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Title: The Black Monk, and Other Stories

Author: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Translator: R. E. C. Long

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK
MONK, AND OTHER STORIES ***

THE BLACK MONK

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 here translated,
although hardly known in this country, and but little better known on the
western continent of Europe, has during the last fifteen years been regarded
as the most talented of the younger generation of Russian writers. Even the
remarkable popularity attained during the last few years by Maxim Gorky
has not eclipsed his fame, though it has probably done much to prevent the
recognition of his talents abroad. Tchekhoff's stories lack the striking
incidents and lurid colouring of the younger writer's, and thus, while they
appeal more strongly to the cultivated Russian, they are devoid of the more
obvious qualities that attract the translator and the public which read
translations. Though they have gone into numberless editions in Russia,
they are almost unknown abroad, being, in fact, represented only by a few
scattered translations and small volumes published in France and Germany,
and by a few critical articles in the reviews of those countries. In England,
Tchekhoff is only a name to most of those interested in Eastern literature,
and not even a name to the general public.

Anton Pavlovitch Tchekhoff was born in 1860, spent his infancy in South
Russia, and was educated in the Medical Faculty of Moscow University.
Although a doctor by profession, and actually practising for some years as a
municipal medical officer, he began his literary career as a story writer
before completing his professional education, contributing, when a student,
sketches to the weekly comic journals, and feuilletons to the St. Petersburg
newspapers. Tchekhoff's early stories turn largely upon domestic
misunderstandings; they are brief, avowedly humorous, and even farcical.
They attracted early attention by their irresponsible gaiety, seldom untinged
with a certain bitterness. The Steppe, a panorama of travel through the great
plains of South Russia, published serially in the now extinct Sieverni
Viestnik, was the first of his productions of sustained merit. It was followed
by a series of stories and sketches and one volume of dramas, which have,
in the opinion of Russian critics, established the writer on a level with the
best native fiction writers, and on a much higher level than any of his
contemporaries.
Tchekhoff in his manner of thought is essentially a Russian; as an artist
essentially Western, having perhaps only one thing in common with the
writers of his own country. Russian novelists, with few exceptions—
Turgenieff, a man of Western training and sympathies, was one—have
commonly lacked the instinct of coherency, the lack of which in fiction is
redeemed only by genius. The novels of Dostoyeffsky and Tolstoy are
notoriously defective in this respect. Tchekhoff and Gorky suffer from the
same deficiency. Unlike Gorky, Tchekhoff has never essayed the long
novel; and even his longer short stories, one of which is included in this
volume, are redeemed from failure chiefly by their humour and close
observation of Russian life. With this exception, Tchekhoff has little in
common with other Russian writers. He is more objective, less diffuse, less
inspiring, and less human. His compatriots, Count Tolstoy among them,
compare him with Maupassant His method of treatment presents many
parallels; he has the same brevity, the same remorselessness, the same
insistence upon the significantly little.
But in his teaching, if teaching it can be called, Tchekhoff is thoroughly
Russian. A French critic[1] has lately reviewed his stories in a chapter called
L'impuissance de vivre, and this phrase summarises admirably what
Tchekhoff has to say. The political condition of modern Russia involves the

repression of all intellect and initiative, or, at best, their diversion into
unproductive official channels; hence, the distaste for life. and intellectual
stagnation which, represented here in "Ward No. 6," run through all
Tchekhoff's longer stories, and particularly through his dramas, most of
which end in disillusion and suicide. Russian life presents itself to
Tchekhoff as the unprofitable struggle of the exceptional few against the
trivial and insignificant many. His pages are peopled with psychopaths,
degenerates of genius and virtue, who succumb in feeble revolt against the
baseness and banality of life, and are quite unfit to combat the healthy, rude,
but unintelligent forces around them. Kovrin, Likharyóff, and Doctor
Andréi Yéfimitch, three heroes in this collection, are characteristic of
Tchekhoff's outlook. All aspiring men, he says, are predestined martyrs;
only the base achieve immunity from ruin: and as martyrdom is the
exception, not the rule, it results that Tchekhoff's ordinary men, and the
secondary characters in most of his stories, are insignificant and mean. The
life depicted is in itself uninteresting; its colour is grey, its keynote tedium,
its only humour the humour of the satirist, not of the sympathiser, and its
only tragedy, failure. Tchekhoff is essentially an objective writer, and this
gives him an undue detachment from the life which he describes; he never
points a moral, delays over an explanation, or shrinks from the
incompleteness which, truthful to life, is often unsatisfactory in art. But his
attitude towards life is not the less unmistakable because never openly
expressed; pessimism, inspired by fatalism and denial 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 more representative collection of
Tchekhoff's writings. But in choosing these stories from among more than a
hundred, I have been guided not merely by what was best, but also by what
seemed most likely to be understood by a public unfamiliar with Russian
manners and Russian thought.
The stories "The Black Monk," "In Exile," "Rothschild's Fiddle," "A
Father," and "At the Manor," have been translated from the volume Poviesti
i Razskazni, St. Petersburg, 1898; "A Family Council," from Razskazni,
12th edition, St. Petersburg, 1898; "Ward No. 6," from Palata No. Shestoi,
6th edition, St. Petersburg, 1898; "On the Way," "At Home," "Two
Tragedies," and "An Event," from V Sumerkakh, 13th edition, St.
Petersburg, 1899; and "Sleepyhead," from Khmuriye Liudi, 8th edition, St.

Petersburg, 1898. "In Exile" was published in the Fortnightly Review in
September, 1903, and is reprinted here with the Editor's permission.
R. E. C. L.
[1] Ivan Strannik. La Pensée Russe Contemporaine. Paris, Librairie Armand
Colin, 1903.

CONTENTS

The Black Monk
On the Way
A Family Council
At Home
In Exile
Rothschild's Fiddle
A Father
Two Tragedies
Sleepyhead
At the Manor
An Event
Ward No. 6

THE BLACK MONK

Andrei Vasilyevitch Kovrin, Magister, had worn himself out, and unsettled
his nerves. He made no effort to undergo regular treatment; but only
incidentally, over a bottle of wine, spoke to his friend the doctor; and his
friend the doctor advised him to spend all the spring and summer in the
country. And in the nick of time came a long letter from Tánya Pesótsky,
asking him to come and stay with her father at Borisovka. He decided to go.
But first (it was in April) he travelled to his own estate, to his native
Kovrinka, and spent three weeks in solitude; and only when the fine

weather came drove across the country to his former guardian and second
parent, Pesótsky, the celebrated Russian horti-culturist. From Kovrinka to
Borisovka, the home of the Pesótskys, was a distance of some seventy
versts, and in the easy, springed calêche the drive along the roads, soft in
springtime, promised real enjoyment.
The house at Borisovka was, large, faced with a colonnade, and adorned
with figures of lions with the plaster falling off. At the door stood a servant
in livery. The old park, gloomy and severe, laid out in English fashion,
stretched for nearly a verst from the house down to the river, and ended
there in a steep clay bank covered with pines whose bare roots resembled
shaggy paws. Below sparkled a deserted stream; overhead the snipe circled
about with melancholy cries—all, in short, seemed to invite a visitor to sit
down and write a ballad. But the gardens and orchards, which together with
the seed-plots occupied some eighty acres, inspired very different feelings.
Even in the worst of weather they were bright and joy-inspiring. Such
wonderful roses, lilies, camelias, such tulips, such a host of flowering plants
of every possible kind and colour, from staring white to sooty black,—such
a wealth of blossoms Kovrin had never seen before. The spring was only
beginning, and the greatest rareties were hidden under glass; but already
enough bloomed in the alleys and beds to make up an empire of delicate
shades. And most charming of all was it in the early hours of morning,
when dewdrops glistened on every petal and leaf.
In childhood the decorative part of the garden, called contemptuously by
Pesótsky "the rubbish," had produced on Kovrin a fabulous impression.
What miracles of art, what studied monstrosities, what monkeries of nature!
Espaliers of fruit trees, a pear tree shaped like a pyramidal poplar, globular
oaks and lindens, apple-tree houses, arches, monograms, candelabra—even
the date 1862 in plum trees, to commemorate the year in which Pesótsky
first engaged in the art of gardening. There were stately, symmetrical trees,
with trunks erect as those of palms, which after examination proved to be
gooseberry or currant trees. But what most of all enlivened the garden and
gave it its joyous tone was the constant movement of Pesótsky's gardeners.
From early morning to late at night, by the trees, by the bushes, in the
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 her father
in great alarm. The clear starlight night foretold frost, and the head
gardener, Ivan Karlitch, had gone to town, so that there was no one who
could be relied upon. At supper they spoke only of the impending frost; and
it was decided that Tánya should not go to bed at all, but should inspect the
gardens at one o'clock and see if all were in order, while Yegor
Semiónovitch should rise at three o'clock, or even earlier.
Kovrin sat with Tánya all the evening, and after midnight accompanied her
to the garden. The air already smelt strongly of burning. In the great
orchard, called "the commercial," which every year brought Yegor
Semiónovitch thousands of roubles profit, there already crept along the
ground the thick, black, sour smoke which was to clothe the young leaves
and save the plants. The trees were marshalled like chessmen in straight
rows—like ranks of soldiers; and this pedantic regularity, together with the
uniformity of height, made the garden seem monotonous and even tiresome.
Kovrin and Tánya walked up and down the alleys, and watched the fires of
dung, straw, and litter; but seldom met the workmen, who wandered in the
smoke like shadows. Only the cherry and plum trees and a few apple trees
were in blossom, but the whole garden was shrouded in smoke, and it was
only when they reached the seed-plots that 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 smoke
saves 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, chilled
face; her thick, black eyebrows; the stiff collar on her jacket which
prevented her from moving her head freely; her dress tucked up out of the
dew; and her whole figure, erect and slight, pleased him.
"Heavens! how she has grown!" he said to himself. "When I was here last
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 tease you. What a change
in five years!"
"Yes, five years!" sighed Tánya. "A lot of things have happened since then.
Tell me, Andrei, honestly," she said, looking merrily into his face, "do you
feel that you have got out of touch with us? But why do I ask? You are a
man, you live your own interesting life, you.... Some estrangement is
natural. But whether that is so or not, Andrusha, I want 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 surely
you know how my father adores you, worships you. You are a scholar, and
not an ordinary man; you have built up a brilliant career, and he is firmly
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 began to
show themselves more clearly. The nightingale sang, and from the fields
came the cry of quails.
"It is time for bed!" said Tánya. "It is cold too." She took Kovrin by the
hand. "Thanks, Andrusha, for coming. We are cursed with most
uninteresting acquaintances, and not many even of them. With us it is
always garden, garden, garden, and nothing else. Trunks, timbers," she
laughed, "pippins, rennets, budding, pruning, grafting.... All our life goes
into the garden, we never even dream of anything but apples and pears. Of
course this is all very good and useful, but sometimes I cannot help wishing
for change. I remember when you used to come and pay us visits, and when
you came home for the holidays, how the whole house grew fresher and
brighter, as if someone had taken the covers off the furniture; I was then a
very little girl, but I understood...."
Tánya spoke for a time, and spoke with feeling. Then suddenly it came into
Kovrin's head that during the summer he might become attached to this
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 with the old man, and
returned with him to the garden. Yegor Semiónovitch was tall, broad-
shouldered, and fat. He suffered from shortness of breath, yet walked so
quickly that it was difficult to keep up with him. His expression was always
troubled and hurried, and he seemed to be thinking that if he were a single
second late everything would be destroyed.
"There, brother, is a mystery for you!" he began, stopping to recover breath.
"On the surface of the ground, as you see, there is frost, but raise the
thermometer a couple of yards on your stick, and it is quite warm.... Why is
that?"
"I confess I don't know," said Kovrin, laughing.
"No!... You can't know everything.... The biggest brain cannot comprehend
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 big
whiskers thoughtfully. "Well, God grant ... I am very glad for your sake,
brother, very glad...."
Suddenly he began to listen, and making a terrible face, ran off the path 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 the apple tree?
My God, my God! Ruined, ruined, spoiled, destroyed! The garden is ruined,
the garden is destroyed! My God!"
When he returned to Kovrin his face bore an expression of injury and
impotence.

"What on earth can you do with these accursed people?" he asked in a
whining voice, wringing his hands. "Stepka brought a manure cart here last
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. What can you do with men
like this? I speak to him and he blinks his eyes and looks stupid. He ought
to be hanged!"
When at last he calmed down, he embraced Kovrin and kissed him on the
cheek.
"Well, God grant ... God grant!..." he stammered. "I am very, very glad that
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 the miracle of
the century.
As they walked about, the sun rose, lighting up the garden. It grew hot.
When he thought of the long, bright day before him, Kovrin remembered
that it was but the beginning of May, and that he had before him a whole
summer of long, bright, and happy days; and suddenly through him pulsed
the joyous, youthful feeling which he had felt when as a child he played in
this same garden. And in turn, he embraced the old man and kissed him
tenderly. Touched by remembrances, the pair went into the house and drank
tea out of the old china cups, with cream and rich biscuits; and these trifles
again reminded Kovrin of his childhood and youth. The splendid present
and the awakening memories of the past mingled, and a feeling of intense
happiness filled his heart.
He waited until Tánya awoke, and having drunk coffee with her, walked
through the garden, and then went to his room and began to work. He read
attentively, making notes; and only lifted his eyes from his books when 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 to hint that every little
vein in his body trembled and pulsated with joy.

II

But in the country Kovrin continued to live the same nervous and
untranquil life as he had lived in town. He read much, wrote much, studied
Italian; and when he went for walks, thought all the time of returning 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 not sleep all the following
night. Yet after these sleepless nights he felt active and gay.
He talked much, drank wine, and smoked expensive cigars. Often, nearly
every day, young girls from the neighbouring country-houses drove over to
Borisovka, played the piano with Tánya, and sang. Sometimes the visitor
was a young man, also a neighbour, who played the violin well. Kovrin
listened eagerly to their music and singing, but was exhausted by it, so
exhausted sometimes that his eyes closed involuntarily, and his head
drooped on his shoulder.
One evening after tea he sat upon the balcony, reading. In the drawing-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 not understand their meaning. At last,
laying down his book and listening attentively, he understood. A girl with a
disordered imagination heard by night in a garden some mysterious sounds,
sounds so beautiful and strange that she was forced to recognise their
harmony and holiness, which to us mortals are incomprehensible, and
therefore flew back to heaven. Kovrin's eyelids drooped. He rose, and in
exhaustion walked up and down the drawing-room, and then up and down
the hall. When the music ceased, he took Tánya by the hand and went out
with her to the balcony.
"All day—since early morning," he began, "my head has been taken up
with a strange legend. I cannot remember whether I read it, or where I heard
it, but the legend is very remarkable and not very coherent. I may begin by
saying that it is not very clear. A thousand years ago a monk, robed in black,
wandered in the wilderness—somewhere in Syria or Arabia ... Some miles
away the fishermen saw another black monk moving slowly over the
surface of the lake. The second monk was a mirage. Now put out of your
mind all the laws of optics, which legend, of course, does not recognise, and
listen. From the first mirage was produced another mirage, from the second

a third, so that the image of the Black Monk is eternally reflected from one
stratum of the atmosphere to another. At one time it was seen in Africa, then
in Spain, then in India, then in the Far North. At last it issued from the
limits of the earth's atmosphere, but never came across conditions which
would cause it to disappear. Maybe it is seen to-day in Mars or in the
constellation of the Southern Cross. Now the whole point, the very essence
of the legend, lies in the prediction that exactly a thousand years after the
monk went into the wilderness, the mirage will again be cast into the
atmosphere of the earth and show itself to the world of men. This term of a
thousand years, it appears, is now expiring.... According to the legend we
must expect the Black Monk to-day or to-morrow."
"It is a strange story," said Tánya, whom the legend did not please.
"But the most astonishing thing," laughed Kovrin, "is that I cannot
remember how this legend came into my head. Did I read it? Did I hear it?
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 the house, and
walked lost in thought beside the flower-beds. Already the sun was setting.
The freshly watered flowers exhaled a damp, irritating smell. In the house
the music had again begun, and from the distance the violin produced the
effect of a human voice. Straining his memory in an attempt to recall where
he had heard the legend, Kovrin walked slowly across the park, and then,
not noticing where he went, to the river-bank.
By the path which ran down among the uncovered roots to the water's edge
Kovrin descended, frightening the snipe, and disturbing two ducks. On the
dark pine trees glowed the rays of the setting sun, but on the surface of the
river darkness had already fallen. Kovrin crossed the 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, enigmatical region in the west where the sun had
already set—where still, vast and majestic, flamed the afterglow.
"How open it is—how peaceful and free!" thought Kovrin, walking along
the path. "It seems as if all the world is looking at me from a hiding-place
and waiting for me to comprehend it."

A wave passed over the rye, and the light evening breeze blew softly on his
uncovered head. Yet a minute more and the breeze blew again, this time
more strongly, the rye rustled, and from behind came the dull murmur of the
pines. Kovrin stopped in amazement On the horizon, like a cyclone or
waterspout, a great, black pillar rose up from earth to heaven. Its outlines
were undefined; but from the first it might be seen that it was not standing
still, but moving with inconceivable speed towards Kovrin; and the nearer it
came the smaller and smaller it grew. Involuntarily Kovrin rushed aside and
made a path for it. A monk in black clothing, with grey hair and black
eyebrows, crossing his hands upon his chest, was borne past. His bare feet
were above the ground. Having swept some twenty yards past Kovrin, he
looked at him, nodded his head, and smiled kindly and at the same time
slyly. His face was 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 pine trees, 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 with the
fact that he had so closely and so plainly seen not only the black clothing
but even the face and eyes of the monk; agitated agreeably, he returned
home.
In the park and in the garden visitors were walking quietly; in the house the
music continued. So he alone had seen the Black Monk. He felt a strong
desire to tell what he had seen to Tánya and Yegor Semiónovitch, but feared
that they would regard it as a hallucination, and decided to keep his counsel.
He laughed loudly, sang, danced a mazurka, and felt in the best of spirits;
and the guests and Tánya noticed 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 own room,
and lay on the sofa. He wished to think of the monk. But in a few minutes
Tánya entered.

"There, Andrusha, you can read father's articles ..." she said. "They are
splendid articles. He writes very well."
"Magnificent!" said Yegor Semiónovitch, coming in after her, with a forced
smile. "Don't listen to her, please!... Or read them only if you want 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 could write a
whole treatise on gardening."
Yegor Semiónovitch laughed, blushed, and stammered out the conventional
phrases used by abashed authors. At last he gave in.
"If you must read them, read first these papers of Gauche's, and the Russian
articles," he stammered, picking out the papers with trembling hands.
"Otherwise you won't understand them. Before you read my replies you
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 and sighed
loudly.
"Akh, brother mine ..." he began after a long silence. As you see, my dear
Magister, I write articles, and exhibit at shows, and get medals sometimes.
... 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 are models.... Not
gardens at all, in short, but a whole institution of high political importance,
and a step towards a new era in Russian agriculture and Russian industry....
But for what purpose? What ultimate object?"
"That question is easily answered."
"I do not mean in that sense. What I want to know is what will happen with
the garden when I die? As things are, it would not last without me a single
month. The secret does not lie in the fact that the garden is big and the
workers many, but in the fact that I love the work—you understand? I love
it, perhaps, more than I love myself. Just look at me! 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 of rudeness. The whole secret is in love, in a sharp
master's eye, in a master's hands, and in the feeling when I drive over to a
friend and sit down for half an hour, that I have left my heart behind me and
am not myself—all the time I am in dread that something has happened to
the garden. Now suppose I die to-morrow, who will replace all this? Who
will do the work? The head gardeners? The workmen? Why the whole
burden of my present worries is that my greatest enemy is not the hare or
the beetle or the frost, but the hands of the stranger."
"But Tánya?" said Kovrin, laughing. "Surely she is not more dangerous
than a hare?... She loves and understands the work."
"Yes, Tánya loves it and understands it. If after my death the garden should
fall to her as mistress, then I could wish for nothing better. But suppose—
which God forbid—she should marry!" Yegor Semiónovitch whispered and
look at Kovrin with frightened eyes. "That's the whole crux. She might
marry, there would be children, and there would be no time to attend to the
garden. That is bad enough. But what I fear most of all is that she may
marry some spendthrift who is always in want of money, who will lease the
garden to tradesmen, and the whole thing will go to the devil in the first
year. In a business like this a woman, is the 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 am
afraid! You've seen that fop who comes along with a fiddle and makes a
noise. I know Tánya would never marry him, yet I cannot bear the sight of
him.... In short, brother, I am a character ... and I know it."
Yegor Semiónovitch rose and walked excitedly up and down the room. It
was plain that he had something very serious to say, but could not bring
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 I say what I think, and
dislike mystification. I tell you plainly, therefore, that you are the only man
whom I should not be afraid of Tánya marrying. You are a clever man, you
have a heart, and you would not see my life's work ruined. And what is

more, I love you as my own son ... and am proud of you. So if you and
Tánya were to end ... in a sort of romance ... I should be very glad and very
happy. I tell you this straight to your face, without shame, as becomes an
honest man."
Kovrin smiled. Yegor Semiónovitch opened the door, and was leaving the
room, but stopped suddenly on the threshold.
"And if you and Tánya had a son, I could make a horti-culturist out of him,"
he added. "But that is an idle fancy. Good night!"
Left alone, Kovrin settled himself comfortably, and took up his host's
articles. The first was entitled "Intermediate Culture," the second "A Few
Words in Reply to the Remarks of Mr. Z. about the Treatment of the Soil of
a New Garden," the third "More about Grafting." The others were similar in
scope. But all breathed restlessness and sickly irritation. Even a paper with
the peaceful title of "Russian Apple Trees" exhaled irritability. Yegor
Semiónovitch began with the words "Audi alteram partem," and ended it
with "Sapienti sat"; and between these learned quotations flowed a whole
torrent of acid words directed against "the learned ignorance of our patent
horticulturists who observe nature from their academic chairs," and against
M. Gauche, "whose fame is founded on the admiration of the profane and
dilletanti" And finally Kovrin came across an uncalled-for and quite
insincere expression of regret that it is no longer legal to flog peasants who
are caught stealing fruit and injuring trees.
"His is good work, wholesome and fascinating," thought Kovrin, "yet in
these 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 are nervous,
and victims of this kind of exalted sensitiveness. I suppose it must be so."
He thought of Tánya, so delighted with her father's articles, and then of
Yegor Semiónovitch. Tánya, small, pale, and slight, with her collar-bone
showing, with her widely-opened, her dark and clever eyes, which it
seemed were always searching for something. And Yegor Semiónovitch
with his little, hurried steps. He thought again of Tánya, fond of talking,
fond of argument, and always accompanying even the most insignificant
phrases with mimicry and gesticulation. Nervous—she must be nervous in
the highest degree. Again Kovrin began to read, but he understood nothing,
and threw down his books. The agreeable emotion with which he had

danced the mazurka and listened to the music still held possession of him,
and aroused a multitude of thoughts. It flashed upon him that if this strange,
unnatural monk had been seen by him alone, he must be ill, ill to the point
of suffering from hallucinations. The thought frightened him, but not for
long.
He sat on the sofa, and held his head in his hands, curbing the inexplicable
joy which filled his whole being; and then walked up and down the room
for a minute, and returned to his work. But the thoughts which he read in
books no longer satisfied him. He longed for something vast, infinite,
astonishing. Towards morning he undressed and went unwillingly to bed; he
felt that he had better rest. When at last he heard Yegor Semiónovitch going
to his work in the garden, he rang, and ordered 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 disagreeable
things to one another. This morning they had both been irritated, and Tánya
burst out crying and went to her room, coming down neither to dinner nor
to tea At first Yegor Semiónovitch marched about, solemn and dignified, as
if wishing to give everyone to understand that for him justice and order
were the supreme interests of life. But he was unable to keep this up for
long; his spirits fell, and he wandered about the park and sighed, "Akh, my
God!" At dinner he ate nothing, and at last, tortured by his conscience, he
knocked softly at the closed door, and called 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 immersed in his own
interesting work, but at last even he felt tired and uncomfortable. He

determined to interfere, and disperse the cloud before evening. He knocked
at Tánya's door, and was admitted.
"Come, come! What a shame!" he began jokingly; and then looked with
surprise 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 of tears gushed
out of her big eyes. "He tormented me!" she continued, wringing her hands.
"I never said a word to him.... I only said there was no need to keep
unnecessary labourers, if ... if we can get day workmen.... 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 your
scoldings and your cryings, and that is surely enough. You can't keep up this
for ever ... it is not right ... all the more since you know he loves you
infinitely."
"He has ruined my whole life," sobbed Tánya. "I never hear anything but
insults and affronts. He regards me as superfluous in his own house. Let
him! He will have cause! I shall leave here to-morrow, and study for a
position as telegraphist.... Let him!"
"Come, come. Stop crying, Tánya. It does you no good.... You are both
irritable and impulsive, and both in the wrong. Come, and I will make
peace!"
Kovrin spoke gently and persuasively, but Tánya continued to cry, twitching
her shoulders and wringing her hands as if she had been overtaken by a real
misfortune. Kovrin felt all the sorrier owing to the smallness of the cause of
her sorrow. What a trifle it took to make this little creature unhappy for a
whole day, or, as she had expressed it, for a whole life! And as he consoled
Tánya, it occurred to him that except this girl and her father there was not
one in the world who loved him as a kinsman; and had it not been for them,
he, left fatherless and motherless in early childhood, must have lived his
whole life without feeling one sincere caress, or tasting ever that simple,
unreasoning love which we feel only for those akin to us by blood. And he
felt that his tired, strained nerves, like magnets, responded to the nerves of

this crying, shuddering girl. He felt, too, that he could never love a healthy,
rosy-cheeked woman; but pale, weak, unhappy Tánya appealed to him.
He felt pleasure in looking at her hair and her shoulders; and he pressed her
hand, and wiped away her tears.... At last she ceased crying. But she still
continued to complain of her father, and of her insufferable life at home,
imploring Kovrin to try to realise her position. Then by degrees she began
to smile, and to sigh that God had cursed 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 Kovrin went into the garden. Yegor Semiónovitch and Tánya,
as if nothing had happened, We were walking side by side up the alley,
eating rye-bread and salt, we both were very hungry.

