crown. The white mufflergleamed only in front; behind, it was hidden under long hair.

"Believe me, I appreciate your generosity," he muttered, seating thedoctor in the calêche. "We will get there in no time. Listen, Luka, oldman, drive as hard as you can! Quick!"

The coachman drove rapidly. First they flew past a row of uglybuildings, with a great open yard; everywhere around it was dark, butfrom a window a bright light glimmered through the palisade, and threewindows in the upper story of the great block seemed paler than theair. After that they drove through intense darkness. There was a smellof mushroom dampness, and a lisping of trees; ravens awakened by thenoise of the calêche stirred in the foliage, and raised a frightened,complaining cry, as if they knew that Kiríloff's son was dead, andthat Abógin's wife was dying. They flashed past single trees, past acoppice; a pond, crossed with great black shadows, scintillated—andthe calêche rolled across a level plain. The cry of the ravens washeard indistinctly far behind, and then ceased entirely.

For nearly the whole way Abógin and Kiríloff were silent. Only once,Abógin sighed and exclaimed:

"A frightful business! A man never so loves those who are near to himas when he is in danger of losing them."

And when the calêche slowly crossed the river, Kiríloff startedsuddenly as if he were frightened by the plash of the water, and moved.

"Listen! Let me go for a moment," he said wearily. "I will come again.I must send a feldscher to my wife. She is alone!"

Abógin did not answer. The calêche, swaying and banging over thestones, crossed a sandy bank, and rolled onward. Kiríloff, wrappedin weariness, looked around him. Behind, in the scanty starlight,gleamed the road; and the willows by the river bank vanished in thedarkness. To the right stretched a plain, flat and interminable asheaven; and far in the distance, no doubt on some sodden marsh, gleamedwill-of-the-wisps. On the left, running parallel to the road, stretcheda hillock, shaggy with a small shrubbery, and over the hill hungimmovably a great half-moon, rosy, half muffled in the mist and fringedwith light clouds, which, it seemed, watched it on every side, that itmight not escape.

On all sides Nature exhaled something hopeless and sickly; the earth,like a fallen woman sitting in her dark chamber and trying to forgetthe past, seemed tormented with remembrances of spring and summer, andwaited in apathy the inevitable winter. Everywhere the world seemeda dark, unfathomable deep, an icy pit from which there was no escapeeither for Kiríloff or for Abógin or for the red half-moon....

The nearer to its goal whirled the calêche, the more impatient seemedAbógin. He shifted, jumped up, and looked over the coachman's shoulder.And when at last the carriage stopped before steps handsomely coveredwith striped drugget, he looked up at the lighted windows of the secondstory, and panted audibly.

"If anything happens ... I will never survive it," he said, enteringthe hall with Kiríloff, and rubbing his hands in agitation. But afterlistening a moment, he added, "There is no confusion ... things must begoing well."

In the hall were neither voices nor footsteps, and the whole house,notwithstanding its brilliant lights, seemed asleep. Only now, for thefirst time, the doctor and Abógin, after their sojourn in darkness,could see one another plainly. Kiríloff was tall, round-shouldered, andugly, and was carelessly dressed. His thick, almost negro, lips, hiseagle nose, and his withered, indifferent glance, expressed somethingcutting, unkindly, and rude. His uncombed hair, his sunken temples, thepremature grey in the long, narrow beard, through which appeared hischin, the pale grey of his skin, and his careless, angular manners, allreflected a career of need endured, of misfortune, of weariness withlife and with men. Judging by his dry figure, no one would ever believethat this man had a wife, and that he had wept over his child.

Abógin was a contrast. He was a thick-set, solid blond, with a bighead, with heavy but soft features; and he was dressed elegantly andfashionably. From his carriage, from his closely-buttoned frock-coat,from his mane of hair, and from his face, flowed something noble andleonine; he walked with his head erect and his chest expanded, he spokein an agreeable baritone, and the way in which he took off his mufflerand smoothed his hair breathed a delicate, feminine elegance. Evenhis pallor, and the childish terror with which, while taking off hiscoat, he looked up the staircase, did not detract from his dignity,or diminish the satiety, health, and aplomb which his whole figurebreathed.

"There is no one about ... I can hear nothing," he said, goingupstairs. "There is no confusion.... God is merciful!"

He led the doctor through the hall into a great drawing-room, with ablack piano, and lustres in white covers. From this they went into asmall, cosy, and well-furnished dining-room, full of a pleasant, rosytwilight.

"Wait a moment," said Abógin, "I shall be back immediately. I will lookaround and tell them you are here...."

Kiríloff remained alone. The luxury of the room, the pleasant twilight,and even his presence in the unknown house of a stranger, which had thecharacter of an adventure, apparently did not affect him. He lay backin the armchair and examined his hands, burnt with carbolic acid. Onlyfaintly could he see the bright red lamp shade and a violoncello case.But looking at the other side of the room, where ticked a clock, henoticed a stuffed wolf, as solid and sated as Abógin himself.

Not a sound.... Then in a distant room someone loudly ejaculated "Ah!";a glass door, probably the door of a wardrobe, closed ... and againall was silent. After waiting a moment Kiríloff ceased to examine hishands, and raised his eyes upon the door through which Abógin had gone.

On the threshold stood Abógin. But it was not the Abógin who hadleft the room. The expression of satiety, the delicate elegance hadvanished; his face, his figure, his pose were contorted by a repulsiveexpression not quite of terror, not quite of physical pain. His nose,his lips, his moustaches, all his features twitched; it seemed theywished to tear themselves off his face; and his eyes were transfiguredas if from torture.

Abógin walked heavily into the middle of the room, bent himself in two,groaned, and shook his fists. "Deceived!" he shouted, with a stronghissing accentuation of the second syllable. "Cheated! Gone! Got ill,and sent for a doctor, only to fly with that buffoon Paptchinski! MyGod!"

Abógin walked heavily up to the doctor, stretched up to his face hiswhite, soft fists, and, shaking them, continued in a howl:

"Gone! Deceived! But why this extra lie? My God! My God! But why thisfilthy swindler's trick, this devilish reptile play? What have I everdone? Gone!"

The tears burst from his eyes. He turned on one foot and walked up anddown the room. And now in his short coat, in the narrow, fashionabletrousers, which made his legs seem too thin for his body, with hisgreat head and mane, he still more closely resembled a lion. On thedoctor's indifferent face appeared curiosity. He rose and looked atAbógin.

"Be so good as to tell me ... where is the patient?"

"Patient! Patient!" cried Abógin, with a laugh, a sob, and a shakingof his fists. "This is no sick woman, but a woman accursed! Meanness,baseness, lower than Satan himself could have conceived! Sent for adoctor, to fly with him—to fly with that buffoon, that clown, thatAlphonse. Oh, God, better a thousand times that she had died! I cannotbear it.... I cannot bear it!"

The doctor drew himself up. His eyes blinked and filled with team, hisnarrow beard moved to the right and to the left in accord with themovement of his jaws.

"Be so good as to inform me what is the meaning of this?" he asked,looking around him in curiosity. "My child lies dead, my wife indespair is left alone in a great house. I myself can hardly stand onmy feet, for three nights I have not slept, and what is this? ambrought here to play in some trivial comedy, to take the part of aproperty-man.... I don't understand it!"

Abógin opened one of his fists, flung upon the floor a crumpled paper,and trod on it as upon an insect which he wished to crush.

"And I never saw it! I never understood!" he said through his clenchedteeth, shaking one of his fists beside his face, with an expression asif someone had trod upon a corn. "I never noticed that he rode hereevery day, never noticed that to-day he came in a carriage! Why in acarriage? And I never noticed! Fool!"

"I don't understand ... I really don't understand," stammered Kiríloff."What is the meaning of this? This is practical joking at the expenseof another ... it is mocking at human suffering. It is impossible. ...I have never heard of such a thing!"

With the dull astonishment depicted on his face of a man who is onlybeginning to understand that he has been badly insulted, the doctorshrugged his shoulders, and not knowing what to say, threw himself inexhaustion into the chair.

"Got tired of me, loved another! Well, God be with them! But whythis deception, why this base, this traitorous trick?" cried Abóginin a whining voice. "Why? For what? What have I done to her? Listen,doctor," he said passionately, coming nearer to Kiríloff. "You arethe involuntary witness of my misfortune, and I will not conceal fromyou the truth. I swear to you that I loved that woman, that I lovedher to adoration, that I was her slave. For her I gave up everything;I quarrelled with my parents, I threw up my career and my music,I forgave her what I could not have forgiven in my own mother orsister.... I have never said an unkind word to her.... I gave her nocause! But why this lie? I do not ask for love, but why this shamelessdeception P If a woman doesn't love, then let her say so openly,honestly, all the more since she knew my views on that subject...."

With tears in his eyes, and with his body trembling all over, Abóginsincerely poured forth to the doctor his whole soul. He spokepassionately, with both hands pressed to his heart, he revealedfamily secrets without a moment's hesitation; and, it seemed, waseven relieved when these secrets escaped him. Had he spoken thus foran hour, for two hours, and poured out his soul, he would certainlyhave felt better. Who knows whether the doctor might not have listenedto him, sympathised with him as a friend, and, even without protest,become reconciled to his own unhappiness.... But it happened otherwise.While Abógin spoke, the insulted doctor changed. The indifference andsurprise on his face gave way little by little to an expression ofbitter offence, indignation, and wrath. His features became sharper,harder, and more disagreeable. And finally when Abógin held beforehis eyes the photograph of a young woman with a face handsome but dryand inexpressive as a nun's, and asked him could he, looking at thisphotograph, imagine that she was capable of telling a lie, the doctorsuddenly leaped up, averted his eyes, and said, rudely ringing outevery word:

"What do you mean by talking to me like this? I don't want to hear you!I will not listen!" He shouted and banged his fist upon the table."What have I to do with your stupid secrets, devil take them! You dareto communicate to me these base trifles! Do you not see that I havealready been insulted enough? Am I a lackey who will bear insultswithout retaliation?"

Abógin staggered backwards, and looked at Kiríloff in amazement.

"Why did you bring me here?" continued the doctor, shaking hisbeard.... "If you marry filth, then storm with your filth, and playyour melodramas; but what affair is that of mine? What have I to dowith your romances? Leave me alone! Display your well-born meanness,show off your humane ideas, (the doctor pointed to the violoncellocase) play on your double basses and trombones, get as fat as a capon,but do not dare to mock the personality of another! If you cannotrespect it, then rid it of your detestable attention!"

Abógin reddened. "What does all this mean?" he asked.

"It means this: that it is base and infamous to play practical jokeson other men. I am a doctor; you regard doctors and all other workingmen who do not smell of scent and prostitution as your lackeys and yourservants. But reflect, reflect—no one has I given you the right tomake a property man of a suffering human being!"

"You dare to speak this to me?" said Abógin; and his face againtwitched, this time plainly from anger.

"Yes ... and you, knowing of the misery in my home, have dared to dragme here to witness this insanity," cried the doctor, again banginghis fist upon the table. "Who gave you the right to mock at humanmisfortune?"

"You are out of your mind," said Abógin. "You are not generous. I alsoam deeply unhappy, and...."

"Unhappy!" cried Kiríloff, with a contemptuous laugh. "Do not touchthat word; it ill becomes you. Oafs who have no money to meet theirbills also call themselves unfortunate. Geese that are stuffed with toomuch fat are also unhappy. Insignificant curs!"

"You forget yourself, you forget yourself!" screamed Abógin. "Forwords like those ... people are horsewhipped. Do you hear me?"

He suddenly thrust his hand into his side pocket, took out apocket-book, and taking two bank-notes, flung them on the table.

"There you have the money for your visit!" he said, dilating hisnostrils. "You are paid!"

"Do not dare to offer money to me," cried Kiríloff, sweeping the noteson to the floor. "For insults money is not the payment."

The two men stood face to face, and in their anger flung insults at oneanother. It is certain that never in their lives had they uttered somany unjust, inhuman, and ridiculous words. In each was fully expressedthe egoism of the unfortunate. And men who are unfortunate, egoistical,angry, unjust, and heartless are even less than stupid men capable ofunderstanding one another. For misfortune does not unite, but severs;and those who should be bound by community of sorrow are much moreunjust and heartless than the happy and contented.

"Be so good as to send me home!" cried the doctor at last.

Abógin rang sharply. Receiving no answer he rang again, and angrilyflung the bell upon the floor; it fell heavily on the carpet andemitted a plaintive and ominous sound.... A footman appeared.

"Where have you been hiding yourself? May Satan take you!" roaredAbógin, rushing at him with clenched fists. "Where have you been? Go,tell them at once to give this gentleman the calêche, and get thecarriage ready for me!... Stop!" he cried, when the servant turned togo. "To-morrow let none of you traitors remain in this house! The wholepack of you! I will get others! Curs!"

Awaiting their carriages, Abógin and Kiríloff were silent. The firsthad already regained his expression of satiety and his delicateelegance. He walked up and down the room, shook his head gracefully,and apparently thought something out. His anger had not yet evaporated,but he tried to look as if he did not notice his enemy.... The doctorstood, with one hand on the edge of the table, and looked at Abóginwith deep, somewhat cynical and ugly contempt—with the eyes of sorrowand misfortune when they see before them satiety and elegance.

When, after a short delay, the doctor took his seat in the calêche,his eyes retained their contemptuous look. It was dark, much darkerthan an hour before. The red half-moon had fallen below the hill,and the clouds that had guarded it lay in black spots among thestars. A carriage with red lamps rattled along the road, and overtookKiríloff. It was Abógin, driving away to protest ... and make a fool ofhimself....

And all the way home Kiríloff thought, not of his wife or of deadAndreï, but of Abógin and of the people who lived in the house whichhe had just left. His thoughts were unjust, heartless, inhuman. Hecondemned Abógin and his wife, and Paptchinski, and all that class ofpersons who live in a rosy twilight and smell of perfumes; all the wayhe hated and despised them to the point of torture; and his mind wasfull of unshakeable convictions as to the worthlessness of such people.

Time will pass; the sorrow of Kiríloff will pass away also, but thisconviction—unjust, unworthy of a human heart—will never pass away,and will remain with the doctor to the day of his death.

SLEEPYHEAD

Night. Nursemaid Varka, aged thirteen, rocks the cradle where babylies, and murmurs almost inaudibly:

"Bayú, bayúshki, bayú!
Nurse will sing a song to you!..."

In front of the ikon burns a green lamp; across the room from wall towall stretches a cord on which hang baby-clothes and a great pair ofblack trousers. On the ceiling above the lamp shines a great greenspot, and the baby-clothes and trousers cast long shadows on the stove,on the cradle, on Varka.... When the lamp flickers, the spot andshadows move as if from a draught. It is stifling. There is a smell ofsoup and boots.

The child cries. It has long been hoarse and weak from crying, butstill it cries, and who can say when it will be comforted P And Varkawants to sleep. Her eyelids droop, her head hangs, her neck painsher.... She can hardly move her eyelids or her lips, and it seems toher that her face is sapless and petrified, and that her head hasshrivelled up to the size of a pinhead.

"Bayú, bayúshki, bayú!" she murmurs, "Nurse is making pap for you...."

In the stove chirrups a cricket. In the next room behind that doorsnore Varka's master and the journeyman Athanasius. The cradle creaksplaintively, Varka murmurs—and the two sounds mingle soothingly in alullaby sweet to the ears of those who lie in bed. But now the music isonly irritating and oppressive, for it inclines to sleep, and sleep isimpossible. If Varka, which God forbid, were to go to sleep, her masterand mistress would beat her.

The lamp flickers. The green spot and the shadows move about, they passinto the half-open, motionless eyes of Varka, and in her half-awakenedbrain blend in misty images. She sees dark clouds chasing one anotheracross the sky and crying like the child. And then a wind blows; theclouds vanish; and Varka sees a wide road covered with liquid mud;along the road stretch waggons, men with satchels on their backs crawlalong, and shadows move backwards and forwards; on either side throughthe chilly, thick mist are visible hills. And suddenly the men with thesatchels, and the shadows collapse in the liquid mud. "Why is this?"asks Varka. "To sleep, to sleep!" comes the answer. And they sleepsoundly, sleep sweetly; and on the telegraph wires perch crows, andcry like the child, and try to awaken them.

"Bayú, bayúshki, bayú. Nurse will sing a song to you," murmurs Varka;and now she sees herself in a dark and stifling cabin.

On the floor lies her dead father, Yéfim Stépanoff. She cannot see him,but she hears him rolling from side to side, and groaning. In his ownwords he "has had a rupture." The pain is so intense that he cannotutter a single word, and only inhales air and emits through his lips adrumming sound.

"Bu, bu, bu, bu, bu...."

Mother Pelageya has run to the manor-house to tell the squire thatYéfim is dying. She has been gone a long time ... will she ever return?Varka lies on the stove, and listens to her father's "Bu, bu, bu, bu.'"And then someone drives up to the cabin door. It is the doctor, sentfrom the manor-house where he is staying as a guest. The doctor comesinto the hut; in the darkness he is invisible, but Varka can hear himcoughing and hear the creaking of the door.

"Bring a light!" he says.

"Bu, bu, bu," answers Yéfim.

Pelageya runs to the stove and searches for a jar of matches. A minutepasses in silence. The doctor dives into his pockets and lights amatch himself. "Immediately, batiushka, immediately!" cries Pelageya,running out of the cabin. In a minute she returns with a candle end.

Yéfim's cheeks are flushed, his eyes sparkle, and his look is piercing,as if he could see through the doctor and the cabin wall.

"Well, what's the matter with you?" asks the doctor, bending over him."Ah! You have been like this long?"

"What's the matter? The time has come, your honour, to die.... I shallnot live any longer...."

"Nonsense.... We'll soon cure you!"

"As you will, your honour. Thank you humbly ... only we understand....If we must die, we must die...."

Half an hour the doctor spends with Yéfim; then he rises and says:

"I can do nothing.... You must go to the hospital; there they willoperate on you. You must go at once ... without fail! It is late, andthey will all be asleep at the hospital ... but never mind, I will giveyou a note.... Do you hear?"

"Batiushka, how can he go to the hospital?" asks Pelageya. "We haveno horse."

"Never mind, I will speak to the squire, he will lend you one."