V

Pleased with his success as peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park. As he
sat on a bench and mused, he heal'd the rattle of a carnage and a woman's
laugh—visitors evidently again. Shadows fell in the garden, the sound of a
violin, the music of a woman's voice reached him almost inaudibly; and this
reminded him of the Black Monk. Whither, to what country, to what planet,
had that optical absurdity flown? Hardly had he called to mind the legend
and painted in imagination the black apparition in the rye-field when from
behind the pine trees opposite to him, walked inaudibly—without the
faintest rustling—a man of middle height. His grey head was uncovered, he
was dressed in black, and barefooted like a beggar. On his pallid, corpse-
like face stood out sharply a number of black spots. Nodding his head
politely the stranger or beggar walked noiselessly to the bench and sat
down, and Kovrin recognised the Black Monk. For a minute they looked at
one another, Kovrin with astonishment, but the monk kindly and, as before,
with a sly expression on his face.
"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin. "Why are you here, and why do you
sit in one place? That is not in accordance with the legend."
"It is all the same," replied the monk softly, turning his face towards
Kovrin. "The legend, the mirage, I—all are products of your own excited

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 as your
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 in reality you
had lived more than a thousand years," said Kovrin. "I did not 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 elected of
God. You serve eternal truth. Your thoughts, your intentions, your
astonishing science, all your life bear the stamp of divinity, a heavenly
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 and
necessary 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 future be
brought. Without you, ministers to the highest principles, living freely and
consciously, humanity would be nothing; developing in the natural order it
must wait the end of its earthly history. But you, by some thousands of
years, hasten it into the kingdom of eternal truth—and in this is your high
service. You embody in yourself the blessing 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 of knowledge; it
is in this sense it was said: 'In My Father's house are many mansions....'"
"You cannot conceive what a joy it is to me to listen to you," said Kovrin,
rubbing his hands with delight.
"I am glad."

"Yet I know that when you leave me I shall be tormented by doubt as to
your reality. You are a phantom, a hallucination. But that means that 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 you have overstrained your
powers, because you have borne your health in sacrifice to one idea, and the
time is near when you will sacrifice not merely it but your life also. What
more could you desire? It is what all 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 trusts
have not also seen visions? Genius, they tell you now, is akin to insanity.
Believe me, the healthy and the normal are but ordinary men—the herd.
Fears as to a nervous age, over-exhaustion and degeneration can trouble
seriously only those whose aims in life lie in the 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 distinguish poets, prophets,
martyrs to ideas from ordinary men are incompatible with the animal life,
that is, with physical health. I repeat, if you wish to be healthy and normal
go with the herd."
"How strange that you should repeat what I myself have so often thought!"
said Kovrin. "It seems as if you had watched me and listened to my secret
thoughts. But do not talk about me. What do you imply by the words:
eternal truth?"
The monk made no answer. Kovrin looked at him, but could not make out
his face. His features clouded and melted away; his head and arms
disappeared; his body faded into the bench and into the twilight, and
vanished 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 said
to him flattered, not his self-love, but his soul, his whole being. To be the
elected, to minister to eternal truth, to stand in the ranks of those who
hasten by thousands of years the making mankind worthy of the kingdom of
Christ, to deliver humanity from thousands of years of struggle, sin, and
suffering, to give to one idea everything, youth, strength, health, to die for

the general welfare—what an exalted, what a glorious ideal! And when
through his memory flowed his past life, a life pure and chaste and full of
labour, when he remembered what he had learnt and what he had taught, he
concluded that in the words of the monk there was no exaggeration.
Through the park, to meet him, came Tánya. She was wearing a different
dress from that in which he had last seen her.
"You here?" she cried. "We were looking for you, looking.... But what has
happened?" she asked in surprise, looking into his glowing, enraptured face,
and into his eyes, now full of tears. "How strange you are, Andrusha!"
"I am satisfied, Tánya," said Kovrin, laying his hand upon her shoulder. "I
am more than satisfied; I am happy! Tánya, dear Tánya, you are
inexpressibly dear to me. Tánya, I am so glad!"
He kissed both her hands warmly, and continued: "I have just lived through
the brightest, most wonderful, most unearthly moments.... But I cannot tell
you all, for you would call me mad, or refuse to believe me.... Let me speak
of you! Tánya, I love you, and have long loved you. To have you near me,
to meet you ten times a day, has become a necessity for me. I do not know
how I shall live without you when I go home."
"No!" laughed Tánya. "You will forget us all in two days. We are little
people, 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 not come,
and, instead, red spots stood out on her cheeks. She breathed quickly, and
walked on rapidly into the park.
"I did not think ... I never thought of this ... never thought," she said,
pressing her hands together as if in despair.
But Kovrin hastened after her, and, with the same glowing, enraptured face,
continued to speak.
"I wish for a love which will take possession of me altogether, and this love
only you, Tánya, can give me. I am happy! How happy!"
She was overcome, bent, withered up, and seemed suddenly to have aged
ten years. But Kovrin found her beautiful, and loudly expressed his ecstacy:

"How lovely she is!"

VI

When he learned from Kovrin that not only had a romance resulted, but that
a wedding was to follow, Yegor Semiónovitch walked from corner to
corner, and tried to conceal his agitation. His hands shook, his neck seemed
swollen and purple; he ordered the horses to be put into his racing droschky,
and drove away. Tánya, seeing how he whipped the horses and how he
pushed his cap down over his ears, understood his mood, locked herself into
her room, and cried all day.
In the orangery the peaches and plums were already ripe. The packing and
despatch to Moscow of such a delicate load required much attention,
trouble, and bustle. Owing to the heat of the summer every tree had to be
watered; the process was costly in time and working-power; and many
caterpillars appeared, which the workmen, and even Yegor Semiónovitch
and Tánya, crushed with their fingers, to the great disgust of Kovrin. The
autumn orders for fruit and trees had to be attended to, and a vast
correspondence carried on. And at the very busiest time, when it seemed no
one had a free moment, work began in the fields and deprived the garden of
half its workers. Yegor Semiónovitch, very sunburnt, very irritated, and
very worried, galloped about, now to the garden, now to the fields; and all
the time shouted that they were tearing him to bits, and that he would put a
bullet through his brain.
On top of all came the bustle over Tánya's trousseau, to which the
Pesótskys attributed infinite significance. With the eternal snipping of
scissors, rattle of sewing-machines, smell of flat-irons, and the caprices of
the nervous and touchy dressmaker, the whole house seemed to 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 if love and happiness had suddenly
burst upon her, although ever since her fourteenth year she had been certain
that Kovrin would marry nobody but herself. She was eternally in a state of

astonishment, doubt, and disbelief in herself. At one moment she was seized
by such great joy 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
would have to leave the home of her childhood and forsake her father; and
she was frightened by the thought—God knows whence it came—that she
was 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 broke in upon her that
Kovrin was a singularly handsome man, that all the women loved him and
envied her; and in these moments her heart was as full 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 her altogether; she helped her father
mechanically, noticing neither pears nor caterpillars, nor workmen, nor how
swiftly time was passing by.
Yegor Semiónovitch was in much the same state of mind. He still worked
from morning to night, Hew about the gardens, and lost his temper; but all
the while he was wrapped in a magic reverie. In his sturdy body contended
two men, one the real Yegor Semiónovitch, who, when he listened to the
gardener, Ivan Karlovitch's report of some mistake or disorder, went mad
with excitement, and tore his hair; and the other the unreal Yegor
Semiónovitch—a half-intoxicated old man, who broke off an important
conversation in the middle of a word, seized the gardener by the shoulder,
and stammered:
"You may say what you like, but blood is thicker than water. His mother
was an astonishing, a most noble, a most brilliant woman. It was a pleasure
to see her good, pure, open, angel face. She painted beautifully, 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 silence
continued:
"When he was a boy growing up to manhood in my house he had just such
an angel face, open and good. His looks, his movements, his words were as
gentle and graceful as his mother's. And his intellect It is not for nothing he
has the degree of Magister. But you just wait, Ivan Karlovitch; you'll see

what he'll be in ten years' time. Why, he'll be out of sight!" But here the real
Yegor Semiónovitch remembered himself, seized his head and roared:
"Devils! Frost-bitten! Ruined, destroyed! The garden is ruined; the garden
is destroyed!" Kovrin worked with all his former ardour, and hardly noticed
the bustle about him. Love only poured oil on the flames. After every
meeting with Tánya, he returned to his rooms in rapture and happiness, and
set to work with his books and manuscripts with 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 eternal truth, and of the glorious future of
humanity, gave to all his work a peculiar, unusual significance. Once or
twice every week, either in the park or in the house, he met the monk, and
talked with him for hours; but this did not frighten, but on the contrary
delighted him, for he was now assured that such apparitions visit only the
elect and exceptional who dedicate themselves to the ministry of ideas.
Assumption passed unobserved. Then came the wedding, celebrated by the
determined wish of Yegor Semiónovitch with what was called éclat, that is,
with meaningless festivities which lasted for two days. Three thousand
roubles were consumed in food and drink; but what with the vile music, the
noisy toasts, the fussing servants, the clamour, and the closeness of the
atmosphere, no one appreciated the expensive wines or the astonishing hors
d'oeuvres specially ordered from Moscow.

VII

One of the long winter nights. Kovrin lay in bed, reading a French novel.
Poor Tánya, whose head every evening ached as the result of the
unaccustomed life in town, had long been sleeping, muttering incoherent
phrases in her dreams.
The dock struck three. Kovrin put out the candle and lay down, lay for a
long time with dosed eyes unable to sleep owing to the heat of the room and
Tánya's continued muttering. At half-past four he again lighted the candle.
The Black Monk was sitting in a chair beside his bed.

"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 been
reading, the hero is a young man who does foolish things, and dies from a
passion for glory. To me this passion is inconceivable."
"Because you are too clever. You look indifferently on fame as a toy which
cannot interest you."
"That is true."
"Celebrity has no attractions for you. What flattery, joy, or instruction can a
man draw from the knowledge that his name will be graven on a
monument, when time will efface the inscription sooner or later? Yes,
happily there are too many of you for brief human memory to remember all
your names."
"Of course," said Kovrin. "And why remember them?... But let us talk of
something else. Of happiness, for instance. What is this happiness?"
When the clock struck five he was sitting on the bed with his feet trailing on
the carpet and his head turned to the monk, and saying:
"In ancient times a man became frightened at his happiness, so great it was,
and to placate the gods laid before them in sacrifice his beloved ring. You
have heard? Now I, like Polycrates, am a little frightened at my own
happiness. From morning to night I experience only joy—joy absorbs me
and stifles all other feelings. I do not know the meaning of grief affliction,
or weariness. I speak seriously, I am beginning to doubt."
"Why?" asked the monk in an astonished tone. "Then you think joy is a
supernatural feeling? You think it is not the normal condition of things? No!
The higher a man has climbed in mental and moral development the freer
he is, the greater satisfaction he draws from life. Socrates, Diogenes,
Marcus Aurelius knew joy and not sorrow. And the apostle said, 'rejoice
exceedingly.' Rejoice and be happy!"
"And suddenly the gods will be angered," said Kovrin jokingly. "But it
would hardly be to my taste if they were to steal my happiness and force me
to shiver and starve."

Tánya awoke, and looked at her husband with amazement and terror. He
spoke, he turned to the chair, he gesticulated, and laughed; his eyes glittered
and his laughter sounded strange.
"Andrusha, whom are you speaking to?" she asked, seizing the hand which
he 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 defend him
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 the chair,
now empty, and suddenly felt weakness in his arms and legs. He began to
dress. "It is nothing, Tánya, nothing, ..." he stammered, and still shuddered.
"But I am a little unwell.... It is time to recognise it."
"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 to yourself, and
smiling so strangely, ... and you do not sleep. O, my God, 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 Kovrin understood
the danger of his position, and realised the meaning of the Black Monk and
of their conversations. It became plain to him that he was mad.
Both, themselves not knowing why, dressed and went into the hall; she first,
he after her. There they found Yegor Semiónovitch in his dressing-gown. He
was staying with them, and had been awakened by Tánya's sobs.
"Do not be afraid, Andrusha," said Tánya, trembling as if in fever. "Do not
be afraid ... father, this will pass off ... it will pass off."
Kovrin was so agitated that he could hardly speak. But he tried to treat the
matter as a joke. He turned to his father-in-law and attempted to say:

"Congratulate me ... it seems I have gone out of my mind." But his lips only
moved, and he smiled bitterly.
At nine o'clock they put on his overcoat and a fur cloak, wrapped him up in
a shawl, and drove him to the doctor's. He began a course of treatment.

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 only
remained for him to recruit his physical strength. He lived with his father-
in-law, drank much milk, worked only two hours a day, never touched wine,
and gave up smoking.
On the evening of the 19th June, before Elijah's day, a vesper service was
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. He went into the
garden. Taking no notice of the gorgeous blossoms around him he walked
up and down, sat for a while on a bench, and then walked through the park.
He descended the sloping bank to the margin of the river, and stood still,
looking questioningly at the water. The great pines, with their shaggy roots,
which a year before had seen him so young, so joyous, so active, no longer
whispered, but stood silent and motionless, as if not recognising him....
And, indeed, with his short-dipped hair, his feeble walk, and his changed
face, so heavy and pale and changed since last year, he would hardly have
been recognised anywhere.
He crossed the stream. In the field, last year covered with rye, lay rows of
reaped oats. The sun had set, and on the horizon flamed a broad, red
afterglow, fore-telling stormy weather. All was quiet; and, gazing towards
the point at which a year before he had first seen the Black Monk, Kovrin
stood twenty minutes watching the crimson fade. When he returned to the
house, tired and unsatisfied, Yegor Semiónovitch and Tánya were sitting on
the steps of the terrace, drinking tea. They were talking together, and,
seeing Kovrin, stopped. But Kovrin knew by their faces 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 drink it. 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 in weight since last Friday." He pressed his hands to his
head and said in 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 gone
out of my mind ... I had the mania of greatness. ... But for all that I was
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, how cruelly... 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 is stupid
even to listen to you."
"Then you need not listen."
The presence of others, especially of Yegor Semiónovitch, now irritated
Kovrin; he answered his father-in-law drily, coldly, even rudely, and could
not look on him without contempt and hatred. And Yegor Semiónovitch felt
confused, and coughed guiltily, although he could not see how he was in the
wrong. Unable to understand the cause of such a sudden reversal of their
former hearty relations, Tánya leaned against her father, and looked with
alarm into his eyes. It was becoming plain to her that their relations every
day grew worse and worse, that her father had aged greatly, and that her
husband had become irritable, capricious, excitable, and uninteresting. She
no longer laughed and sang, she ate nothing, and whole nights never slept,
but lived under the weight of some impending terror, torturing herself so
much that she lay insensible from dinner-time till evening. When the
service was being held, it had seemed to her that her father was crying; and
now as she sat on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.

"How happy were Buddha and Mahomet and Shakespeare that their kind-
hearted kinsmen and doctors did not cure them of ecstacy and inspiration!"
said Kovrin. "If Mahomet had taken potassium bromide for his nerves,
worked only two hours a day, and drunk milk, that astonishing man would
have left as little behind him as his dog. Doctors and kind-hearted relatives
only do their best to make humanity stupid, and the time will come when
mediocrity will be considered genius, and humanity will perish. If you only
had some idea," concluded Kovrin peevishly, "if you only had some idea
how grateful I am!" He felt strong irritation, and to prevent himself saying
too much, rose and went into the house. It was a windless night, and into
the window was borne the smell of tobacco plants and jalap. Through the
windows of the great dark hall, on the floor and on the piano, fell the
moonrays. Kovrin recalled the raptures of the summer before, when the air,
as now, was full of the smell of jalap and the moonrays poured through the
window.... To awaken the mood of last year he went to his room, lighted a
strong cigar, and ordered the servant to bring him wine. But now the cigar
was bitter and distasteful, and the wine had lost its flavour of the year
before. How much it means to get out of practice! From a single cigar, and
two sips of wine, his head went round, and he was obliged to take bromide
of potassium.
Before going to bed Tánya said to him:
"Listen. Father worships you, but you are annoyed with him about
something, and that is killing him. Look at his face; he is growing old, not
by days but by hours! I implore you, Andrusha, for the love of Christ, for
the sake of your own dead father, for the sake of my peace of 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 your father."
"I cannot, cannot understand," said Tánya. She pressed her hands to her
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, an exceptional man—get

irritated over trifles. ... You are annoyed by such little things that at any
other time you yourself would have refused to believe it. No ... do not be
angry, do not be angry," she continued, kissing his hands, and frightened by
her own words. "You are clever, good, and noble. You will be just to father.
He is so good."
"He is not good, but merely good-humoured. These vaudeville uncles—of
your father's type—with well-fed, easy-going faces, are characters in their
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 the marrow of their
bones.... Most disgusting of all is their satiety, and this 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 weary and 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 massacred infants.
Of course!"
His face seemed to Tánya ugly and disagreeable. The expression of hatred
and contempt did not suit it. She even observed that something was lacking
in his face; ever since his hair had been cut off, it seemed changed. She felt
an almost irresistible desire to say something insulting, but restrained
herself in time, and overcome with terror, went out of the bedroom.

IX

Kovrin received an independent chair. His inaugural address was fixed for
the 2nd of December, and a notice to that effect was posted in the corridors
of the University. But when the day came a telegram was received by the
University authorities that he could not fulfil the engagement, owing to
illness.
Blood came from his throat. He spat it up, and twice in one month it flowed
in streams. He felt terribly weak, and fell into a somnolent condition. But

this illness did not frighten him, for he knew that his dead mother had lived
with the same complaint more than ten years. His doctors, too, declared that
there was no danger, and advised him merely not to worry, to lead a regular
life, and to talk less.
In January the lecture was postponed for the same reason, and in February it
was too late to begin the course. It was postponed till the following year.
He no longer lived with Tánya, but with another woman, older than himself,
who looked after him as if he were a child. His temper was calm and
obedient; he submitted willingly, and when Varvara Nikolaievna—that was
her name—made arrangements for taking him to the Crimea, he consented
to go, although he felt that from the change no good 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 by the
journey. Varvara Nikolaievna drank tea, and went to bed. But Kovrin
remained up. An hour before leaving home for the railway station he had
received a letter from Tánya, which he had not read; and the thought of this
letter caused him unpleasant agitation. In the depths of his heart he knew
that his marriage with Tánya had been a mistake. He was glad that he was
finally parted from her; but the remembrance of this woman, who towards
the last had seemed to turn into a walking, living mummy, in which all had
died except the great, clever eyes, awakened in him only pity and vexation
against himself. The writing on the envelope reminded him that two years
before he had been guilty of cruelty and injustice, and that he had avenged
on people in no way guilty his spiritual vacuity, his solitude, his
disenchantment with life.... He remembered how he had once torn into
fragments his dissertation and all the articles written by him since the time
of his illness, and thrown them out of the window, how the fragments flew
in the wind and rested on the trees and flowers; in every page he had seen
strange and baseless pretensions, frivolous irritation, and a mania for
greatness. And all this had produced upon him an impression that he had
written a description of his own faults. Yet when the last copybook had been
tom up and thrown out of the window, he felt bitterness and vexation, and
went to his wife and spoke to her cruelly. Heavens, how he had ruined her
life! He remembered how once, wishing to cause her pain, he had told her
that her father had played in their romance an unusual role, and had even
asked him to marry her; and Yegor Semiónovitch, happening to overhear

him, had rushed into the room, so dumb with consternation that he could
not utter a word, but only stamped his feet on one spot and bellowed
strangely as if his tongue had been cut out. And Tánya, looking at her
father, cried out in a heartrending voice, and fell insensible on the floor. It
was hideous.
The memory of all this returned to him at the sight of the well-known
handwriting. He went out on to the balcony. It was warm and calm, and a
salt smell came to him from the sea. The moonlight, and the lights around,
were imaged on the surface of the wonderful bay—a surface of a hue
impossible to name. It was a tender and soft combination of dark blue and
green; in parts the water resembled copperas, and in parts, instead of water,
liquid moonlight filled the bay. And all these combined in a harmony of
hues which exhaled tranquillity and exaltation.
In the lower story of the inn, underneath the balcony, the windows were
evidently 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, returning to his
room, began to read:
"My father has just died. For this I am indebted to you, for it was you who
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 am indebted to you. I
hate you with all my soul, and wish that you may perish soon! Oh, how I
suffer I My heart bums with an intolerable pain!... May you be accursed! I
took you for an exceptional man, for a genius; I loved you, and you proved
a madman...."
Kovrin could read no more; he tore up the letter and threw the pieces
away.... He was overtaken by restlessness—almost by terror.... On the other
side of the screen, slept Varvara Nikolaievna; he could hear her breathing.
From the story beneath came the women's voices and laughter, but he felt
that in the whole hotel there was not one living soul except himself. The
fact that wretched, overwhelmed Tánya had cursed him in her letter, and
wished him ill, caused him pain; and he looked fearfully at the door as if
fearing to see again that unknown power which in two years had brought
about so much ruin in his own life and in the lives of all who were dearest
to him.

By experience he knew that when the nerves give way the best refuge lies
in work. He used to sit at the table and concentrate his mind upon some
definite thought. He took from his red portfolio a copybook containing the
conspect of a small work of compilation which he intended to carry out
during his stay in the Crimea, if he became tired of inactivity.... He sat at
the table, and worked on this conspect, and it seemed to him that he was
regaining his former peaceful, resigned, impersonal mood. His conspect led
him to speculation on the vanity of the world. He thought of the great price
which life demands for the most trivial and ordinary benefits which it gives
to men. To reach a chair of philosophy under forty years of age; to be an
ordinary professor; to expound commonplace thoughts—and those thoughts
the thoughts of others—in feeble, tiresome, heavy language; in one word, to
attain the position of a learned mediocrity, he had studied fifteen years,
worked day and night, passed through a severe psychical disease, survived
an unsuccessful marriage—been guilty of many follies and injustices which
it was torture to remember. Kovrin now clearly realised that he was a
mediocrity, and he was willingly reconciled to it, 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 and hindered
the concentration of his thoughts. He rose, picked up the fragments, and
threw them out of the window. But a light wind blew from the sea, and the
papers fluttered back on to the window sill. Again he was overtaken by
restlessness akin to terror, and it seemed to him that in the whole hotel
except himself there was not one living soul.... He went on to the balcony.
The bay, as if alive, stared up at him from its multitude 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's voices
sang. All this was known to him. The song which they sang told of a young
girl, diseased in imagination, who heard by night in a garden mysterious
sounds, and found in them a harmony and a holiness incomprehensible to us
mortals. ... Kovrin held his breath, his heart ceased to beat, and the magical,
ecstatic rapture which he had long forgotten trembled in his heart again.
A high, black pillar, like a cyclone or waterspout, appeared on the opposite
coast. It swept with incredible swiftness across the bay towards the hotel; it
became smaller and smaller, and Kovrin stepped aside to make room for

it.... The monk, with uncovered grey head, with black eyebrows, barefooted,
folding his arms upon his chest, swept past him, and stopped in the middle
of the room.
"Why did you not believe me?" he asked in a tone of reproach, looking
caressingly at Kovrin. "If you had believed me when I said you were a
genius, these last two years would not have been passed so sadly and so
barrenly."
Kovrin again believed that he was the elected of God and a genius; he
vividly remembered all his former conversation with the Black Monk, and
wished to reply. But the blood flowed from his throat on to his chest, and
he, not knowing what to do, moved his hands about his chest till his cuffs
were red with the blood. He wished to call Varvara Nikolaievna, who slept
behind the screen, and making an effort to do so, 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 miraculous flowers,
cried to the park, to the pines with their shaggy roots, to the rye-field, cried
to his marvellous science, to his youth, his daring, his joy, cried to the life
which had been so beautiful. He saw on the floor before him a great pool of
blood, and from weakness could not utter a single word. But an
inexpressible, infinite joy filled his whole being. Beneath the balcony the
serenade was being played, and the Black Monk whispered to him that he
was a genius, and died only because his feeble, mortal body had lost its
balance, and could no longer serve as the covering of genius.
When Varvara Nikolaievna awoke, and came from behind her screen,
Kovrin was 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 exclusively for travellers,"—

at a big, unpainted table, sat a tall and broad-shouldered man of about forty
years of age. With his elbows on the table and his head lasting on his hands,
he slept. A fragment of a tallow candle, stuck in a pomade jar, illumined his
fair hair, his thick, broad nose, his sunburnt cheeks, and the beetling brows
that hung over his closed eyes.... Taken one by one, all his features—his
nose, his cheeks, his eyebrows—were as rude and heavy as the furniture in
"The Traveller" taken together they produced an effect of singular harmony
and beauty. Such, indeed, is often the character of the Russian face; the
bigger, the sharper the individual features, the softer and more benevolent
the whole. The sleeper was dressed as one of good class, in a threadbare
jacket bound with new wide braid, a plush waistcoat, and loose black
trousers, vanishing in big boots.
On a bench which stretched the whole way round the room slept a girl some
eight years of age. She lay upon a foxskin overcoat, and wore a brown dress
and long black stockings. Her face was pale, her hair fair, her shoulders
narrow, her body slight and frail; but her nose ended in just such an ugly
lump as the man's. She slept soundly, and did not seem to feel that the
crescent comb which had fallen from her hair was cutting into her cheek.
"The Traveller" had a holiday air. The atmosphere smelt of newly-washed
floors; there were no rags on the line which stretched diagonally across the
room; and in the ikon corner, casting a red reflection upon the image of St.
George the Victory-Bringer, burned a lamp. With a severe and cautious
gradation from the divine to the earthly, there stretched from each side of
the image row of gaudily-painted pictures. In the dim light thrown from the
lamp and candle-end these pictures seemed to form a continuous belt
covered with black patches; but when the tiled stove, wishing to sing in
accord with the weather, drew in the blast with a howl, and the logs, as if
angered, burst into ruddy flames and roared with rage, rosy patches
quivered along the walls; and above the head of the sleeping man might be
seen first the faces of seraphim, then the Shah Nasr Edin, and finally a
greasy, sunburnt boy, with staring eyes, whispering something into the ear
of a girl with a singularly blunt and indifferent face.
The storm howled outside. Something wild and angry, but deeply miserable,
whirled round the inn with the fury of a beast, and strove to burst its way in.
It banged against the doors, it beat on the windows and roof, it tore the
walls, it threatened, it implored, it quieted down, and then with the joyous