The doctor leaves, the light goes out, and again Varka hears: "Bu, bu,bu." In half an hour someone drives up to the cabin.... This is thecart for Yéfim to go to hospital in.... Yéfim gets ready and goes....

And now comes a clear and fine morning. Pelageya is not at home; shehas gone to the hospital to find out how Yéfim is.... There is a childcrying, and Varka hears someone singing with her own voice:

"Bayú, bayúshki, bayú, Nurse will sing a song to you...."

Pelageya returns, she crosses herself and whispers: "Last night he wasbetter, towards morning he gave his soul to God.... Heavenly kingdom,eternal rest! ... They say we brought him too late.... We should havedone it sooner...."

Varka goes into the wood, and cries, and suddenly someone slaps her onthe nape of the neck with such force that her forehead bangs againsta birch tree. She lifts her head, and sees before her her master, theshoemaker.

"What are you doing, scabby?" he asks. "The child is crying and you areasleep."

He gives her a slap on the ear; and she shakes her head, rocks thecradle, and murmurs her lullaby. The green spot, the shadows from thetrousers and the baby-clothes, tremble, wink at her, and soon againpossess her brain. Again she sees a road covered with liquid mud. Menwith satchels on their backs, and shadows lie down and sleep soundly.When she looks at them Varka passionately desires to sleep; she wouldlie down with joy; but mother Pelageya comes along and hurries her.They are going into town to seek situations.

"Give me a kopeck for the love of Christ," says her mother to everyoneshe meets. "Show the pity of God, merciful gentleman!"

"Give me here the child," cries a well-known voice. "Give me thechild," repeats the same voice, but this time angrily and sharply. "Youare asleep, beast!"

Varka jumps up, and looking around her remembers where she is; thereis neither road, nor Pelageya, nor people, but only, standing in themiddle of the room, her mistress who has come to feed the child. Whilethe stout, broad-shouldered woman feeds and soothes the baby, Varkastands still, looks at her, and waits till she has finished.

And outside the window the air grows blue, the shadows fade and thegreen spot on the ceiling pales. It will soon be morning.

"Take it," says her mistress buttoning her nightdress. "It is crying.The evil eye is upon it!"

Varka takes the child, lays it in the cradle, and again begins rocking.The shadows and the green spot fade away, and there is nothing nowto set her brain going. But, as before, she wants to sleep, wantspassionately to sleep. Varka lays her head on the edge of the cradleand rocks it with her whole body so as to drive away sleep; but hereyelids droop again, and her head is heavy.

"Varka, light the stove!" rings the voice of her master from behind thedoor.

That is to say: it is at last time to get up and begin the day'swork. Varka leaves the cradle, and runs to the shed for wood. She isdelighted. When she runs or walks she does not feel the want of sleepas badly as when she is sitting down. She brings in wood, lights thestove, and feels how her petrified face is waking up, and how herthoughts are clearing.

"Varka, get ready the samovar!" cries her mistress.

Varka cuts splinters of wood, and has hardly lighted them and laid themin the samovar when another order conies:

"Varka, clean your master's goloshes!"

Varka sits on the floor, cleans the goloshes, and thinks how delightfulit would be to thrust her head into the big, deep golosh, and slumberin it awhile. ... And suddenly the golosh grows, swells, and fills thewhole room. Varka drops the brush, but immediately shakes her head,distends her eyes, and tries to look at things as if they had not grownand did not move in her eyes.

"Varka, wash the steps outside ... the customers will be scandalised!"

Varka cleans the steps, tidies the room, and then lights another stoveand runs into the shop. There is much work to be done, and not a momentfree.

But nothing is so tiresome as to stand at the kitchen-table and peelpotatoes. Varka's head falls on the table, the potatoes glimmer in hereyes, the knife drops from her hand, and around her bustles her stout,angry mistress with sleeves tucked up, and talks so loudly that hervoice rings in Varka's ears. It is torture, too, to wait at table, towash up, and to sew. There are moments when she wishes, notwithstandingeverything around her, to throw herself on the floor and sleep.

The day passes. And watching how the windows darken, Varka presses herpetrified temples, and smiles, herself not knowing why. The darknesscaresses her drooping eyelids, and promises a sound sleep soon. Buttowards evening the bootmaker's rooms are full of visitors.

"Varka, prepare the samovar!" cries her mistress.

It is a small samovar, and before the guests are tired of drinking tea,it has to be filled and heated five times. After tea Varka stands awhole hour on one spot, looks at the guests, and waits for orders.

"Varka, run and buy three bottles of beer!"

Varka jumps from her place, and tries to run as quickly as possible soas to drive away sleep.

"Varka, go for vodka! Varka, where is the corkscrew? Varka, clean theherrings!"

At last the guests are gone; the fires are extinguished; master andmistress go to bed.

"Varka, rock the cradle!" echoes the last order. In the stove chirrupsa cricket; the green spot on the ceiling, and the shadows from thetrousers and baby-clothes again twinkle before Varka's half-openedeyes, they wink at her, and obscure her brain.

"Bayú, bayúshki, bayú," she murmurs, "Nurse will sing a song toyou...."

But the child cries and wearies itself with crying. Varka sees againthe muddy road, the men with satchels, Pelageya, and father Yéfim. Sheremembers, she recognises them all, but in her semi-slumber she cannotunderstand the force which binds her, hand and foot, and crushes her,and ruins her life. She looks around her, and seeks that force that shemay rid herself of it. But she cannot find it. And at last, tortured,she strains all her strength and sight; she looks upward at the winkinggreen spot, and as she hears the cry of the baby, she finds the enemywho is crushing her heart.

The enemy is the child.

Varka laughs. She is astonished. How was it that never before could sheunderstand such a simple thing? The green spot, the shadows, and thecricket, it seems, all smile and are surprised at it.

An idea takes possession of Varka. She rises from the stool, and,smiling broadly with unwinking eyes, walks up and down the room. Sheis delighted and touched by the thought that she will soon be deliveredfrom the child who has bound her, hand and foot. To kill the child, andthen to sleep, sleep, sleep....

And smiling and blinking and threatening the green spot with herfingers, Varka steals to the cradle and bends over the child.... Andhaving smothered the child she drops on the floor, and, laughing withjoy at the thought that she can sleep, in a moment sleeps as soundly asthe dead child.

AT THE MANOR

Pavel Ilitch Rashevitch marched up and down the room, stepping softlyon the Little Russian parquet, and casting a long shadow on the wallsand ceiling; and his visitor, Monsieur Meyer, Examining Magistrate, saton a Turkish divan, with one leg bent under him, smoked, and listened.It was eleven o'clock, and from the next room came the sound ofpreparations for supper.

"I don't dispute it for a moment!" said Rashevitch. "From the point ofview of fraternity, equality, and all that sort of thing the swineherdMitka is as good a man as Goethe or Frederick the Great. But lookat it from the point of view of science; have the courage to lookactuality straight in the face, and you cannot possibly deny that thewhite bone[1] is not a prejudice, not a silly woman's invention. Thewhite bone, my friend, has a natural-historical justification, and todeny it, in my mind, is as absurd as to deny the antlers of a stag.Look at it as a question of fact! You are a jurist, and never studiedanything except the humanities, so you may well deceive yourself withillusions as to equality, fraternity, and that sort of thing. But, onmy side, I am an incorrigible Darwinian, and for me such words as race,aristocracy, noble blood are no empty sounds."

Rashevitch was aroused, and spoke with feeling. His eyes glittered, hispince-nez jumped off his nose, he twitched his shoulders nervously,and at the word "Darwinian" glanced defiantly at the mirror, and withhis two hands divided his grey beard. He wore a short, well-wornjacket, and narrow trousers; but the rapidity of his movements andthe smartness of the short jacket did not suit him at all, and hisbig, longhaired, handsome head, which reminded one of a bishop or avenerable poet, seemed to be set on the body of a tall, thin, andaffected youth. When he opened his legs widely, his long shadowresembled a pair of scissors.

As a rule he loved the sound of his own voice; and it always seemedto him that he was saying something new and original. In the presenceof Meyer he felt an unusual elevation of spirits and flow of thought.He liked the magistrate, who enlivened him by his youthful ways, hishealth, his fine manners, his solidity, and, even more, by the kindlyrelations which he had established with the family. Speaking generally,Rashevitch was not a favourite with his acquaintances. They avoidedhim, and he knew it. They declared that he had driven his wife intothe grave with his perpetual talk, and called him, almost to his face,a beast and a toad. Meyer alone, being an unprejudiced new-corner,visited him often and willingly, and had even been heard to say thatRashevitch and his daughters were the only persons in the districtwith whom he felt at home. And Rashevitch reciprocated his esteem—allthe more sincerely because Meyer was a young man, and an excellentmatch for his elder daughter, Zhenya. And now, enjoying his thoughtsand the sound of his own voice, and looking with satisfaction at thestout, well-groomed, respectable figure of his visitor, Rashevitchreflected how he would settle Zhenya for life as the wife of a goodman, and, in addition, transfer all the work of managing the estate tohis son-in-law's shoulders. It was not particularly agreeable work.The interest had not been paid into the bank for more than two terms,and the various arrears and penalties amounted to over twenty thousandroubles.

"There can hardly be a shadow of doubt," continued Rashevitch, becomingmore and more possessed by his subject, "that if some Richard theLion-hearted or Frederick Barbarossa, for instance, a man courageousand magnanimous, has a son, his good qualities will be inherited bythe son, together with his bumps; and if this courage and magnanimityare fostered in the son by education and exercise, and he marries aprincess also courageous and magnanimous, then these qualities will betransmitted to the grandson, and so on, until they become peculiaritiesof the species, and descend organically, so to speak, in flesh andblood. Thanks to severe sexual selection, thanks to the fact that noblefamilies instinctively preserve themselves from base alliances, andthat young people of position do not marry the devil knows whom, theirhigh spiritual qualities have reproduced themselves from generationto generation, they have been perpetuated, and in the course of ageshave become even more perfect and loftier. For all that is good inhumanity we are indebted to Nature, to the regular, natural-historical,expedient course of things, strenuously in the course of centuriesseparating the white bone from the black. Yes, my friend! It is notthe potboy's child, the cookmaid's brat who has given us literature,science, art, justice, the ideas of honour and of duty.... For allthese, humanity is indebted exclusively to the white bone; and inthis sense, from the point of view of natural history, worthlessSobakevitch,[2] merely because he is a white bone, is a million timeshigher and more useful than the best tradesman, let him endow fiftymuseums! You may say what you like, but if I refuse to give my hand tothe potboy's or the cookmaid's son, by that refusal I preserve fromstain the best that is on the earth, and subserve one of the highestdestinies of mother Nature, leading us to perfection...."

Rashevitch stood still, and smoothed down his beard with both hands.His scissors-like shadow stood still also.

"Take our dear Mother Russia!" he continued, thrusting his hands intohis pockets, and balancing himself alternately on toes and heels."Who are our best people? Take our first-class artists, authors,composers.... Who are they? All these, my dear sir, are representativesof the white bone. Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontoff, Turgenieff, Tolstoy....Were these cook-maids' children?"

"Gontcharoff was a tradesman," said Meyer.

"What does that prove? The exception, my friend, proves the rule. Andas to the genius of Gontcharoff there can be two opinions. But let usleave names and return to facts. Tell me how you can reply, sir, tothe eloquent fact that when the potboy climbs to a higher place thanhe was born in—when he reaches eminence in literature, in science,in local government, in law—what have you to say to the fact thatNature herself intervenes on behalf of the most sacred human rights,and declares war against him? As a matter of fact, hardly has thepotboy succeeded in stepping into other people's shoes when he beginsto languish, wither, go out of his mind, and degenerate; and nowherewill you meet so many dwarfs, psychical cripples, consumptives, andstarvelings as among these gentry. They die away like flies in autumn.And it is a good thing. If it were not for this salutary degeneration,not one stone of our civilisation would remain upon another—the potboywould destroy it all.... Be so good as to tell me, please, what thisinvasion has given us up to the present time? What has the potboybrought with him?"

Rashevitch made a mysterious, frightened face, and continued:

"Never before did our science and literature find themselves at sucha low ebb as now. The present generation, sir, has neither ideas norideals, and all its activity is restricted to an attempt to tear thelast shirt off someone else's back. All your present-day men who givethemselves out as progressive and incorruptible may be bought for asilver rouble; and modern intelligent society is distinguished by onlyone thing, that is, that if you mix in it you must keep your hand onyour pocket, else it will steal your purse." Rashevitch blinked andsmiled. "Steal your purse!" he repeated, with a happy laugh. "Andmorals? What morals have we?" Rashevitch glanced at the door. "You canno longer be surprised if your wife robs you and abandons you—that isa mere trifle. At the present day, my friend, every twelve-year-oldgirl looks out for a lover; and all these amateur theatricals andliterary evenings are invented only for the purpose of catching richparvenus as sweethearts. Mothers sell their daughters, husbands areasked openly at what price they will sell their wives, and you may eventrade, my friend,..."

Up to this Meyer had said nothing, and sat motionless. Now he rose fromthe sofa, and looked at the clock.

"Excuse me, Pavel Ilitch," he said, "but it's time for me to go."

But Rashevitch, who had not finished, took him by the arm, set him downforcibly upon the sofa, and swore he should not leave the house withoutsupper. Meyer again sat motionless and listened; but soon began to lookat Rashevitch with an expression of doubt and alarm, as if he wereonly just beginning to understand his character. When at last the maidentered, saying that the young ladies had sent her to say that supperwas ready, he sighed faintly, and went out of the study first.

In the dining-room, already at table, sat Rashevitch's daughters,Zhenya and Iraida, respectively aged twenty-four and twenty-two. Theywere of equal stature, and both black-eyed and very pale. Zhenya hadher hair down, but Iraida's was twisted into a high top-knot. Beforeeating anything each drank a glass of spirits, with an expression meantto imply that they were drinking accidentally, and for the first timein their lives. After this they looked confused, and tittered.

"Don't be silly, girls!" said Rashevitch.

Zhenya and Iraida spoke French to one another and Russian to theirfather and the visitor.... Interrupting one another, and mixing Frenchand Russian, they began to remark that just at this time of the year,that is in August, they used to leave home for the Institute. How jollythat was! But now there was no place to go to for a change, and theylived at the manor-house winter and summer. How tiresome!

"Don't be silly, girls!" repeated Rashevitch.

"In short, that is exactly how things stand," he said, lookingaffectionately at the magistrate. "We, in the goodness and simplicityof our hearts, and from fear of being suspected of retrogradetendencies, fraternise—excuse the expression—with all kinds of humantrash, and preach equality and fraternity with upstarts and nouveauxriches! Yet if we paused to reflect for a single minute we should seehow criminal is our kindness. For all that our ancestors attained to inthe course of centuries will be derided and destroyed in a single dayby these modern Huns."

After supper all went into the drawing-room. Zhenya and Iraida lightedthe piano candles and got ready their music.... But their parentcontinued to hold forth, and there was no knowing when he would end.Bored and irritated, they looked at their egoist father, for whom, theyconcluded, the satisfaction of chattering and showing off his brains,was dearer than the future happiness of his daughters. Here was Meyer,the only young man who frequented the house—for the sake, they knew,of tender feminine society—yet the unwearying old man kept possessionof him, and never let him escape for a moment.

"Just as western chivalry repelled the onslaught of the Mongols, somust we, before it is too late, combine and strike together at theenemy." Rashevitch spoke apostolically, and lifted his right handon high. "Let me appear before the potboy no longer as plain PavelIlitch, but as a strong and menacing Richard the Lion-Heart! Fling yourscruples behind you—enough! Let us swear a sacred compact that whenthe potboy approaches we will fling him words of contempt straightin the face! Hands off! Back to your pots! Straight in the face!"In ecstacy, Rashevitch thrust out a bent forefinger, and repeated:"Straight in the face! In the face! In the face!"

Meyer averted his eyes. "I cannot tolerate this any longer!" he said.

"And may I ask why?" asked Rashevitch, scenting the beginnings of aprolonged and interesting argument.

"Because I myself am the son of an artisan." And having so spoken,Meyer reddened, his neck seemed to swell, and tears sparkled in hiseyes..

"My father was a plain working man," he said in an abrupt, brokenvoice. "But I can see nothing bad in that."

Rashevitch was thunderstruck. In his confusion he looked as if he hadbeen detected in a serious crime; he looked at Meyer with a dumfoundedface, and said not a word. Zhenya and Iraida blushed, and bent overtheir music. They were thoroughly ashamed of their tactless father. Aminute passed in silence, and the situation was becoming unbearablewhen suddenly a sickly, strained voice—it seemed utterly mal àpropos—stammered forth the words:

"Yes, I am a tradesman's son, and I am proud of it." And Meyer,awkwardly stumbling over the furniture, said good-bye, and walkedquickly into the hall, although the trap had not been ordered.

"You will have a dark drive," stammered Rashevitch, going after him."The moon rises late to-night." They stood on the steps in the darknessand waited for the horses. It was cold.

"Did you see the falling star?" asked Meyer, buttoning his overcoat.

"In August falling stars are very plentiful."

When at last the trap drove round to the door, Rashevitch lookedattentively at the heavens, and said, with a sigh:

"A phenomenon worthy of the pen of Flammarion...."

Having parted from his guest, he walked up and down the garden, andtried to persuade himself that such a stupid misunderstanding had notreally taken place. He was angry, and ashamed of himself. In thefirst place, he knew that it was extremely tactless and incautious toraise this accursed conversation about the white bone without knowinganything of the origin of his guest. He told himself, with perfectjustice, that for him there was no excuse, for he had had a lessonbefore, having once in a railway carriage set about abusing Germans tofellow-passengers who, it turned out, were themselves Germans.... Andin the second place he was convinced that Meyer would come no more.These intellectuels who have sprung from the people are sensitive,vain, obstinate, and revengeful.

"It is a bad business ... bad ... bad!" he muttered, spitting; he feltawkward and disgusted, as if he had just eaten soap. "It is a badbusiness!"

Through the open window he could see into the drawing-room whereZhenya with her hair down, pale and frightened, spoke excitedly to hersister.... Iraida walked from corner to corner, apparently lost inthought; and then began to speak, also excitedly and with an indignantface. Then both spoke together. Rashevitch could not distinguish aword, but he knew too well the subject of their conversation. Zhenyawas grumbling that her father with his eternal chattering drove everydecent man from the house, and had to-day robbed them of their lastacquaintance, it might have been husband; and now the poor young mancould not find a place in the whole district wherein to rest his soul.And Iraida, if judged correctly from the despairing way in which sheraised her arms, lamented bitterly their wearisome life at home andtheir ruined youth.