howl of triumphant treachery it rushed up the stove pipe; but here the logs
burst into flame, and the fire, like a chained hound, rose up in rage to meet
its enemy. There was a sobbing, a hissing, and an angry roar. In all this
might be distinguished both irritated weariness and unsatisfied hate, and the
angered impotence of one accustomed to victory.
Enchanted by the wild, inhuman music, "The Traveller" seemed numbed
into immobility for ever. But the door creaked on its hinges, and into the 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 went out The bells of
the village church of Rogatchi, three hundred yards away, began to strike
twelve. It was midnight The storm played with the sounds as with
snowflakes, it chased them to infinite distances, it cut some short and
stretched some into long undulating notes; and it smothered others
altogether in the universal tumult But suddenly a chime resounded so loudly
through the room that it might have been rung under the window. The girl
on the foxskin overcoat started and raised hex head. For a moment she
gazed vacantly at the black window, then turned 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 sounded outside
the door. Again the hinges squeaked, and indistinct voices were heard.
Someone entered, shook the snow from his coat, and stamped his feet
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, dressed
in a coachman's caftan, covered with snow from head to foot. He stooped
under the weight of a heavy portmanteau. Behind him entered a little female
figure, not half his height, faceless and handless, rolled into a shapeless

bundle, and covered also with snow. Both coachman and bundle 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 our losing the
way."
"Lose our way or not, it's all the same ... the horses won't go an inch
farther," answered the coachman. "Lord bless you, miss.... As if I had done
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 the
portmanteau, snuffled, and went out And the little girl, watching, saw two
tiny hands creeping out of the middle of the bundle, stretching upward, and
undoing the network of shawls, handkerchiefs, and scarfs. First on the floor
fell a heavy shawl, then a hood, and after it a white knitted muffler. Having
freed its head, the bundle removed its cloak, and shrivelled suddenly into
half its former size. Now it appeared in a long, grey ulster, with immense
buttons and yawning pockets. From one pocket it drew a paper parcel. From
the other came a bunch of keys, which the bundle put down so incautiously
that the sleeping man started and opened his eyes. For a moment he looked
around him 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 its
ulster, again reduced itself by half, drew off its shoes, and also sat down.
It no longer resembled a bundle. It was a woman, a tiny, fragile brunette of
some twenty years of age, thin as a serpent, with a long pale face, and curly
hair. Her nose was long and sharp, her chin long and sharp, her eyelashes
long; and thanks to a general sharpness the expression of her face was
stinging. Dressed in a tight-fitting black gown, with lace on the neck and
sleeves, with sharp elbows and long, rosy fingers, she called to mind
portraits of English ladies of the middle of the century. The serious, self-
centred expression of her face served only to increase the resemblance.
The brunette looked around the room, glanced sidelong at the man and girl,
and, shrugging her shoulders, went over and sat at the window. The dark
windows trembled in the damp west wind. Outside great flakes of snow,

flashing white, darted against the glass, clung to it for a second, 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 stature and
long beard, went to the bench.
"You're not sleeping, dearie? What do you want?" He spoke in the voice of
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 in the tone
employed by husbands when they make excuses to their angry wives. "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 on
for another twenty days!"
"Listen, friend, I give you my word of honour that this is the last day. I
never tell you untruths. If the storm delayed us, that is not my fault."
"I can bear it no longer! I cannot! I cannot!"
Sasha pulled in her leg sharply, and filled the room with a disagreeable
whining cry. Her father waved his arm, and looked absent-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 to have a
sore shoulder ... but what can be done?"
"The fact is, mademoiselle," said the man apologetically, "we have had no
sleep for two nights, and drove here in a villainous cart. No wonder she 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 I feel almost drunk. Listen, Sasha
... even as they are things are bad enough ... 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. If you are
ill, dearie, you must undress and go to sleep.... Come, let me undress you!"
With the girl undressed and comforted, silence again took possession of the
room. The brunette sat at the window, and looked questioningly at the wall,
the ikon, and the stove. Apparently things around seemed very strange to
her, the room, the girl with her fat nose and boy's short nightgown, and the
girl's father. That strange man sat in the corner, looking vacantly about him
like a drunken man, and nibbing his face with his hands. He kept silence,
blinked his eyes; and judging from his guilty figure no one would expect
that he would be the first to break 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 to express by
it? But life sometimes makes such a salto mortale, that you look and can't
believe your eyes. Are you going far, miss?"
"Not very far," answered the brunette. "I was going from home, about
twenty versts away, to a farm of ours where my father and brother are
staying. I am Mademoiselle Ilováisky, and the farm is Ilováisk. It is twelve
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 the
pomade jar.
"Get the samovar!" said the man.
"Nobody drinks tea at this hour," grinned the boy. "It is a sin before Mass."
"Don't you mind ... it is not you that'll burn in hell, but we...."
While they drank their tea the conversation continued. Mdlle. Ilováisky
learned that the stranger's name was Grigóri Petróvitch Likharyóff, that he
was a brother of Likharyóff, the Marshal of the Nobility in the neighbouring
district, that he had himself once been a landed proprietor, but had gone
through everything. And in turn Likharyóff learned that his companion was
Márya Mikháilovna Ilováisky, that her father had a large estate, and that all
the management fell upon her shoulders, as both father and brother were

improvident, looked at life through 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 of moving her fingers
before her stinging face, and after every phrase, licking her lips with a
pointed tongue); "they are the mast helpless creatures on the face of the
earth, and can't lift a finger to help themselves. My father is muddle-headed,
and my brother every evening tired off his feet. Imagine!... who is to get
them food after the Fast? Mother is dead, and our servants cannot lay a
cloth without my supervision. They will be without proper food, while I
spend all night here. 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 love these holidays. My
brother, for instance, says there is no God, but at Easter he is the first to run
off to the morning service." Likharyóff lifted his eyes, turned them on his
companion and laughed.
"They say that there is no God," continued Mdlle. Ilováisky, also laughing,
"but why then, be so good as to tell me, do all celebrated writers, scholars,
and clever men generally, believe at the close of their lives?"
"The man who in youth has not learnt to believe does not believe in old age,
be he a thousand times a writer."
Judged by his cough, Likharyóff had a bass voice, but now either from fear
of speaking too loud, or from a needless bashfulness, he spoke in a 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 the same as
talent ... it is congenital. As far as I can judge from my own case, from those
whom I have met in life, from all that I see around me, this congenital faith
is inherent in all Russians to an astonishing degree.... May I have another
cup? ... Russian life presents itself as a continuous series of faiths and
infatuations, but unbelief or negation it has not—if I may so express it—
even smelt. That a Russian does not believe in God is merely a way of
saying that he believes in something else."

Likharyóff took from Mdlle. Ilováisky another cup of tea, gulped down half
of it at once, and continued: "Let me tell you about myself. In my soul
Nature planted exceptional capacity for belief. Half my life have I lived an
atheist and a Nihilist, yet never was there a single moment when I did not
believe. Natural gifts display themselves generally in early childhood, and
my capacity for faith showed itself at a time when I could walk upright
underneath the table. My mother used to make us children eat a lot, and
when she gave us our meals, she had a habit of saying, 'Eat, children; there's
nothing on earth like soup!' I believed this; I ate soup ten times a day,
swallowed it like a shark to the point of vomiting and disgust. My nurse
used to tell me fairy tales, and I believed in ghosts, in fairies, in wood-
demons, in every kind of monster. I remember well! I used to steal
corrosive sublimate from father'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 read and to understand what I read, my beliefs got beyond
description. I even ran away to America, I joined a gang of robbers, I tried
to enter a monastery, I hired boys to torture me for Christ's sake. When I ran
away to America I did not go alone, but took with me just such another fool,
and I was glad when we froze nearly to death, and when I was flogged.
When I ran away to join the robbers, I returned every time with a broken
skin. Most untranquil childhood! But when I was sent to school, and
learned that the earth goes round the sun, and that white light so far from
being white is composed of seven primary colours, my head went round
entirely. At home everything seemed hideous, my mother, in the name of
Elijah, denying lightning conductors, my father indifferent to the truths I
preached. My new enlightenment inspired me! Like a madman I rushed
about the house; I preached my truths to the stable boys, I was driven to
despair by ignorance, I flamed with hatred against all who saw in white
light only white.... But this is nonsense.... Serious, so to speak, manly
infatuations began with me only 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 this science
is. All sciences, whatever they may be, have only one and the same
passport, without which they are meaningless—an aspiration to truth! 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 are captivated from the first. I
tell you, there is nothing more seductive and gracious, nothing so seizes and
overwhelms the human soul, as the beginning of a science. In the first five
or six lectures you are exalted by the very brightest hopes—you seem
already the master of eternal truth.... Well, I gave myself to science
passionately, as to a woman loved. I was its slave, and, except it, would
recognise no other sun. Day and night, night and day, without unbending
my back, I studied. I learnt off formulas by heart; I ruined myself on books;
I wept when I saw with my own eyes others exploiting science for personal
aims. ... But I got over my infatuation soon. The fact is, every science has a
beginning, but it has no end—it is like a recurring decimal. 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 from the end as now, for all contemporary
scientific research consists in the multiplication of figures.... This I began to
understand when I myself discovered the thirty-five-thousand-and-first
species, and gained no satisfaction. But I had no disillusion to outlive, for a
new faith immediately appeared. I thrust myself into Nihilism with its
proclamations, its hideous deeds, its tricks of all sorts. I went down to the
people; I served as factory-hand; I greased the axles of railway carriages; I
turned myself into a bargee. It was while thus wandering all over the face of
Russia that I first saw Russian life. I became an impassioned admirer of that
life. I loved the Russian people to distraction; I loved and trusted in its God,
in its language, in its creations.... And so on eternally.... In my time I have
been a Slavophile, and bored Aksakoff with my letters; and an
Ukrainophile, and an archaeologist, and a collector of specimens of popular
creative art ... I have been earned away by ideas, by men, by events, by
places.... I have been carried away unceasingly.... Five years ago I
embodied as the negation of property; my latest faith was non-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 have
something to remember."
"Yes, yes; it is all very genial when you sit at the tea-table and gossip with a
good companion; but you do not ask me what has all this gaiety cast me.
With what have I paid for the diversity of my life? You must remember, in
the first place, that I did not believe like a German Doctor of Philosophy. I
did not live as a hermit, but my every faith bent me as a bow, and tore my
body to pieces. Judge for yourself! Once I was as rich as my brother: now I
am a beggar. Into this whirlpool of infatuation I cast my own estate, the
property of my wife, the money of many others. I am forty-two to-day, with
old age staring me in the face, 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 constant torment; I suffered even from my hopes.... I have worn myself
out with heavy unregulated work; I have suffered deprivation; five times I
have been in prison. I have wandered through Archangel and Tobolsk ... the
very memory sickens me. I lived, but in the vortex never felt the process of
life. Will you believe it, I never noticed how my wife loved me—when my
children were born. What more can I tell you? To all who loved me I
brought misfortune.... My mother has mourned for me now fifteen years,
and my own brothers, who through me have been made to blush, who have
been made to bend their backs, whose hearts have been sickened, whose
money has been wasted, have grown at last to hate me like 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 away when I
remember how often in my infatuations I was ridiculous, far from the truth,
unjust, cruel, dangerous! How often with my whole soul have I hated and
despised those whom I ought to have loved, and loved those whom I ought
to have hated! To-day, I believe; I fall down on my face and worship: to-
morrow, like a coward, I flee from the gods and friends of yesterday, and
silently swallow some scoundrel! God alone 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 my conscience is unclean! I cannot even
boast that my hands are unstained with blood, for before my own eyes my
wife faded to death—worn out by my improvidence. My own wife!...
Listen; there are now in fashion two opposing opinions of woman. One

class measures her skull to prove that she is lower than man, to determine
her defects, to justify their own animality. The other would employ all their
strength in lifting woman to their own level—that is to say, force her to
learn by heart thirty-five thousand species of insects, to talk and write the
same nonsense as they themselves talk and write." Likharyóff's face
darkened.
"But I tell you that woman always was and always will be the slave of
man!" he said in a bass voice, thumping his fist upon the table. "She is wax
—tender, plastic wax—from which man can mould what he will. Lord in
heaven! Yet out of some trumpery infatuation for manhood she cuts her
hair, forsakes her family, dies in a foreign land.... Of all the ideas to which
she sacrifices herself not one is feminine!... Devoted, unthinking slave!
Skulls I have never measured; but this I say from bitter, grievous
experience: The proudest, the most independent women—once I had
succeeded in communicating to them my inspiration, came after me,
unreasoning, asking no questions, obeying my every wish. Of a nun I made
a Nihilist, who, as I afterwards learned, killed a gendarme. My wife never
forsook me in all my wanderings, and like a weathercock changed her faith
as I changed my infatuations." With excitement Likharyóff jumped up, and
walked up and down the room.
"Noble, exalted slavery!" he exclaimed, gesticulating. "In this, in this alone,
is hidden the true significance of woman's life.... Out of all the vile
nonsense which accumulated in my head during my relations with women,
one thing, as water from a filter, has come out pure, and that is neither
ideas, nor philosophy, nor clever phrases, but this extraordinary
submissiveness to fate, this uncommon benevolence, this all-merciful
kindness."
Likharyóff clenched his fists, concentrated his eyes upon a single point,
and, as if tasting every word, filtered through his clenched teeth:
"This magnanimous endurance, faith to the grave, the poetry of the heart. It
is in this ... yes, it is in this that the meaning of life is found, in this
unmurmuring martyrdom, in the tears that soften stone, in the infinite all-
forgiving love, which sweeps into the chaos of life in lightness and
warmth...."

Márya Mikháilovna rose slowly, took a step towards Likharyóff, and set her
eyes piercingly upon his face. By the tears which sparkled on his eyelashes,
by the trembling, passionate voice, by the flushed cheeks, she saw at a
glance that women were not the accidental theme of his conversation. No,
they were the object of his new infatuation, or, as he had put it, of his new
belief. For the first time in her life she saw 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 the movements of his gigantic body, she saw only such beauty, that,
herself not knowing what she did, she stood silently before him as if rooted
to 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 in her eyes the race of
Likharyóff, I brought her only such evil as is brought by the bitterest foe,
and ... what? My brothers give her odd kopecks for wafers and collections,
and she, violating her religious feeling, hoards up those kopecks, and sends
them secretly to me! Such deeds as this educate and ennoble the soul more
than all your theories, subtle phrases, thirty-five thousand species!... But I
might give you a thousand instances! Take your own case! Outside storm
and darkness, yet through storm and darkness and cold, you drive, fearless,
to your father 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 go
after him to the North Pole.... You would go!"
"Yes ... if I loved him."
"You see!" rejoiced Likharyóff, stamping his feet. "Oh, God, how happy I
am to have met you here! ... Such has always been my good fortune ...
everywhere I meet with kind acquaintances. Not a day passes that I do not
meet some man for whom I would give my own soul! In this world there
are many more good people than evil! Already you and I have spoken
frankly and out of the heart, as if we had known one another a thousand
years. It is possible for a man to live his own life, to keep silent 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, and reveals to him his
whole soul. ... You ... I have the honour to see you for 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 and down
the room and talked again of women. The church bell chimed for the
morning 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. "They live with their uncle,
but she cannot bear to be a day without her father.... Suffers, grumbles, but
sticks to me as a fly to honey. ... But I have been talking nonsense,
mademoiselle, and have prevented you also from sleeping. Shall I make
your bed?"
Without waiting for an answer, he shook out the wet cloak, and stretched it
on the bench with the fur on top, picked up the scattered mufflers and
shawls, and rolled the ulster into a pillow—all this silently, with an
expression of servile adoration, as though he were dealing not with
women's rags, but with fragments of holy vessels. His whole figure seemed-
to express guilt and confusion, as if in the presence of such a tiny being he
were ashamed of his height and strength....
When Mdlle. Ilováisky had lain down he extinguished the candle, and sat
on a stool near the stove....
"Yes," he whispered, smoking a thick cigarette, and puffing the smoke into
the stove. "Nature has set in every Russian an enquiring mind, a tendency to
speculation, and extraordinary capacity for belief; but all these are broken
into dust against our improvidence, indolence, and fantastic triviality...."
Márya Mikháilovna looked in astonishment into the darkness, but she could
see only the red spot on the ikon, and the quivering glare from the stove on
Likharyóff's face. The darkness, the clang of the church bells, the roar of the
storm, the limping boy, peevish Sasha and unhappy Likharyóff—all these
mingled, fused in one great impression, and the whole of God's world
seemed to her fantastic, full of mystery and magical forces. The words of
Likharyóff resounded in her ears, and human life seemed to her a lovely,
poetical fairy-tale, to which there was no end.
The great impression grew and grew, until it absorbed all consciousness and
was transformed into a sweet sleep. Mdlle. Ilováisky slept. But in sleep she

continued to see the lamp, and the thick nose with the red light dancing
upon it. She was awakened by a cry.
"Papa, dear," tenderly implored a child's voice. "Let us go back to uncle's!
There is a Christmas tree. Stepa and Kolya are there!"
"What can I do, darling?" reasoned a soft, male bass. "Try and understand
me...."
And to the child's crying was added the man's. The cry of this double
misery breaking through the howl of the storm, touched upon the ears of the
girl with such soft, human music, that she could not withstand the emotion,
and wept also. And she listened as the great black shadow walked across the
room, lifted up the fallen shawl and wrapped it round her 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 blue
dawn. The room itself was full of a grey twilight, through which she could
see the stove, the sleeping girl, and Nasr Edin. The lamp and stove had both
gone out. Through the wide-opened door of the room could be seen the
public hall of the inn with its tables and benches. A man with a blunt, gipsy
face and staring eyes stood in the middle of the room in a pool of melted
snow, and held up a stick with a red star on the top. Around him was a
throng of boys, immovable as statues, and covered with snow. The light of
the star, piercing though its red paper covering, flushed their wet faces. The
crowd roared in discord, and out of 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 smiled broadly,
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 and broad-
shouldered, but a little man. A big steamer seems small to those who have
crossed the ocean.
"It is time for me to go," she said. "I must get ready. Tell me, where are you
going to?"
"I? First to Klinushka station, thence to Siergievo, and from Sergievo a
drive of forty versts to the coalmines of a certain General Shashkovsky. My
brothers have got me a place as manager.... I will dig coal."
"Allow me ... I know these mines. Shashkovsky is my uncle. But ... why are
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 are going to
these mines. Do you know what that means? Do you know that it is all bare
steppe, that there is not a soul near ... that the tedium is 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.... He will 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 down the
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 worse than exile. It is a grave for a
living man. Akh, heavens!" she said passionately, approaching Likharyóff
and moving her fingers before his smiling face. Her upper lip trembled, and
her stinging face grew pale. "Imagine it, a bare steppe ... and solitude. Not a
soul to say a word to ... and you ... infatuated with women! Mines and
women!"
Mdlle. Ilováisky seemed ashamed of her warmth, and, turning away from
Likharyóff, went over to the window.
"No ... no ... you cannot go there!" she said, rubbing her finger down the
window-pane. Not only through her head, but through her whole body ran a
feeling that here behind her stood an unhappy, forsaken, perishing man. But
he, as if unconscious of his misery, as if he had not wept the night before,
looked at her and smiled good-humouredly. It would have been better if he

had continued to cry. For a few minutes in agitation she walked up and
down the room, and then stopped in the corner and began to think.
Likharyóff said something, but she did not hear him. Turning her back to
him, she took a credit note from her purse, smoothed it in her hand, and
then, looking at him, blushed and thrust it into her pocket.
Outside the inn resounded the coachman's voice. Silently, with a severe,
concentrated expression, Mdlle. Ilováisky began to put on her wraps.
Likharyóff rolled her up in them, and chattered gaily. But every word
caused her intolerable pain. It is not pleasant to listen to the jests of the
wretched or dying.
When the transformation of a living woman into a formless bundle was
complete, Mdlle. Ilováisky, looked for the last time around "The Traveller,"
stood silent a moment, and then went out slowly. Likharyóff escorted her.
Outside, God alone knows why, the storm still raged. Great clouds of big,
soft snowflakes restlessly whirled over the ground, finding no abiding
place. Horses, sledge, trees, the bull tethered to the post—all were white,
and seemed made of down.
"Well, God bless you!" stammered Likharyóff, as he helped Márya
Mikháilovna into the sledge. "Don't think ill of me!"
Mdlle. Ilováisky said nothing. When the sledge started and began to circle
round a great snowdrift, she looked at Likharyóff as if she wished to say
something. Likharyóff ran up to the sledge, but she said not a word, and
only gazed at him through her long eyelashes to which the snowflakes
already clung.
Whether it be that his sensitive mind read this glance aright, or whether, as
it may have been, that his imagination led him astray, it suddenly struck him
that but a little more and this girl would have forgiven him his age, his
failures, his misfortunes, and followed him, neither questioning nor
reasoning, to the ends of the earth. For a long time he stood as if rooted to
the spot, and gazed at the track left by the sledge-runners. The snowflakes
settled swiftly on his hair, his beard, his shoulders. But soon the traces of
the sledge-runners vanished, and he, covered with snow, began to resemble
a white boulder, his eyes all the time continuing to search for something
through the clouds of snow.

A FAMILY COUNCIL

To prevent the skeleton in the Uskoff family cup-board escaping into the
street, the most rigorous measures were taken. One half of the servants was
packed off to the theatre and circus, and the other half sat imprisoned in the
kitchen. Orders were given to admit no one. The wife of the culprit's uncle,
her sister, and the governess, although initiated into the mystery, pretended
that they knew nothing whatever about it; they sat silently in the dining-
room, and dared not show their faces in the drawing-room or hall. Sasha
Uskoff, aged twenty-five, the cause of all this upheaval, arrived some time
ago; and on the advice of kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, his maternal uncle,
sat demurely in the corridor outside the study door, and prepared himself for
sincere, open-hearted confession. On the other side of the door the family
council was being held. The discussion ran on a ticklish and very
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 paternal uncles, and Ivan
Markovitch, an uncle on his mother's side, were discussing the solemn
problem: should the money be paid and the family honour saved, or should
they wash their hands of the whole matter, and leave the law to take its
course?
To people unconcerned and uninterested such questions seem very trivial,
but for those with whom the solution lies they are extraordinarily 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 betraying both
weariness and irritation. "Heavens! who said that family honour was a
prejudice? I never said anything of the kind. I only wanted to save you from
looking at the matter from a false standpoint—to point out how easily you
may make an irremediable mistake. Yet you don't seem to understand me! I
suppose I am speaking Russian, not Chinese!"
"My dear fellow, we understand you perfectly," interposed Ivan Markovitch
soothingly.

"Then why do you say that I deny family honour? I repeat what I have said!
Fam—ily hon—our falsely under—stood is a pre—ju—dice! Falsely under
—stood, mind you! That is my point of view. From any conviction
whatever, to screen and leave unpunished a rascal, no matter who 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. Take the Army, for
example! The honour of the Army is dearer to a soldier than any other
honour. But we do not screen our guilty members ... we judge 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, a rheumatic,
taciturn, and not very intelligent man, held his peace all the time, or spoke
only of the fact that if the matter came into court the name of the Uskoffs
would appear in the newspapers; in his opinion, therefore, to avoid publicity
it would be better to hush up the matter while there was still time. But with
the exception of this reference to the newspapers, he gave no reason for his
opinion.
But kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, the maternal uncle, spoke fluently and
softly with a tremula in his voice. He began with the argument that youth
has its claims and its peculiar temptations. Which of us was not once young,
and which of us did not sometimes go a step too far? Even leaving aside
ordinary mortals, did not history teach that the greatest minds in youth were
not always able to avoid infatuations and mistakes. Take for instance the
biographies of great writers. What one of them did not gamble and drink,
and draw upon himself the condemnation of all right-minded men? While
on the one hand we remembered that Sasha's errors had overstepped the
boundary into crime, on the other we must take into account that Sasha
hardly received any education; he was expelled from the gymnasium when
in the fifth form; he lost his parents in early childhood, and thus at the most
susceptible age was deprived of control and all beneficent influences. He
was a nervous boy, easily excited, without any naturally strong moral
convictions, and he had been spoiled by happiness. Even if he were guilty,
still he deserved the sympathy and concern of all sympathetic souls.
Punished, of course, he must be; but then, had he not already been punished
by his conscience, and the tortures which he must now be feeling as he
awaited the decision of his relatives. The comparison with the Army which
the Colonel had made was very flattering, and did great honour to his

generous mind; the appeal to social feelings showed the nobility of his
heart. But it must not be forgotten that the member of society in every
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 hand of mercy?"
Then Ivan Markovitch reverted to the question of the family honour. He
himself had not the honour to belong to the distinguished family of Uskoff,
but he knew very well that that illustrious race dated its origin from the
thirteenth century, and he could not forget for a moment that his beloved,
unforgotten sister was the wife of a scion of the race. In one word—the
Uskoff family was dear to him for many reasons, and he could not for a
moment entertain the thought that for a paltry fifteen hundred roubles a
shadow should be cast for ever upon the ancestral tree. And if all the
arguments already adduced were insufficiently convincing then he, in
conclusion, asked his brothers-in-law to explain the problem: What is a
crime? A crime was an immoral action, having its impulse in an evil will.
So most people thought. 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,
the new school of Lombroso refused to recognise free-will, and held that
every crime was the product of purely anatomical peculiarities in the
individual.
"Ivan Markovitch!" interrupted the Colonel imploringly. "Do, for Heaven's
sake, talk sense. We are speaking seriously about a serious matter ... and
you, about Lombroso! You are a clever man, but think for a moment—how
can all this rattle-box rhetoric help us to decide the question?"
Sasha Uskoff sat outside the door and listened. He felt neither fear nor
shame nor tedium—only weariness and spiritual vacuity. He felt that it did
not matter a kopeck whether he was forgiven or not; he had come here to
await his sentence and to offer a frank explanation, only because he was
begged to do so by kindly Ivan Markovitch. He was not afraid 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 is
inextricably in debt, he has not a kopeck in his pocket, his relatives have

become odious to him; with his friends and with women he must part
sooner or later, for they are already beginning to look at him
contemptuously as a parasite. The future is dark.
Sasha, in fact, is indifferent, and only one thing affects him. That is, that
through the door he can hear himself being spoken of as a scoundrel and a
criminal. All the time he is itching to jump up, burst into the room, and, in
answer to the detestable metallic voice of the Colonel, 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 Ivan Markovitch are both in debt.
"What on earth am I guilty of?" asked Sasha. He had obtained money by
presenting a forged bill. But this was done by every young man he knew.
Khandrikoff and Von Burst, for instance, whenever they wanted money,
discounted bills with forged acceptance of their parents and friends, and
when their own money came in met them. Sasha did exactly the same thing,
and only failed to meet his bill owing to Khandrikoff's failure to lend the
money which he had promised. It was not he, but circumstance which was
at fault. ... It was true that imitating another man's signature was considered
wrong, but that did not make it a crime but merely an ugly formality, a
manoeuvre constantly adopted which injured nobody; and Sasha when he
forged the Colonel's name had no intention of causing loss to anyone.
"It is absurd to pretend that I have been guilty of a crime," thought Sasha. "I
have not the character of men who commit crimes. On the contrary, I am
easy-going and sensitive ... when I have money I help the poor...."
While Sasha reasoned thus, the discussion continued on the other side of 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 the money! He will go
on still in the same way and continue to lead his unprincipled life. He will
indulge in dissipation, run into debt, go to our tailors and order clothes in
our names. What guarantee have we that this scandal will be the last? As far

as I am concerned, I tell you frankly that I do not believe in his reformation
for one moment."
The official of the Crown Council muttered something in reply. Then Ivan
Markovitch began to speak softly and fluently. The Colonel impatiently
shifted his chair, and smothered Ivan Markovitch's argument with his
detestable, metallic voice. At last the door opened, and out of the study
came Ivan Markovitch with red spots on his meagre, clean-shaven face.
"Come!" he said, taking Sasha by the arm. "Come in and 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 continued to
sit, but the Colonel, hands in pockets, and with one knee resting on his
chair, stood before the table. The room was full of smoke and stiflingly hot.
Sasha did not look at either the Colonel or his brother, but suddenly feeling
ashamed and hurt, glanced anxiously at Ivan Markovitch and muttered:
"I will pay ... I will give...."
"May I ask you on what you relied when you obtained the money on this
bill?" 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 the
chair outside the door. He would have gone away at once had he not been
stifled with hatred and with a desire to tear the Colonel to pieces or at least
to insult him to his face. But at this moment in the dim twilight around the
dining-room door appeared a woman's figure. It was the Colonel's wife. She
beckoned Sasha, and, wringing her hands, said with tears in her voice:
"Alexandre, I know that you do not love me, but ... listen for a moment! My
poor boy, how can this have happened P It is awful, awful! For Heaven's
sake beg their forgiveness ... justify yourself, implore them!"
Sasha looked at her twitching shoulders, and at the big tears which flowed
down her cheeks; he heard behind him the dull, nervous voices of his
exhausted uncles, and shrugged his shoulders. He had never expected that
his aristocratic relatives would raise such a storm over a paltry fifteen
hundred roubles. And he could understand neither the tears nor the
trembling voices.