Going up to his bedroom, Rashevitch sat on the bed and undressedhimself slowly. He felt that he was a persecuted man, and was tormentedby the same feeling as though he had eaten soap. He was thoroughlyashamed of himself. When he had undressed he gazed sadly at his long,veined, old-man's legs, and remembered that in the country round hewas nicknamed "the toad," and that never a conversation passed withoutmaking him ashamed of himself. By some extraordinary fatality everydiscussion ended badly. He began softly, kindly, with good intentions,and called himself genially an "old student," an "idealist," a "DonQuixote." But gradually, and unnoticed by himself, he passed on toabuse and calumny, and, what is more surprising, delivered himselfof sincere criticisms of science, art, and morals, although it wastwenty years since he had read a book, been farther than the governmenttown, or had any channel for learning what was going on in the worldaround him. Even when he sat down to write a congratulatory letter heinvariably ended by abusing something or somebody. And as he reflectedupon this, it seemed all the more strange, since he knew himself inreality to be a sensitive, lachrymose old man. It seemed almost as ifhe were possessed by an unclean spirit which filled him against hiswill with hatred and grumbling.

"A bad business!" he sighed, getting into bed. "A bad business!"

His daughters also could not sleep. Laughter and lamentation resoundedthrough the house. Zhenya was in hysterics. Shortly afterwards Iraidaalso began to cry. More than once the barefooted housemaid ran up anddown the corridor.

"What a scandal!" muttered Rashevitch, sighing, and turning uneasilyfrom side to side. "A bad business!"

He slept, but nightmare gave him no peace. He thought that he wasstanding in the middle of the room, naked, and tall as a giraffe,thrusting out his forefinger, and saying:

"In the face! In the face! In the face!"

He awoke in terror, and the first thing he remembered was, that lastevening a serious misunderstanding had occurred, and that Meyer wouldnever visit him again. He remembered then that the interest had tobe lodged in the bonk, that he must find husbands for his daughters,and that he must eat and drink. He remembered sickness, old age, andunpleasantness; that winter would soon be upon him, and that there wasno wood....

At nine o'clock he dressed slowly, then drank some tea and ate twolarge slices of bread and butter.... His daughters did not come downto breakfast, they did not wish to see his face; and this offendedhim. For a time he lay upon the study sofa, and then sat at hiswriting-table and began to write a letter to his daughters. His handtrembled and his eyes itched. He wrote that he was now old, that nobodywanted him, and that nobody loved him; so he begged his children toforget him, and when he died, to bury him in a plain, deal coffin,without ceremony, or to send his body to Kharkoff for dissection inthe Anatomical Theatre. He felt that every line breathed malice andaffectation ... but he could not stop himself, and wrote on and on andon....

"The toad!" rang a voice from the next room; it was the voice of hiselder daughter, an indignant, hissing voice. "The toad!"

"The toad!" repeated the younger in echo. "The toad!"

[1] Blue blood.

[2] Sobakevitch, a stupid, coarse country gentleman, is one ofthe heroes of Gogol's celebrated novel Dead Souls.

AN EVENT

Morning. Through the frosty lacework which covered the window-panesa host of bright sun-rays burst into the nursery. Vanya, a boy ofsix, with a nose like a button, and his sister Nina, aged four,curly-headed, chubby, and small for her age, awoke, and glared angrilyat one another through the bars of their cots.

"Fie!" cried nurse. "For shame, children! All the good people havefinished breakfast, and you can't keep your eyes open...."

The sun-rays played merrily on the carpet, on the walls, on nurse'sskirt, and begged the children to play with them. But the children tookno notice. They had awakened on the wrong side of their beds. Ninapouted, made a wry face, and drawled:

"Te-ea! Nurse, te-ea!"

Vanya frowned, and looked about for an opportunity to pick a quarreland roar. He had just blinked his eyes and opened his mouth, when outof the diningroom rang mother's voice:

"Don't forget to give the cat milk; she has got kittens."

Vanya and Nina lengthened their faces and looked questioningly at oneanother. Then both screamed, jumped out of bed, and, making the airring with deafening yells, ran barefooted in their nightdresses intothe kitchen.

"The cat's got kittens! The cat's got kittens!" they screamed.

In the kitchen under a bench stood a small box, a box which Stepan usedfor coke when he lighted the stove. Out of this box gazed the cat.Her grey face expressed extreme exhaustion, her green eyes with theirlittle black pupils looked languishing and sentimental. ... From herface it was plain that to complete her happiness only one thing waslacking, and that was the presence of the father of her children, towhom she had given herself heart and soul. She attempted to mew, andopened her mouth wide, but only succeeded in making a hissing sound....The kittens squealed.

The children squatted on the ground in front of the box, and, withoutmoving, but holding their breath, looked at the cat.... They wereastonished and thunderstruck, and did not hear the grumbling of thepursuing nurse. In the eyes of both shone sincere felicity.

In the up-bringing of children, domestic animals play an unnoticedbut unquestionably beneficent part. Which of us cannot remember strongbut magnanimous dogs, lazy lapdogs, birds who died in captivity,dull-witted but haughty turkey-cocks, kindly old-lady-cats who forgaveus when we stood on their tails for a joke and caused them intensepain? It might even be argued that the patience, faithfulness,all-forgivingness and sincerity of our domestic animals act on thechildish brain much more powerfully than the long lectures of dry andpale Earl Earlovitch, or the obscure explanations of the governesswho tries to prove to children that water is composed of hydrogen andoxygen.

"What duckies!" cried Nina, overflowing with gay laughter. "They'reexactly like mice!"

"One, two, three!" counted Vanya. "Three kittens.That is one for me, one for you, and one for somebody else."

"Murrrrm ... murrrrm," purred the mother, flattered by so muchattention. "Murrrrm!"

When they had looked for a while at the kittens, the children took themfrom under the cat and began to smooth them down, and afterwards, notsatisfied with this, laid them in the skirts of their nightdresses andran from one room to another.

"Mamma, the cat's got kittens!" they cried. Mother sat in thedining-room, talking to a stranger. When she saw her children unwashed,undressed, with their nightdresses on high, she got red, and looked atthem severely.

"Drop your nightdresses, shameless!" she said. "Run away at once, oryou'll be punished."

But the children paid no attention either to their mother's threatsor to the presence of the stranger. They put the kittens down on thecarpet and raised a deafening howl. Beside them walked the old cat, andmewed imploringly. When in a few minutes the children were dragged offto the nursery to dress, say their prayers, and have their breakfast,they were full of a passionate wish to escape from these prosaic dutiesand return to the kitchen.

Ordinary occupations and games were quite forgotten. From the momentof their appearance in the world the kittens obscured everything, andtook their place as the living novelty and heart-swelling of the day.If you had offered Vanya or Nina a bushel of sweets for each kitten,or a thousand threepenny-bits, they would have rejected the offerwithout a moment's hesitation. Till dinner-time, in spite of the warmprotests of nurse and the cook, they sat in the kitchen and played withthe kittens. Their faces were serious, concentrated, and expressive ofanxiety. They had to provide not only for the present condition, butalso for the future of the kittens. So they decided that one kittenwould remain at home with the old cat, so as to console its mother,that the other would be sent to the country-house, and that the thirdwould live in the cellar and eat the rats.

"But why can't they see?" asked Nina. "They have blind eyes, likebeggars."

The question troubled Vanya. He did his best to open one of thekitten's eyes, for a long time puffed and snuffled, but the operationwas fruitless. And another circumstance worried the childrenextremely—the kittens obstinately refused the proffered meat and milk.Everything that was laid before their little snouts was eaten up bytheir grey mother.

"Let's build houses for the kittens," proposed Vanya. "We will makethem live in different houses, and the cat will pay them visits...."In three cornel's of the kitchen they set up old hat-boxes. But theseparation of the family seemed premature; the old cat, preserving onher face her former plaintive and sentimental expression, paid visitsto all the boxes and took her children home again.

"The cat is their mother," said Vanya, "but who is their father?"

"Yes, who is their father?" repeated Nina.

"They can't live without a father."

For a long time Vanya and Nina discussed the problem, who should befather of the kittens. In the end their choice fell on a big dark-redhorse whose tail had been tom off. He had been cast away in thestore-room under the staircase, together with the remnants of othertoys that had outlived their generation. They took the horse from thestore-room and stood it beside the box.

"Look out!" they warned him. "Stand there and see that they behavethemselves."

All this was said and done in a serious manner, and with an expressionof solicitude. Outside the box and the kittens, Vanya and Nina wouldrecognise no other world. Their happiness had no bounds. But they weredestined to endure moments of unutterable torture. Just before dinnerVanya sat in his father's study, and looked thoughtfully at the table.Near the lamp, across a packet of stamped paper, crawled a kitten.Vanya watched its movements attentively, and occasionally poked it inthe snout with a pencil.... Suddenly, as if springing out of the floor,appeared his father.

"What is this?" cried an angry voice.

"It is ... it is a kitten, papa."

"I'll teach you to bring your kittens here, wretched child! Look whatyou've done! Ruined a whole package of paper!"

To Vanya's astonishment, his father did not share his sympathy withkittens, and, instead of going into raptures and rejoicing, pulledVanya's ear, and cried:

"Stepan, take away this abomination!"

At dinner the scandal was repeated.... During the second course thediners suddenly heard a faint squeal. They began to search for thecause, and found a kitten under Nina's pinafore.

"Ninka! Go out of the room!" said her father angrily. "The kittensmust be thrown into the sink this minute! I won't tolerate theseabominations in the house!"

Vanya and Nina were terror-stricken. Death in the sink, apart from itscruelty, threatened to deprive the cat and the wooden horse of theirchildren, to desolate the box, to destroy all their plans for thefuture—that beautiful future when one kitten would console its oldmother, the second live in the country, and the third catch rats in thecellar.... They began to cry, and implored mercy for the kittens. Theirfather consented to spare them, but only on the condition that thechildren should not dare to go into the kitchen or touch the kittensagain.

After dinner, Vanya and Nina wandered from one room to another andlanguished. The prohibition on going to the kitchen drove them todespair. They refused sweets; and were naughty, and rude to theirmother. In the evening when Uncle Petrusha came they took him aside andcomplained of their father for threatening to throw the kittens intothe sink.

"Uncle Petrusha," they implored, "tell mamma to put the kittens in thenursery.... Do!"

"Well ... all right!" said their uncle, tearing himself away. "Agreed!"

Uncle Petrusha seldom came alone. Along with him came Nero, a bigblack dog, of Danish origin, with hanging ears and a tail as hard as astick. Nero was silent, morose, and altogether taken up with his owndignity. To the children he paid not the slightest attention; and, whenhe marched past them, knocked his tail against them as if they werechairs. Vanya and Nina detested him from the bottom of their hearts.But on this occasion practical considerations gained the upper handover mere sentiment.

"Do you know what, Nina?" said Vanya, opening wide his eyes. "Let usmake Nero the father instead of the horse! The horse is dead, butNero's alive." The whole evening they waited impatiently for theirfather to sit down to his game of vint, when they might take Neroto the kitchen without being observed.... At last father sat down tohis cards, mother bustled around the samovar, and did not see thechildren.... The happy moment had come!

"Come!" whispered Vanya to his sister.

But at that very moment Stepan came into the room, and said with a grin:

"I beg your pardon, ma'am. Nero has eaten the kittens."

Nina and Vanya turned pale, and looked with horror at Stepan.

"Yes, ma'am ..." grinned the servant. "He went straight to the box andgobbled them up."

The children expected everyone in the house to rise in alarm and flyat the guilty Nero. But their parents sat calmly in their chairs, andonly expressed surprise at the appetite of the big dog. Father andmother laughed.... Nero marched up to the table, flourished his tail,and licked himself complacently. ... Only the cat seemed disturbed; shestretched out her tail, and walked about the room looking suspiciouslyat everyone and mewing plaintively.

"Now, children, time for bed! Ten o'clock!" cried mother.

And Vanya and Nina were put to bed, where they wept over the injuredcat, whose life had been desolated by cruel, nasty, unpunished Nero.

WARD No. 6

At the side of the hospital yard stands a large wing, nearly surroundedby a forest of burdocks, nettles, and wild hemp. The roof is red,the chimney is on the point of tumbling, the steps are rotten andovergrown with grass, and of the plaster only traces remain. Thefront gazes at the hospital, the back looks into the fields, fromwhich it is separated only by a grey, spiked fence. The spikes withtheir sharp points sticking upwards, the fence, the wing itself, havethat melancholy, God-forsaken air which is seen only in hospitals andprisons.

If you are not afraid of being stung by nettles, come along the narrowpath, and see what is going on inside. Open the hall-door and enterthe hall. Here, against the walls and around the stove, are heapedwhole mountains of rubbish. Mattresses, old tattered dressing-gowns,trousers, blue-striped shills, worn-out footgear, all good-for-nothing,lie in tangled and crushed heaps, rot, and exhale a suffocating smell.

On the top of this rubbish heap, pipe eternally in mouth, lies thewatchman Nikita, an old soldier. His face is coarse and drink-sodden,his hanging eye-brows give him the appearance of a sheep-dog, he issmall and sinewy, but his carriage is impressive and his fists arestrong. He belongs to that class of simple, expeditious, positive, anddull persons, who above all things in the world worship order, and findin this a justification of their existence. He beats his charges in theface, in the chest, in the back, in short, wherever his fists chance tostrike; and he is convinced that without this beating there would be noorder in the universe.

After you pass through Nikita's hall, you enter the large, roomydormitory which takes up the rest of the wing. In this room the wallsare painted a dirty blue, the ceiling is black with soot like theceiling of a chimneyless hut; it is plain that in winter the stovesmokes, and the air is suffocating. The windows are disfigured withiron bars, the floor is damp and splintered, there is a smell of sourcabbage, a smell of unsnuffed wicks, a smell of bugs and ammonia. Andat the moment of entry all these smells produce upon you the impressionthat you have entered a cage of wild beasts.

Around the room stand beds, screwed to the floor. Sitting or lying onthem, dressed in blue dressing-gowns, and wearing nightcaps after themanner of our forefathers, are men. It is the lunatic asylum, andthese arc the lunatics.

There are only five patients. One is of noble birth, the others arcmen of lower origin. The nearest to the door, a tall, thin man of thepetty trading class, looks fixedly at one point. He has a red moustacheand tear-stained eyes, and supports his head on one hand. In the booksof the asylum his complaint is described as hypochondria; in reality,he is suffering from progressive paralysis. Day and night he mourns,shakes his head, sighs, and smiles bitterly. In conversation he seldomjoins, and usually refuses to answer questions. He eats and drinksmechanically. Judged by his emaciation, his flushed cheeks, and hispainful, hacking cough, he is wasting away from consumption.

Beside him is a little, active old man with a pointed beard, and theblack, fuzzy hair of a negro. He spends all day in walking from windowto window, or sitting on his bed, with legs doubled underneath himas if he were a Turk. He is as tireless as a bullfinch, and all daychirrups, titters, and sings in a low voice His childish gaiety andlively character are shown also at night, when he rises to "pray toGod," that is, to beat his breast with his clenched fists, and pick atthe doors. This is Moséika, a Jew and an idiot. He went out of his mindtwenty years ago when his cap factory was destroyed by fire.

Of all the captives in Word No. 6, he alone has permission to leavethe asylum, and he is even allowed to wander about the yard and thestreets. This privilege, which he has enjoyed for many years, wasprobably accorded to him as the oldest inmate of the asylum, and asa quiet, harmless fool, the jester of the town, who may be seen inthe streets surrounded by dogs and little boys. Wrapped in his olddressing-gown, with a ridiculous nightcap and slippers, sometimesbarefooted, and generally without his trousers, he walks the streets,stopping at doorways and entering small shops to beg for kopecks.Sometimes he is given kvas, sometimes bread, sometimes a kopeck, sothat he returns to the ward wealthy and sated. But all that he bringshome is taken by Nikita for his own particular benefit. The old soldierdoes this roughly and angrily, turning out the Jew's pockets, callingGod to witness that he will never allow him outside the asylum again,and swearing that to him disorder is the most detestable thing in theworld.

Moséika loves to make himself useful to others. He fetches waterfor his companions, tucks them in when they go to bed, promises tobring each a kopeck when he next returns from the town, and to makethem new caps. He feeds with a spoon his paralytic neighbour on theleft; and all this he does, not out of sympathy for others or forconsiderations of humanity, but from a love of imitation, and in a sortof involuntary subjection to his neighbour on the right, Iván Gromof.

Ivan Dmítritch Gromof is a man of thirty-three years of age. He isa noble by birth, and has been an usher in the law courts, and agovernment secretary; but now he suffers from the mania of persecution.He lies upon his bed twisted into a lump resembling a roll of bread, ormarches from corner to corner for the sake of motion. He is always ina state of excitement and agitation; and seems strained by some dull,indefinable expectation. It needs but the slightest rustle in the hall,the slightest noise in the yard, to make him raise his head and listenintently. Is it for him they arc coming? Are they searching for him?And his face immediately takes on an expression of restlessness andrepulsion.

There is something attractive about his broad, high cheek-boned face,which reflects, as a mirror, the tortured wrestlings and eternal terrorof his mind. His grimaces arc strange and sickly; but the delicatelines engraven on his face by sincere suffering express reason andintelligence, and his eyes bum with a healthy and passionate glow.There is something attractive also in his character, in his politeness,his attentiveness, and in the singular delicacy of his bearing towardseveryone except Nikita. If his neighbour drops a spoon or a buttonhe jumps immediately out of bed and picks it up. When he wakes heinvariably says, "Good morning!" to his companions; and every eveningon going to bed wishes them "good night!"