An hour later he heard indications that the Colonel was gaining the day. The
other uncles were being won over to his determination to leave the matter to
the law.
"It is decided!" said the Colonel stiffly. "Basta!" But having decided thus,
the three uncles, even the inexorable Colonel, perceptibly lost heart.
"Heavens!" sighed Ivan Markovitch. "My poor sister!"
And he began in a soft voice to announce his conviction that his sister,
Sasha's mother, was invisibly present in the room. He felt in his heart that
this unhappy, sainted woman was weeping, anguishing, interceding for her
boy. For the sake of her repose in the other world it would have been better
to spare Sasha. Sasha heard someone whimpering. It was Ivan Markovitch.
He wept and muttered something inaudible through the door. The Colonel
rose and walked from corner to corner. 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 the
corridor. He was plainly agitated, but rubbed his hands cheerfully. His tear-
stained eyes glanced happily around him, and his mouth was twisted into a
smile.
"It is all right, my boy!" he said to Sasha. "Heaven be praised! You may go
home, child, and sleep quietly. We have decided to pay the money, but only
on the condition that you repent sincerely, and agree to come with me to the
country to-morrow, and set to work."
A minute afterwards, Ivan Markovitch and Sasha, having put on their
overcoats and hats, went downstairs together. Uncle Ivan muttered
something edifying. But Sasha didn't listen; he felt only that something
heavy and painful had fallen from his shoulders. He was forgiven—he was
free! Joy like a breeze burst into his breast and wrapped his heart with
refreshing coolness. He wished to breathe, to move, to live. And looking at
the street lamps and at the black sky he remembered that to-day at "The
Bear," Von Burst would celebrate his name-day. A new joy seized his soul.
"I will go!" he decided.
But suddenly he remembered that he had not a kopeck, and that his friends
already despised him for his penuriousness. He must get money at all cost.

"Uncle, lend me a hundred roubles!" he said to Ivan Markovitch.
Ivan Markovitch looked at him in amazement, and staggered back against a
lamp-post.
"Lend me a hundred roubles!" cried Sasha, impatiently shifting from foot 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 too dumfounded
to understand. "Listen, if you refuse to lend them, I'll inform on myself to-
morrow. I'll refuse to let you pay the money. I'll forge another to-morrow!"
Thunderstruck, terror-stricken, Ivan Markovitch muttered something
incoherent, took from his pocket a hundred-rouble note, and handed it
silently to Sasha. And Sasha took it and hurriedly walked away. And sitting
in a droschky, Sasha grew cool again, and felt his heart expand with
renewed joy. The claims of youth of which kind-hearted uncle Ivan had
spoken at the council-table had inspired and taken possession of him again.
He painted in imagination the coming feast, and in his mind, among visions
of bottles, women, and boon companions, twinkled a little thought:
"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 that you
were not at home. The postman has brought the newspapers and two letters.
And, Yevgéniï Petróvitch, I really must ask you to do something in regard
to Serózha. I caught him smoking the day before yesterday, and again to-
day. When I began to scold him, in his usual way he put his hands over his
ears, and shouted so us to drown my voice."
Yevgéniï Petróvitch Buikovsky, Procurer of the District Court, who had
only just returned from the Session House and was taking off his gloves in
his study, looked for a moment at the complaining governess and laughed:

"Serózha smoking!" He shrugged his shoulders. "I can imagine that
whipper-snapper with a cigarette! How old is he?"
"Seven. Of course you may not take it seriously, but at his age smoking is a
bad and injurious habit, and bad habits should be rooted out in their
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 in front of
his desk, shut his eyes, and began to think. He pictured in imagination his
Serózha with a gigantic cigarette a yard long, surrounded by clouds of
tobacco smoke. The caricature made him laugh in spite of himself; but at
the same time the serious, worried face of his governess reminded him of a
time, now long passed by, a half-forgotten time, when smoking in the
schoolroom or nursery inspired in teachers and parents a strange and not
quite comprehensible horror. No other word but horror would describe it.
The culprits were mercilessly flogged, expelled from school, their lives
marred, and this, although not one of the schoolmasters or parents could say
what precisely constitutes the danger and guilt of smoking. Even very
intelligent men did not hesitate to fight a vice which they did not
understand. Yevgéniï Petróvitch remembered the director of his own school,
a benevolent and highly educated old man, who was struck with such terror
when he caught a boy with a cigarette that he became pale, immediately
convoked an extraordinary council of masters, and condemned the offender
to expulsion. Such indeed appears to be the law of life; the more intangible
the evil the more fiercely and mercilessly is it combated.
The Procurer remembered two or three cases of expulsion, and recalling the
subsequent lives of the victims, he could not but conclude that such
punishment was often a much greater evil than the vice itself.... But the
animal organism is gifted with capacity to adapt itself rapidly, to accustom
itself to changes, to different atmospheres, otherwise every man would feel
that his rational actions were based upon an irrational foundation, and that
there was little reasoned truth and conviction even in such responsibilities

—responsibilities terrible in their results—as those of the schoolmaster, and
lawyer, the writer....
And such thoughts, light and inconsequential, which enter only a tired and
resting brain, wandered about in Yevgéniï Petróvitch's head; they spring no
one knows where or why, vanish soon, and, it would seem, wander only on
the outskirts of the brain without penetrating far. For men who are obliged
for whole hours, even for whole days, to think official thoughts all in the
same direction, such free, domestic speculations are an agreeable comfort.
It was nine o'clock. Overhead from the second story came the footfalls of
someone walking from corner to corner; and still higher, on the third 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 create a drowsy atmosphere
favourable to idle thoughts. From the nursery came the 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, piping like 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 boy of
seven years old. He was one of those little boys whose sex can be
distinguished only by their clothes—weakly, pale-faced, delicate....
Everything about him seemed tender and soft; his movements, his curly
hair, his looks, his velvet jacket.
"Good evening, papa," he began in a soft voice, climbing on his father's
knee, and kissing his neck. "You wanted me?"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, Sergéï Yevgénitch," answered the Procuror,
pushing him off. "Before I allow you to kiss me I want to talk to you, and to
talk seriously.... I am very angry with you, and do not 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 the chair, and
shrugged his shoulders.

"What have I done?" he asked in doubt, twitching his eyes. "I have not been
in your study all day and touched nothing."
"Natálya Semiónovna has just been complaining to me that she caught you
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, and trying
at the same time to smother a smile. "Natálya Semiónovna saw you
smoking twice. That is to say, you are found out in three acts of misconduct
—you smoke, you take another person's tobacco, and you lie. Three faults!"
"Akh, yes," remembered Serózha, with smiling eyes. "It is true. I smoked
twice—to-day and once before."
"That is to say you smoked not once but twice. I am very, very displeased
with you! You used to be a good boy, but now I see you are spoiled and
have become naughty."
Yevgéniï Petróvitch straightened Serózha's collar, and thought: "What else
shall I say to him?"
"It is very bad," he continued. "I did not expect this from you. In the first
place you have no right to go to another person's table and take tobacco
which does not belong to you. A man has a right to enjoy only his own
property, and if he takes another's then he is a wicked man." (This is not the
way to go about it, thought the Procuror.) "For instance, 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 touch it, as it is not ours.... Isn't that
plain? You have your horses and pictures ... I do not take them. Perhaps I
have often felt that I wanted to take them ... but they are yours, not mine!"
"Please, father, take them if you like," said Serózha, raising his eyebrows.
"Always take anything of mine, father. This yellow dog which is on your
table is mine, but I don't mind...."
"You don't understand me," said Buikovsky. "The dog you gave me, it is
now mine, and I can do with it what I like; but the tobacco I did not 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 smoke someone else's
tobacco I first of all ask for permission...."

And idly joining phrase to phrase, and imitating the language of children,
Buikovsky began to explain what is meant by property. Serózha looked at
his chest, and listened attentively (he loved to talk to his father in the
evenings), then set his elbows on the table edge and began to concentrate
his short-sighted eyes upon the papers and inkstand. His glance wandered
around the table, and paused on a bottle of gum-arabic. "Papa, what is gum
made of?" he asked, suddenly lifting the 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 on account of it ... (I am a
nice teacher, thought the Procurer.) Tobacco seriously injures the health,
and people who smoke die sooner than they 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 people tobacco smoke produces consumption and
other complaints. Uncle Ignatius died of consumption. If he had not smoked
perhaps he would have been alive to-day."
Serózha looked thoughtfully at the lamp, touched the shade with his fingers,
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 intently or following
the course of his own thoughts; sorrow and something like fright showed
themselves in his big, staring eyes. Probably he was thinking of death,
which had so lately carried away his mother and Uncle Ignatius. Death is a
tiling which carries away mothers and uncles and leaves on the earth only
children and fiddles. Dead people live in the 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 or in 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 their floggings, carried the
tobacco in their boots and smoked in the stable. When they were caught in
the stable and again flogged, they smoked on the river-bank ... and so on
until they were grown up. My own mother in order to keep me from
smoking used to give me money and sweets. Nowadays all these methods
are regarded as petty or immoral. Taking logic as his standpoint, the modern
teacher tries to inspire in the child good principles not out of fear, not out of
wish for distinction or reward, but consciously."
While he walked and talked, Serózha climbed on the chair next the table
and began to draw. To prevent the destruction of business papers and the
splashing of ink, his father had provided a packet of paper, cut especially
for him, and a blue pencil. "To-day the cook was chopping cabbage and cut
her finger," he said, meantime sketching a house and twitching his
eyebrows. "She cried so loud that we were all frightened and ran into the
kitchen. Such a stupid! Natálya Semiónovna ordered her to bathe her finger
in cold water, but she sucked it.... How could she put her dirty finger in her
mouth! Papa, that is bad manners!"
He further told how during dinner-time an organ-grinder came into the yard
with a little girl who sang and danced to his music.
"He has his own current of thoughts," thought the Procuror. "In his head he
has a world of his own, and he knows better than anyone else what is
serious and what is not. To gain his attention and conscience it is no use
imitating his language ... what is wanted is to understand and reason also in
his manner. He would understand me perfectly if I really disliked tobacco,
if I were angry, or cried.... For that reason mothers are irreplaceable in
bringing up children, for they alone can feel and cry and laugh like
children.... With logic and morals nothing can be done. What shall I say to
him?"
And Yevgéniï Petróvitch found it strange and absurd that he, an experienced
jurist, half his life struggling with all kinds of interruptions, prejudices, and
punishments, was absolutely at a loss for 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 and
bending down to the sketch. "Word of honour!"

"But has he any idea what 'word of honour' means?" Buikovsky asked
himself. "No, I am a bad teacher! If a schoolmaster or any of our lawyers
were to see me now, he would call me a rag, and suspect me of super-
subtlety.... But in school and in court all these stupid problems are decided
much more simply than at home when you are dealing with those 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, I should not be such a
coward and scatterbrains...."
Yevgéniï Petróvitch sat at the table and took up one of Serózha's sketches. 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 bayonet shaped like the figure four.
"A man cannot be taller than a house," said the Procuror. "Look! the roof of
your house only goes up to the soldier's shoulder."
Serózha climbed on his father's knee, and wriggled for a long time before
he felt comfortable. "No, papa," he said, looking at the drawing. "If you
drew the soldier smaller you wouldn't be able to see his eyes."
Was it necessary to argue? From daily observation the Procuror had become
convinced that children, like savages, have their own artistic outlook, and
their own requirements, inaccessible to the understanding of 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 own sentiments. Thus, the sound of
an orchestra he drew as a round, smoky spot; whistling as a spiral thread....
According to his ideas, sounds were closely allied with forms and colour,
and when painting letters he always coloured L yellow, M red, A black, and
so on. Throwing away his sketch, Serózha again wriggled, settled himself
more comfortably, and occupied himself with his father's beard. First he
carefully smoothed it down, then divided it in two, and arranged it to look
like whiskers.
"Now you are like Iván Stepánovitch," he muttered; "but wait, in a minute
you will be like ... like the porter. Papa, why do porters stand in doorways?
Is it to keep out robbers?"

The Procurer felt on his face the child's breath, touched with his cheek the
child's hair. In his heart rose a sudden feeling of warmth and softness, a
softness that made it seem that not only his hands but all his soul lay upon
the velvet of Serózha's coat. He looked into the great, dark eyes of his child,
and it seemed to him that out of their big pupils looked at him his mother,
and his wife, and all whom he had ever 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 too much; logic has
eaten us up.... The more cultivated a man, the more he thinks, the more he
surrenders himself to subtleties, the less firm is his 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 does it 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 me about
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 Serózha
stories. Like most men of affairs he could not repeat by heart a single verse
or remember a single fairy tale; and every time was obliged to improvise.
As a rule he began with the jingle, "Once upon a time, and a very good time
it was," and followed this up with all kinds of innocent nonsense, at the
beginning having not the slightest idea of what would be the middle and the
end. Scenery, characters, situations all came at hazard, and fable and moral
flowed out by themselves without regard to the teller's will Serózha dearly
loved these improvisations, and the Procuror noticed that the simpler and
less pretentious the plots, the more 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 old tsar, 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 a big lump of clean ice.... The
palace ... brother mine ... the palace stood in a great garden where, you

know, grew oranges ... pears, cherry trees .,. and blossomed tulips, roses,
water lilies ... and birds of different colours sang.... Yes.... On the trees hung
glass bells which, when the breeze blew, sounded so musically that it was a
joy to listen. Glass gives out a softer and more tender sound than metal. ...
Well? Where was I? In the garden were fountains. ... You remember you
saw a fountain in the country, at Aunt Sonia's. Just the same kind of
fountains stood in the king's garden, only they were much bigger, and the
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 boy about your
size. He was a good boy. He was never peevish, went to bed early, never
touched anything on the table ... and in all ways was a model. But he had
one fault—he smoked."
Serózha listened intently, and without blinking looked straight in his father's
eyes. The Procuror continued, and thought: "What next?" He hesitated for a
moment, and ended his story thus:
"From too much smoking, the tsarevitch got ill with consumption, and died
... when he was twenty years old. His sick and feeble old father was left
without any help. There was no one to govern the kingdom and defend the
palace. His enemies came and killed the old man, and destroyed the palace,
and now in the garden are neither cherry trees nor 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 his eyes
took on an expression of sorrow and something like fright; he looked
thoughtfully at the dark window, shuddered, and said in a weak voice:
"I will not smoke any more."
"They will tell me that this parable acted by means of beauty and artistic
form," he speculated. "That may be so, but that is no consolation.... That
does not make it an honest method.... Why is it morals and truth cannot be
presented in a raw form, but only with mixtures, 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 to make
a "speech of the public which understands history only through epics and

historical novels; and of himself drawing a philosophy of life not from
sermons and laws, but from fables, romances, poetry....
"Medicine must be sweetened, truth made beautiful. ... And this good
fortune man has taken advantage of from the time of Adam.... And after all
maybe it is natural thus, and cannot be otherwise ... there are in nature many
useful and expedient deceits and illusions...."
He sat down to his work, but idle, domestic thoughts long wandered in his
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 and down....

IN EXILE

Old Semión, nicknamed Wiseacre, and a young Tartar, whom nobody knew
by name, sat by the bonfire at the side of the river. The other three ferrymen
lay in the hut. Semión, an old man of sixty, gaunt and toothless, but broad-
shouldered and healthy in appearance, was drunk; he would have been
asleep long ago if it had not been for the flagon in his pocket, and his fear
that his companions in the hut might ask him for vodka. The Tartar was ill
and tired; and sat there, wrapped up in his rags, holding forth on the glories
of life in Simbirsk, and boasting of the handsome and clever wife he had
left behind him. He was about twenty-five years old, but now in the light of
the camp fire his pale face, with its melancholy and sickly expression,
seemed the face of a lad.
"Yes, you can hardly call it paradise," said Wiseacre. "You can take it all in
at a glance—water, bare banks, and clay about you, and nothing more. Holy
Week is over, but there is still ice floating down the river, 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, it seemed, 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 the great barges which the
ferrymen call karbases. On the opposite side, far away, rising and falling,

and mingling with one another, crept little serpents of fire. It was the
burning of last year's grass. And behind the serpents of fire darkness again.
From the river came the noise 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 in his own
country, just the same blackness above him. But something was lacking. At
home in Simbirsk government there were no such stars and no such heaven.
"Misery, misery!" he repeated.
"You'll get used to it," said Wiseacre, grinning. "You're young and foolish
now—your mother's milk is still wet on your lips, only youth and folly
could make you imagine there's no one more miserable than you. But the
time'll come when you'll say, 'God grant every one such a life as this!' Look
at me, for instance. In a week's time the water will have fallen, we'll launch
the small boat, you'll be off to Siberia to amuse yourselves, and I'll remain
here and row from one side to another. Twenty years now I've been
ferrying. Day and night! Salmon and pike beneath the water and I above it!
And God be thanked! I don't want for anything! God grant everyone such a
life!"
The Tartar thrust some brushwood into the fire, lay closer to it, and said:
"My father is ill. When he dies my mother and wife are coming. They
promised me."
"What do you want with a mother and wife?" asked Wiseacre, "put that out
of your head, it's all nonsense, brother! It's the devil's doing to make you
think such thoughts. Don't listen to him, accursed! If he begins about
women, answer him back, 'Don't want them.' If he comes about freedom,
answer him back, 'Don't want it.' You don't want anything. 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 no
simple mujik, but a sexton's son, and when I lived in freedom in Kursk
wore a frockcoat, yet now I have brought myself to such a point that I can
sleep naked on the earth and eat grass. And God grant everyone such a life!
I don't want anything, and I don't fear anyone, and I know there is no one
richer and freer than I in the world. The first day I came here from Russia I

persisted,41 don't want anything.' The devil took me on also about wife, and
home, and freedom, but I answered him back 'I don't want anything.' I tired
him out, and now, as you see, I live well, and don't complain. If any one
bates an inch to the devil, or listens to him even once, he's lost—there's no
salvation for him—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 they sent a
gentleman here from Russia. He wouldn't share something with his
brothers, and did something dishonest with a will. Belonged, they said, to a
prince's or a baron's family—maybe he was an official, who can tell? Well,
anyway he came, and the first thing he did was to buy himself a house and
land in Mukhortinsk. 'I want,' he says, 'to live by my work, by the sweat of
my brow, because,' he says, 'I am no longer a gentleman, but a convict.'
'Well,' I said, 'may God help him, he can do nothing better.' He was a young
man, fussy, and fond of talking; mowed his 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 to ride to Guirino, to the post office. He would stand
with me in the boat and sigh: 'Akh, Semión, how long they are sending me
money from home.' 'You don't want it, Vassili Sergeyitch,' I answered,' what
good is money 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, you want only
money, but in a little time you'll want something more. If you 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's no good begging charity
from her, and bowing down to her—you must despise and laugh at her.
Then she'll begin to laugh herself.' So I used to talk to him.
"Well, two years after he came, he drove down to the ferry in good spirits.
He was rubbing his hands and laughing. 'I am going to Guirino,' he says, 'to
meet my wife. She has taken pity on me, and is coming. 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, a
good-looking one, in a hat, with a little girl in her arms. And my Vassili
Sergeyitch bustles about her, feasts his eyes on her, and praises her up to the
skies, 'Yes, brother Semión, even in Siberia people live.' 'Well,' I thought,

'he won't always think so.' From that time out, every week, he rode to
Guirino to inquire whether money had been sent to him from Russia.
Money he wanted without end. 'For my sake,' 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 every enjoyment.' And to make things gayer for
her, he makes acquaintance with 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 shaggy dog for the sofa—in one word, extravagance, luxury.... She
didn't live with him long. How could she? Mud, water, cold, neither
vegetable nor fruit, bears and drunkards around her, and she a woman from
Petersburg, 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 shouting from the opposite bank.
When I rowed across I saw the lady all wrapped up, and with her a young
man, one of the officials. A troika! I rowed them across, they got into the
troika and drove off. Towards morning, Vassili Sergeyitch drives up in hot
haste. 'Did my wife go by,' he asked, 'with a man in spectacles?' 'Yes,' I said,
'seek the wind in the field.' He drove after them, and chased them for five
days. When I ferried him back, he threw himself into the bottom of the boat,
beat his 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 to Russia,
and he thought only of seeing her, and getting her to return to him. Every
day he galloped off to one place or another, one day to the post office, the
next to town to see the authorities. He sent in petitions asking for pardon
and permission to return to Russia—on telegrams alone, he used to say, he
spent two hundred roubles. He sold his 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 speak without tears coming into his eyes. Eight
years he spent sending in petitions. 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 the truth, she wasn't bad-looking—pretty, black-browed, and
high-spirited. Every Sunday he rode with her to the church at Guirino. They
would stand side by side in the boat, she laughing, and he never lifting his
eyes 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 thousand versts and
never see another like her.' The daughter, as I said, was really 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. Pined and declined, dwindled away, got ill, and now can't
stand on her legs. Consumption! There's your Siberian happiness! That's the
way people live in Siberia!... And my Vassili Sergeyitch spends his time
driving about to doctors and bringing them home. Once let him hear there'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 of money he spends, he
might as well drink it.... She'll die all the same, nothing'll save her, and then
he'll be altogether lost. Whether he 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 penal servitude, 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'll have,
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, God granted him that.
To have nothing is bad, but three years is good. You don't understand."
Trembling with cold, finding only with painful difficulty the proper Russian
words, the Tartar began to beg that God might save him from dying in a
strange land, and being buried in the cold earth. If his wife were to come to
him, even for one day, even for one hour, for such happiness he would
consent to undergo the most frightful tortures, and thank 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 and
clever 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 suffering unjustly. His
two brothers and his uncle had stolen a peasant's horses, and beaten the old
man half to death. But society had treated him unfairly, and sent the three
brothers to Siberia, while the uncle, a rich 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; his face
expressed doubt and alarm, as if he did not yet understand why he lay there

in darkness and in cold among strangers, and not at Simbirsk. Wiseacre lay
beside the fire, laughed silently at something, and hummed a tune.
"What happiness can she have with her father?" he began after a few
minutes' silence. "He loves her, and finds her a consolation, that's true But
you can't put your finger in his eyes; he's a cross old man, a stern old man.
And with young girls you don't want sternness. What they want 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, and
began to think of his native village and of his wife; if his wife would only
come for a week, for a day, let her go back if she liked! Better a few days,
even a day, than nothing! But if his wife kept her promise and 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 a day.
True, passengers sometimes gave money for tea and vodka, but the others
shared this among themselves, gave nothing to the Tartar, and only laughed
at him. From poverty he was hungry, cold, and frightened. His whole body
ached and trembled. If he went into the hut there would be nothing for him
to cover himself with. Here, too, he had nothing to cover himself with, but
he might keep up the fire.
In a week the waters would have fallen, and the ferrymen, with the
exception of Semión, would no longer be wanted. The Tartar must begin his
tramp from village to village asking for bread and work. His wife was only
seventeen years old; she was pretty, modest, and spoiled. How could she
tramp with uncovered face through the villages and ask for bread? It was
too horrible to think of.
When next the Tartar looked up it was dawn. The barge, the willows, and
the ripples stood out plainly. You might turn round and see the clayey slope,
with its brown thatched hut at the bottom, and above it the huts of 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. It was only a dream,

thought the Tartar. He felt that he was sleeping, and heard himself snore. Of
course, he was at home in Simbirsk, he had only to call his wife by name
and she would call bock; in the next room lay his old mother.... What
terrible things are dreams!... Where do they come from?... The Tartar smiled
and opened his eyes. What river was this? 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. Dragging
on their sheepskin coats on the way, swearing in voices hoarse from sleep,
the ferrymen appeared on the bank. After sleep, the river, with its piercing
breeze, evidently seemed to them a nightmare. They tumbled lazily 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 opposite bank the shouting
continued, and twice revolver shots were heal'd. The stranger evidently
thought that the ferrymen were asleep or had gone into the village to the
kabak.
"You'll get across in time," said Wiseacre in the tone of a man who is
convinced that in this world there is no need for hurry. "It's all the same in
the end; you'll gain nothing by making a noise."
The heavy, awkward barge parted from the bank, cleaving a path through
the willows, and only the slow movement of the willows backward showed
that it was moving at all. The ferrymen slowly raised their oars in time.
Wiseacre lay on his stomach across the helm, and, describing a bow in the
air, swung slowly from one side to the other. In the dim light it seemed as if
the men were sitting on some long-clawed antediluvian animal, floating
with it into the cold desolate land that is sometimes seen in nightmares.
The willows soon were passed and the open water reached. On the other
bank the creak and measured dipping of the oars were already audible, and
cries of "Quicker, quicker!" came back across the water. Ten minutes more
and the barge struck heavily against the landing-stage.
"It keeps on falling, it keeps on falling," grumbled Semión, rubbing the
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 foxskin coat and
white lambskin cap. He stood immovable at some distance from the horses;
his face had a gloomy concentrated expression, as if he were trying to
remember something, and were angry with his disobedient memory. When
Semión approached him, and, smiling, took off his cap, he began:
"I am going in great haste to Anastasevki. My daughter is worse. In
Anastasevka, 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 time immovable,
tightly compressing his thick fingers, and when the driver asked for
permission to smoke in his presence, answered nothing, as if he had not
heard. Semión, lying on his stomach across the helm, looked at him
maliciously, and said:
"Even in Siberia people live! Even in Siberia!" Wiseacre's face bore a
triumphant expression, as if he had demonstrated something, and rejoiced
that things had justified his prediction. The miserable, helpless expression
of the man in the foxskin coat evidently only increased his delight.
"It's muddy travelling at this time, Vassili Sergeyitch," he said, as they
harnessed the horses on the river bank. "You might have waited another
week or two till it got drier. For the matter of that, you might just as well
not go at all.... If there was any sense in going it would be another matter,
but you yourself know that you might go on for ever and nothing would
come of it.... Well?"
Vassili Sergeyitch silently handed the men some money, climbed into the
cart, 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 the devil 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 and
repulsion. Then, trembling, and mixing Tartar words with his broken
Russian, he said:
"He is a good man, a good man, and you are bad. You are bad. He is a good
soul, a great one, but you are a beast.... He is living, but you are dead....