But madness shows itself in other things besides his grimaces andcontinual mental tension. In the evening he wraps himself in hisdressing-gown, and, trembling all over, and chattering his teeth, hewalks from corner to corner, and in between the beds. He seems to bein a state of fever. From his sudden stoppages and strange looks athis fellow-prisoners it is plain that he has something very seriousto say; but, no doubt, remembering that they will neither listennor understand, he says nothing, shakes his head impatiently, andcontinues his walk. But at last the desire to speak conquers all otherconsiderations, and he gives way, and speaks passionately. His wordsare incoherent, gusty, and delirious; he cannot always be understood;but the sound of his voice expresses some exceptional goodness.In every word you hear the madman and the man. He speaks of humanbaseness, of violence trampling over truth, of the beautiful life onearth that is to come, and of the barred windows which remind him everymoment of the folly and cruelty of the strong. And he hums medleys ofold but for gotten songs.

II

Fifteen years before, in his own house, in the best street in the town,lived an official named Gromof—a solid and prosperous man. Gromof hadtwo sons, Sergéi and Iván. Sergéi, when a student in the fourth class,was seized with consumption and died; and his death was the first of ascrees of misfortunes which overtook the Gromofs. A week after Sergéi'sdeath his old father was tried for forgery and misappropriation ofpublic moneys, and soon afterwards died of typhus in the prisoninfirmary. His house and all his belongings were sold by auction, andIván Dmítritch and his mother remained without a penny.

When his father was alive, Iván Dmítritch studied at St. PetersburgUniversity, received an allowance of sixty or seventy roubles a month,and had no idea of the meaning of poverty. Now he had to change hiswhole life. From early morning till late at night he gave cheap lessonsto students and copied documents, yet starved, for all his earningswent to support his mother. The life was impossible, and Iván Dmítritchruined his health and spirits, threw up his university studies, andreturned home. Through interest he obtained an appointment as usher inthe district school; but he was disliked by his colleagues, failed toget on with the pupils, and gave up the post. His mother died. Forsix months he lived without resources, eating black bread and drinkingwater, until at last he obtained an appointment as Usher of the Court.This duty he fulfilled until he was discharged owing to illness.

Never, even in his student days, had he had the appearance of astrong man. He was pale, thin, and sensitive to cold; he ate littleand slept foully. A single glass of wine made him giddy and sent himinto hysterics. His disposition impelled him to seek companionship,but thanks to his irritable and suspicious character he never becameintimate with anyone, and had no friends. Of his fellow-citizens healways spoke with contempt, condemning as disgusting and repulsivetheir gross ignorance and torpid, animal life. He spoke in a tenorvoice, loudly and passionately, and always seemed to be in a sincerestate of indignation, excitement, or rapture. However he began aconversation, it ended always in one way—in a lament that the town wasstifling and tiresome, that its people had no high interests, but leda dull, unmeaning life, varied only by violence, coarse debauchery andhypocrisy; that scoundrels were fed and clothed while honest men atecrusts; that the town was crying out for schools, honest newspapers,a theatre, public lectures, an union of intellectual forces; and thatthe time had come for the townspeople to awaken to, and be shocked at,the state of affairs. In his judgments of men he laid on his coloursthickly, using only white and black, and recognising no gradations;for him humanity was divided into two sections, honest men androgues—there was nothing between. Of woman and woman's love he spokepassionately and with rapture. But he had never been in love.

In the town, notwithstanding his nervous character and censorioustemper, he was loved, and called caressingly "Vanya." His innatedelicacy, his attentiveness, his neatness, his moral purity, his worncoat, his sickly appearance, the misfortunes of his family, inspiredin all feelings of warmth and compassion. Besides, he was educatedand well-read; in the opinion of the townsmen he knew everything; andoccupied among them the place of a walking reference-book. He readmuch. He would sit for hours at the club, pluck nervously at his beard,and turn over the pages of books and magazines—by his face it might beseen that he was not reading but devouring. Yet reading was apparentlymerely one of his nervous habits, for with equal avidity he readeverything that fell into his hands, even old newspapers and calendars.At home he always read, lying down.

III

One autumn morning, Iván Dmítritch, with the collar of his coat turnedup, trudged through the mud to the house of a certain tradesman toreceive money due on a writ of execution. As always in the morning, hewas in a gloomy mood. Passing through a lane, he met two convicts inchains and with them four warders armed with rifles. Iván Dmítritchhad often met convicts before, and they had awakened in him a feelingof sympathy and confusion. But this meeting produced upon him anunusual impression. It suddenly occurred to him that he too mightbe shackled and driven through the mud to prison. Having finishedhis work, he was returning home when he met a police-inspector, anacquaintance, who greeted him and walked with him a few yards downthe street. This seemed to him for some reason suspicions. At homevisions of convicts and of soldiers armed with rifles haunted him allday, and an inexplicable spiritual dread prevented him from readingor concentrating his mind. In the evening he sat without a fire, andlay awake all night thinking how he also might be arrested, manacled,and flung into prison. He knew that he had committed no crime, and wasquite confident that he would never commit murder, arson, or robbery;but then, he remembered, how easy it was to commit a crime by accidentor involuntarily, and how common were convictions on false evidenceand owing to judicial errors! And in the present state of human affairshow probable, how little to be wondered at, were judicial errors!Men who witness the sufferings of others only from a professionalstandpoint; for instance, judges, policemen, doctors, became hardenedto such a degree that even if they wished otherwise they could notresist the habit of treating accused persons formally; they got toresemble those peasants who kill sheep and calves in their back-yardswithout even noticing the blood. In view of the soulless relationshipto human personality which everywhere obtains, all that a judge thinksof is the observance of certain formalities, and then all is over, andan innocent man perhaps deprived of his civil rights or sent to thegalleys. Who indeed would expect justice or intercession in this dirty,sleepy little town, two hundred versts from the nearest rail-way? Andindeed was it not ridiculous to expect, justice when society regardsevery form of violence as rational, expedient, and necessary; and whenan act of common mercy such as the acquittal of an accused man callsforth an explosion of unsatisfied vindictiveness!

Next morning Iván Dmítritch awoke in terror with drops of cold sweaton his forehead. He felt convinced that he might be arrested atany moment. That the evening's gloomy thoughts had haunted him sopersistently, he concluded, must mean that there was some ground forhis apprehensions. Could such thoughts come into his head without cause?

A policeman walked slowly past the window; that must mean something.Two men in plain clothes stopped outside the gate, and stood withoutsaying a word. Why were they silent?

For a time, Iván Dmítritch spent his days and nights in torture. Everyman who passed the window or entered the yard was a spy or detective.Every day at twelve o'clock the Chief Constable drove through thestreet on his way from his suburban house to the Department ofPolice, and every day it seemed to Iván Dmítritch that the Constablewas driving with unaccustomed haste, and that there was a peculiarexpression on his face; he was going, in short, to announce that agreat criminal had appeared in the town. Iván Dmítritch shudderedat every sound, trembled at every knock at the yard-gate, and wasin torment when any strange man visited his landlady. When he met agendarme in the street, he smiled, whistled, and tried to assume anindifferent air. For whole nights, expecting arrest, he never closedhis eyes, but snored carefully so that his landlady might think hewas asleep; for if a man did not sleep at night it meant that he wastormented by the gnawings of conscience, and that might be taken as aclue. Reality and healthy reasoning convinced him that his fears wereabsurd and psychopathic, and that, regarded from a broad standpoint,there was nothing very terrible in arrest and imprisonment for a manwhose conscience was clean. But the more consistently and logically hereasoned the stronger grew his spiritual torture; his efforts remindedhim of the efforts of a pioneer to hack a path through virgin forest,the harder he worked with the hatchet the thicker and stronger becamethe undergrowth. So in the end, seeing that his efforts were useless,he ceased to struggle, and gave himself up to terror and despair.

He avoided others and became more and more solitary in his habits.His duties had always been detestable, now they became intolerable.He imagined that someone would hide money in his pockets and thendenounce him for taking bribes, that he would make mistakes in officialdocuments which were equivalent to forgery, or that he would lose themoney entrusted to him. Never was his mind so supple and ingenious aswhen he was engaged in inventing various reasons for fearing for hisfreedom and honour. On the other hand, his interest in the outsideworld decreased correspondingly, he lost his passion for books, and hismemory daily betrayed him.

Next spring when the snow had melted, the semi-decomposed corpses of anold woman and a boy, marked with indications of violence, were foundin a ravine beside the graveyard. The townspeople talked of nothingbut the discovery and the problem: who were the unknown murderers? Inorder to avert suspicion, Iván Dmítritch walked about the streets andsmiled; and when he met his acquaintances, first grew pale and thenblushed, and declared vehemently that there was no more detestablecrime than the killing of the weak and defenceless. But this pretencesoon exhausted him, and after consideration he decided that the bestthing he could do was to hide in his landlady's cellar. In the cellartherefore, chilled to the bone, he remained all day, all next night,and yet another day, after which, waiting until it was dark, he creptsecretly back to his room. Till daylight he stood motionless in themiddle of the room, and listened. At sunrise a number of artisans rangat the gate. Iván Dmítritch knew very well that they had come to putup a new stove in the kitchen; but his terror suggested that they wereconstables in disguise. He crept quietly out of his room, and overcomeby panic, without cap or coat, fled down the street. Behind him ranbarking dogs, a woman called after him, in his ears the wind whistled,and it seemed to him that the scattered violences of the whole worldhad united and were chasing him through the town.

He was captured and brought home. His landlady sent for a doctor.Doctor Andréi Yéfimitch Rágin, of whom we shall hear again, prescribedcold compresses for his head, ordered him to take drops of bay rum, andwent away saying that he would come no more, as it was not right toprevent people going out of their minds. So, as there were no meansof treating him at home, Iván Dmítritch was sent to hospital, and putinto the ward for sick men. He did not sleep at night, was unruly, anddisturbed his neighbours, so that soon, by arrangement with DoctorAndréi Yéfimitch, he was transferred to Ward No. 6. Before a year hadpassed, the townspeople had quite forgotten Iván Dmítritch; and hisbooks, piled up in a sledge by his landlady and covered with a curtain,were torn to pieces by children.

IV

Iván Dmítritch's neighbour on the left, I have already said, was theJew Moséika; his neighbour on the right was a fat, almost globularmuzhik with a dull, meaningless face. This torpid, gluttonous, anduncleanly animal had long lost all capacity for thought and feeling. Heexhaled a sharp, suffocating smell. When Nikita was obliged to attendon him he used to beat him terribly, beat him with all his strength andwithout regard for his own fists; and it was not this violence whichwas so frightful—the terror of that was mitigated by custom—but thefact that the stupefied animal made no answer to the blows either bysound or movement or even by expression in his eyes, but merely rockedfrom side to side like a heavy cask.

The fifth and last occupant of Ward No. 6 was a townsman who had servedonce as a sorter in the Post Office. He was a little, thin, fair-headedman, with a kindly, but somewhat cunning face. Judged by his clever,tranquil eyes, which looked out on the world frankly and merrily, hewas the possessor of some valuable and pleasant secret. Under hispillow and mattress he had something hidden which he refused to show toanyone, not out of fear of losing it, but out of shame. Occasionally hewalked to the window, and turning his back upon his fellow-prisoners,held something to his breast, and looked earnestly at it; but if anyoneapproached he became confused and hid it away. But it was not hard toguess his secret.

"Congratulate me!" he used to say to Iván Dmítritch. "I have beendecorated with the Stanislas of the second degree with a star. Asa rule the second degree with a star is given only to foreigners,but for some reason they have made an exception in my case." Andthen, shrugging his shoulders as if in doubt, he would add: "That issomething you never expected, you must admit."

"I understand nothing about it," answered Iván Dmítritch, gloomily.

"Do you know what I shall get sooner or later?" continued theex-sorter, winking slyly. "I shall certainly receive the Swedish PoleStar. An order of that kind is worth trying for. A white cross and ablack ribbon. It is very handsome."

In no other place in the world, probably, is life so monotonous asin the wing. In the morning the patients, with the exception of theparalytic and the fat muzhik, wash themselves in a great bucket whichis placed in the hall, and dry themselves in the skirts of theirdressing-gowns. After this they drink tea out of tin mugs brought byNikita from the hospital. At midday they dine on shtchi made withsour cabbage, and porridge, and in the evening they sup on the porridgeleft over from dinner. Between meals they lie down, sleep, look out ofthe windows, and walk from corner to corner.

And so on every day. Even the ex-sorter talks always of the samedecorations.

Fresh faces are seldom seen in Ward No. 6. Years ago the doctor gaveorders that no fresh patients should be admitted, and in this worldpeople rarely visit lunatic asylums for pleasure.

But once every two months comes Semión Lazaritch the barber.With Nikita's assistance, he cuts the patients hair; and on theconsternation of the victims every time they see his drunken, grinningface, there is no need to dwell.

With this exception no one ever enters the ward. From day to day thepatients are condemned to see only Nikita. But at last a strange rumourobtained circulation in the hospital. It was rumoured the doctor hadbegun to pay visits to Ward No. 6.

V

It was indeed a strange rumour!

Doctor Andréi Yéfimitch Rágin was a remarkable man in his way. In earlyyouth, so they said, he was very pious, and intended to make a careerin the Church. But when in the year 1863 he finished his studies inthe gymnasium and prepared to enter the Ecclesiastical Academy, hisfather, a surgeon and a doctor of medicine, poured ridicule on theseintentions, and declared categorically that if Andréi became a priesthe would disown him for ever. Whether this story is true or not it isimpossible to say, but it is certain that Andréi Yéfimitch more thanonce admitted that he had never felt any vocation for medicine or,indeed, for specialised sciences at all.

Certain it is, also, that he never became a priest, but completed acourse of study in the medical faculty of his university. He showedno particular trace of godliness, and at the beginning of his medicalcareer was as little like a priest as at the end.

In appearance he was as heavy and rudely built as a peasant. Hisbearded face, his straight hair, and his strong, awkward build recalledsome innkeeper on a main road—incontinent and stubborn. He was talland broad-shouldered, and had enormous feet, and hands with which, itseemed, he could easily crush the life out of a man's body. Yet hiswalk was noiseless, cautious, and insinuating; and when he met anyonein a narrow passage he was always the first to step aside, and tosay—not as might be expected in a bass voice—in a soft, piping tenor:"Excuse me!"

On his neck Andréi Yéfimitch had a small tumour which forbade hiswearing starched collars; he always wore a soft linen or print shirt.Indeed, in no respect did he dress like a doctor; he wore the same suitfor ten years, and when he did buy new clothing—at a Jew's store—italways looked as worn and crumpled as his old clothes. In one andthe same frock-coat he received his patients, dined, and attendedentertainments; and this not from penuriousness but from a genuinecontempt for appearances.

When Andréi Yéfimitch first came to the town to take up his dutiesas physician to the hospital, that "charitable institution" was in astate of inconceivable disorder. In the wards, in the corridors, andeven in the open air of the yard it was impossible to breathe owingto the stench. The male attendants, the nurses and their children,slept in the dormitories together with the patients. It was complainedthat the hospital was becoming uninhabitable owing to the invasion ofbeetles, bugs, and mice. In the surgical department there were onlytwo scalpels, nowhere was there a thermometer, and the baths wereused for storing potatoes in. The superintendent, the housekeeper,and the feldscher robbed the sick, and of the former doctor, AndréiYéfimitch's predecessor, it was said that he sold the hospital spiritssecretly, and kept up a whole harem recruited from among the nurses andfemale patients. In the town these scandals were well-known and evenexaggerated; but the townspeople were indifferent, and even excusedthe abuses on the ground that the patients were all either pettytradespeople or peasants who lived at home among conditions so muchworse that they had no right to complain; such gentry, they added, mustnot expect to be fed on grouse! Others argued that as no small town hadsufficient resources to support a good hospital without subsidies fromthe Zemstvo, they might thank God they had a bad one; and the Zemstvorefused to open a hospital in the town on the ground that there wasalready one.

When he inspected the hospital for the first time Andréi Yéfimitchsaw at once that the whole institution was hopelessly bad, and in thehighest degree dangerous to the health of the inmates. He concludedthat the best thing to do was to discharge the patients and to closethe hospital. But he knew that to effect this his wish alone was notenough; and he reasoned that if the physical and moral uncleanlinesswere driven from one place it would merely be transplanted to another;it was necessary, in fact, to wait until it cleaned itself out. Tothese considerations he added that if people opened a hospital andtolerated its abuses they must have need of it; and, no doubt, suchabominations were necessary, and in the course of time would evolvesomething useful, as good soil results from manuring. And, indeed, onthis earth there is nothing good that has not had evil germs in itsbeginnings.

Having taken up his duties, therefore, Andréi Yéfimitch looked upon theabuses with apparent indifference. He merely asked the servants andnurses not to sleep in the wards, and bought two cases of instruments;but he allowed the superintendent, the housekeeper, and the feldscherto remain in their positions.

Andréi Yéfimitch was passionately enamoured of intellect and honesty,but he had neither the character nor the confidence in his own powersnecessary to establish around himself an intelligent and honest life.To command, to prohibit, to insist, he had never learned; It seemedalmost that he had sworn an oath never to raise his voice or to usethe imperative mood. ... Even to use the words "give" or "bring"was difficult for him. When he felt hungry, he coughed irresolutelyand said to his cook, "Suppose I were to have a cup of tea," or "Iwas thinking about dining." To tell the superintendent that he mustcease his robberies, to dismiss him, or to abolish altogether hisparasitical office he had not the strength. "When he was deceived orflattered, or handed accounts for signature which he knew to have beenfalsified, he would redden all over and feel guilty, yet sign theaccounts; and when the patients complained that they were hungry or hadbeen ill-treated by the nurses, he merely got confused, and stammeredguiltily:

"Very well, very well, I will investigate the matter. ... No doubtthere is some misunderstanding...."

At first Andréi Yéfimitch worked very zealously. He attended topatients from morning until dinner-time, performed operations, andeven occupied himself with obstetrics. He gained a reputation forexceptional skill in the treatment of women and children. But he soonbegan visibly to weary of the monotony and uselessness of his work.One day he would receive thirty patients, the next day the number hadgrown to thirty-five, the next day to forty, and so on from day to day,from year to year. Yet the death-rate in the town did not decrease, andthe number of patients never grew less. To give any real assistanceto forty patients in the few hours between morning and dinner-timewas physically impossible; in other words, he became an involuntarydeceiver. The twelve thousand persons received every year, he reasoned,were therefore twelve thousand dupes. To place the serious cases inthe wards and treat them according to the rules of medical science wasimpossible, because there were no rules and no science; whereas ifhe left philosophy and followed the regulations pedantically as otherdoctors did, he would still be in difficulty, for in the first placewere needed cleanliness and fresh air, and not filth; wholesome food,and not shtchi made of stinking sour cabbage; and honest assistants,not thieves.

And, indeed, why hinder people dying, if death is the normal and lawfulend of us all? What does it matter whether some tradesman or pettyofficial lives, or does not live, an extra five years? We pretend tosee the object of medical science in its mitigation of suffering, butwe cannot but ask ourselves the question: Why should suffering bemitigated? In the first place, we are told that suffering leads mento perfection; and in the second, it is plain that if men were reallyable to alleviate their sufferings with pills and potions, they wouldabandon that religion and philosophy in which until now they had foundnot only consolation, but even happiness. Pushkin suffered agonisingtorment before his death; Heine lay for years in a state of paralysis.Why, then, interfere with the sufferings of some mere Andréi Yéfimitchor Matrena Savishin, whose lives are meaningless, and would be asvacuous as the life of the amoeba if it were not for suffering?

Defeated by such arguments, Andréi Yéfimitch dropped his hands upon hisknees, and ceased his daily attendances at the hospital.

VI

His life passed thus. At eight in the morning he rose and took hisbreakfast. After that he either sat in his study and read, or visitedthe hospital. In the hospital in a narrow, dark corridor waited theout-patients. With heavy boots clattering on the brick floor, servantsand nurses ran past them; emaciated patients in dressing-gownsstaggered by; and vessels of filth, and corpses were carried out. Andamong them children cried and draughts blew. Andréi Yéfimitch knewwell that to the fevered, the consumptive, and the impressionable suchsurroundings were torment; but what could he do? In the reception-roomhe was met by the feldscher, Sergéi Sergéyitch, a little fat man,with a beardless, well-washed, puffy face, and easy manners. SergéiSergéyitch always wore clothes which resembled a senator's more than asurgeon's; in the town he had a large practice, and believed that heknew more than the doctor, who had no practice at all. In the cornerof the room hung a case of ikons with a heavy lamp in front; on thewalls were portraits of bishops, a view of Sviatogorsk Monastery, andgarlands of withered corn-flowers. Sergéi Sergéyitch was religious, andthe images had been placed in the room at his expense; every Sundayby his command one of the patients read the acathistus, and when thereading was concluded, Sergéi Sergéyitch went around the wards with acenser and sprinkled them piously.

There were many patients and little time. The examination was thereforelimited to a few short questions, and to the distribution of suchsimple remedies as castor-oil and ointments. Andréi Yéfimitch sat withhis head resting on his hands, lost in thought, and asked questionsmechanically; and Sérgei Sergéyitch sat beside him, and sometimesinterjected a word.

"We become ill and suffer deprivation," he would sometimes say, "onlybecause we pray too little to God."

In these hours Andréi Yéfimitch performed no operations; he had got outof practice, and the sight of blood affected him unpleasantly. When hehad to open a child's mouth, to examine its throat for instance, ifthe child cried and defended itself with its hands, the doctor's headwent round and tears came into his eyes. He made haste to prescribea remedy, and motioned to the mother to take it away as quickly aspossible.

He quickly wearied of the timidity of the patients, of their shiftlessways, of the proximity of the pompous Sérgei Sergéyitch, of theportraits on the walls, and of his own questions—questions which hehad asked without change for more than twenty years.

And he would sometimes leave the hospital after having examined fiveor six patients, the remainder in his absence being treated by thefeldscher.

With the pleasant reflection that thank God he had no private practiceand no one to interfere with him, Andréi Yéfimitch on returning homewould sit at his study-table and begin to read. He read much, andalways with pleasure. Half his salary went on the purchase of books,and of the six rooms in his flat three were crowded with books and oldnewspapers. Above all things he loved history and philosophy; but ofmedical publications he subscribed only to The Doctor, which he alwaysbegan to read at the end. Every day he read uninterruptedly for severalhours, and it never wearied him. He read, not quickly and eagerly asIván Dmítritch had read, but slowly, often stopping at passages whichpleased him or which he did not understand. Beside his books stood adecanter of vodka, and a salted cucumber or soaked apple; and everyhalf-hour he poured himself out a glass of vodka, and drank it withoutlifting his eyes from his book, and then—again without lifting hiseyes—took the cucumber and bit a piece off.

At three o'clock he would walk cautiously to the kitchen door, cough,and say:

"Dáryushka, I was thinking of dining...."

After a bad and ill-served dinner, Andréi Yéfimitch walked about hisrooms, with his arms crossed on his chest, and thought. Sometimes thekitchen door creaked, and the red, sleepy face of Dáryushka appeared.

"Andréi Yéfimitch, is it time for your beer?" she would asksolicitously.

"No, not yet," he would answer. "I'll wait a little longer...."

In the evening came the postmaster, Mikhail Averyanitch, the only manin the town whose society did not weary Andréi Yéfimitch. MikhailAveryanitch had once been a rich country gentleman and had served ina cavalry regiment, but having ruined himself he took a position inthe Post Office to save himself from beggary in his old age. He hoda brisk, wholesome appearance, magnificent grey whiskers, well-bredmanners, and a loud but pleasant voice. When visitors at the PostOffice protested, refused to agree with him, or began to argue, MikhailAveryanitch became purple, shook all over, and roared at the top ofhis voice: "Silence!" so that the Post Office had the reputation of aplace of terror. Mikhail Averyanitch was fond of Andréi Yéfimitch andrespected his attainments and the nobility of his heart. But the othertownspeople he treated haughtily as inferiors.

"Well, here I am!" he would begin. "How are you, my dear?... Butperhaps I bore you? Eh?"

"On the contrary. I am delighted," answered the doctor. "I amalways glad to see you."

The friends would sit on the study sofa and smoke for a time silently.

"Dáryushka, suppose I were to have a little beer..." said AndréiYéfimitch.

The first bottle was drunk in silence. The doctor was lost in thought,while Mikhail Averyanitch had the gay and active expression of a manwho has something very interesting to relate. The conversation wasalways begun by the doctor.

"What a pity!" he would say, slowly and quietly, looking away fromhis friend—he never looked anyone in the face. "What a pity, mydear Mikhail Averyanitch, what a pity it is that there is not a soulin this town who cares to engage in an intellectual or interestingconversation! It is a great deprivation for us. Even the so-calledintelligent classes never rise above commonplaces; the level of theirdevelopment, I assure you, is no higher than that of the lower order."

"Entirely true. I agree with you."

"As you yourself know very well," continued the doctor, pausingintermittently, "as you know, everything in this world is insignificantand uninteresting except the higher phenomena of the human intellect.Intellect creates a sharp distinction between the animal and theman, it reminds the latter of his divinity, and to a certain extentcompensates him for the immortality which he has not. As the result ofthis, intellect serves as the only fountain of enjoyment. When we saywe see and hear around us no evidence of intellect, we mean therebythat we are deprived of true happiness. True, we have our books, butthat is a very different thing from living converse and communication.If I may use a not very apt simile, books are the accompaniment, butconversation is the singing.'"

"That is entirely true."

A silence followed. From the kitchen came Dáryushka, and, with her headresting on her hands and an expression of stupid vexation on her face,stood at the door and listened.

"Akh!" sighed Mikhail Averyanitch, "why seek intellect among the menof the present day?" And he began to relate how in the old days lifewas wholesome, gay, and interesting, how the intellect of Russia wasreally enlightened, and how high a place was given to the ideas ofhonour and friendship. Money was lent without I. O. U.'s, and it wasregarded as shameful not to stretch out the hand of aid to a needyfriend. What marches there were, what adventures, what fights, whatcompanions-in-arms, what women! The Caucasus, what a marvellouscountry! And the wife of the commander of his battalion—what a strangewoman!—who put on an officer's uniform and drove into the mountains atnight without an escort. They said she had a romance with a prince inone of the villages.

"Heavenly mother! Lord preserve us!" sighed Dáryushka.

"And how we drank! How we used to eat! What desperate Liberals we were!"

Andréi Yéfimitch listened, but heard nothing; he was thinking ofsomething else and drinking his beer.

"I often dream of clever people and have imaginary conversations withthem," he said, suddenly, interrupting Mikhail Averyanitch. "My fathergave me a splendid education, but, under the influence of the ideascurrent in the sixties, forced me to become a doctor. It seems to methat if I had disobeyed him I might now be living in the very centreof the intellectual movement—probably a member of some faculty. Ofcourse intellect itself is not eternal but transitory—but you alreadyknow why I worship it so. Life is a vexatious snare. When a reflectingman attains manhood and ripe consciousness, he cannot but feel himselfin a trap from which there is no escape.... By an accident, withoutconsulting his own will, he is called from non-existence into life....Why? He wishes to know the aim and significance of his existence; he isanswered with silence or absurdities; he knocks but it is not openedto him; and death itself comes against his will. And so, as prisonersunited by common misfortune are relieved when they meet, men inclinedto analysis and generalisation do not notice the snare in which theylive when they spend their days in the exchange of free ideas. In thissense intellect is an irreplaceable enjoyment."

"Entirely true!"

And still with his face averted from his companion, Andréi Yéfimitch,in a soft voice, with constant pauses, continues to speak of clever menand of the joy of communion with them, and Mikhail Averyanitch listensattentively and says: "It is entirely true."

"Then you do not believe in the immortality of the soul?" asks thepostmaster.

"No, my dear Mikhail Averyanitch. I do not believe, and I have noreason for believing."

"I admit that I also doubt it. Still I have afeeling that I can never die. 'Come,' I say to myself, 'Come, old man,it's time for you to die.' But in my heart a voice answers: 'Don'tbelieve it, you will never die.'"

At nine o'clock Mikhail Averyanitch takes leave. As he puts on hisovercoat in the hall, he says with a sigh:

"Yes, what a desert fate has planted us in! And what is worst of all,we shall have to die here. Akh!"

VII

When he has parted from his friend, Andréi Yéfimitch sits at his tableand again begins to read. The stillness of evening, the stillness ofnight is unbroken by a single sound; time, it seems, stands still andperishes, and the doctor perishes also, till it seems that nothingexists but a book and a green lamp-shade. Then the rude, peasant faceof the doctor, as he thinks of the achievements of the human intellect,becomes gradually illumined by a smile of emotion and rapture. Oh, whyis man not immortal? he asks. For what end exist brain-centres andconvolutions, to what end vision, speech, consciousness, genius, if allare condemned to pass into the earth, to grow cold with it, and forcountless millions of years, without aim or object, to be borne with itaround the sun? In order that the human frame may decay and be whirledaround the sun, is it necessary to drag man with his high, his divinemind, out of non-existence, as if in mockery, and to turn him againinto earth?

Immortality of matter! What cowardice to console ourselves with thisfictitious immortality! Unconscious processes working themselves out inNature—processes lower even than folly, for in folly there is at leastconsciousness and volition, while in these processes there is neither!Yet they say to men, "Be at rest, thy substance, rotting in the earth,will give life to other organisms "—in other words, thou wilt be morefoolish than folly! Only the coward, who has more fear of death thansense of dignity, can console himself with the knowledge that his bodyin the course of time will live again in grass, in stones, in the toad.To seek immortality in the indestructibility of matter is, indeed, asstrange as to prophesy a brilliant future for the case when the costlyviolin is broken and worthless.

When the clock strikes, Andréi Yéfimitch leans back in his chair, shutshis eyes, and thinks. Under the influence of the lofty thoughts whichhe has just been reading, he throws a glance over the present and thepast. The past is repellent, better not think of it! And the present isbut as the past. He knows that in this very moment, while his thoughtsare sweeping round the sun with the cooling earth, in the hospitalbuilding in a line with his lodgings, lie men tortured by pain andtormented by uncleanliness; one cannot sleep owing to the insects, andhowls in his pain; another is catching erysipelas, and groaning at thetightness of his bandages; others are playing cards with the nurses,and drinking vodka. In this very year no less than twelve thousandpersons were duped; the whole work of the hospital, as twenty yearsbefore, is based on robbery, scandal, intrigue, nepotism, and grosscharlatanry; altogether, the hospital is an immoral institution, and asource of danger to the health of its inmates. And Andréi Yéfimitchknows that inside the iron bars of Ward No. 6, Nikita beats thepatients with his fists, and that, outside, Moséika wanders about thestreets begging for kopecks.

Yet he knows very well that in the last twenty-five years a fabulousrevolution has taken place in the doctor's art. When he studied at theuniversity it had seemed to him that medicine would soon be overtakenby the lot of alchemy and metaphysics, but now the records of its featswhich he reads at night touch him, astonish him, and even send himinto raptures. What a revolution! what unexpected brilliance! Thanksto antiseptics, operations are every day performed which the greatPigorof regarded as impossible. Ordinary Zemstvo doctors perform suchoperations as the resection of the knee articulations, of a hundredoperations on the stomach only one results in death, and the stone isnow such a trifle that it has ceased to be written about. Complaintswhich were once only alleviated are now entirely cured. And hypnotism,the theory of heredity, the discoveries of Pasteur and Koch, statisticsof hygiene, even Russian Zemstvo medicine! Psychiatry, with itsclassification of diseases, its methods of diagnosis, its method ofcure—what a transformation of the methods of the past! No longer arclunatics drenched with cold water and confined in strait waistcoats;they are treated as human beings, and even—as Andréi Yéfimitch readin the newspapers—have their own special dramatic entertainmentsand dances. Andréi Yéfimitch is well aware that in the modern worldsuch an abomination as Ward No. 6 is possible only in a town situatedtwo hundred versts from a railway, where the Mayor and Councillorsare half-educated tradesmen, who regard a doctor as a priest to whomeverything must be entrusted without criticism, even though he were todose his patients with molten tin. In any other town the public and thePress would long ago have tom this little Bastille to pieces.

"But in the end?" asks Andréi Yéfimitch, opening his eyes. "What is thedifference? In spite of antiseptics and Koch and Pasteur, the essenceof the matter has no way changed. Disease and death still exist.Lunatics are amused with dances and theatricals, but they are stillkept prisoners.... In other words, all these tilings are vanity andfolly, and between the best hospital in Vienna and the hospital herethere is in reality no difference at all."

But vexation and a feeling akin to envy forbid indifference. It allarises out of weariness. Andréi Yéfimitch's head falls upon his book,he rests his head comfortably on his hands and thinks:

"I am engaged in a bad work, and I receive a salary from the men whomI deceive. I am not an honest man.... But then by myself I am nothing;I am only part of a necessary social evil; all the officials in thedistrict are bod, and draw their salaries without doing their work....In other words, it is not I who am guilty of dishonesty, but Time....If I were born two hundred years hence I should be a different man."

When the clock strikes three, he puts out his lamp and goes up to hisbedroom. But he has no wish to sleep.

VIII

Two years ago, in a fit of liberality, the Zemstvo determined toappropriate three hundred roubles a year to the increase of thepersonnel of the hospital, until such time as they should open one oftheir own. They sent, therefore, as assistant to Andréi Yéfimitch,the district physician Yevgéniï Feódoritch Khobótoff. Khobótoff wasa very young man, under thirty, bill and dark, with small eyes andhigh cheek-bones; evidently of Asiatic origin. He arrived in the townwithout a kopeck, with a small portmanteau as his only luggage, and wasaccompanied by a young, unattractive woman, whom he called his cook.This woman's child completed the party. Khobótoff wore a peaked cap andhigh boots, and—in winter—a short fur coat. He was soon on intimateterms with the feldscher, Sergéi Sergéyitch, and with the bursar, butthe rest of the officials he avoided and denounced as aristocrats.He possessed only one book, "Prescriptions of the Vienna Hospital in1881," and when he visited the hospital he always brought it with him.He did not care for cards, and in the evenings spent his time playingbilliards at the club.

Khobótoff visited the hospital twice a week, inspected the wards,and received out-patients. The strange absence of antiseptics,cupping-glasses, and other necessaries seemed to trouble him, but hemade no attempt to introduce a new order, fearing to offend AndréiYéfimitch, whom he regarded as all old rogue, suspected of havinglarge means, and secretly envied. He would willingly have occupied hisposition.

IX

One spring evening towards the end of March, when the snow haddisappeared and starlings sang in the hospital garden, the doctor wasstanding at his gate saying good-bye to his friend the postmaster. Atthat moment the Jew Moséika, returning with his booty, entered theyard. He was capless, wore a pair of goloshes on his stockingless feet,and held in his hand a small bag of coins.

"Give me a kopeck?" he said to the doctor, shuddering from the cold andgrinning.

Andréi Yéfimitch, who could refuse no one, gave him a ten-kopeck piece.

"How wrong this is!" he thought, as he looked at the Jew's bare legsand thin ankles. "Wet, I suppose?" And impelled by a feeling of pityand squeamishness he entered the wing after Moséika, looking all thetime now at the Jew's bald head, now at his ankles. When the doctorentered, Nikita jumped off his rubbish-heap and stretched himself.

"Good evening, Nikita!" said the doctor softly. "Suppose you give thisman a pair of boots ... that is ... he might catch cold."

"Yes, your Honour. I will ask the superintendent."

"Please. Ask him in my name. Say that I spoke about it."

The door of the ward was open. Iván Dmítritch, who was lying on hisbed, and listening with alarm to the unknown voice, suddenly recognisedthe doctor. He shook with anger, jumped oft his bed, and with aflushed, malicious face, and staring eyeballs, ran into the middle ofthe room.

"It is the doctor!" he cried, with a loud laugh. "At last! Lord,I congratulate you, the doctor honours us with a visit! Accursedmonster!" he squealed, and in an ecstacy of rage never before seen inthe hospital, stamped his feet. "Kill this monster! No, killing is notenough for him! Drown him in the closet!"

Andréi Yéfimitch heard him. He looked into the ward and asked mildly:

"For what?"

"For what!" screamed Iván Dmítritch, approaching with a threateningface, and convulsively clutching his dressing-gown. "For what! Thief!"He spoke in a tone of disgust, and twisted his lips as if about to spit.

"Charlatan! Hangman!"

"Be quiet!" said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling guiltily. "I assure you Ihave never stolen anything.... I see that you are angry with me. Becalm, I implore you, if you can, and tell me why you want to kill me."

"For keeping me here."

"I do that because you are ill."

"Yes! Ill! But surely tens, hundreds, thousands of madmen liveunmolested merely because you in your ignorance cannot distinguish themfrom the sane. You, the feldscher, the superintendent, all the rascalsemployed in the hospital are immeasurably lower in morals than theworst of us; why, then, are we here instead of you? Where is the logic?"