God made men that they might have joys and sorrows, but you 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 the straw
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 whirled
through the hut. But no one rose to shut it, all were too cold and lazy.
"I, for one, am all right," said Semión. "God grant everyone such a life."
"You, it is known, were born a galley-slave—the devil himself wouldn't
take 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 remained unshut.

ROTHSCHILD'S FIDDLE

He town was small—no better than a village—and it was inhabited almost
entirely by old people who died so seldom that it was positively painful. In
the hospital, and even in the prison, coffins were required very seldom. In
one word, business was bad. If Yacob Ivanof had been coffin-maker in the
government town, he would probably have owned his own house, and

called himself Yakob Matvieitch; but, as it was, he was known only by the
name of Yakob, with the street nickname given for some obscure reason of
"Bronza"; and lived as poorly as a simple muzhik in a little, ancient cabin
with only one room; and in this room lived he, Marfa, the stove, a double
bed, the coffins, a joiner's bench, and all the domestic utensils.
Yet Yakob made admirable coffins, durable and good. For muzhiks and
petty tradespeople he made them all of one size, taking himself as model;
and this method never failed him, for though he was seventy years of age,
there was not a taller or stouter man in the town, not even in the prison. For
women and for men of good birth he made his coffins to measure, using for
this purpose an iron yardwand. Orders for children's coffins he accepted
very unwillingly, made them without measurement, as if in contempt, and
every time when paid for his work exclaimed:
"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 his skill with
the fiddle. At weddings in the town there usually played a Jewish orchestra,
the conductor of which was the tinsmith Moses Hitch Shakhkes, who kept
more than half the takings for himself. As Yakob played very well upon the
fiddle, being particularly skilful with 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
fiddle whined, at his right ear snored the double-bass, at his left wept the
flute, played by a lanky, red-haired Jew with a whole network of red and
blue veins upon his face, who bore the same surname as the famous
millionaire Rothschild. And even the merriest tunes this accursed Jew
managed to play sadly. Without any tangible cause Yakob had become
slowly penetrated with hatred and contempt for Jews, and especially for
Rothschild; he began with irritation, then swore at him, and once even was
about to hit him; but Rothschild flared up, and, looking at him furiously,
said:
"If it were not that I respect you for your talents, I should send you flying
out of the window."
Then he began to cry. So Bronza was employed in the orchestra very
seldom, and only in cases of extreme need when one of the Jews was

absent.
Yakob had never been in a good humour. He was always overwhelmed by
the sense of the losses which he suffered. For instance, on Sundays and
saints' days it was a sin to work, Monday was a tiresome day—and so on;
so that in one way or another, there were about two hundred days in the
year when he was compelled to sit with his hands idle. That was one loss! If
anyone in the town got married without music, or if Shakhkes did not
employ Yakob, that was another loss. The Inspector of Police was ill for two
years, and Yakob waited with impatience for his death, yet in the end the
Inspector transferred himself to the government town for the purpose of
treatment, where he got worse and died. 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 with brocade. Regrets for his losses generally overtook
Yakob at night; he lay in bed with the fiddle beside him, and, with his head
full of such speculations, would take the bow, the fiddle giving out through
the darkness a melancholy sound which made Yakob feel better.
On the sixth of May last year Marfa was suddenly taken ill. She breathed
heavily, drank much water and staggered. Yet next morning she lighted the
stove, and even went for water. Towards evening she lay down. All day
Yakob had played on the fiddle, and when it grew dark he took the book in
which every day he inscribed his losses, and from want of something better
to do, began to add them up. The total amounted to more than a thousand
roubles. The thought of such losses so horrified him that he threw the book
on the floor and stamped his feet. Then he took up the book, snapped his
fingers, and sighed heavily. His face was purple, and wet with perspiration.
He reflected that if this thousand roubles had been lodged in the bank the
interest per annum would have amounted to at least forty roubles. That
meant that the forty roubles were also a loss. In one word, whenever you
turn, everywhere you meet with loss, and profits none.
"Yakob," cried Marfa unexpectedly, "I am dying."
He glanced at his wife. Her face was red from fever and unusually clear and
joyful; and Bronza, who was accustomed to see her pale, timid, and
unhappy-looking, felt confused. It seemed as if she were indeed dying, and
were happy in the knowledge that she was leaving for ever the cabin, the

coffins, and Yakob. And now she looked at the ceiling and twitched her lips,
as if she had seen Death her deliverer, and were whispering 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 he
had never treated her kindly, never caressed her, never pitied her, never
thought of buying her a kerchief for her head, never carried away from the
weddings a piece of tasty food, but only roared at her, abused her for his
losses, and rushed at her with shut fists. True, he had never beaten her, but
he had often frightened her out of her life and left her rooted to the ground
with terror. Yes, and he had forbidden her to drink tea, as the losses without
that were great enough; so she drank always hot water. And now, beginning
to understand why she had such a strange, enraptured face, he felt
uncomfortable.
When the sun had risen high he borrowed a cart from a neighbour, and
brought Marfa to the hospital. There were not many patients there, and he
had to wait only three hours. To his joy he was received not by the doctor
but by the feldscher, Maxim Nikolaitch, an old man of whom it was said
that, although he was drunken and quarrelsome, he knew more than the
doctor.
"May your health be good!" said Yakob, leading the old woman into the
dispensary. "Forgive me, Maxim Nikolaitch, for troubling you with my
empty 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 feldscher began
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 is about to
drink.
"So ..." said the feldscher slowly, and then sighed. "Influenza and may be 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 of politeness.
"And I am sincerely grateful for your kindness; but allow me to make one

remark; every insect is fond of life."
The feldscher replied in a tone which implied that upon him alone depended
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 a day. And good-bye to
you."
By the expression of the feldscher's face, Yacob saw that it was a bad
business, and that no powders would make it any better; it was quite plain
to him that Marfa was beyond repair, and would assuredly die, if not to-day
then to-morrow. He touched the feldscher on the arm, blinked his eyes, and
said in a whisper: "Yes, Maxim Nikolaitch, but you will let her blood."
"I have no time, no time, friend. Take your old woman, and God be with
you!"
"Do me this one kindness!" implored Yakob. "You yourself know that if she
merely had her stomach out of order, or some internal organ wrong, then
powders and mixtures would cure; but she has caught cold. In cases of cold
the first tiling is to bleed the patient."
But the feldscher had already called for the next patient, and into the
dispensary 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 said nothing
more and took Marfa under his arm and led her out of the room. As soon as
he had got her into the cart, he looked angrily and contemptuously at the
hospital and said:
"What an artist! He will let the blood of a rich man, but for a poor man
grudges even a leech. Herod!"
When they arrived home, and entered the cabin, Marfa stood for a moment
holding on to the stove. She was afraid that if she were to lie down Yakob
would begin to complain about his losses, and abuse her for lying in bed
and doing no work. And Yakob looked at her with tedium in his soul and
remembered that to-morrow was John the Baptist, and the day after Nikolai

the Miracle-worker, and then came Sunday, and after that Monday—another
idle day. For four days no work could be done, and Marfa would be sure to
die on one of these days. Her coffin must be made to-day. He took the iron
yardwand, went up to the old woman and took 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 in his
book of losses:
"Marfa Ivanova's coffin—2 roubles, 40 kopecks."
And he sighed. All the time Marfa had lain silently with her eyes closed.
Towards evening, when it was growing dark, she called her husband:
"Rememberest, Yakob?" she said, looking at him joyfully. "Rememberest,
fifty years ago God gave us a baby with yellow hair. Thou and I then sat
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 and extreme
unction. Marfa began to mutter something incomprehensible, and towards
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, Yakob himself
read the psalms; and escaped a fee also at the graveyard, as the watchman
there was his godfather. Four peasants carried the coffin free, out of respect
for the deceased. After the coffin walked a procession of old women,
beggars, and two cripples. The peasants on the road crossed themselves
piously. And Yakob was very satisfied that everything passed off in honour,
order, and cheapness, without offence to anyone. When saying good-bye for
the last time to Marfa, he tapped the coffin with his fingers, and thought
"An excellent piece of work."
But while he was returning from the graveyard he was overcome with
extreme weariness. He felt unwell, he breathed feverishly and heavily, he
could hardly stand on his feet. His brain was full of unaccustomed thoughts.
He remembered again that he had never taken pity on Marfa and never
caressed her. The fifty-two years during which they had lived in the same
cabin stretched back to eternity, yet in the whole of that eternity 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 had lighted the stove, boiled and
baked, fetched water, chopped wood, slept with him on the same bed; and
when he returned drunk from weddings, she had taken his fiddle
respectfully, and hung it on the wall, and put him to 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 buy her a present, but it was too late....
Towards Yakob smiling and bowing came Rothschild. "I was looking for
you, uncle," he said. "Moses Ilitch sends his compliments, and asks you to
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 of his red
freckles awoke in Yakob disgust. He felt disgust, too, for his 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 flying over 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 cursed body! I have
no peace with Jews."
Rothschild was frozen with terror; he squatted down and waved his arms
above his head, as if warding off blows, and then jumped up and ran for his
life. While running he hopped, and flourished his hands; and the twitching
of his long, fleshless spine could plainly be seen. The boys in the street
were delighted with the incident, and rushed after him, crying, "Jew! Jew!"
The dogs pursued him with loud barks. Someone laughed, then someone
whistled, and the dogs barked louder and louder. Then, it must have been, a
dog bit Rothschild, for there rang out a sickly, 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 snipe flew
around him, and ducks quacked. The sun baked everything, and from the
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 a stout, red-
cheeked lady come out of the bathing-place. Not far from the bathing-place
sat a group of boys catching crabs with meat; and seeing him they cried
maliciously, "Bronza! Bronza!" And at this moment before him rose a thick
old willow with an immense hollow in it, and on it a raven's nest.... And
suddenly in Yakob's mind awoke the memory of the child with the yellow
hair of whom Marfa had spoken.... Yes, it was the same willow, green,
silent, sad.... How it had aged, poor thing!
He sat underneath it, and began to remember. On the other bank, where was
now a flooded meadow, there then stood a great birch forest, and farther
away, where the now bare hill glimmered on the horizon, was an old pine
wood. Up and down the river went barges. But now everything was 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 and geese where once had
floated barges. It seemed that since those days even the geese had become
smaller. Yakob closed his eyes, and in imagination saw flying towards him
an immense flock of white geese.
He began to wonder how it was that in the last forty or fifty years of his life
he had never been near the river, or if he had, had never noticed it. Yet it
was a respectable river, and by no means contemptible; it would have been
possible to fish in it, and the fish might have been sold to tradesmen,
officials, and the attendant at the railway station buffet, and the money
could have been lodged in the bank; he might have used it for rowing from
country-house to country-house and playing on the fiddle, and everyone
would have paid him money; he might even have tried to act as bargee—it
would have been better than making coffins; he might have kept geese,
killed them and sent them to Moscow in the winter-time—from the feathers
alone he would have made as much as ten roubles a year. But he had
yawned away his life, and done nothing. What losses! Akh, what losses!
and if he hod done all together—caught fish, played on the fiddle, acted as
bargee, and kept geese—what a sum he would have amassed! But he had
never even dreamed of this; life had passed without profits, without any

satisfaction; everything had passed away unnoticed; before him nothing
remained. But look backward—nothing but losses, such losses that to think
of them it makes the blood run cold. And why cannot a man live without
these losses? Why had the birch wood and the pine forest both been cut
down? Why is the common pasture unused? Why do people do exactly
what they ought not to do? Why did he all his life scream, roar, clench his
fists, insult his wife? For what imaginable purpose did he frighten and insult
the Jew? Why, indeed, do people prevent one another living in peace? All
these are also losses! Terrible losses! If it were not for hatred and malice
people would draw from one another incalculable profits.
Evening and night, twinkled in Yakob's brain the willow, the fish, the dead
geese, Marfa with her profile like that of a bird about to drink, the pale,
pitiable face of Rothschild, and an army of snouts thrusting themselves out
of the darkness and muttering about losses. He shifted from side to side, and
five times in the night rose from his bed and played 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 cold compress, and
gave him powders; and by the expression of his face and by his tone Yakob
saw that it was a bad business, and that no powders would make it any
better. But upon his way home he reflected that from death at least there
would be one profit; it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay
taxes, or to injure others; and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but
hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man
was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit. Yet this consideration,
though entirely just, was offensive and bitter; for why in this world is it so
ordered that 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 his fiddle,
his heart fell, and he felt sorry. The fiddle could not be taken to the grave; it
must remain an orphan, and the same thing would happen with it as had
happened with the birch wood and the pineforest. Everything in this world
decayed, and would decay! Yakob went to the door of the hut and sat upon
the thresholdstone, pressing his fiddle to his shoulder. Still thinking of life,
full of decay and full of losses, he began to play, and as the tune poured out
plaintively and touchingly, the tears flowed down his cheeks. And the
harder he thought, 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, he stopped short,
shrivelled up, and apparently from fright began to make signs 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 stopped about
two yards away. "Don't beat me, Yakob, it is not my fault!" he said, 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 cannot possibly get on.' The
wedding is on Wednesday. Shapovaloff's daughter is marrying a wealthy
man.... It will be a first-class wedding," added the 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 fell upon
the fiddle. Rothschild listened attentively, standing by his side with arms
folded upon his chest. The distrustful, terrified expression upon his face
little by little changed into a look of suffering and grief, he rolled his eyes
as if in an ecstacy of torment, and ejaculated "Wachchch!" And the tears
slowly rolled down his cheeks and made little black patches on his green
frock-coat.
All day long Yakob lay in bed and worried. With evening came the priest,
and, confessing him, asked whether he had any particular sin which he
would like to confess; and Yakob exerted his fading memory, and
remembering Marfa's unhappy face, and the Jew's despairing cry when he
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 an
excellent fiddle? Did he buy it or steal it ... or did he get it in pledge? Long
ago he abandoned his flute, and now plays on the fiddle only. From beneath
his bow issue the same mournful sounds as formerly came from the flute;
but when he tries to repeat the tune that Yakob played when he sat on the
threshold stone, the fiddle emits sounds so passionately sad and full of grief
that the listeners weep; and he himself rolls his eyes and ejaculates
"Wachchch!" ... But this new song so pleases everyone in the town that

wealthy traders and officials never fail to engage Rothschild for their social
gatherings, and even force 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 fact is I
happened to pass by the public, and, all owing to the heat, I drank a couple
of bottles. It's hot, brother!"
Old Musátoff took a rag from his pocket, and wiped the sweat from his
clean-shaven, dissipated face.
"I have come to you, Bórenka, angel mine, just for a minute," he continued,
looking at his son, "on very important business. Forgive me if I am in the
way. Tell me, my soul ... do you happen to have ten roubles to spare till
Tuesday? You understand me ... yesterday I ought to 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 whispered
consultation with his housekeeper and the colleagues in the Civil Service
with whom he shared the villa. In a minute he returned, and silently handed
his father a ten-rouble note. The old gentleman took it carelessly, and
without looking at it thrust it into his pocket, and said:
"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
am not 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 have no business matters at all,
simply idleness, drink, and shame to show myself 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. It hurts me to plunder you in this way, angel
mine; I know that you can hardly make both ends meet, and live—so to say

—on locusts. But with impudence like mine you can do nothing. A rascal
who only shows his face when he wants money!... Forgive me, Bórenka, I
tell you the plain truth, 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 a glass 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 a three-rouble
note on Shustri.[1] And good luck to Shustri! With the risk 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 love it!"

[1] Rapid.

Boris, a young fair-haired man, with a sad, apathetic face, walked from
corner to corner, and listened silently. When Musátoff interrupted his story
in order to cough, he went up to him and said:
"The other day, papa, I bought myself a new pair of boots, but they turned
out too small. I wish you would take them off my hands. I will let you have
them cheap!"
"I shall be charmed!" said the old man, with a grimace. "Only for the same
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 someone else'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 may as well confess, I
lie." He resumed his former piteous tone. "About the races I lied, and about
the pension I lie. You are deceiving me, Bórenka.... I see very well through
your magnanimous pretext. I can see through you! The boots are too small
for you because your heart is too large! Akh, Borya, Borya, I understand it
... and I feel it!"
"You have gone to your new rooms?" asked Boris, with the object of
changing the subject. "Yes, brother, into the new rooms.... Every month we
shift. With a character like the old woman's we cannot stay anywhere."
"I have been at the old rooms. But now I want to ask you to come to the
country. In your state of health it will do you good to be in the fresh air."
Musátoff waved his hand. "The old woman wouldn't let me go, and myself I
don't care to. A hundred times you have tried to drag me out of the pit.... I
have tried to drag myself ... but the devil an improvement! Give it up! In the
pit I'll die as I have lived. At this moment I sit in front of you and look at
your angel face ... yet I am being dragged down into the pit. It's destiny,
brother! You can't get flies from a dunghill to a rose bush. No. ... Well, I'm
off ... it's getting dark."
"If you wait a minute, well go together. I have business in town myself."

Musátoff and his son put on their coats, and went out. By the time they had
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, poor
children! What an affliction to be cursed with such a father! Bórenka, angel
mine, I cannot lie when I see your face. Forgive me!... To what a pass, my
God, has impudence brought me! This very minute I have taken your
money, and shamed you with my drunken face; your brothers also I spunge
on and put to shame. If you had seen me yesterday! I won't hide anything,
Bórenka. Yesterday our neighbours—all the rascality, in short—came in to
see the old woman. I drank with them, and actually abused you behind your
back, and complained that you had neglected me. I tried, you understand, to
get the drunken old women to pity me, and played the part of an unhappy
father. That's my besetting sin; when I want to hide my faults, I heap them
on the heads of my innocent children.... But I cannot lie to you, Bórenka, or
hide things. I came to you in pride, but when I had felt your kindness and
all-mercifulness, my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and all my
conscience turned upside down."
"Yes, father, but let us talk about something else."
"Mother of God, what children I have!" continued the old man, paying no
attention to his son, "What a glory the Lord has sent me! Such children
should be sent not to me, a good-for-nothing, but to a real man 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 an ikon.
"Astonishing, priceless children! Three sons I have, and all of them 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 tired of listening.
Children, children mine, I cannot believe that you are mine at all! I don't
believe it! You, Bórenka, are a very martyr! I am ruining you ... before long
I shall have mined you. You give me money without end, although you
know very well that not a kopeck goes on necessaries. Only the other day I
sent you a piteous letter about my illness.... But I lied; the money was
wanted to buy rum. Yet you gave it to me sooner than offend your old father
with a refusal. All this I know ... and feel ... Grisha also is a martyr. On

Thursday, angel mine, I went to his office, drunk, dirty, ragged ... smelling
of vodka like a cellar. 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—and petitioners all around! Disgraced him for his whole life!..
Yet he never got the least confused, only a little pale; he smiled, and got up
from his desk as if nothing were wrong—even introduced me to his
colleagues. And he brought me the whole way home, without a word of
reproach! I spunge on him even worse than on you!
"Then take your brother, Sasha! There's another martyr! Married to a
colonel's daughter, moving in a circle of aristocrats, with a dot ... and
everything else.... He, at any rate, you would think would have nothing to
do with me. Well, brother, what does he do? When he gets married the very
first thing after the wedding he comes to me with his young 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 eating
scraped radishes and kvas, and frying fish, with a stench in the room
enough to stink out the devil. I was lying drunk as usual, and the old woman
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 Sasha and
Sonia. I torture, pester, disgrace, and spunge on you, yet in my whole life I
have never heard a word of reproach, or seen a single sidelong 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 no character left in me, but formerly,
when you were little children, I had a character and no mistake. Whatever I
said or did seemed to me gospel! I remember! I used to come back late from
the club, drunk and irritated, and begin to abuse your poor mother about the
household expenses. I would keep on at her all night, and imagine that she
was in the wrong; in the morning you would get up and go to school, but all
the time I would keep on showing her that I had a character. Heaven rest her
soul, how I tortured the poor martyr! And when you came back from school
and found me asleep you weren't allowed your dinner until I got up. And

after dinner the same music! Primps you remember. May God forbid that
anyone else should be cursed with such a father! He sent you to me as a
blessing. A blessing! Continue in this way, children, to the end. Honour thy
father that thy days may be long in the land! For your goodness Heaven will
reward you with long life! Cabman, stop!"
Musátoff alighted and ran into a beerhouse. After a delay of half an hour 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, God
bless her—went with her brothers. Akh, Bórenka, no mother, no one to
console her! Tell me, Bórenka, does she know ... does she know that I am
alive? Eh?"
Boris did not answer. Five minutes passed in deep silence. The old man
sobbed, wiped his face with a rag, and said:
"I love her, Bórenka! She was the only daughter, and in old age there is no
consolation like a daughter. If I could only see her for a moment. 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't see her in
this get-up. But all this, Bórenka, we can arrange. For three days I won't
taste a drop—that'll bring my accursed drunken snout into shape. Then I
will go to your place and put on a suit of your clothes, and get a shave and
have my hair cut. Then you will drive 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 time his
son waited silently and patiently. When, having dismissed the cabman, they
crossed the broad, muddy yard to the rooms of the "old woman," Musátoff
looked contused and guilty, grunted timidly, and smacked his lips.
"Bórenka," he began, in an imploring voice, "if the old woman says
anything of that kind to you—you understand—don't pay any attention to
her. And be polite to her. She is very ignorant and impertinent, but not a bad
sort at bottom. She has a good, warm heart."
They crossed the yard and entered a dark hall. The door squeaked, the
kitchen smelt, the samovar smoked, and shrill voices were heard.... While
they passed through the kitchen Boris noticed only the black smoke, 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 son into
a little, low-ceilinged room, filled with atmosphere unbearable from
proximity to the kitchen. At a table sat three women, helping one another to
food. Seeing the guest, they looked at one another and stopped 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 live in a
simple way."
Musátoff fussed about without any visible reason. He was ashamed before
his son, and at the same time apparently wished to bear himself before the
women as a man of importance and a forsaken, unhappy father.
"Yes, brother mine—young man—we live simply, without show-off," he
stammered. "We are plain folk, young man.... We are not like you ... we do,
not trouble to throw dust in other people's eyes. No!... A drop of vodka,
eh?"
One of the women, ashamed of drinking before a stranger, sighed and said:
"I must have another glass after these mushrooms. After mushrooms,
whether you like it or not, you have to drink.... Ivan Gerasiuitch, ask him ...
perhaps he'll have a drink."

"Drink, young man!" said Musátoff, without looking at his son. "Wines and
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 drained it in
silence. When the samovar was brought in he, silently and with a
melancholy air—again to please his father—drank two cups of atrocious
tea. And without a word he listened while the "old woman" lamented the
fact that in this world you will sometimes find cruel and godless children
who forsake their parents in their old age.
"I know what you are thinking," said the drunken old man, falling into his
customary state of excitement. "You are thinking that I have fallen in the
world, that I have dirtied myself, that I am an object of pity! 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 of humiliating myself ... I can
stand a lot ... but tolerance is at an end when a brat of a boy looks at me
with pity."
When he had drunk his tea, he cleaned a herring, and squeezed onion on 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 of Panama straw for which
he had paid sixteen roubles the day before. He lied with the same appetite
with which he had drunk and devoured the herring. His son sat silently for
more than an hour, and then rose to take leave.
"I wouldn't think of detaining you," said Musátoff stiffly. "I ask your
pardon, young man, for not living in the way to which you are accustomed."
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 face to his
son's arm, and sobbed. "If I could only see Sóniushka!" he whispered.
"Arrange it, Bórenka, angel mine! I will have a shave, and put on one of
your suits ... and make a severe face. I won't open my mouth 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 shrill voices 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, the only
son of Dr. Kiríloff, a Zemstvo physician, died from diphtheria. The doctor's
wife had just thrown herself upon her knees at the bedside of 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 infection all the servants had been sent
out of the house that morning; and Kiríloff, in his shirtsleeves, with
unbuttoned waistcoat, with sweating face, and hands burned with carbolic
acid, opened the door himself. The hall was dark, and the stranger who
entered it was hardly visible. All that Kiríloff could distinguish was that he
was of middle height, that he wore a white muffler, and had a big,
extraordinarily pale face—a face so pale that at first it seemed to illumine
the darkness of the hall.
"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 through the
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 very glad that you are in....
For the love of Christ do not refuse to come with me at once.... My wife is
dangerously ill.... I have brought a trap."
From Abógin's voice and movements it was plain that he was greatly
agitated. Like a man frightened by a fire or by a mad dog, he could not
contain his breath. He spoke rapidly in a trembling voice, and something
inexpressibly sincere and childishly imploring sounded in his speech. But,
like all men frightened and thunderstruck, he spoke in short abrupt phrases,
and used many superfluous and inconsequential words.

"I was afraid I should not find you at home," he continued. "While I was
driving here I was in a state of torture.... Dress and come at once, for the
love of God ... It happened thus. Paptchinski—Alexander Semionevitch—
whom you know, had driven over.... We talked for awhile ... then we had
tea; suddenly my wife screamed, laid her hand upon her heart, and fell
against the back of the chair. We put her on the bed.... I bathed her forehead
with ammonia, and sprinkled her with water ... she lies like a corpse.... It is
aneurism.... Come.... Her father died from aneurism...."
Kiríloff listened and said nothing. It seemed he had forgotten his own
language. But when Abógin repeated what he had said about Paptchinski
and about his wife's father, the doctor shook his head, and said
apathetically, 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 what an
unlucky time I have come! An amazingly unhappy day ... amazing! What a
coincidence ... as if on purpose."
Abógin put his hand upon the door-handle, and inclined his head as if in
doubt. He was plainly undecided as to what to do; whether to go, or again to
ask the doctor to come.
"Listen to me," he said passionately, seizing Kiríloff by the arm; "I
thoroughly understand your position. God is my witness that I feel shame in
trying to distract your attention at such a moment, but ... what can I do?
Judge yourself—whom can I apply to? Except you, there is no doctor in the
neighbourhood. Come! For the love of God! It is not for myself I ask.... It is
not I who am ill."
A silence followed. Kiríloff turned his back to Abógin, for a moment stood
still, and went slowly from the anteroom into the hall. Judging by his
uncertain, mechanical gait, by the care with which he straightened the shade
upon the unlit lamp, and looked into a thick book which lay upon the table
—in this moment he had no intentions, no wishes, thought of nothing; and
probably had even forgotten that in the anteroom a stranger was waiting.
The twilight and silence of the hall apparently intensified his stupor.
Walking from the hall into his study, he raised his right leg high, and sought
with his hands the doorpost. All his figure showed a strange uncertainty, as

if he were in another's house, or for the first time in life were intoxicated,
and were surrendering himself questioningly to the new sensation. Along
the wall of the study and across the bookshelves ran a long zone of light.
Together with a heavy, close smell of carbolic and ether, this light came
from a slightly opened door which led from the study into the bedroom. The
doctor threw himself into an armchair before the table. A minute he looked
drowsily at the illumined books, and then rose, and went into the bedroom.
In the bedroom reigned the silence of the grave. All, to the smallest trifle,
spoke eloquently of a struggle just lived through, of exhaustion, and of final
rest. A candle standing on the stool among phials, boxes, and jars, and a
large lamp upon the dressing-table lighted the room. On the bed beside the
window lay a boy with open eyes and an expression of surprise upon his
face. He did not move, but his eyes, it seemed, every second grew darker
and darker, and vanished into his skull. With her hands upon his body, and
her face hidden in the folds of the bedclothes, knelt the mother. Like the
child, she made no movement; life showed itself alone in the bend of her
back and in the position of her hands. She pressed against the bed with all
her being, with force and eagerness, us if she feared to destroy the tranquil
and convenient pose which she had found for her weary body. Counterpane,
dressings, jars, pools on the floor, brashes and spoons scattered here and
there, the white bottle of lime-water, the very air, heavy and stifling—all
were dead and seemed immersed in rest.
The doctor stopped near his wife, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets,
and turning his head, bent his gaze upon his son. His face expressed
indifference; only by the drops upon his beard could it be seen that he had
just been crying.
The repellent terror which we conceive when we speak of death was absent
from the room. The general stupefaction, the mother's pose, the father's
indifferent face, exhaled something attractive and touching; exhaled that
subtle, intangible beauty of human sorrow which cannot be analysed or
described, and which music alone can express. Beauty breathed even in the
grim tranquillity of the mourners. Kiríloff and his wife were silent; they did
not weep, as if in addition to the weight of their sorrow they were conscious
also of the poetry of their position. It seemed that they were thinking how in
its time their youth had passed, how now with this child had passed even
their right 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 in time of
spiritual pain feel a need for movement. After standing five minutes beside
his wife, he, again lifting high his right leg, went from the bedroom into a
little room half taken up by a long, broad sofa, and thence into the kitchen.
After wandering about the stove and the cook's bed he bowed his head and
went through a little door back to the 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 your position....
I sympathise with you!" said Abógin, with an imploring voice, laying one
hand upon his muffler. "But I am not asking this for myself.... My wife is
dying! If you had heard her cry, if you had seen her face, then you would
understand my persistence! My God! and I thought that you had gone to get
ready! Dr. Kiríloff, time is precious. Come, I implore you!"
"I cannot go," said Kiríloff with a pause between each word. Then he
returned 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 of you 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. How strange
this seems! Here I am hardly standing on my legs, yet you worry me 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 my wife? No.... No."
Kiríloff waved his hands and staggered back.

"Do not ... do not ask me," he continued in a frightened voice. "Excuse
me.... By the Thirteenth Volume of the Code I am bound to go, and you
have the right to drag me by the arm.... If you will have it, drag me ... but I
am useless.... Even for conversation I am not in a fit state.... Excuse me."
"It is useless, doctor, for you to speak to me in that tone," said Abógin,
again taking Kiríloff's arm. "The devil take your Thirteenth Volume!... 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 will that I appeal, but to your heart!...
A young woman is at the point of death! This moment your own son has
died, and who if not you should understand my terror?"
Abógin's voice trembled with agitation; in tremble and in tone was
something more persuasive than in the words. He was certainly sincere; but
it was remarkable that no matter how well chosen his phrases, they seemed
to come from him stilted, soulless, inappropriately ornate, to such an extent
that they seemed an insult to the atmosphere of the doctor's house and to his
own dying wife. He felt this himself, and therefore, fearing to be
misunderstood, he tried with all his force to make his voice sound soft and
tender, so as to win if not with words at least by sincerity of tone. In
general, phrases, however beautiful and profound, act only on those who
are indifferent, and seldom satisfy the happy or unhappy; it is for this reason
that the most touching expression of joy or sorrow is always silence;
sweethearts understand one another best when they are silent; and a burning
passionate eulogy spoken above a grave touches only the strangers present,
and seems to widow and child inexpressive and cold.
Kiríloff stood still and said nothing. When Abógin used some more phrases
about the high vocation of a physician, self-sacrifice, and so on, the doctor
asked gloomily:
"Is it far?"
"Something between thirteen and fourteen versts. I have excellent horses. I
give you my word of honour to bring you there and back in an hour. In a
single hour!"
The last words aided on the doctor more powerfully than the references to
humanity and the vocation of a doctor. He thought for a moment and said,
with a sigh:

"All right.... I will go."
With a rapid, steady gait he went into his study, and after a moment's delay
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 the darkness was
clearly defined the outline of the tall, stooping doctor, with his long, narrow
beard and eagle nose. As for Abógin, in addition to his pale face the doctor
could now distinguish a big head, and a little student's cap barely covering
the crown. The white muffler gleamed only in front; behind, it was hidden
under long hair.
"Believe me, I appreciate your generosity," he muttered, seating the doctor
in the calêche. "We will get there in no time. Listen, Luka, old man, drive as
hard as you can! Quick!"
The coachman drove rapidly. First they flew past a row of ugly buildings,
with a great open yard; everywhere around it was dark, but from a window
a bright light glimmered through the palisade, and three windows in the
upper story of the great block seemed paler than the air. After that they
drove through intense darkness. There was a smell of mushroom dampness,
and a lisping of trees; ravens awakened by the noise of the calêche stirred in
the foliage, and raised a frightened, complaining cry, as if they knew that
Kiríloff's son was dead, and that Abógin's wife was dying. They flashed
past single trees, past a coppice; a pond, crossed with great black shadows,
scintillated—and the calêche rolled across a level plain. The cry of the
ravens was heard 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 him as
when he is in danger of losing them."
And when the calêche slowly crossed the river, Kiríloff started suddenly 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 the stones,
crossed a sandy bank, and rolled onward. Kiríloff, wrapped in weariness,
looked around him. Behind, in the scanty starlight, gleamed the road; and
the willows by the river bank vanished in the darkness. To the right
stretched a plain, flat and interminable as heaven; and far in the distance, no
doubt on some sodden marsh, gleamed will-of-the-wisps. On the left,
running parallel to the road, stretched a hillock, shaggy with a small
shrubbery, and over the hill hung immovably a great half-moon, rosy, half
muffled in the mist and fringed with light clouds, which, it seemed, watched
it on every side, that it might 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 forget the past,
seemed tormented with remembrances of spring and summer, and waited in
apathy the inevitable winter. Everywhere the world seemed a dark,
unfathomable deep, an icy pit from which there was no escape either for
Kiríloff or for Abógin or for the red half-moon....
The nearer to its goal whirled the calêche, the more impatient seemed
Abógin. He shifted, jumped up, and looked over the coachman's shoulder.
And when at last the carriage stopped before steps handsomely covered
with striped drugget, he looked up at the lighted windows of the second
story, and panted audibly.
"If anything happens ... I will never survive it," he said, entering the hall
with Kiríloff, and rubbing his hands in agitation. But after listening a
moment, he added, "There is no confusion ... things must be going well."
In the hall were neither voices nor footsteps, and the whole house,
notwithstanding its brilliant lights, seemed asleep. Only now, for the first
time, the doctor and Abógin, after their sojourn in darkness, could see one
another plainly. Kiríloff was tall, round-shouldered, and ugly, and was
carelessly dressed. His thick, almost negro, lips, his eagle nose, and his
withered, indifferent glance, expressed something cutting, unkindly, and
rude. His uncombed hair, his sunken temples, the premature grey in the
long, narrow beard, through which appeared his chin, the pale grey of his
skin, and his careless, angular manners, all reflected a career of need
endured, of misfortune, of weariness with life and with men. Judging by his

dry figure, no one would ever believe that 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 big head,
with heavy but soft features; and he was dressed elegantly and fashionably.
From his carriage, from his closely-buttoned frock-coat, from his mane of
hair, and from his face, flowed something noble and leonine; he walked
with his head erect and his chest expanded, he spoke in an agreeable
baritone, and the way in which he took off his muffler and smoothed his
hair breathed a delicate, feminine elegance. Even his pallor, and the childish
terror with which, while taking off his coat, he looked up the staircase, did
not detract from his dignity, or diminish the satiety, health, and aplomb
which his whole figure breathed.
"There is no one about ... I can hear nothing," he said, going upstairs.
"There is no confusion.... God is merciful!"
He led the doctor through the hall into a great drawing-room, with a black
piano, and lustres in white covers. From this they went into a small, cosy,
and well-furnished dining-room, full of a pleasant, rosy twilight.
"Wait a moment," said Abógin, "I shall be back immediately. I will look
around 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 the
character of an adventure, apparently did not affect him. He lay back in the
armchair and examined his hands, burnt with carbolic acid. Only faintly
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, he noticed 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 again all was
silent. After waiting a moment Kiríloff ceased to examine his hands, and
raised his eyes upon the door through which Abógin had gone.
On the threshold stood Abógin. But it was not the Abógin who had left the
room. The expression of satiety, the delicate elegance had vanished; his
face, his figure, his pose were contorted by a repulsive expression not quite
of terror, not quite of physical pain. His nose, his lips, his moustaches, all

his features twitched; it seemed they wished to tear themselves off his face;
and his eyes were transfigured as 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 strong hissing
accentuation of the second syllable. "Cheated! Gone! Got ill, and sent for a
doctor, only to fly with that buffoon Paptchinski! My God!"
Abógin walked heavily up to the doctor, stretched up to his face his white,
soft fists, and, shaking them, continued in a howl:
"Gone! Deceived! But why this extra lie? My God! My God! But why this
filthy swindler's trick, this devilish reptile play? What have I ever done?
Gone!"
The tears burst from his eyes. He turned on one foot and walked up and
down the room. And now in his short coat, in the narrow, fashionable
trousers, which made his legs seem too thin for his body, with his great
head and mane, he still more closely resembled a lion. On the doctor's
indifferent face appeared curiosity. He rose and looked at Abógin.
"Be so good as to tell me ... where is the patient?"
"Patient! Patient!" cried Abógin, with a laugh, a sob, and a shaking of his
fists. "This is no sick woman, but a woman accursed! Meanness, baseness,
lower than Satan himself could have conceived! Sent for a doctor, to fly
with him—to fly with that buffoon, that clown, that Alphonse. Oh, God,
better a thousand times that she had died! I cannot bear it.... I cannot bear
it!"
The doctor drew himself up. His eyes blinked and filled with team, his
narrow beard moved to the right and to the left in accord with the
movement 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 in despair is
left alone in a great house. I myself can hardly stand on my feet, for three
nights I have not slept, and what is this? am brought here to play in some
trivial comedy, to take the part of a property-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 clenched
teeth, shaking one of his fists beside his face, with an expression as if
someone had trod upon a corn. "I never noticed that he rode here every day,
never noticed that to-day he came in a carriage! Why in a carriage? 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 expense of 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 only
beginning to understand that he has been badly insulted, the doctor
shrugged his shoulders, and not knowing what to say, threw himself in
exhaustion into the chair.
"Got tired of me, loved another! Well, God be with them! But why this
deception, why this base, this traitorous trick?" cried Abógin in a whining
voice. "Why? For what? What have I done to her? Listen, doctor," he said
passionately, coming nearer to Kiríloff. "You are the involuntary witness of
my misfortune, and I will not conceal from you the truth. I swear to you that
I loved that woman, that I loved her 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 or sister.... I have never said an unkind word to her.... I gave her no
cause! But why this lie? I do not ask for love, but why this shameless
deception 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, Abógin
sincerely poured forth to the doctor his whole soul. He spoke passionately,
with both hands pressed to his heart, he revealed family secrets without a
moment's hesitation; and, it seemed, was even relieved when these secrets
escaped him. Had he spoken thus for an hour, for two hours, and poured out
his soul, he would certainly have felt better. Who knows whether the doctor
might not have listened to 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 and surprise on his face gave way little by little to an

expression of bitter offence, indignation, and wrath. His features became
sharper, harder, and more disagreeable. And finally when Abógin held
before his eyes the photograph of a young woman with a face handsome but
dry and inexpressive as a nun's, and asked him could he, looking at this
photograph, imagine that she was capable of telling a lie, the doctor
suddenly leaped up, averted his eyes, and said, rudely ringing out every
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 dare to communicate to
me these base trifles! Do you not see that I have already been insulted
enough? Am I a lackey who will bear insults without retaliation?"
Abógin staggered backwards, and looked at Kiríloff in amazement.
"Why did you bring me here?" continued the doctor, shaking his beard....
"If you marry filth, then storm with your filth, and play your melodramas;
but what affair is that of mine? What have I to do with your romances?
Leave me alone! Display your well-born meanness, show off your humane
ideas, (the doctor pointed to the violoncello case) 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 cannot respect 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 jokes on other
men. I am a doctor; you regard doctors and all other working men who do
not smell of scent and prostitution as your lackeys and your servants. But
reflect, reflect—no one has I given you the right to make a property man of
a suffering human being!"
"You dare to speak this to me?" said Abógin; and his face again twitched,
this time plainly from anger.
"Yes ... and you, knowing of the misery in my home, have dared to drag me
here to witness this insanity," cried the doctor, again banging his fist upon
the table. "Who gave you the right to mock at human misfortune?"
"You are out of your mind," said Abógin. "You are not generous. I also am
deeply unhappy, and...."

"Unhappy!" cried Kiríloff, with a contemptuous laugh. "Do not touch that
word; it ill becomes you. Oafs who have no money to meet their bills also
call themselves unfortunate. Geese that are stuffed with too much fat are
also unhappy. Insignificant curs!"
"You forget yourself, you forget yourself!" screamed Abógin. "For words
like those ... people are horsewhipped. Do you hear me?"
He suddenly thrust his hand into his side pocket, took out a pocket-book,
and taking two bank-notes, flung them on the table.
"There you have the money for your visit!" he said, dilating his nostrils.
"You are paid!"
"Do not dare to offer money to me," cried Kiríloff, sweeping the notes on to
the floor. "For insults money is not the payment."
The two men stood face to face, and in their anger flung insults at one
another. It is certain that never in their lives had they uttered so many
unjust, inhuman, and ridiculous words. In each was fully expressed the
egoism of the unfortunate. And men who are unfortunate, egoistical, angry,
unjust, and heartless are even less than stupid men capable of understanding
one another. For misfortune does not unite, but severs; and those who
should be bound by community of sorrow are much more unjust 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 angrily flung
the bell upon the floor; it fell heavily on the carpet and emitted a plaintive
and ominous sound.... A footman appeared.
"Where have you been hiding yourself? May Satan take you!" roared
Abógin, rushing at him with clenched fists. "Where have you been? Go, tell
them at once to give this gentleman the calêche, and get the carriage ready
for me!... Stop!" he cried, when the servant turned to go. "To-morrow let
none of you traitors remain in this house! The whole pack of you! I will get
others! Curs!"
Awaiting their carriages, Abógin and Kiríloff were silent. The first had
already regained his expression of satiety and his delicate elegance. 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 doctor stood, with one hand on
the edge of the table, and looked at Abógin with deep, somewhat cynical
and ugly contempt—with the eyes of sorrow and 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 darker than an hour
before. The red half-moon had fallen below the hill, and the clouds that had
guarded it lay in black spots among the stars. A carriage with red lamps
rattled along the road, and overtook Kiríloff. It was Abógin, driving away to
protest ... and make a fool of himself....
And all the way home Kiríloff thought, not of his wife or of dead Andreï,
but of Abógin and of the people who lived in the house which he had just
left. His thoughts were unjust, heartless, inhuman. He condemned Abógin
and his wife, and Paptchinski, and all that class of persons who live in a
rosy twilight and smell of perfumes; all the way he hated and despised them
to the point of torture; and his mind was full of unshakeable convictions as
to the worthlessness of such people.
Time will pass; the sorrow of Kiríloff will pass away also, but this
conviction—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 baby lies,
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 to wall
stretches a cord on which hang baby-clothes and a great pair of black
trousers. On the ceiling above the lamp shines a great green spot, and the
baby-clothes and trousers cast long shadows on the stove, on the cradle, on

Varka.... When the lamp flickers, the spot and shadows move as if from a
draught. It is stifling. There is a smell of soup and boots.
The child cries. It has long been hoarse and weak from crying, but still it
cries, and who can say when it will be comforted P And Varka wants to
sleep. Her eyelids droop, her head hangs, her neck pains her.... She can
hardly move her eyelids or her lips, and it seems to her that her face is
sapless and petrified, and that her head has shrivelled 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 door snore
Varka's master and the journeyman Athanasius. The cradle creaks
plaintively, Varka murmurs—and the two sounds mingle soothingly in a
lullaby sweet to the ears of those who lie in bed. But now the music is only
irritating and oppressive, for it inclines to sleep, and sleep is impossible. If
Varka, which God forbid, were to go to sleep, her master and mistress
would beat her.
The lamp flickers. The green spot and the shadows move about, they pass
into the half-open, motionless eyes of Varka, and in her half-awakened
brain blend in misty images. She sees dark clouds chasing one another
across the sky and crying like the child. And then a wind blows; the clouds
vanish; and Varka sees a wide road covered with liquid mud; along the road
stretch waggons, men with satchels on their backs crawl along, and
shadows move backwards and forwards; on either side through the chilly,
thick mist are visible hills. And suddenly the men with the satchels, and the
shadows collapse in the liquid mud. "Why is this?" asks Varka. "To sleep, to
sleep!" comes the answer. And they sleep soundly, sleep sweetly; and on the
telegraph wires perch crows, and cry 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 own words he
"has had a rupture." The pain is so intense that he cannot utter a single
word, and only inhales air and emits through his lips a drumming sound.
"Bu, bu, bu, bu, bu...."

Mother Pelageya has run to the manor-house to tell the squire that Yéfim 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, sent from the manor-house
where he is staying as a guest. The doctor comes into the hut; in the
darkness he is invisible, but Varka can hear him coughing 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 minute
passes in silence. The doctor dives into his pockets and lights a match
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 shall not
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 will operate on
you. You must go at once ... without fail! It is late, and they will all be
asleep at the hospital ... but never mind, I will give you a note.... Do you
hear?"
"Batiushka, how can he go to the hospital?" asks Pelageya. "We have no
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 the cart 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; she has
gone to the hospital to find out how Yéfim is.... There is a child crying, 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 was
better, towards morning he gave his soul to God.... Heavenly kingdom,
eternal rest! ... They say we brought him too late.... We should have done it
sooner...."
Varka goes into the wood, and cries, and suddenly someone slaps her on the
nape of the neck with such force that her forehead bangs against a birch
tree. She lifts her head, and sees before her her master, the shoemaker.
"What are you doing, scabby?" he asks. "The child is crying and you are
asleep."
He gives her a slap on the ear; and she shakes her head, rocks the cradle,
and murmurs her lullaby. The green spot, the shadows from the trousers and
the baby-clothes, tremble, wink at her, and soon again possess her brain.
Again she sees a road covered with liquid mud. Men with satchels on their
backs, and shadows lie down and sleep soundly. When she looks at them
Varka passionately desires to sleep; she would lie 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 everyone she
meets. "Show the pity of God, merciful gentleman!"
"Give me here the child," cries a well-known voice. "Give me the child,"
repeats the same voice, but this time angrily and sharply. "You are asleep,
beast!"
Varka jumps up, and looking around her remembers where she is; there is
neither road, nor Pelageya, nor people, but only, standing in the middle of
the room, her mistress who has come to feed the child. While the stout,

broad-shouldered woman feeds and soothes the baby, Varka stands still,
looks at her, and waits till she has finished.
And outside the window the air grows blue, the shadows fade and the green
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 now to set her
brain going. But, as before, she wants to sleep, wants passionately to sleep.
Varka lays her head on the edge of the cradle and rocks it with her whole
body so as to drive away sleep; but her eyelids droop again, and her head is
heavy.
"Varka, light the stove!" rings the voice of her master from behind the door.
That is to say: it is at last time to get up and begin the day's work. Varka
leaves the cradle, and runs to the shed for wood. She is delighted. When she
runs or walks she does not feel the want of sleep as badly as when she is
sitting down. She brings in wood, lights the stove, and feels how her
petrified face is waking up, and how her thoughts are clearing.
"Varka, get ready the samovar!" cries her mistress.
Varka cuts splinters of wood, and has hardly lighted them and laid them in
the samovar when another order conies:
"Varka, clean your master's goloshes!"
Varka sits on the floor, cleans the goloshes, and thinks how delightful it
would be to thrust her head into the big, deep golosh, and slumber in it
awhile. ... And suddenly the golosh grows, swells, and fills the whole room.
Varka drops the brush, but immediately shakes her head, distends her eyes,
and tries to look at things as if they had not grown and 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 stove and
runs into the shop. There is much work to be done, and not a moment free.

But nothing is so tiresome as to stand at the kitchen-table and peel potatoes.
Varka's head falls on the table, the potatoes glimmer in her eyes, the knife
drops from her hand, and around her bustles her stout, angry mistress with
sleeves tucked up, and talks so loudly that her voice rings in Varka's ears. It
is torture, too, to wait at table, to wash up, and to sew. There are moments
when she wishes, notwithstanding everything around her, to throw herself
on the floor and sleep.
The day passes. And watching how the windows darken, Varka presses her
petrified temples, and smiles, herself not knowing why. The darkness
caresses her drooping eyelids, and promises a sound sleep soon. But
towards 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 a whole 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 so as to
drive away sleep.
"Varka, go for vodka! Varka, where is the corkscrew? Varka, clean the
herrings!"
At last the guests are gone; the fires are extinguished; master and mistress
go to bed.
"Varka, rock the cradle!" echoes the last order. In the stove chirrups a
cricket; the green spot on the ceiling, and the shadows from the trousers and
baby-clothes again twinkle before Varka's half-opened eyes, they wink at
her, and obscure her brain.
"Bayú, bayúshki, bayú," she murmurs, "Nurse will sing a song to you...."
But the child cries and wearies itself with crying. Varka sees again the
muddy road, the men with satchels, Pelageya, and father Yéfim. She
remembers, she recognises them all, but in her semi-slumber she cannot
understand the force which binds her, hand and foot, and crushes her, and
ruins her life. She looks around her, and seeks that force that she may 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 winking green spot, and as she
hears the cry of the baby, she finds the enemy who is crushing her heart.
The enemy is the child.
Varka laughs. She is astonished. How was it that never before could she
understand such a simple thing? The green spot, the shadows, and the
cricket, 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. She is
delighted and touched by the thought that she will soon be delivered from
the child who has bound her, hand and foot. To kill the child, and then to
sleep, sleep, sleep....
And smiling and blinking and threatening the green spot with her fingers,
Varka steals to the cradle and bends over the child.... And having smothered
the child she drops on the floor, and, laughing with joy at the thought that
she can sleep, in a moment sleeps as soundly as the dead child.