"It is not a question of morality or logic. It depends oncircumstances. The man who is put here, here he stays, and the man whois not here lives in freedom, that is all For the fact that I am adoctor and you a lunatic neither morals nor logic is responsible, butonly empty circumstance."

"This nonsense I do not understand!" answered Iván Dmitri tch, sittingdown on his bed.

Moséika, whom Nikita was afraid to search in the doctor's presence,spread out on his bed his booty—pieces of bread, papers, and bones;and trembling with the cold, talked Yiddish in a sing-song voice.Apparently he imagined that he was opening a shop.

"Release me!" said Iván Dmítritch. His voice trembled.

"I cannot."

"Why not?"

"Because it is not in my power. Judge for yourself! What good would itdo you if I released you? Suppose I do! The townspeople or the policewill capture you and send you back."

"Yes, that is true, it is true ..." said Iván Dmítritch, rubbing hisforehead. "It is terrible! But what can I do? What?"

His voice, his intelligent, youthful face pleased Andréi Yéfimitch.He wished to caress him and quiet him. He sat beside him on the bed,thought for a moment, and said:

"You ask what is to be done. The best thing in your position would beto run away. But unfortunately that is useless. You would be captured.When society resolves to protect itself from criminals, lunatics,and inconvenient people, it is irresistible. One thing alone remainsto you, to console yourself with the thought that your stay here isnecessary."

"It is necessary to no one."

"Once prisons and asylums exist, someone must inhabit them. If it isnot you it will be I, if not I then someone else. But wait! In the farfuture there will be neither prisons nor madhouses, nor barred windows,nor dressing-gowns.... Such a time will come sooner or later."

Iván Dmítritch smiled contemptuously.

"You are laughing at me," he said, winking. "Such gentry as you andyour assistant Nikita have no business with the future. But you maybe assured, sir, that better times are in store for us. What if I doexpress myself vulgarly—laugh at me!—but the dawn of a new lifewill shine, and truth will triumph ... and it will be on our side theholiday will be. I shall not see it, but our posterity shall.... Icongratulate them with my whole soul, and rejoice—rejoice for them!Forward! God help you, friends!"

Iván Dmítritch's eyes glittered; he rose, stretched out his eyes to thewindow, and said in an agitated voice:

"For these barred windows I bless you. Hail to the truth! I rejoice!"

"I see no cause for rejoicing," said Andréi Yéfimitch, whom IvánDmítritch's movements, though they seemed theatrical, pleased."Prisons and asylums will no longer be, and justice, as you put it,will triumph. But the essence of things will never change, the laws ofNature will remain the same. Men will be diseased, grow old, and die,just as now. However glorious the dawn which enlightens your life, inthe end of ends you will be nailed down in a coffin and flung into apit."

"But immortality?"

"Nonsense!"

"You do not believe, but I believe. Dostoyeffsky or Voltaire or someonesaid that if there were no God men would have invented one. And I amdeeply convinced that if there were no immortality it would sooner orlater have been invented by the great human intellect."

"You speak well," said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling with pleasure. "It iswell that you believe. With such faith as yours you would live happilythough entombed in a wall. May I asked where you were educated?"

"I was at college, but never graduated."

"You are a thoughtful and penetrating man. You would find tranquillityin any environment. The free and profound thought which aspires tothe comprehension of life; and high contempt for the vanity of theworld—these are two blessings higher than which no man can know. Andthese you will enjoy though you live behind a dozen barred windows.Diogenes lived in a tub, yet he was happier than all the kings of theearth."

"Your Diogenes was a blockhead!" cried Iván Dmítritch gloomily. "Whatdo you tell me about Diogenes and the understanding of life?" He spokeangrily, and sprang up. "I love life, love it passionately. I have themania of persecution, a ceaseless, tormenting terror, but there aremoments when I am seized by the thirst of life, and in those moments Ifear to go out of my mind. I long to live ... terribly!"

He walked up and down the ward in agitation, and continued in a lowervoice:

"When I meditate I am visited by visions. Men come to me, I hear voicesand music, and it seems to me that I am walking through woods, on theshores of the sea; and I long passionately for the vanities and worriesof life.... Tell me! What is the news?"

"You ask about the town, or generally?"

"First tell me about the town, and then generally?"

"What is there? The town is tiresome to the point of torment. There is no one to talk to,no one to listen to. There are no new people. But lately we got a newdoctor, Khobótoff, a young man."

"He has been here. A fool?"

"Yes, an uneducated man. It is strange, do you know. If you judgeby metropolitan life there is no intellectual stagnation in Russia,but genuine activity; in other words, there are real men. But forsome reason or other they always send such fellows here. It is anunfortunate town.'"

"An unfortunate town," sighed Iván Dmítritch. "And what news is theregenerally? What have you in the newspapers and reviews?"

In the ward it was already dark. The doctor rose, and told his patientwhat was being written in Russia and abroad, and what were the currenttendencies of the world. Iván Dmítritch listened attentively, andasked questions. But suddenly, as if he had just remembered somethingterrible, he seized his head and threw himself on the bed, with hisback turned to the doctor.

"What is the matter?" asked Andréi Yéfimitch. "You will not hearanother word from me," said Iván Dmítritch rudely. "Go away!"

"Why?"

"I tell you, go away! Go to the devil!"

Andréi Yéfimitch shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and left the ward. Ashe passed through the hall, he said: "Suppose you were to clear some ofthis away; Nikita.... The smell is frightful."

"Yes, your Honour!"

"What a delightful young man!" thought Andréi Yéfimitch, as he walkedhome. "He is the first man worth talking to whom I have met all thetime I have lived in this town. He can reason and interests himselfonly with what is essential."

As he read in his study, as he went to bed, all the time, he thought ofIván Dmítritch. When he awoke next morning, he remembered that he hadmade the acquaintance of a clever and interesting man. And he decidedto pay him another visit at the first opportunity.

X

Iván Dmítritch lay in the same position as on the day before, holdinghis head in his hands, his legs being doubled up underneath him.

"Good morning, my friend," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "You are not asleep?"

"In the first place I am not your friend," said Iván Dmítritch, keepinghis face turned towards the pillow, "and in the second, you aretroubling yourself in vain; you will not get from me a single word.""That is strange," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "Yesterday we were speakingas friends, but suddenly you took offence and stopped short.... PerhapsI spoke awkwardly, or expressed opinions differing widely from yourown."

"You won't catch me!" said Iván Dmítritch, rising from the bed andlooking at the doctor ironically and suspiciously. "You may go and spyand cross-examine somewhere else; here there is nothing for you to do.I know very well why you came yesterday."

"That is a strange idea," laughed the doctor. "But why do you assumethat I am spying?"

"I assume it.... Whether spy or doctor it is all the same."

"Yes, but ... excuse me...." The doctor sat on a stool beside the bed,and shook his head reproachfully. "Even suppose you are right, supposeI am following your words only in order to betray you to the police,what would happen? They would arrest you and try you. But then, in thedock or in prison would you be worse off than here? In exile or penalservitude you would not suffer any more than now.... What, then, do youfear?"

Apparently these words affected Iván Dmítritch. He sat down quietly.

It was five o'clock, the hour when Andréi Yéfimitch usually walked upand down his room and Dáryushka asked him whether it was time for hisbeer. The weather was calm and clear.

"After dinner I went out for a walk, and you see where I've come," saidthe doctor. "It is almost spring."

"What month is it?" asked Iván Dmítritch. "March?"

"Yes, we are at the end of March."

"Is it very muddy?"

"Not very. The paths in the garden are clear."

"How glorious it would be to drive somewhere outside the town!" saidIván Dmítritch, rubbing his red eyes as if he were sleepy, "and thento return to a warm comfortable study ... and to be cured of headacheby a decent doctor.... For years past I have not lived like a humanbeing.... Things are abominable here,—intolerable, disgusting!"

After last evening's excitement he was tired and weak, and he spokeunwillingly. His fingers twitched, and from his face it was plain thathis head ached badly.

"Between a warm, comfortable study and this ward there is nodifference," said Andréi Yéfimitch. "The rest and tranquillity of a manare not outside but within him."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Ordinary men find good and evil outside, that is, in their carriagesand comfortable rooms; but the thinking man finds them within himself."

"Go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it is warm and smellsof oranges—it doesn't suit this climate. With whom was it I spoke ofDiogenes? With you?"

"Yes, yesterday with me."

"Diogenes had no need of a study and a warm house, he was comfortablewithout them.... Lie in a tub and eat oranges and olives! Set him downin Russia—not in December, but even in May. He would freeze even inMay with the cold."

"No. Cold, like every other feeling, may be disregarded. As MarcusAurelius said, pain is the living conception of pain; make an effortof the will to change this conception, cease to complain, and thepain disappears. The wise man, the man of thought and penetration, isdistinguished by his contempt for suffering; he is always content andhe is surprised by nothing."

"That means that I am an idiot because I suffer, because I amdiscontented, and marvel at the baseness of men."

"Your discontent is in vain. Think more, and you will realise howtrifling are all the things which now excite you.... Try to understandlife—in this is true beatitude."

"Understand!" frowned Iván Dmítritch. "External, internal.... Excuseme, but I cannot understand you. I know only one thing," he continued,rising and looking angrily at the doctor. "I know only that God createdme of warm blood and nerves; yes! and organic tissue, if it be capableof life, must respond to irritation. And I respond to it! Pain Ianswer with tears and cries, baseness with indignation, meanness withrepulsion. In my mind, that is right, and it is that which is calledlife. The lower the organism the less susceptible is it, and the morefeebly it responds to irritation; the higher it is the more sensitivelyit responds. How is it you do not know that? A doctor—yet you do notknow such truisms! If you would despise suffering, be always contented,and marvel at nothing, you must lower yourself to the condition ofthat...." Iván Dmítritch pointed to the fat, greasy muzhik, "or inureyourself to suffering until you lose all susceptibility—in otherwords, cease to live. Excuse me, but I am not a wise man and nota philosopher," continued Iván Dmítritch irritably, "and I do notunderstand these things. I am not in a condition to reason."

"But you reason admirably."

"The Stoics whom you travesty were remarkable men, but their teachingdied two thousand years ago, and since then it has not advanced, norwill it advance, an inch, for it is not a practical or a living creed.It was successful only with a minority who spent their lives in studyand trifled with gospels of all sorts; the majority never understoodit.... A creed which teaches indifference to wealth, indifferenceto the conveniences of life, and contempt for suffering, is quiteincomprehensible to the great majority who never knew either wealthor the conveniences of life, and to whom contempt for suffering wouldmean contempt for their own lives, which are made up of feelings ofhunger, cold, loss, insult, and a Hamlet-like terror of death. All lifelies in these feelings, and life may be hated or wearied of, but neverdespised. Yes, I repeat it, the teaching of the Stoics can never have afuture; from the beginning of time, life has consisted in sensibilityto pain and response to irritation.[1] Iván Dmítritch suddenly lostthe thread of his thoughts, ceased speaking, and nibbed his foreheadirritably.

"I had something important to say, but have gone off the track," hecontinued. "What was I saying? Yes, this is it. One of these Stoicssold himself into slavery to redeem a friend. Now what does that meanbut that even a Stoic responded to irritation, for to perform such amagnanimous deed as the min of one's self for the sake of a frienddemands a disturbed and sympathetic heart I have forgotten here inprison all that I learnt, otherwise I should have oilier illustrations.But think of Christ! Christ rebelled against actuality by weeping, bysmiling, by grieving, by anger, even by weariness. Not with a smile didHe go forth to meet suffering, nor did He despise death, but prayed inthe garden of Gethsemane that this cup might pass from Him."[2]

Iván Dmítritch laughed and sat down.

"Suppose that contentment and tranquillity are not outside but within aman," he continued. "Suppose that we must despise suffering and marvelat nothing. But you do not say on what foundation you base this theory.You are a wise man? A philosopher?"

"I am not a philosopher, but everyone must preach this because it isrational."

"But I wish to know why in this matter of understanding life, despisingsuffering, and the rest of it, you consider yourself competent tojudge? Have you ever suffered? What is your idea of suffering? Were youever flogged when you were a child?"

"No, my parents were averse to corporal punishment."

"But my father flogged me cruelly. He was a stern hemorrhoidal officialwith a long nose and a yellow neck. But what of you? In your wholelife no one has ever laid a finger on you, and you are as healthy asa bull. You grew up under your father's wing, studied at his expense,and then dropped at once into a fat sinecure. More than twenty yearsyou have lived in free lodgings, with free fire and free lights, withservants, with the right to work how, and as much as, you like, or todo nothing. By character you were an idle and a feeble man, and youstrove to build up your life so as to avoid trouble. You left yourwork to feldschers and other scoundrels, and sat at home in warmth andquiet, heaped up money, read books, and enjoyed your own reflectionsabout all kinds of exalted nonsense, and"—Iván Dmítritch looked at thedoctor's nose—"drank beer. In one word, you have not seen life, youknow nothing about it, and of realities you have only a theoreticalknowledge. Yes, you despise suffering and marvel at nothing for verygood reasons; because your theory of the vanity of things, external andinternal happiness, contempt for life, for suffering and for death,and so on—this is the philosophy best suited to a Russian lie-abed.You see, for instance, a muzhik beating his wife. Why interfere? lethim beat her! It is all the same, both will be dead sooner, or later,and then, does not the wife-beater injure himself and not his victim?To get drunk is stupid and wrong, but the man who drinks dies, and thewoman who drinks dies also! A woman comes to you with a toothache.Well, what of that? Pain is the conception of pain, without sicknessyou cannot live, all must die, and therefore take yourself off, mygood woman, and don't interfere with my thoughts and my vodka! A youngman comes to you for advice: what should he do, how ought he to live?Before answering, most men would think, but your answer is alwaysready: Aspire to understand life and to real goodness! And what isthis fantastic real goodness? No answer! We are imprisoned behind ironbars, we rot and we are tortured, but this, in reality, is reasonableand beautiful because between this ward and a comfortable warm studythere is no real difference! A convenient philosophy; your conscienceis clean, and you feel yourself to be a wise man. No, sir, this isnot philosophy, not breadth of view, but idleness, charlatanism,somnolent folly.... Yes," repeated Iván Dmítritch angrily. "You despisesuffering, but squeeze your finger in the door and you will howl foryour life!"

"But suppose I do not howl," said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling indulgently.

"What! Well, if you had a stroke of paralysis, or if some impudentfellow, taking advantage of his position in the world, insulted you'publicly, and you had no redress—then you would know what it meant totell others to understand life and aspire to real good."

"This is original," said Andréi Yéfimitch, beaming with satisfactionand rubbing his hands. "I am delighted with your love ofgeneralisation; and the character which you have just drawn is simplybrilliant. I confess that conversation with you gives me greatpleasure. Rut now, as I have heard you out, will you listen to me...."

XI

This conversation, which lasted for an hour longer, apparently madea great impression on Andréi Yéfimitch. He took to visiting the wardevery day. He went there in the morning, and again after dinner, andoften darkness found him in conversation with Iván Dmítritch. At firstIván Dmítritch was shy with him, suspected him of some evil intention,and openly expressed his suspicions. But at last he got used to him;and his rude bearing softened into indulgent irony.

A report soon spread through the hospital that Doctor Andréi Yéfimitchpaid daily visits to Ward No. 6. Neither the feldscher, nor Nikita, northe nurses could understand his object; why he spent whole hours in theward, what he was talking about, or why he did not write prescriptions.His conduct appeared strange to everyone. Mikhail Averyanitch sometimesfailed to find him at home, and Dáryushka was very alarmed, for thedoctor no longer drank his beer at the usual hour, and sometimes evencame home late for dinner.

One day—it was at the end of June—Doctor Khobótoff went to AndréiYéfimitch's house to sec him on a business matter. Not finding him athome, he looked for him in the yard, where he was told that the olddoctor was in the asylum. Khobótoff entered the hall of the ward, andstanding there listened to the following conversation:

"We will never agree, and you will never succeed in converting meto your faith," said Iván Dmítritch irritably. "You are altogetherignorant of realities, you have never suffered, but only, like a leech,fed on the sufferings of others. But I have suffered without cease fromthe day of my birth until now. Therefore I tell you frankly I considermyself much higher than you, and more competent in all respects. It isnot for you to teach me."

"I certainly have no wish to convert you to my faith," said AndréiYéfimitch softly, and evidently with regret that he was misunderstood."That is not the question, my friend. Suffering and joy aretransitory—leave them, God be with them! The essence of the matteris that you and I recognise in one another men of thought, and thismakes us solid however different our views. If you knew, my friend,how I am weary of the general idiocy around me, the lack of talent,the dullness—if you knew the joy with which I speak to you! You are aclever man, and it is a pleasure to be with you."

Khobótoff opened the door and looked into the room. Iván Dmítritch witha nightcap on his head and Doctor Andréi Yéfimitch sat side by side onthe bed. The lunatic shuddered, made strange faces, and convulsivelyclutched his dressing-gown; and the doctor sat motionless, inclininghis head, and his face was red and helpless and sad. Khobótoff shruggedhis shoulders, laughed, and looked at Nikita. Nikita also shrugged hisshoulders.

Next day Khobótoff again came to the wing, this time together with thefeldscher. They stood in the hall and listened:

"Our grandfather, it seems, is quite gone," said Khobótoff going out ofthe wing.

"Lord, have mercy upon us—sinners!" sighed the pompous SergéiSergéyitch, going round the pools in order to keep his shiny bootsclear of the mud. "I confess, my dear Yevgéniï Feódoritch, I have longexpected this."

XII

After this incident, Andréi Yéfimitch began to notice that he wassurrounded by a strange atmosphere of mystery.... The servants, thenurses, and the patients whom he met looked questioningly at oneanother, and whispered among themselves. When he met little Masha, thesuperintendent's daughter, in the hospital garden, and smilingly wentover to her, as usual, to stroke her hair, for some inexplicable reasonshe ran away. When the postmaster, Mikhail Averyanitch, sat listeningto him he no longer said: "Entirely true!" but got red in the face andstammered, "Yes, yes ... yes ..." and sometimes, looking at his friendthoughtfully and sorrowfully, advised him to give up vodka and beer.But when doing this, as became a man of delicacy, he did not speakopenly, but dropped gentle hints, telling stories, now of a certainbattalion commander, an excellent man, now of the regimental chaplain,a first-rate little fellow, who drank a good deal and was taken ill,yet having given up drink got quite well. Twice or thrice AndréiYéfimitch was visited by his colleague Khobótoff, who also asked him togive up spirits, and, without giving him any reason, advised him to trybromide of potassium.