AT THE MANOR
Pavel Ilitch Rashevitch marched up and down the room, stepping softly on
the Little Russian parquet, and casting a long shadow on the walls and
ceiling; and his visitor, Monsieur Meyer, Examining Magistrate, sat on 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 of preparations for
supper.
"I don't dispute it for a moment!" said Rashevitch. "From the point of view
of fraternity, equality, and all that sort of thing the swineherd Mitka is as
good a man as Goethe or Frederick the Great. But look at it from the point
of view of science; have the courage to look actuality straight in the face,
and you cannot possibly deny that the white bone[1] is not a prejudice, not a
silly woman's invention. The white bone, my friend, has a natural-historical
justification, and to deny 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 studied
anything except the humanities, so you may well deceive yourself with
illusions as to equality, fraternity, and that sort of thing. But, on my 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, his
pince-nez jumped off his nose, he twitched his shoulders nervously, and at
the word "Darwinian" glanced defiantly at the mirror, and with his two
hands divided his grey beard. He wore a short, well-worn jacket, and
narrow trousers; but the rapidity of his movements and the smartness of the
short jacket did not suit him at all, and his big, longhaired, handsome head,
which reminded one of a bishop or a venerable poet, seemed to be set on
the body of a tall, thin, and affected youth. When he opened his legs widely,
his long shadow resembled a pair of scissors.
As a rule he loved the sound of his own voice; and it always seemed to him
that he was saying something new and original. In the presence of Meyer he
felt an unusual elevation of spirits and flow of thought. He liked the
magistrate, who enlivened him by his youthful ways, his health, his fine

manners, his solidity, and, even more, by the kindly relations which he had
established with the family. Speaking generally, Rashevitch was not a
favourite with his acquaintances. They avoided him, and he knew it. They
declared that he had driven his wife into the 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 that Rashevitch and his daughters were the only persons
in the district with whom he felt at home. And Rashevitch reciprocated his
esteem—all the more sincerely because Meyer was a young man, and an
excellent match for his elder daughter, Zhenya. And now, enjoying his
thoughts and the sound of his own voice, and looking with satisfaction at
the stout, well-groomed, respectable figure of his visitor, Rashevitch
reflected how he would settle Zhenya for life as the wife of a good man,
and, in addition, transfer all the work of managing the estate to his 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 thousand roubles.
"There can hardly be a shadow of doubt," continued Rashevitch, becoming
more and more possessed by his subject, "that if some Richard the Lion-
hearted or Frederick Barbarossa, for instance, a man courageous and
magnanimous, has a son, his good qualities will be inherited by the son,
together with his bumps; and if this courage and magnanimity are fostered
in the son by education and exercise, and he marries a princess also
courageous and magnanimous, then these qualities will be transmitted to the
grandson, and so on, until they become peculiarities of the species, and
descend organically, so to speak, in flesh and blood. Thanks to severe
sexual selection, thanks to the fact that noble families instinctively preserve
themselves from base alliances, and that young people of position do not
marry the devil knows whom, their high spiritual qualities have reproduced
themselves from generation to generation, they have been perpetuated, and
in the course of ages have become even more perfect and loftier. For all that
is good in humanity we are indebted to Nature, to the regular, natural-
historical, expedient course of things, strenuously in the course of centuries
separating the white bone from the black. Yes, my friend! It is not the
potboy's child, the cookmaid's brat who has given us literature, science, art,
justice, the ideas of honour and of duty.... For all these, humanity is
indebted exclusively to the white bone; and in this sense, from the point of

view of natural history, worthless Sobakevitch,[2] merely because he is a
white bone, is a million times higher and more useful than the best
tradesman, let him endow fifty museums! You may say what you like, but if
I refuse to give my hand to the potboy's or the cookmaid's son, by that
refusal I preserve from stain the best that is on the earth, and subserve one
of the highest destinies 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 into his
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 representatives of 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. And as to
the genius of Gontcharoff there can be two opinions. But let us leave names
and return to facts. Tell me how you can reply, sir, to the eloquent fact that
when the potboy climbs to a higher place than he was born in—when he
reaches eminence in literature, in science, in local government, in law—
what have you to say to the fact that Nature herself intervenes on behalf of
the most sacred human rights, and declares war against him? As a matter of
fact, hardly has the potboy succeeded in stepping into other people's shoes
when he begins to languish, wither, go out of his mind, and degenerate; and
nowhere will you meet so many dwarfs, psychical cripples, consumptives,
and starvelings 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 potboy would
destroy it all.... Be so good as to tell me, please, what this invasion has
given us up to the present time? What has the potboy brought with him?"
Rashevitch made a mysterious, frightened face, and continued:
"Never before did our science and literature find themselves at such a low
ebb as now. The present generation, sir, has neither ideas nor ideals, and all
its activity is restricted to an attempt to tear the last shirt off someone else's

back. All your present-day men who give themselves out as progressive and
incorruptible may be bought for a silver rouble; and modern intelligent
society is distinguished by only one thing, that is, that if you mix in it you
must keep your hand on your pocket, else it will steal your purse."
Rashevitch blinked and smiled. "Steal your purse!" he repeated, with a
happy laugh. "And morals? What morals have we?" Rashevitch glanced at
the door. "You can no longer be surprised if your wife robs you and
abandons you—that is a mere trifle. At the present day, my friend, every
twelve-year-old girl looks out for a lover; and all these amateur theatricals
and literary evenings are invented only for the purpose of catching rich
parvenus as sweethearts. Mothers sell their daughters, husbands are asked
openly at what price they will sell their wives, and you may even trade, my
friend,..."
Up to this Meyer had said nothing, and sat motionless. Now he rose from
the 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 down
forcibly upon the sofa, and swore he should not leave the house without
supper. Meyer again sat motionless and listened; but soon began to look at
Rashevitch with an expression of doubt and alarm, as if he were only just
beginning to understand his character. When at last the maid entered, saying
that the young ladies had sent her to say that supper was 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. They were of equal
stature, and both black-eyed and very pale. Zhenya had her hair down, but
Iraida's was twisted into a high top-knot. Before eating anything each drank
a glass of spirits, with an expression meant to imply that they were drinking
accidentally, and for the first time in 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 their father
and the visitor.... Interrupting one another, and mixing French and 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 jolly that was! But now there was
no place to go to for a change, and they lived 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, looking affectionately
at the magistrate. "We, in the goodness and simplicity of our hearts, and
from fear of being suspected of retrograde tendencies, fraternise—excuse
the expression—with all kinds of human trash, and preach equality and
fraternity with upstarts and nouveaux riches! Yet if we paused to reflect for
a single minute we should see how criminal is our kindness. For all that our
ancestors attained to in the course of centuries will be derided and
destroyed in a single day by these modern Huns."
After supper all went into the drawing-room. Zhenya and Iraida lighted the
piano candles and got ready their music.... But their parent continued to
hold forth, and there was no knowing when he would end. Bored and
irritated, they looked at their egoist father, for whom, they concluded, 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 possession of him, and never let
him escape for a moment.
"Just as western chivalry repelled the onslaught of the Mongols, so must
we, before it is too late, combine and strike together at the enemy."
Rashevitch spoke apostolically, and lifted his right hand on high. "Let me
appear before the potboy no longer as plain Pavel Ilitch, but as a strong and
menacing Richard the Lion-Heart! Fling your scruples behind you—
enough! Let us swear a sacred compact that when the potboy approaches
we will fling him words of contempt straight in 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 a
prolonged 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 his eyes..
"My father was a plain working man," he said in an abrupt, broken voice.
"But I can see nothing bad in that."
Rashevitch was thunderstruck. In his confusion he looked as if he had been
detected in a serious crime; he looked at Meyer with a dumfounded face,
and said not a word. Zhenya and Iraida blushed, and bent over their music.
They were thoroughly ashamed of their tactless father. A minute passed in
silence, and the situation was becoming unbearable when suddenly a sickly,
strained voice—it seemed utterly mal à propos—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 walked quickly 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 darkness and
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 looked attentively
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, and tried
to persuade himself that such a stupid misunderstanding had not really
taken place. He was angry, and ashamed of himself. In the first place, he
knew that it was extremely tactless and incautious to raise this accursed
conversation about the white bone without knowing anything of the origin
of his guest. He told himself, with perfect justice, that for him there was no
excuse, for he had had a lesson before, having once in a railway carriage set
about abusing Germans to fellow-passengers who, it turned out, were
themselves Germans.... And in 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 felt awkward
and disgusted, as if he had just eaten soap. "It is a bad business!"
Through the open window he could see into the drawing-room where
Zhenya with her hair down, pale and frightened, spoke excitedly to her
sister.... Iraida walked from corner to corner, apparently lost in thought; and
then began to speak, also excitedly and with an indignant face. Then both
spoke together. Rashevitch could not distinguish a word, but he knew too
well the subject of their conversation. Zhenya was grumbling that her father
with his eternal chattering drove every decent man from the house, and had
to-day robbed them of their last acquaintance, it might have been husband;
and now the poor young man could not find a place in the whole district
wherein to rest his soul. And Iraida, if judged correctly from the despairing
way in which she raised her arms, lamented bitterly their wearisome life at
home and their ruined youth.
Going up to his bedroom, Rashevitch sat on the bed and undressed himself
slowly. He felt that he was a persecuted man, and was tormented by the
same feeling as though he had eaten soap. He was thoroughly ashamed of
himself. When he had undressed he gazed sadly at his long, veined, old-
man's legs, and remembered that in the country round he was nicknamed
"the toad," and that never a conversation passed without making him
ashamed of himself. By some extraordinary fatality every discussion ended
badly. He began softly, kindly, with good intentions, and called himself
genially an "old student," an "idealist," a "Don Quixote." But gradually, and
unnoticed by himself, he passed on to abuse and calumny, and, what is
more surprising, delivered himself of sincere criticisms of science, art, and
morals, although it was twenty years since he had read a book, been farther
than the government town, or had any channel for learning what was going
on in the world around him. Even when he sat down to write a
congratulatory letter he invariably ended by abusing something or
somebody. And as he reflected upon this, it seemed all the more strange,
since he knew himself in reality to be a sensitive, lachrymose old man. It
seemed almost as if he were possessed by an unclean spirit which filled him
against his will with hatred and grumbling.
"A bad business!" he sighed, getting into bed. "A bad business!"

His daughters also could not sleep. Laughter and lamentation resounded
through the house. Zhenya was in hysterics. Shortly afterwards Iraida also
began to cry. More than once the barefooted housemaid ran up and down
the corridor.
"What a scandal!" muttered Rashevitch, sighing, and turning uneasily from
side to side. "A bad business!"
He slept, but nightmare gave him no peace. He thought that he was standing
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 last evening
a serious misunderstanding had occurred, and that Meyer would never visit
him again. He remembered then that the interest had to be lodged in the
bonk, that he must find husbands for his daughters, and that he must eat and
drink. He remembered sickness, old age, and unpleasantness; that winter
would soon be upon him, and that there was no wood....
At nine o'clock he dressed slowly, then drank some tea and ate two large
slices of bread and butter.... His daughters did not come down to breakfast,
they did not wish to see his face; and this offended him. For a time he lay
upon the study sofa, and then sat at his writing-table and began to write a
letter to his daughters. His hand trembled and his eyes itched. He wrote that
he was now old, that nobody wanted him, and that nobody loved him; so he
begged his children to forget him, and when he died, to bury him in a plain,
deal coffin, without ceremony, or to send his body to Kharkoff for
dissection in the Anatomical Theatre. He felt that every line breathed malice
and affectation ... but he could not stop himself, and wrote on and on and
on....
"The toad!" rang a voice from the next room; it was the voice of his elder
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 of the heroes of
Gogol's celebrated novel Dead Souls.

AN EVENT

Morning. Through the frosty lacework which covered the window-panes a
host of bright sun-rays burst into the nursery. Vanya, a boy of six, with a
nose like a button, and his sister Nina, aged four, curly-headed, chubby, and
small for her age, awoke, and glared angrily at one another through the bars
of their cots.
"Fie!" cried nurse. "For shame, children! All the good people have finished
breakfast, and you can't keep your eyes open...."
The sun-rays played merrily on the carpet, on the walls, on nurse's skirt, and
begged the children to play with them. But the children took no notice.
They had awakened on the wrong side of their beds. Nina pouted, made a
wry face, and drawled:
"Te-ea! Nurse, te-ea!"
Vanya frowned, and looked about for an opportunity to pick a quarrel and
roar. He had just blinked his eyes and opened his mouth, when out of 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 one
another. Then both screamed, jumped out of bed, and, making the air ring
with deafening yells, ran barefooted in their nightdresses into the 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 used for
coke when he lighted the stove. Out of this box gazed the cat. Her grey face
expressed extreme exhaustion, her green eyes with their little black pupils
looked languishing and sentimental. ... From her face it was plain that to
complete her happiness only one thing was lacking, and that was the
presence of the father of her children, to whom she had given herself heart
and soul. She attempted to mew, and opened 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, without
moving, but holding their breath, looked at the cat.... They were astonished
and thunderstruck, and did not hear the grumbling of the pursuing nurse. In
the eyes of both shone sincere felicity.
In the up-bringing of children, domestic animals play an unnoticed but
unquestionably beneficent part. Which of us cannot remember strong but
magnanimous dogs, lazy lapdogs, birds who died in captivity, dull-witted
but haughty turkey-cocks, kindly old-lady-cats who forgave us when we
stood on their tails for a joke and caused them intense pain? It might even
be argued that the patience, faithfulness, all-forgivingness and sincerity of
our domestic animals act on the childish brain much more powerfully than
the long lectures of dry and pale Earl Earlovitch, or the obscure
explanations of the governess who tries to prove to children that water is
composed of hydrogen and oxygen.
"What duckies!" cried Nina, overflowing with gay laughter. "They're
exactly 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 much attention.
"Murrrrm!"
When they had looked for a while at the kittens, the children took them
from under the cat and began to smooth them down, and afterwards, not
satisfied with this, laid them in the skirts of their nightdresses and ran from
one room to another.
"Mamma, the cat's got kittens!" they cried. Mother sat in the dining-room,
talking to a stranger. When she saw her children unwashed, undressed, with
their nightdresses on high, she got red, and looked at them severely.
"Drop your nightdresses, shameless!" she said. "Run away at once, or you'll
be punished."
But the children paid no attention either to their mother's threats or to the
presence of the stranger. They put the kittens down on the carpet and raised
a deafening howl. Beside them walked the old cat, and mewed imploringly.
When in a few minutes the children were dragged off to the nursery to
dress, say their prayers, and have their breakfast, they were full of a

passionate wish to escape from these prosaic duties and return to the
kitchen.
Ordinary occupations and games were quite forgotten. From the moment of
their appearance in the world the kittens obscured everything, and took 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 offer without a moment's hesitation. Till
dinner-time, in spite of the warm protests of nurse and the cook, they sat in
the kitchen and played with the kittens. Their faces were serious,
concentrated, and expressive of anxiety. They had to provide not only for
the present condition, but also for the future of the kittens. So they decided
that one kitten would 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 third
would live in the cellar and eat the rats.
"But why can't they see?" asked Nina. "They have blind eyes, like beggars."
The question troubled Vanya. He did his best to open one of the kitten's
eyes, for a long time puffed and snuffled, but the operation was fruitless.
And another circumstance worried the children extremely—the kittens
obstinately refused the proffered meat and milk. Everything that was laid
before their little snouts was eaten up by their grey mother.
"Let's build houses for the kittens," proposed Vanya. "We will make them
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 the separation of the family
seemed premature; the old cat, preserving on her face her former plaintive
and sentimental expression, paid visits to 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 be
father of the kittens. In the end their choice fell on a big dark-red horse
whose tail had been tom off. He had been cast away in the store-room under
the staircase, together with the remnants of other toys that had outlived their

generation. They took the horse from the store-room and stood it beside the
box.
"Look out!" they warned him. "Stand there and see that they behave
themselves."
All this was said and done in a serious manner, and with an expression of
solicitude. Outside the box and the kittens, Vanya and Nina would recognise
no other world. Their happiness had no bounds. But they were destined to
endure moments of unutterable torture. Just before dinner Vanya 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 in the 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 what you've
done! Ruined a whole package of paper!"
To Vanya's astonishment, his father did not share his sympathy with kittens,
and, instead of going into raptures and rejoicing, pulled Vanya's ear, and
cried:
"Stepan, take away this abomination!"
At dinner the scandal was repeated.... During the second course the diners
suddenly heard a faint squeal. They began to search for the cause, and
found a kitten under Nina's pinafore.
"Ninka! Go out of the room!" said her father angrily. "The kittens must be
thrown into the sink this minute! I won't tolerate these abominations in the
house!"
Vanya and Nina were terror-stricken. Death in the sink, apart from its
cruelty, threatened to deprive the cat and the wooden horse of their children,
to desolate the box, to destroy all their plans for the future—that beautiful
future when one kitten would console its old mother, the second live in the
country, and the third catch rats in the cellar.... They began to cry, and
implored mercy for the kittens. Their father consented to spare them, but

only on the condition that the children should not dare to go into the kitchen
or touch the kittens again.
After dinner, Vanya and Nina wandered from one room to another and
languished. The prohibition on going to the kitchen drove them to despair.
They refused sweets; and were naughty, and rude to their mother. In the
evening when Uncle Petrusha came they took him aside and complained of
their father for threatening to throw the kittens into the sink.
"Uncle Petrusha," they implored, "tell mamma to put the kittens in the
nursery.... Do!"
"Well ... all right!" said their uncle, tearing himself away. "Agreed!"
Uncle Petrusha seldom came alone. Along with him came Nero, a big black
dog, of Danish origin, with hanging ears and a tail as hard as a stick. Nero
was silent, morose, and altogether taken up with his own dignity. To the
children he paid not the slightest attention; and, when he marched past
them, knocked his tail against them as if they were chairs. Vanya and Nina
detested him from the bottom of their hearts. But on this occasion practical
considerations gained the upper hand over mere sentiment.
"Do you know what, Nina?" said Vanya, opening wide his eyes. "Let us
make Nero the father instead of the horse! The horse is dead, but Nero's
alive." The whole evening they waited impatiently for their father to sit
down to his game of vint, when they might take Nero to the kitchen without
being observed.... At last father sat down to his cards, mother bustled
around the samovar, and did not see the children.... 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 and
gobbled them up."
The children expected everyone in the house to rise in alarm and fly at the
guilty Nero. But their parents sat calmly in their chairs, and only expressed

surprise at the appetite of the big dog. Father and mother laughed.... Nero
marched up to the table, flourished his tail, and licked himself
complacently. ... Only the cat seemed disturbed; she stretched out her tail,
and walked about the room looking suspiciously at 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 injured cat,
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 surrounded by a
forest of burdocks, nettles, and wild hemp. The roof is red, the chimney is
on the point of tumbling, the steps are rotten and overgrown with grass, and
of the plaster only traces remain. The front gazes at the hospital, the back
looks into the fields, from which it is separated only by a grey, spiked fence.
The spikes with their sharp points sticking upwards, the fence, the wing
itself, have that melancholy, God-forsaken air which is seen only in
hospitals and prisons.
If you are not afraid of being stung by nettles, come along the narrow path,
and see what is going on inside. Open the hall-door and enter the hall. Here,
against the walls and around the stove, are heaped whole 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 the watchman
Nikita, an old soldier. His face is coarse and drink-sodden, his hanging eye-
brows give him the appearance of a sheep-dog, he is small and sinewy, but
his carriage is impressive and his fists are strong. He belongs to that class of
simple, expeditious, positive, and dull persons, who above all things in the
world worship order, and find in this a justification of their existence. He
beats his charges in the face, in the chest, in the back, in short, wherever his

fists chance to strike; and he is convinced that without this beating there
would be no order in the universe.
After you pass through Nikita's hall, you enter the large, roomy dormitory
which takes up the rest of the wing. In this room the walls are painted a
dirty blue, the ceiling is black with soot like the ceiling of a chimneyless
hut; it is plain that in winter the stove smokes, and the air is suffocating.
The windows are disfigured with iron bars, the floor is damp and splintered,
there is a smell of sour cabbage, a smell of unsnuffed wicks, a smell of bugs
and ammonia. And at the moment of entry all these smells produce upon
you the impression that you have entered a cage of wild beasts.
Around the room stand beds, screwed to the floor. Sitting or lying on them,
dressed in blue dressing-gowns, and wearing nightcaps after the manner of
our forefathers, are men. It is the lunatic asylum, and these arc the lunatics.
There are only five patients. One is of noble birth, the others arc men of
lower origin. The nearest to the door, a tall, thin man of the petty trading
class, looks fixedly at one point. He has a red moustache and tear-stained
eyes, and supports his head on one hand. In the books of 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 seldom joins, and usually refuses to
answer questions. He eats and drinks mechanically. Judged by his
emaciation, his flushed cheeks, and his painful, hacking cough, he is
wasting away from consumption.
Beside him is a little, active old man with a pointed beard, and the black,
fuzzy hair of a negro. He spends all day in walking from window to
window, or sitting on his bed, with legs doubled underneath him as if he
were a Turk. He is as tireless as a bullfinch, and all day chirrups, titters, and
sings in a low voice His childish gaiety and lively character are shown also
at night, when he rises to "pray to God," that is, to beat his breast with his
clenched fists, and pick at the doors. This is Moséika, a Jew and an idiot.
He went out of his mind twenty years ago when his cap factory was
destroyed by fire.
Of all the captives in Word No. 6, he alone has permission to leave the
asylum, and he is even allowed to wander about the yard and the streets.
This privilege, which he has enjoyed for many years, was probably

accorded to him as the oldest inmate of the asylum, and as a quiet, harmless
fool, the jester of the town, who may be seen in the streets surrounded by
dogs and little boys. Wrapped in his old dressing-gown, with a ridiculous
nightcap and slippers, sometimes barefooted, 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, so that he returns to the ward wealthy and sated. But
all that he brings home is taken by Nikita for his own particular benefit. The
old soldier does this roughly and angrily, turning out the Jew's pockets,
calling God to witness that he will never allow him outside the asylum
again, and swearing that to him disorder is the most detestable thing in the
world.
Moséika loves to make himself useful to others. He fetches water for his
companions, tucks them in when they go to bed, promises to bring each a
kopeck when he next returns from the town, and to make them new caps.
He feeds with a spoon his paralytic neighbour on the left; and all this he
does, not out of sympathy for others or for considerations of humanity, but
from a love of imitation, and in a sort of involuntary subjection to his
neighbour on the right, Iván Gromof.
Ivan Dmítritch Gromof is a man of thirty-three years of age. He is a noble
by birth, and has been an usher in the law courts, and a government
secretary; but now he suffers from the mania of persecution. He lies upon
his bed twisted into a lump resembling a roll of bread, or marches from
corner to corner for the sake of motion. He is always in a 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 listen intently. Is it for him they arc
coming? Are they searching for him? And his face immediately takes on an
expression of restlessness and repulsion.
There is something attractive about his broad, high cheek-boned face,
which reflects, as a mirror, the tortured wrestlings and eternal terror of his
mind. His grimaces arc strange and sickly; but the delicate lines engraven
on his face by sincere suffering express reason and intelligence, 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 towards everyone except Nikita. If his neighbour

drops a spoon or a button he jumps immediately out of bed and picks it up.
When he wakes he invariably says, "Good morning!" to his companions;
and every evening on going to bed wishes them "good night!"
But madness shows itself in other things besides his grimaces and continual
mental tension. In the evening he wraps himself in his dressing-gown, and,
trembling all over, and chattering his teeth, he walks from corner to corner,
and in between the beds. He seems to be in a state of fever. From his sudden
stoppages and strange looks at his fellow-prisoners it is plain that he has
something very serious to say; but, no doubt, remembering that they will
neither listen nor understand, he says nothing, shakes his head impatiently,
and continues his walk. But at last the desire to speak conquers all other
considerations, and he gives way, and speaks passionately. His words are
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 human baseness, of violence
trampling over truth, of the beautiful life on earth that is to come, and of the
barred windows which remind him every moment of the folly and cruelty of
the strong. And he hums medleys of old 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 had two
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 a screes of
misfortunes which overtook the Gromofs. A week after Sergéi's death his
old father was tried for forgery and misappropriation of public moneys, and
soon afterwards died of typhus in the prison infirmary. His house and all his
belongings were sold by auction, and Iván Dmítritch and his mother
remained without a penny.
When his father was alive, Iván Dmítritch studied at St. Petersburg
University, received an allowance of sixty or seventy roubles a month, and
had no idea of the meaning of poverty. Now he had to change his whole

life. From early morning till late at night he gave cheap lessons to students
and copied documents, yet starved, for all his earnings went to support his
mother. The life was impossible, and Iván Dmítritch ruined his health and
spirits, threw up his university studies, and returned home. Through interest
he obtained an appointment as usher in the district school; but he was
disliked by his colleagues, failed to get on with the pupils, and gave up the
post. His mother died. For six months he lived without resources, eating
black bread and drinking water, 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 a strong man.
He was pale, thin, and sensitive to cold; he ate little and slept foully. A
single glass of wine made him giddy and sent him into hysterics. His
disposition impelled him to seek companionship, but thanks to his irritable
and suspicious character he never became intimate with anyone, and had no
friends. Of his fellow-citizens he always spoke with contempt, condemning
as disgusting and repulsive their gross ignorance and torpid, animal life. He
spoke in a tenor voice, loudly and passionately, and always seemed to be in
a sincere state of indignation, excitement, or rapture. However he began a
conversation, it ended always in one way—in a lament that the town was
stifling and tiresome, that its people had no high interests, but led a dull,
unmeaning life, varied only by violence, coarse debauchery and hypocrisy;
that scoundrels were fed and clothed while honest men ate crusts; that the
town was crying out for schools, honest newspapers, a theatre, public
lectures, an union of intellectual forces; and that the 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 colours thickly, using only white and black,
and recognising no gradations; for him humanity was divided into two
sections, honest men and rogues—there was nothing between. Of woman
and woman's love he spoke passionately and with rapture. But he had never
been in love.
In the town, notwithstanding his nervous character and censorious temper,
he was loved, and called caressingly "Vanya." His innate delicacy, his
attentiveness, his neatness, his moral purity, his worn coat, his sickly
appearance, the misfortunes of his family, inspired in all feelings of warmth
and compassion. Besides, he was educated and well-read; in the opinion of

the townsmen he knew everything; and occupied among them the place of a
walking reference-book. He read much. 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 be seen that he was not reading but
devouring. Yet reading was apparently merely one of his nervous habits, for
with equal avidity he read everything 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 turned up,
trudged through the mud to the house of a certain tradesman to receive
money due on a writ of execution. As always in the morning, he was in a
gloomy mood. Passing through a lane, he met two convicts in chains and
with them four warders armed with rifles. Iván Dmítritch had often met
convicts before, and they had awakened in him a feeling of sympathy and
confusion. But this meeting produced upon him an unusual impression. It
suddenly occurred to him that he too might be shackled and driven through
the mud to prison. Having finished his work, he was returning home when
he met a police-inspector, an acquaintance, who greeted him and walked
with him a few yards down the street. This seemed to him for some reason
suspicions. At home visions of convicts and of soldiers armed with rifles
haunted him all day, and an inexplicable spiritual dread prevented him from
reading or concentrating his mind. In the evening he sat without a fire, and
lay awake all night thinking how he also might be arrested, manacled, and
flung into prison. He knew that he had committed no crime, and was quite
confident that he would never commit murder, arson, or robbery; but then,
he remembered, how easy it was to commit a crime by accident or
involuntarily, and how common were convictions on false evidence and
owing to judicial errors! And in the present state of human affairs how
probable, how little to be wondered at, were judicial errors! Men who
witness the sufferings of others only from a professional standpoint; for
instance, judges, policemen, doctors, became hardened to such a degree that
even if they wished otherwise they could not resist the habit of treating