In August Andréi Yéfimitch received a letter from the Mayor askinghim to come and see him on very important business. On arriving atthe Town Hall at the appointed time he found awaiting him the head ofthe recruiting department, the superintendent of the district school,a member of the Town Council, Khobótoff, and a stout, fair-hairedman, who was introduced as a doctor. This doctor, who bore anunpronounceable Polish name, lived on a stud-farm some thirty verstsaway, and was passing through the town on his way home.

"Here is a communication about your department," said the TownCouncillor, turning to Andréi Yéfimitch. "You see, Yevgéniï Feódoritchsays that there is no room for the dispensing room in the mainbuilding, and that it must be transferred to one of the wings. That, ofcourse, is easy, it can be transferred any day, but the chief thing isthat the wing is in want of repair."

"Yes, we can hardly get on without that," answered Andréi Yéfimitchafter a moment's thought. "But if the corner wing is to be fitted up asa dispensary you will have to spend at least five hundred roubles onit. It is unproductive expenditure."

For a few minutes all were silent.

"I had the honour to announce to you, ten years ago," continuedAndréi Yéfimitch in a soft voice, "that this hospital, under presentconditions, is a luxury altogether beyond the means of the town. Itwas built in the forties, when the means for its support: were greater.The town wastes too much money on unnecessary buildings and sinecureoffices. I think that with the money we spend we could keep up twomodel hospitals; that is, of course, with a different order of things."

"Well, then, let us reform the present order," said the Town Councillor.

"I have already had the honour to advise you to transfer the medicaldepartment to the Zemstvo."

"Yes, and hand over to the Zemstvo fundswhich it will pocket," laughed the fair-haired doctor.

"That is just what happens," said the Town Councillor, laughing also.

Andréi Yéfimitch looked feebly at the fair-haired doctor, and said:

"We must be just in our judgments."

Again all were silent. Tea was brought in. The chief of the recruitingdepartment, apparently in a state of confusion, touched AndréiYéfimitch's hand across the table, and said:

"You have quite forgotten us, doctor. But then you were always a monk;you don't play cards, and you don't care for women. We bore you, I'mafraid." And all agreed that it was tiresome for any decent man tolive in such a town. Neither theatres, nor concerts, and at the lastdub-dance about twenty women present and only two men. Young men nolonger danced, but crowded round the supper-table or played cardstogether. And Andréi Yéfimitch, in a slow and soft voice, withoutlooking at those around him, began to lament that the citizens wastedtheir vital energy, their intellects, and their feelings over cards andscandal, and neither cared nor knew how to pass the time in interestingconversation, in reading, or in taking advantage of the pleasureswhich intellect alone yields. Intellect is the only interesting anddistinguished thing in the world; all the rest is petty and base.Khobótoff listened attentively to his colleague, and suddenly asked:

"Andréi Yéfimitch, what is the day of the month?"

Having received an answer, he and the fair-haired doctor, both in thetone of examiners convinced of their own incapacity, asked AndréiYéfimitch a number of other questions: what was the day of the week,how many days were there in the year, and was it true that in Ward No.6 there was a remarkable prophet?

In answer to this last question Andréi Yéfimitch got red in the face,and said:

"Yes, he is insane.... But he is a most interesting young man."

No other questions were asked.

As Andréi Yéfimitch put on his coat, the chief of the recruitingdepartment put his hand on his shoulder and said, with a sigh:

"For us—old men—it is time to take a rest."

As he left the Town Hall, Andréi Yéfimitch understood that he had beenbefore a commission appointed to test his mental sanity. He rememberedthe questions put to him, reddened, and for the first time in his lifefelt pity for the medical art.

"My God!" he thought. "These men have only just been studyingpsychiatry and passing examinations! Where does their monstrousignorance come from? They have no ideas about psychiatry." For thefirst time in his life he felt insulted and angry.

Towards evening Mikhail Averyanitch came to see him. Without a word ofgreeting, the postmaster went up to him, took him by both hands, andsaid in an agitated voice:

"My dear friend, my dear friend, let me see that you believe in mysincere affection for you. Regard me as your friend!" And preventingAndréi Yéfimitch saying a word, he continued in extreme agitation:"You know that I love you for the culture and nobility of your mind.Listen to me, like a good man! The rules of their profession compelthe doctors to hide the truth from you, but I, in soldier style, willtell it to you flatly. You are unwell! Excuse me, old friend, but thatis the plain truth, and it has been noticed by everyone around you.Only this moment Doctor Yevgéniï Feódoritch said that for the benefitof your health you needed rest and recreation. It is entirely true! Andthings fit in admirably. In a few days I will take my leave, and go oftfor change of air. Trove to me that you are my friend, and come withme. Come!"

"I feel very well," said Andréi Yéfimitch, after a moment's thought;"and I cannot go. Allow me to prove my friendship in some other way."

To go away without any good reason, without his books, withoutDáryushka, without beer—suddenly to destroy the order of life observedfor twenty years—when he first thought of it, the project seemedwild and fantastic. But he remembered the talk in the Town Hall, andthe torments which he had suffered on the w ay home; and the idea ofleaving for a short time a town where stupid men considered him mad,delighted him.

"But where do you intend to go?" he asked.

"To Moscow, to Petersburg, to Warsaw.... In Warsaw I spent some of thehappiest days of my life. An astonishing city! Come!"

XIII

A week after this conversation, Andréi Yéfimitch received a formalproposal to take a rest, that is, to retire from his post, and hereceived the proposal with indifference. Still a week later, he andMikhail Averyanitch were sitting in the post tarantass and driving tothe railway station. The weather was cool and clear, the sky blue andtransparent. The two hundred versts were traversed in two days andtwo nights. When they stopped at the post-houses and were given dirtyglasses for tea, or were delayed over the horses, Mikhail Averyanitchgrew purple, shook all over, and roared "Silence! Don't argue!"...And as they sat in the tarantass he talked incessantly of his travelsin the Caucasus and in Poland. What adventures he had, what meetings!He spoke in a loud voice, and all the time made such astonished eyesthat it might have been thought he was lying. As he told his storieshe breathed in the doctor's face and laughed in his ear. All thisincommoded the doctor and hindered his thinking and concentrating hismind.

For reasons of economy they travelled third-class, in a non-smokingcarriage. Half of the passengers were clean. Mikhail Averyanitchstruck up acquaintance with all, and as he shifted from seat to seat,announced in a loud voice that it was a mistake to travel on thesetormenting railways. Nothing but rascals around! What a different thingto ride on horseback; in a single day you cover a hundred versts, andat the end feel wholesome and fresh. Yes, and we had been cursed withfamines as the result of the draining of the Pinsky marshes! Everywherenothing but disorder! Mikhail Averyanitch lost his temper, spokeloudly, and allowed no one else to say a word. His incessant chatter,broken only by loud laughter and expressive gesticulations, boredAndréi Yéfimitch.

"Which of us is the more mad?" he asked himself. "I who do my bestnot to disturb my fellow-travellers, or this egoist who thinks he iscleverer and more interesting than anyone else, and gives no one amoment's rest?"

In Moscow, Mikhail Averyanitch donned his military tunic withoutshoulder-straps, and trousers with red piping. Out of doors he wore anarmy forage-cap and cloak, and was saluted by the soldiers. To AndréiYéfimitch he began to seem a man who had lost all the good pointsof the upper classes and retained only the bad. He loved people todance attendance on him even when it was quite unnecessary. Matcheslay before him on the table and he saw them, yet he roared to thewaiter to hand them to him; he marched about in his underclothingbefore the chambermaid; he addressed the waitresses—even the elderlyones—indiscriminately as "thou," and when he was irritated called themblockheads and fools. This, thought Andréi Yéfimitch, is no doubtgentlemanly, but it is detestable.

First of all, Mikhail Averyanitch brought his friend to theIverskaya.[1] He prayed piously, bowed to the ground, shed teal's, andwhen he had finished, sighed deeply and said:

"Even an unbeliever feels himself at peace after he has prayed. Kissthe image, dear!"

Andréi Yéfimitch got red in the face and kissed the image; and MikhailAveryanitch puffed out his lips, shook his head, prayed in a whisper;and again into his eyes came tears. After this they visited the Kremlinand inspected the Tsar-Cannon and the Tsar-Bell, touched them withtheir fingers, admired the view across the Moscow River, and spent sometime in the Temple of the Saviour and afterwards in the RumiantseffMuseum.

They dined at Testoffs.[2] Mikhail Averyanitch stroked his whiskers,gazed long at the menu, and said to the waiter in the tone of a gourmetwho feels at home in restaurants:

"Well see what you'll feed us with to-day, angel!"

[1] A celebrated ikon kept in a small chapel near the MoscowTown Hall. It is supposed to possess miraculous healing virtues.

[2] A Moscow restaurant noted for genuine Russian cookery.

XIV

The doctor walked and drank and ate and inspected, but his feelingsremained unchanged; he was vexed with Mikhail Averyanitch. He longed toget a rest from his companion, to escape from him, but the postmasterconsidered it his duty not to let him out of his sight, and to seethat he tasted every possible form of recreation. For two days AndréiYéfimitch endured it, but on the third declared that he was unwell,and would remain all day at home. Mikhail Averyanitch said that inthat case he also would remain at home. And indeed, he added, a restwas necessary, otherwise they would have no strength left. AndréiYéfimitch lay on the sofa with his face to the wall, and with clenchedteeth listened to his friend, who assured him that France would sooneror later inevitably destroy Germany, that in Moscow there are a greatmany swindlers, and that you cannot judge of the merits of a horse byits appearance. The doctor's heart throbbed, his ears hummed, but frommotives of delicacy he could not ask his friend to leave him alone orbe silent. But happily Mikhail Averyanitch grew tired of sitting in theroom, and after dinner went for a walk.

Left alone, Andréi Yéfimitch surrendered himself to the feeling ofrest. How delightful it was to lie motionless on the sofa and knowthat he was alone in the room! Without solitude true happiness wasimpossible. The fallen angel was faithless to God probably only becausehe longed for solitude, which angels knew not. Andréi Yéfimitch wishedto reflect upon what he had seen and heard in the last few days. But hecould not drive Mikhail Averyanitch out of his mind.

"But then he obtained leave and came with me purely out of friendshipand generosity," he thought with vexation. "Yet there is nothing moredetestable than his maternal care. He is good and generous and a gaycompanion—but tiresome! Intolerably tiresome! He is one of those menwho say only clever things, yet you cannot help feeling that they arestupid at bottom."

Next day Andréi Yéfimitch said he was still ill, and remained in hisloom. He lay with his face to the back of the sofa, was bored when hewas listening to conversation, and happy only when he was left alone.He was angry with himself for leaving home, he was angry with MikhailAveryanitch, who every day became more garrulous and free-making; toconcentrate his thoughts on a serious, elevated plane he failed utterly.

"I am now being tested by the realities of which Iván Dmítritch spoke,"he thought, angered at his own pettiness. "But this is nothing.... Iwill go home, and things will be as before."

In St. Petersburg the incidents of Moscow were repeated; whole days henever left his room, but lay on the sofa, and rose only when he wantedto drink beer.

All the time, Mikhail Averyanitch was in a great hurry to get to Warsaw.

"My dear friend, why must I go there?" asked Andréi Yéfimitchimploringly. "Go yourself, and let me go home. I beg you!"

"Not for a million!" protested Mikhail Averyanitch. "It is anastonishing city! In Warsaw I spent the happiest days of my life."

Andréi Yéfimitch had not the character to persist, and with a twingeof pain accompanied his friend to Warsaw. When he got there he stayedall day in the hotel, lay on the sofa, and was angry with himself, andwith the waiters who stubbornly refused to understand Russian. MikhailAveryanitch, healthy, gay, and active as ever, drove from morning tonight about the city and sought out his old acquaintances. Severalnights he stayed out altogether. After one of these nights, spent itis uncertain where, he returned early in the morning, dishevelled andexcited. For a long time he walked up and down the room, and at laststopped and exclaimed:

"Honour before everything!"

Again he walked up and down the room, seized his head in his hands, anddeclaimed tragically:

"Yes! Honour before everything! Cursed be the hour when it entered myhead to come near this Babylon!... My dear friend," he turned to AndréiYéfimitch, "I have lost heavily at cards. Lend me five hundred roubles!"

Andréi Yéfimitch counted the money, and gave it silently to hisfriend. Mikhail Averyanitch, purple from shame and indignation, cursedincoherently and needlessly, put on his cap, and went out. After twohours' absence he returned, threw himself into an armchair, sighedloudly, and said:

"Honour is saved! Let us go away, my friend! Not another minute will Irest in this accursed city! They are all scoundrels!... Austrian spies!"

When the travellers returned it was the beginning of November, andthe streets were covered with snow. Doctor Khobótoff occupied AndréiYéfimitch's position at the hospital, but lived at his own rooms,waiting until Andréi Yéfimitch returned and gave up the officialquarters. The ugly woman whom he called his cook already lived in oneof the wings.

Fresh scandals in connection with the hospital were being circulatedin the town. It was said that the ugly woman had quarrelled with thesuperintendent, who had gone down before her on his knees and beggedforgiveness. On the day of his return Andréi Yéfimitch had to look fornew lodgings.

"My friend," began the postmaster timidly, "forgive the indelicatequestion, what money have you got?"

Andréi Yéfimitch silently counted his money, and said:

"Eighty-six roubles."

"You don't understand me," said Mikhail Averyanitch in confusion. "Iask what means have you—generally?"

"I have told you already—eighty-six roubles.... Beyond that I havenothing."

Mikhail Averyanitch was well aware that the doctor was an honest andstraightforward man. But he believed that he had at least twentythousand roubles in capital. Now learning that his friend was a beggarand had nothing to live on, he began to cry, and embraced him.

XV

Andréi Yéfimitch migrated to the three-windowed house of Madame Byelof,a woman belonging to the petty trading class. In this house were onlythree rooms and a kitchen. Of these rooms two, with windows opening onthe street, were occupied by the doctor, while in the third and in thekitchen lived Dáryushka, the landlady, and three children. Occasionallythe number was added to by a drunken workman, Madame Byeloff's lover, whomade scenes at night and terrified Dáryushka and the children. When hecame, sat in the kitchen, and demanded vodka, the others were crowdedout, and the doctor in compassion took the crying children to his ownroom, and put them to sleep on the floor. This always gave him greatsatisfaction.

As before, he rose at eight o'clock, took his breakfast, and sat downand read his old books and reviews. For new books he had no money. Butwhether it was because the books were old or because the surroundingswere changed, reading no longer interested him, and even tired him. Soto pass the time he compiled a detailed catalogue of his books, andpasted labels on the backs; and this mechanical work seemed to himmuch more interesting than reading. The more monotonous and triflingthe occupation the more it calmed his mind, he thought of nothing, andtime passed quickly. Even to sit in the kitchen and peel potatoes withDáryushka or to pick the dirt out of buckwheat meal interested him.On Saturdays and Sundays he went to church. Standing at the wall, heblinked his eyes, listened to the singing, and thought of his father,his mother, the university, religion; he felt calm and melancholy, andwhen leaving the church, regretted that the service had not lastedlonger.

Twice he visited the hospital for the purpose of seeing Iván Dmítritch.But on both occasions Gromof was unusually angry and excited; he askedto be left in peace, declared that he had long ago wearied of emptychatter, and that he would regard solitary confinement as a deliverancefrom these accursed, base people. Was it possible they would refusehim that? When Andréi Yéfimitch took leave of him and wished him goodnight, he snapped and said:

"Take yourself to the devil!"

And Andréi Yéfimitch felt undecided as to whether he should go a thirdtime or not. But he wished to go.

In the old times Andréi Yéfimitch had been in the habit of spending thetime after dinner in walking about his rooms and thinking. But now fromdinner to tea-time he lay on the sofa with his face to the wall andsurrendered himself to trivial thoughts, which he found himself unableto conquer. He considered himself injured by the fact that after twentyyears' service he had been given neither a pension nor a grant. True hehad not done his duties honestly, but then were not pensions given toall old servants indiscriminately, without regard to their honesty orotherwise? Modern ideas did not regard rank, orders, and pensions asthe reward of moral perfection or capacity, and why must he alone bethe exception? He was absolutely penniless. He was ashamed to pass theshop where he dealt or to meet the proprietor. For beer alone he was indebt thirty-two roubles. He was in debt also to his landlady. Dáryushkasecretly sold old clothing and books, and lied to the landlady,declaring that her master was about to come in to a lot of money.

Andréi Yéfimitch was angry with himself for having wasted on hisjourney the thousand roubles which he had saved. What could he not dowith a thousand roubles now? He was annoyed, also, because others wouldnot leave him alone. Khobótoff considered it his duty to pay periodicalvisits to his sick colleague; and everything about him was repulsive toAndréi Yéfimitch—his sated face, his condescending bad manners, theword "colleague," and the high boots. But the greatest annoyance of allwas that he considered it his duty to cure Andréi Yéfimitch, and evenimagined he was curing him. On every occasion he brought a phial ofbromide of potassium and a rhubarb pill.

Mikhail Averyanitch also considered it his duty to visit his sickfriend and amuse him. He entered the room with affected freeness,laughed unnaturally, and assured Andréi Yéfimitch that to-day helooked splendid, and that, glory be to God! he was getting all right.From this alone it might be concluded that he regarded the case ashopeless. He had not yet paid off the Warsaw debt, and being ashamed ofhimself and constrained, he laughed all the louder, and told ridiculousanecdotes. His stories now seemed endless, and were a source of tormentboth to Andréi Yéfimitch and to himself.

When the postmaster was present, Andréi Yéfimitch usually lay on thesofa, his face turned to the wall, with clenched teeth, listening. Itseemed to him that a crust was forming about his heart, and after;every visit he felt the crust becoming thicker, and; threateningto extend to his throat. To exorcise these trivial afflictions hereflected that he, and Khobótoff, and Mikhail Averyanitch would, sooneror later, perish, leaving behind themselves not a trace. When a millionyears had passed by, a spirit flying through space would see only afrozen globe and naked stones. All—culture and morals—everythingwould pass away; even the burdock would not grow. Why, then, shouldhe trouble himself with feelings of shame on account of a shopkeeper,of insignificant Khobótoff, of the terrible friendship of MikhailAveryanitch. It was all folly and vanity.

But such reasoning did not console him. He had hardly succeeded inpainting a vivid picture of the frozen globe after a million yearn ofdecay, when from behind a naked rock appeared Khobótoff in his topboots, and beside him stood Mikhail Averyanitch, with an affectedlaugh, and a shamefaced whisper on his lips: "And the Warsaw debt, oldman, I will repay in a few days ... without fail!"

XVI

Mikhail Averyanitch arrived after dinner one evening when AndréiYéfimitch was lying on the sofa. At the same time came Khobótoff withhis bromide of potassium. Andréi Yéfimitch rose slowly, sat down again,and supported himself by resting his hands upon the sofa edge.

"To-day, my dear," began Mikhail Averyanitch, "to-day your complexionis much healthier than yesterday. You are a hero! I swear to God, ahero!"

"It's time, indeed it's time for you to recover, colleague," saidKhobótoff, yawning. "You must be tired of the delay yourself."

"Never mind, we'll soon be all right," said Mikhail Averyanitch gaily."Why, we'll live for another hundred years! Eh?"

"Perhaps not a hundred, but a safe twenty," said Khobótoff consolingly."Don't worry, colleague, don't worry!"

"We'll let them see!" laughed Mikhail Averyanitch, slapping his friendon the knee. "We'll show how the trick is done! Next summer, withGod's will, we'll fly away to the Caucasus, and gallop all over thecountry—trot, trot, trot! And when we come back from the Caucasuswe'll dance at your wedding!"

Mikhail Averyanitch winked slyly. "We'll marry you, my friend, we'llfind the bride!"

Andréi Yéfimitch felt that the crust had risen to his throat. His heartbeat painfully.

"This is absurd," he said, rising suddenly and going over to thewindow. "Is it possible you don't understand that you are talkingnonsense?"

He wished to speak to his visitors softly and politely, but could notrestrain himself, and, against his own will, clenched his fists, andraised them threateningly above his head.

"Leave me!" he cried, in a voice which was not his own. His face waspurple and he trembled all over. "Begone! Both of you! Go!"

Mikhail Averyanitch and Khobótoff rose, and looked at him, at first inastonishment, then in tenor. "Begone both of you!" continued AndréiYéfimitch. "Stupid idiots! Fools! I want neither your friendship noryour medicines, idiots! This is base, it is abominable!"

Khobótoff and the postmaster exchanged confused glances, staggered tothe door, and went into the hall. Andréi Yéfimitch seized the phial ofbromide of potassium, and flung it after them, breaking it upon thethreshold.

"Take yourselves to the devil!" he cried, running after them into thehall. "To the devil!"

After his visitors had gone he lay on the sofa, trembling as if infever, and repeated—

"Stupid idiots! Dull fools!"

When he calmed down, the first thought that entered his head was thatpoor Mikhail Averyanitch must now be terribly ashamed and wretched, andthat the scene that had passed was something very terrible. Nothing ofthe kind had ever happened before. What had become of his intellectand tact? Where were now his understanding of the world and hisphilosophical indifference?

All night the doctor was kept awake by feelings of shame and vexation.At nine o'clock next morning, he went to the post office and apologisedto the postmaster.

"Do not refer to what happened!" said the postmaster, with a sigh.Touched by Andréi Yéfimitch's conduct, he pressed his hands warmly. "Noman should trouble over such trifles.... Lubiakin!" he roared so loudlythat the clerks and visitors trembled. "Bring a chair!... And youjust wait!" he cried to a peasant woman, who held a registered letterthrough the grating. "Don't you see that I am engaged? ... We willforget all that," he continued tenderly, turning to Andréi Yéfimitch."Sit down, my old friend!"

He stroked his eyebrows silently for a minute, and continued:

"It never entered my head to take offence. Illness is a very strangething, I understand that. Yesterday your fit frightened both the doctorand myself, and we talked of you for a long time. My dear friend, whywill you not pay more attention to your complaint? Do you think youcan go on living in this way? Forgive the plain speaking of a friend."He dropped his voice to a whisper. "But you live among hopelesssurroundings—closeness, uncleanliness, no one to look after you,nothing to take for your ailment.... My dear friend, both I and thedoctor implore you with all our hearts—listen to our advice—go intothe hospital. There you will get wholesome food, care and treatment.Yevgéniï Feódoritch—although, between ourselves, de mauvais ton—is acapable man, and you can fully rely upon him. He gave me his word thathe would take care of you."

Andréi Yéfimitch was touched by the sincere concern of his friend, andthe tears that trickled down the postmaster's cheeks.

"My dear friend, don't believe them!" he whispered, laying his handupon his heart. "It is all a delusion. My complaint lies merely inthis, that in twenty years I found in this town only one intelligentman, and he was a lunatic. I suffer from no disease whatever; mymisfortune is that I have fallen into a magic circle from which thereis no escape. It is all the same to me—I am ready for anything."

"Then you will go into the hospital?"

"It is all the same—even into the pit."

"Give me your word, friend, that you will obey Yevgéniï Feódoritch ineverything."

"I give you my word. But I repeat that I have fallen into a magiccircle. Everything now, even the sincere concern of my friends, tendsonly to the same thing—to my destruction. I am perishing, and I havethe courage to acknowledge it."

"Nonsense, you will get all right!"

"What is the use of talking like that?" said Andréi Yéfimitchirritably. "There are very few men who at the close of their lives donot experience what I am experiencing now. When people tell you thatyou have disease of the kidneys or a dilated heart, and set about tocure you; when they tell you that you are a madman or a criminal—inone word, when they begin to turn their attention on to you—you mayrecognise that you are in a magic circle from which there is no escape.You may try to escape, but that makes things worse. Give in, for nohuman efforts will save you. So it seems to me."

All this time, people were gathering at the grating. Andréi Yéfimitchdisliked interrupting the postmaster's work, and took his leave.Mikhail Averyanitch once more made him give his word of honour, andescorted him to the door.

The same day towards evening Khobótoff, in his short fur coat and highboots, arrived unexpectedly, and, as if nothing had happened the daybefore, said: "I have come to you on a matter of business, colleague, Iwant you to come with me to a consultation. Eh?"

Thinking that Khobótoff wanted to amuse him with a walk, or give himsome opportunity of earning money, Andréi Yéfimitch dressed, and wentwith him into the street. He was glad of the chance to redeem hisrudeness of the day before, thankful for the apparent reconciliation,and grateful to Khobótoff for not hinting at the incident. From thisuncultured man who would have expected such delicacy?

"And where is your patient?" asked Andréi Yéfimitch.

"At the hospital. For a long time past I have wanted you to see him....A most interesting case."

They entered the hospital yard, and passing through the main building,went to the wing where the lunatics were confined. When they enteredthe hall, Nikita as usual jumped up and stretched himself.

"One of them has such strange complications in the lungs," whisperedKhobótoff as he entered the ward with Andréi Yéfimitch. "But wait here.I shall be back immediately. I must get my stethoscope."

And he left the room.

XVII

It was already twilight. Iván Dmítritch lay on his bed with his faceburied in the pillow; the paralytic sat motionless, and wept softly andtwitched his lips; the fat muzhik and the ex-sorter slept. It was veryquiet.

Andréi Yéfimitch sat on Iván Dmítritch's bed and listened. Half an hourpassed by, but Khobótoff did not come. Instead of Khobótoff came Nikitacarrying in his arm a dressing-gown, some linen, and a pair of slippers.

"Please to put on these, your Honour," he said calmly. "There is yourbed, this way, please," he added, pointing at a vacant bed, evidentlyonly just set up. "And don't take on; with God's will you will soon bewell!"

Andréi Yéfimitch understood. Without a Word he walked over to the bedindicated by Nikita and sat upon it. Then, seeing that Nikita waswaiting, he stripped himself and felt ashamed. He put on the hospitalclothing; the flannels were too small, the shirt was too long, and thedressing-gown smelt of smoked fish.

"You will soon be all right, God grant it!" repeated Nikita.

He took up Andréi Yéfimitch's clothes, went out, and locked the door.

"It is all the same," thought Andréi Yéfimitch, shamefacedly gatheringthe dressing-gown around him, and feeling like a convict in his newgarments. "It is all the same. In dress clothes, in uniform ... or inthis dressing-gown."

But his watch? And the memorandum book in his side pocket? And thecigarettes? Where had Nikita taken his clothes? To the day of his deathhe would never again wear trousers, a waistcoat, or boots. It wasstrange and incredible at first. Andréi Yéfimitch was firmly convincedthat there was no difference whatever between Madame Byelof's houseand Ward No. 6, and that all in this world is folly and vanity; but hecould not prevent his hands trembling, and his feet were cold. He washurt, too, by the thought that Iván Dmítritch would rise and see him inthe dressing-gown. He rose, walked up and down the room, and again satdown.

He remained sitting for half an hour, weary to the point of grief.Would it be possible to live here a day, a week, even years, as theseothers had done? He must sit down, and walk about and again sit down;and then he might look out of the window, and again walk from end toend of the room. And afterwards? Just to sit all day still as an idol,and think! No, it was impossible.

Andréi Yéfimitch lay down on his bed, but almost immediately rose,rubbed with his cuff the cold sweat from his forehead, and felt thathis whole face smelt of dried fish. He walked up and down the ward.

"This is some misunderstanding...." he said, opening his arms. "It onlyneeds an explanation, it is a misunderstanding...."

At this moment Iván Dmítritch awoke. He sat up in bed, rested his headon his hands, and spat. Then he looked idly at the doctor, apparentlyat first understanding nothing. But soon his sleepy face grewcontemptuous and malicious.

"So they have brought you here, my friend," he began in a voice hoarsefrom sleep. He blinked one eye. "I am very glad! You drank other men'sblood, and now they will drink yours! Admirable!"

"It is some misunderstanding ..." began Andréi Yéfimitch, frightened bythe lunatic's words. He shrugged his shoulders and repeated. "It is amisunderstanding of some kind."

Iván Dmítritch again spat, and lay down on his bed.

"Accursed life!" he growled. "But what is most bitter, most abominableof all, is that this life ends not with rewards for suffering, not withapotheoses as in operas, but in death; men come and drag the corpse byits arms and legs into the cellar. Brrrrrr!... Well, never mind!... Forall that we have suffered in this, in the other world we will be repaidwith a holiday! From the other world I shall return hither as a shadow,and terrify these monsters!... I will turn their heads grey!"

Moséika entered the ward, and seeing the doctor, stretched out hishand, and said:

"Give me a kopeck!"

XVIII

Andréi Yéfimitch went across to the window, and looked out into thefields. It was getting dark, and on the horizon rose a cold, lividmoon. Near the hospital railings, a hundred fathoms away, not more,rose a lofty, white building, surrounded by a stone wall. It was theprison.

"That is actuality," thought Andréi Yéfimitch, and he felt terrified.

Everything was terrible: the moon, the prison, the spikes in the fence,and the blaze in the distant bone-mill. Andréi Yéfimitch turned awayfrom the window, and saw before him a man with glittering stars andorders upon his breast. The man smiled and winked cunningly. And this,too, seemed terrible.

He tried to assure himself that in the moon and in the prison therewas nothing peculiar at all, that even sane men wear orders, and thatthe best of things in their turn rot and turn into dust. But despairsuddenly seized him, he took hold of the grating with both hands, andjerked it with all his strength. But the bars stood firm.

That it might be less terrible, he went to Iván Dmítritch's bed, andsat upon it.

"I have lost my spirits, friend," he said, stammering, trembling, andrubbing the cold sweat from his face. "My spirits have fallen."

"But why don't you philosophise?" asked Iván Dmítritch ironically.

"My God, my God!... Yes, yes!... Once you said that in Russia thereis no philosophy; but all philosophise, even triflers. But thephilosophising of triflers does no harm to anyone," said AndréiYéfimitch as if he wanted to cry. "By why, my dear friend, why thismalicious laughter? Why should not triflers philosophise if they arenot satisfied? For a clever, cultivated, proud, freedom-loving man,built in the image of God, there is no course left but to come asdoctor to a dirty, stupid town, and lead a life of jars, leeches, andgallipots. Charlatanry, narrowness, baseness! Oh, my God!"

"You chatter nonsense! If you didn't want to be a doctor, why weren'tyou a minister of state?"

"I could not. We are weak, my friend. I was indifferent to things, Ireasoned actively and wholesomely, but it needed but the first touchof actuality to make me lose heart, and surrender.... We are weak; weare worthless!... And you also, my friend. You are able, you are noble,with your mother's milk you drank in draughts of happiness, yet hardlyhad you entered upon life when you wearied of it.... We are weak, weak!"

In addition to terror and the feeling of insult, Andréi Yéfimitch hadbeen tortured by sonic importunate craving ever since the approach ofevening. Finally he came to the conclusion that he wanted to smoke anddrink beer.

"I am going out, my friend," he said. "I will tell them to bringlights.... I cannot in this way.... I am not in a state...."

He went to the door and opened it, but immediately Nikita jumped up andbarred the way.

"Where are you going to? You can't, you can't!" he cried. "It's timefor bed!"

"But only for a minute.... I want to go into the yard.... I want tohave a walk in the yard," said Andréi Yéfimitch.

"You can't. I have orders against it.... You know yourself."

Nikita banged the door and set his back against it. "But if I go outwhat harm will it do?" asked Andréi Yéfimitch. "I don't understand!Nikita, I must go out!" he cried in a trembling voice. "I must go!"

"Don't create disorder; it is not right!" said Nikita in an edifyingtone.

"The devil knows what is the meaning of this!" suddenly screamed IvánDmitri tch, jumping from his bed. "What right has he to refuse to letus go? How dare they keep us here? The law allows no man to be deprivedof freedom without a trial! This is violence ... tyranny!"

"Of course it is tyranny," said Andréi Yéfimitch, encouraging Gromof."I must go! I have to go out! He has no right! Let me out, I tell you!"

"Do you hear, stupid dog!" screamed Ivrin Dmítritch, thumping the doorwith his fists. "Open, or I will smash the door! Blood-sucker!"

"Open!" cried Andréi Yéfimitch, trembling all over: "I demand it!"

"Talk away!" answered Nikita through the door. "Talk away!"

"Go, then, for Yevgéniï Feódoritch! Say that I ask him to come ... Fora minute!"

"To-morrow he will come all right."

"They will never let us go!" cried Iván Dmítritch. "We will all diehere! Oh, God, is it possible that in the other world there is no hell,that these villains will be forgiven? Where is there justice? Open,scoundrel, I am choking!" Gromof cried out in a hoarse voice, andflung himself against the door. "I will dash my brains out! Assassins!"

Nikita flung open the door, and with both hands and his knees roughlypushed Andréi Yéfimitch back into the room, and struck him with hisclenched fist full in the face. It seemed to Andréi Yéfimitch thata great salt wave had suddenly dashed upon his head and flung himupon his bed; in his mouth was a taste of salt, and the blood seemedto burst from his gums. As if trying to swim away from the wave, heflourished his arms and seized the bedstead. But at this moment Nikitastruck him again and again in the back. Iván Dmítritch screamed loudly.He also had evidently been beaten.

Then all was quiet Liquid moonlight poured through between the ironbars, and on the floor lay a network shadow. All were terrified. AndréiYéfimitch lay on the bed and held his breath in terror, awaitinganother blow.

It seemed as if someone had taken a sickle, thrust it into his chestand turned it around. In his agony he bit his pillow and groundhis teeth, and suddenly into his head amid the chaos flashed theintolerable thought that such misery had been borne year afteryear by these helpless men who now lay in the moonlight like blackshadows about him. In twenty years he had never known of it, andnever wanted to know. He did not know, he had no idea of theirwretchedness, therefore he was not guilty; but conscience, as rude andunaccommodating as Nikita's fists, sent an icy thrill through him fromhead to foot. He jumped from his bed and tried to scream with all hismight, to fly from the ward and kill Nikita, and Khobótoff, and thesuperintendent, and the feldscher, and himself. But not a sound camefrom his throat, his feet rebelled against him, he panted, he tore hisgown and shirt, and fell insensible on the bed.

XIX

Next morning his head ached, his cars hummed, and he was weak. Thememory of his weakness of the day before made him feel ashamed.Yesterday he had shown a petty spirit, he had feared even the moon, andhonestly expressed feelings and thoughts which he had never suspectedcould exist in himself. For instance, the thought about the discontentof philosophic triflers. But now he was quite indifferent.

He neither ate nor drank, but lay motionless and silent.

"It is all the same to me," he thought when he was questioned. "I shallnot answer.... It is all the same...."

After dinner Mikhail Averyanitch brought him a quarter of a pound oftea and a pound of marmalade. Dáryushka also came, and for a wholehour stood beside the bed with a dull expression of uncomprehendingaffliction. Doctor Khobótoff also paid him a visit. He brought a phialof bromide of potassium, and ordered Nikita to fumigate the ward.

Towards evening Andréi Yéfimitch died from an apoplectic stroke. Atfirst he felt chill, and sickness; something loathsome like rottingsour cabbage or bad eggs seemed to permeate his whole body even to hisfingers, to extend from his stomach to his head, and to flow in hiseyes and ears. A green film appeared before his eyes. Andréi Yéfimitchrealised that his hour had come; and remembered that Iván Dmítritch,Mikhail Averyanitch, and millions of others believed in immortality.But immortality he did not desire, and thought of it only for a moment.A herd of antelopes, extraordinarily beautiful and graceful, of whichhe had been reading the day before, rushed past him; then a womanstretched out to him a hand holding a registered letter.... MikhailAveryanitch said something. Then all vanished and Andréi Yéfimitch died.

The servants came in, took him by the shoulders and legs, and carriedhim to the chapel. There he lay on a table with open eyes, and at nightthe moon shone down upon him. In the morning came Sergéi Sergéyitch,piously prayed before a crucifix, and closed the eyes of his formerchief. Next day Andréi Yéfim itch was buried. Only Mikhail Averyanitchand Dáryushka were present at the funeral.