accused persons formally; they got to resemble those peasants who kill
sheep and calves in their back-yards without even noticing the blood. In
view of the soulless relationship to human personality which everywhere
obtains, all that a judge thinks of is the observance of certain formalities,
and then all is over, and an innocent man perhaps deprived of his civil rights
or sent to the galleys. Who indeed would expect justice or intercession in
this dirty, sleepy little town, two hundred versts from the nearest rail-way?
And indeed was it not ridiculous to expect, justice when society regards
every form of violence as rational, expedient, and necessary; and when an
act of common mercy such as the acquittal of an accused man calls forth an
explosion of unsatisfied vindictiveness!
Next morning Iván Dmítritch awoke in terror with drops of cold sweat on
his forehead. He felt convinced that he might be arrested at any moment.
That the evening's gloomy thoughts had haunted him so persistently, he
concluded, must mean that there was some ground for his 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 without saying
a word. Why were they silent?
For a time, Iván Dmítritch spent his days and nights in torture. Every man
who passed the window or entered the yard was a spy or detective. Every
day at twelve o'clock the Chief Constable drove through the street on his
way from his suburban house to the Department of Police, and every day it
seemed to Iván Dmítritch that the Constable was driving with
unaccustomed haste, and that there was a peculiar expression on his face; he
was going, in short, to announce that a great criminal had appeared in the
town. Iván Dmítritch shuddered at every sound, trembled at every knock at
the yard-gate, and was in torment when any strange man visited his
landlady. When he met a gendarme in the street, he smiled, whistled, and
tried to assume an indifferent air. For whole nights, expecting arrest, he
never closed his eyes, but snored carefully so that his landlady might think
he was asleep; for if a man did not sleep at night it meant that he was
tormented by the gnawings of conscience, and that might be taken as a clue.
Reality and healthy reasoning convinced him that his fears were absurd and
psychopathic, and that, regarded from a broad standpoint, there was nothing
very terrible in arrest and imprisonment for a man whose conscience was

clean. But the more consistently and logically he reasoned the stronger
grew his spiritual torture; his efforts reminded him of the efforts of a
pioneer to hack a path through virgin forest, the harder he worked with the
hatchet the thicker and stronger became the 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 then denounce
him for taking bribes, that he would make mistakes in official documents
which were equivalent to forgery, or that he would lose the money entrusted
to him. Never was his mind so supple and ingenious as when he was
engaged in inventing various reasons for fearing for his freedom and
honour. On the other hand, his interest in the outside world decreased
correspondingly, he lost his passion for books, and his memory daily
betrayed him.
Next spring when the snow had melted, the semi-decomposed corpses of an
old woman and a boy, marked with indications of violence, were found in a
ravine beside the graveyard. The townspeople talked of nothing but the
discovery and the problem: who were the unknown murderers? In order to
avert suspicion, Iván Dmítritch walked about the streets and smiled; and
when he met his acquaintances, first grew pale and then blushed, and
declared vehemently that there was no more detestable crime than the
killing of the weak and defenceless. But this pretence soon exhausted him,
and after consideration he decided that the best thing he could do was to
hide in his landlady's cellar. In the cellar therefore, chilled to the bone, he
remained all day, all next night, and yet another day, after which, waiting
until it was dark, he crept secretly back to his room. Till daylight he stood
motionless in the middle of the room, and listened. At sunrise a number of
artisans rang at the gate. Iván Dmítritch knew very well that they had come
to put up a new stove in the kitchen; but his terror suggested that they were
constables in disguise. He crept quietly out of his room, and overcome by
panic, without cap or coat, fled down the street. Behind him ran barking
dogs, a woman called after him, in his ears the wind whistled, and it seemed
to him that the scattered violences of the whole world had 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, prescribed cold
compresses for his head, ordered him to take drops of bay rum, and went
away saying that he would come no more, as it was not right to prevent
people going out of their minds. So, as there were no means of treating him
at home, Iván Dmítritch was sent to hospital, and put into the ward for sick
men. He did not sleep at night, was unruly, and disturbed his neighbours, so
that soon, by arrangement with Doctor Andréi Yéfimitch, he was transferred
to Ward No. 6. Before a year had passed, the townspeople had quite
forgotten Iván Dmítritch; and his books, 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 the Jew
Moséika; his neighbour on the right was a fat, almost globular muzhik with
a dull, meaningless face. This torpid, gluttonous, and uncleanly animal had
long lost all capacity for thought and feeling. He exhaled a sharp,
suffocating smell. When Nikita was obliged to attend on him he used to
beat him terribly, beat him with all his strength and without regard for his
own fists; and it was not this violence which was so frightful—the terror of
that was mitigated by custom—but the fact that the stupefied animal made
no answer to the blows either by sound or movement or even by expression
in his eyes, but merely rocked from side to side like a heavy cask.
The fifth and last occupant of Ward No. 6 was a townsman who had served
once as a sorter in the Post Office. He was a little, thin, fair-headed man,
with a kindly, but somewhat cunning face. Judged by his clever, tranquil
eyes, which looked out on the world frankly and merrily, he was the
possessor of some valuable and pleasant secret. Under his pillow and
mattress he had something hidden which he refused to show to anyone, not
out of fear of losing it, but out of shame. Occasionally he walked to the
window, and turning his back upon his fellow-prisoners, held something to
his breast, and looked earnestly at it; but if anyone approached he became
confused and hid it away. But it was not hard to guess his secret.

"Congratulate me!" he used to say to Iván Dmítritch. "I have been decorated
with the Stanislas of the second degree with a star. As a rule the second
degree with a star is given only to foreigners, but for some reason they have
made an exception in my case." And then, shrugging his shoulders as if in
doubt, he would add: "That is something 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 the ex-sorter,
winking slyly. "I shall certainly receive the Swedish Pole Star. An order of
that kind is worth trying for. A white cross and a black ribbon. It is very
handsome."
In no other place in the world, probably, is life so monotonous as in the
wing. In the morning the patients, with the exception of the paralytic and
the fat muzhik, wash themselves in a great bucket which is placed in the
hall, and dry themselves in the skirts of their dressing-gowns. After this
they drink tea out of tin mugs brought by Nikita from the hospital. At
midday they dine on shtchi made with sour cabbage, and porridge, and in
the evening they sup on the porridge left over from dinner. Between meals
they lie down, sleep, look out of the windows, and walk from corner to
corner.
And so on every day. Even the ex-sorter talks always of the same
decorations.
Fresh faces are seldom seen in Ward No. 6. Years ago the doctor gave
orders that no fresh patients should be admitted, and in this world people
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 the consternation of the
victims every time they see his drunken, grinning face, there is no need to
dwell.
With this exception no one ever enters the ward. From day to day the
patients are condemned to see only Nikita. But at last a strange rumour
obtained circulation in the hospital. It was rumoured the doctor had begun
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 early
youth, so they said, he was very pious, and intended to make a career in the
Church. But when in the year 1863 he finished his studies in the
gymnasium and prepared to enter the Ecclesiastical Academy, his father, a
surgeon and a doctor of medicine, poured ridicule on these intentions, and
declared categorically that if Andréi became a priest he would disown him
for ever. Whether this story is true or not it is impossible to say, but it is
certain that Andréi Yéfimitch more than once 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 a course of
study in the medical faculty of his university. He showed no particular trace
of godliness, and at the beginning of his medical career was as little like a
priest as at the end.
In appearance he was as heavy and rudely built as a peasant. His bearded
face, his straight hair, and his strong, awkward build recalled some
innkeeper on a main road—incontinent and stubborn. He was tall and
broad-shouldered, and had enormous feet, and hands with which, it seemed,
he could easily crush the life out of a man's body. Yet his walk was
noiseless, cautious, and insinuating; and when he met anyone in a narrow
passage he was always the first to step aside, and to say—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 his
wearing 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 suit for ten years,
and when he did buy new clothing—at a Jew's store—it always looked as
worn and crumpled as his old clothes. In one and the same frock-coat he
received his patients, dined, and attended entertainments; and this not from
penuriousness but from a genuine contempt for appearances.
When Andréi Yéfimitch first came to the town to take up his duties as
physician to the hospital, that "charitable institution" was in a state of

inconceivable disorder. In the wards, in the corridors, and even in the open
air of the yard it was impossible to breathe owing to the stench. The male
attendants, the nurses and their children, slept in the dormitories together
with the patients. It was complained that the hospital was becoming
uninhabitable owing to the invasion of beetles, bugs, and mice. In the
surgical department there were only two scalpels, nowhere was there a
thermometer, and the baths were used for storing potatoes in. The
superintendent, the housekeeper, and the feldscher robbed the sick, and of
the former doctor, Andréi Yéfimitch's predecessor, it was said that he sold
the hospital spirits secretly, and kept up a whole harem recruited from
among the nurses and female patients. In the town these scandals were well-
known and even exaggerated; but the townspeople were indifferent, and
even excused the abuses on the ground that the patients were all either petty
tradespeople or peasants who lived at home among conditions so much
worse that they had no right to complain; such gentry, they added, must not
expect to be fed on grouse! Others argued that as no small town had
sufficient resources to support a good hospital without subsidies from the
Zemstvo, they might thank God they had a bad one; and the Zemstvo
refused to open a hospital in the town on the ground that there was already
one.
When he inspected the hospital for the first time Andréi Yéfimitch saw at
once that the whole institution was hopelessly bad, and in the highest
degree dangerous to the health of the inmates. He concluded that the best
thing to do was to discharge the patients and to close the hospital. But he
knew that to effect this his wish alone was not enough; and he reasoned that
if the physical and moral uncleanliness were driven from one place it would
merely be transplanted to another; it was necessary, in fact, to wait until it
cleaned itself out. To these considerations he added that if people opened a
hospital and tolerated its abuses they must have need of it; and, no doubt,
such abominations were necessary, and in the course of time would evolve
something useful, as good soil results from manuring. And, indeed, on this
earth there is nothing good that has not had evil germs in its beginnings.
Having taken up his duties, therefore, Andréi Yéfimitch looked upon the
abuses with apparent indifference. He merely asked the servants and nurses
not to sleep in the wards, and bought two cases of instruments; but he

allowed the superintendent, the housekeeper, and the feldscher to 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 powers necessary
to establish around himself an intelligent and honest life. To command, to
prohibit, to insist, he had never learned; It seemed almost that he had sworn
an oath never to raise his voice or to use the imperative mood. ... Even to
use the words "give" or "bring" was difficult for him. When he felt hungry,
he coughed irresolutely and said to his cook, "Suppose I were to have a cup
of tea," or "I was thinking about dining." To tell the superintendent that he
must cease his robberies, to dismiss him, or to abolish altogether his
parasitical office he had not the strength. "When he was deceived or
flattered, or handed accounts for signature which he knew to have been
falsified, he would redden all over and feel guilty, yet sign the accounts; and
when the patients complained that they were hungry or had been ill-treated
by the nurses, he merely got confused, and stammered guiltily:
"Very well, very well, I will investigate the matter. ... No doubt there is
some misunderstanding...."
At first Andréi Yéfimitch worked very zealously. He attended to patients
from morning until dinner-time, performed operations, and even occupied
himself with obstetrics. He gained a reputation for exceptional skill in the
treatment of women and children. But he soon began visibly to weary of the
monotony and uselessness of his work. One day he would receive thirty
patients, the next day the number had grown 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, and the number of patients never grew less. To give
any real assistance to forty patients in the few hours between morning and
dinner-time was physically impossible; in other words, he became an
involuntary deceiver. The twelve thousand persons received every year, he
reasoned, were therefore twelve thousand dupes. To place the serious cases
in the wards and treat them according to the rules of medical science was
impossible, because there were no rules and no science; whereas if he left
philosophy and followed the regulations pedantically as other doctors did,
he would still be in difficulty, for in the first place were 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 lawful
end of us all? What does it matter whether some tradesman or petty official
lives, or does not live, an extra five years? We pretend to see the object of
medical science in its mitigation of suffering, but we cannot but ask
ourselves the question: Why should suffering be mitigated? In the first
place, we are told that suffering leads men to perfection; and in the second,
it is plain that if men were really able to alleviate their sufferings with pills
and potions, they would abandon that religion and philosophy in which
until now they had found not only consolation, but even happiness. Pushkin
suffered agonising torment before his death; Heine lay for years in a state of
paralysis. Why, then, interfere with the sufferings of some mere Andréi
Yéfimitch or Matrena Savishin, whose lives are meaningless, and would be
as vacuous as the life of the amoeba if it were not for suffering?
Defeated by such arguments, Andréi Yéfimitch dropped his hands upon his
knees, and ceased his daily attendances at the hospital.

VI

His life passed thus. At eight in the morning he rose and took his breakfast.
After that he either sat in his study and read, or visited the hospital. In the
hospital in a narrow, dark corridor waited the out-patients. With heavy boots
clattering on the brick floor, servants and nurses ran past them; emaciated
patients in dressing-gowns staggered by; and vessels of filth, and corpses
were carried out. And among them children cried and draughts blew. Andréi
Yéfimitch knew well that to the fevered, the consumptive, and the
impressionable such surroundings were torment; but what could he do? In
the reception-room he was met by the feldscher, Sergéi Sergéyitch, a little
fat man, with a beardless, well-washed, puffy face, and easy manners.
Sergéi Sergéyitch always wore clothes which resembled a senator's more
than a surgeon's; in the town he had a large practice, and believed that he
knew more than the doctor, who had no practice at all. In the corner of the
room hung a case of ikons with a heavy lamp in front; on the walls were
portraits of bishops, a view of Sviatogorsk Monastery, and garlands of
withered corn-flowers. Sergéi Sergéyitch was religious, and the images had

been placed in the room at his expense; every Sunday by his command one
of the patients read the acathistus, and when the reading was concluded,
Sergéi Sergéyitch went around the wards with a censer and sprinkled them
piously.
There were many patients and little time. The examination was therefore
limited to a few short questions, and to the distribution of such simple
remedies as castor-oil and ointments. Andréi Yéfimitch sat with his head
resting on his hands, lost in thought, and asked questions mechanically; and
Sérgei Sergéyitch sat beside him, and sometimes interjected a word.
"We become ill and suffer deprivation," he would sometimes say, "only
because we pray too little to God."
In these hours Andréi Yéfimitch performed no operations; he had got out of
practice, and the sight of blood affected him unpleasantly. When he had to
open a child's mouth, to examine its throat for instance, if the child cried
and defended itself with its hands, the doctor's head went round and tears
came into his eyes. He made haste to prescribe a remedy, and motioned to
the mother to take it away as quickly as possible.
He quickly wearied of the timidity of the patients, of their shiftless ways, of
the proximity of the pompous Sérgei Sergéyitch, of the portraits on the
walls, and of his own questions—questions which he had asked without
change for more than twenty years.
And he would sometimes leave the hospital after having examined five or
six patients, the remainder in his absence being treated by the feldscher.
With the pleasant reflection that thank God he had no private practice and
no one to interfere with him, Andréi Yéfimitch on returning home would sit
at his study-table and begin to read. He read much, and always 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 old newspapers.
Above all things he loved history and philosophy; but of medical
publications he subscribed only to The Doctor, which he always began to
read at the end. Every day he read uninterruptedly for several hours, and it
never wearied him. He read, not quickly and eagerly as Iván Dmítritch had
read, but slowly, often stopping at passages which pleased him or which he
did not understand. Beside his books stood a decanter of vodka, and a salted

cucumber or soaked apple; and every half-hour he poured himself out a
glass of vodka, and drank it without lifting his eyes from his book, and then
—again without lifting his eyes—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 his rooms,
with his arms crossed on his chest, and thought. Sometimes the kitchen
door creaked, and the red, sleepy face of Dáryushka appeared.
"Andréi Yéfimitch, is it time for your beer?" she would ask solicitously.
"No, not yet," he would answer. "I'll wait a little longer...."
In the evening came the postmaster, Mikhail Averyanitch, the only man in
the town whose society did not weary Andréi Yéfimitch. Mikhail
Averyanitch had once been a rich country gentleman and had served in a
cavalry regiment, but having ruined himself he took a position in the Post
Office to save himself from beggary in his old age. He hod a brisk,
wholesome appearance, magnificent grey whiskers, well-bred manners, and
a loud but pleasant voice. When visitors at the Post Office protested,
refused to agree with him, or began to argue, Mikhail Averyanitch became
purple, shook all over, and roared at the top of his voice: "Silence!" so that
the Post Office had the reputation of a place of terror. Mikhail Averyanitch
was fond of Andréi Yéfimitch and respected his attainments and the nobility
of his heart. But the other townspeople he treated haughtily as inferiors.
"Well, here I am!" he would begin. "How are you, my dear?... But perhaps I
bore you? Eh?"
"On the contrary. I am delighted," answered the doctor. "I am always 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 Andréi Yéfimitch.
The first bottle was drunk in silence. The doctor was lost in thought, while
Mikhail Averyanitch had the gay and active expression of a man who has

something very interesting to relate. The conversation was always begun by
the doctor.
"What a pity!" he would say, slowly and quietly, looking away from his
friend—he never looked anyone in the face. "What a pity, my dear Mikhail
Averyanitch, what a pity it is that there is not a soul in this town who cares
to engage in an intellectual or interesting conversation! It is a great
deprivation for us. Even the so-called intelligent classes never rise above
commonplaces; the level of their development, 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, pausing
intermittently, "as you know, everything in this world is insignificant and
uninteresting except the higher phenomena of the human intellect. Intellect
creates a sharp distinction between the animal and the man, it reminds the
latter of his divinity, and to a certain extent compensates him for the
immortality which he has not. As the result of this, intellect serves as the
only fountain of enjoyment. When we say we see and hear around us no
evidence of intellect, we mean thereby that we are deprived of true
happiness. True, we have our books, but that is a very different thing from
living converse and communication. If I may use a not very apt simile,
books are the accompaniment, but conversation is the singing.'"
"That is entirely true."
A silence followed. From the kitchen came Dáryushka, and, with her head
resting 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 men of
the present day?" And he began to relate how in the old days life was
wholesome, gay, and interesting, how the intellect of Russia was really
enlightened, and how high a place was given to the ideas of honour and
friendship. Money was lent without I. O. U.'s, and it was regarded as
shameful not to stretch out the hand of aid to a needy friend. What marches
there were, what adventures, what fights, what companions-in-arms, what
women! The Caucasus, what a marvellous country! And the wife of the
commander of his battalion—what a strange woman!—who put on an

officer's uniform and drove into the mountains at night without an escort.
They said she had a romance with a prince in one 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 of something
else and drinking his beer.
"I often dream of clever people and have imaginary conversations with
them," he said, suddenly, interrupting Mikhail Averyanitch. "My father gave
me a splendid education, but, under the influence of the ideas current in the
sixties, forced me to become a doctor. It seems to me that if I had disobeyed
him I might now be living in the very centre of the intellectual movement—
probably a member of some faculty. Of course intellect itself is not eternal
but transitory—but you already know why I worship it so. Life is a
vexatious snare. When a reflecting man attains manhood and ripe
consciousness, he cannot but feel himself in a trap from which there is no
escape.... By an accident, without consulting his own will, he is called from
non-existence into life.... Why? He wishes to know the aim and significance
of his existence; he is answered with silence or absurdities; he knocks but it
is not opened to him; and death itself comes against his will. And so, as
prisoners united by common misfortune are relieved when they meet, men
inclined to analysis and generalisation do not notice the snare in which they
live when they spend their days in the exchange of free ideas. In this sense
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 men and of
the joy of communion with them, and Mikhail Averyanitch listens
attentively and says: "It is entirely true."
"Then you do not believe in the immortality of the soul?" asks the
postmaster.
"No, my dear Mikhail Averyanitch. I do not believe, and I have no reason
for believing."

"I admit that I also doubt it. Still I have a feeling 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't believe it, you will never die.'"
At nine o'clock Mikhail Averyanitch takes leave. As he puts on his overcoat
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 table and
again begins to read. The stillness of evening, the stillness of night is
unbroken by a single sound; time, it seems, stands still and perishes, and the
doctor perishes also, till it seems that nothing exists but a book and a green
lamp-shade. Then the rude, peasant face of the doctor, as he thinks of the
achievements of the human intellect, becomes gradually illumined by a
smile of emotion and rapture. Oh, why is man not immortal? he asks. For
what end exist brain-centres and convolutions, to what end vision, speech,
consciousness, genius, if all are condemned to pass into the earth, to grow
cold with it, and for countless millions of years, without aim or object, to be
borne with it around the sun? In order that the human frame may decay and
be whirled around the sun, is it necessary to drag man with his high, his
divine mind, out of non-existence, as if in mockery, and to turn him again
into earth?
Immortality of matter! What cowardice to console ourselves with this
fictitious immortality! Unconscious processes working themselves out in
Nature—processes lower even than folly, for in folly there is at least
consciousness 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 more foolish than folly!
Only the coward, who has more fear of death than sense of dignity, can
console himself with the knowledge that his body in the course of time will
live again in grass, in stones, in the toad. To seek immortality in the

indestructibility of matter is, indeed, as strange as to prophesy a brilliant
future for the case when the costly violin is broken and worthless.
When the clock strikes, Andréi Yéfimitch leans back in his chair, shuts his
eyes, and thinks. Under the influence of the lofty thoughts which he has just
been reading, he throws a glance over the present and the past. The past is
repellent, better not think of it! And the present is but as the past. He knows
that in this very moment, while his thoughts are sweeping round the sun
with the cooling earth, in the hospital building in a line with his lodgings,
lie men tortured by pain and tormented by uncleanliness; one cannot sleep
owing to the insects, and howls in his pain; another is catching erysipelas,
and groaning at the tightness of his bandages; others are playing cards with
the nurses, and drinking vodka. In this very year no less than twelve
thousand persons were duped; the whole work of the hospital, as twenty
years before, is based on robbery, scandal, intrigue, nepotism, and gross
charlatanry; altogether, the hospital is an immoral institution, and a source
of danger to the health of its inmates. And Andréi Yéfimitch knows that
inside the iron bars of Ward No. 6, Nikita beats the patients with his fists,
and that, outside, Moséika wanders about the streets begging for kopecks.
Yet he knows very well that in the last twenty-five years a fabulous
revolution has taken place in the doctor's art. When he studied at the
university it had seemed to him that medicine would soon be overtaken by
the lot of alchemy and metaphysics, but now the records of its feats which
he reads at night touch him, astonish him, and even send him into raptures.
What a revolution! what unexpected brilliance! Thanks to antiseptics,
operations are every day performed which the great Pigorof regarded as
impossible. Ordinary Zemstvo doctors perform such operations as the
resection of the knee articulations, of a hundred operations on the stomach
only one results in death, and the stone is now such a trifle that it has ceased
to be written about. Complaints which were once only alleviated are now
entirely cured. And hypnotism, the theory of heredity, the discoveries of
Pasteur and Koch, statistics of hygiene, even Russian Zemstvo medicine!
Psychiatry, with its classification of diseases, its methods of diagnosis, its
method of cure—what a transformation of the methods of the past! No
longer arc lunatics drenched with cold water and confined in strait
waistcoats; they are treated as human beings, and even—as Andréi
Yéfimitch read in the newspapers—have their own special dramatic

entertainments and dances. Andréi Yéfimitch is well aware that in the
modern world such an abomination as Ward No. 6 is possible only in a
town situated two hundred versts from a railway, where the Mayor and
Councillors are half-educated tradesmen, who regard a doctor as a priest to
whom everything must be entrusted without criticism, even though he were
to dose his patients with molten tin. In any other town the public and the
Press would long ago have tom this little Bastille to pieces.
"But in the end?" asks Andréi Yéfimitch, opening his eyes. "What is the
difference? In spite of antiseptics and Koch and Pasteur, the essence of the
matter has no way changed. Disease and death still exist. Lunatics are
amused with dances and theatricals, but they are still kept prisoners.... In
other words, all these tilings are vanity and folly, and between the best
hospital in Vienna and the hospital here there is in reality no difference at
all."
But vexation and a feeling akin to envy forbid indifference. It all arises 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 whom I
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 the district 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 his
bedroom. But he has no wish to sleep.

VIII

Two years ago, in a fit of liberality, the Zemstvo determined to appropriate
three hundred roubles a year to the increase of the personnel of the hospital,
until such time as they should open one of their own. They sent, therefore,
as assistant to Andréi Yéfimitch, the district physician Yevgéniï Feódoritch

Khobótoff. Khobótoff was a very young man, under thirty, bill and dark,
with small eyes and high cheek-bones; evidently of Asiatic origin. He
arrived in the town without a kopeck, with a small portmanteau as his only
luggage, and was accompanied by a young, unattractive woman, whom he
called his cook. This woman's child completed the party. Khobótoff wore a
peaked cap and high boots, and—in winter—a short fur coat. He was soon
on intimate terms with the feldscher, Sergéi Sergéyitch, and with the bursar,
but the rest of the officials he avoided and denounced as aristocrats. He
possessed only one book, "Prescriptions of the Vienna Hospital in 1881,"
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 playing billiards 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 he made no attempt to
introduce a new order, fearing to offend Andréi Yéfimitch, whom he
regarded as all old rogue, suspected of having large means, and secretly
envied. He would willingly have occupied his position.

IX

One spring evening towards the end of March, when the snow had
disappeared and starlings sang in the hospital garden, the doctor was
standing at his gate saying good-bye to his friend the postmaster. At that
moment the Jew Moséika, returning with his booty, entered the yard. 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 and
grinning.
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 legs and
thin ankles. "Wet, I suppose?" And impelled by a feeling of pity and

squeamishness he entered the wing after Moséika, looking all the time now
at the Jew's bald head, now at his ankles. When the doctor entered, Nikita
jumped off his rubbish-heap and stretched himself.
"Good evening, Nikita!" said the doctor softly. "Suppose you give this man
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 his bed,
and listening with alarm to the unknown voice, suddenly recognised the
doctor. He shook with anger, jumped oft his bed, and with a flushed,
malicious face, and staring eyeballs, ran into the middle of the room.
"It is the doctor!" he cried, with a loud laugh. "At last! Lord, I congratulate
you, the doctor honours us with a visit! Accursed monster!" he squealed,
and in an ecstacy of rage never before seen in the hospital, stamped his feet.
"Kill this monster! No, killing is not enough 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 threatening face,
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 I have
never stolen anything.... I see that you are angry with me. Be calm, 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 live unmolested
merely because you in your ignorance cannot distinguish them from the
sane. You, the feldscher, the superintendent, all the rascals employed in the

hospital are immeasurably lower in morals than the worst 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 on circumstances. The
man who is put here, here he stays, and the man who is not here lives in
freedom, that is all For the fact that I am a doctor and you a lunatic neither
morals nor logic is responsible, but only empty circumstance."
"This nonsense I do not understand!" answered Iván Dmitri tch, sitting
down 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 it do
you if I released you? Suppose I do! The townspeople or the police will
capture you and send you back."
"Yes, that is true, it is true ..." said Iván Dmítritch, rubbing his forehead. "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 be to 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 remains to you, to console yourself
with the thought that your stay here is necessary."
"It is necessary to no one."
"Once prisons and asylums exist, someone must inhabit them. If it is not
you it will be I, if not I then someone else. But wait! In the far future 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 and your
assistant Nikita have no business with the future. But you may be assured,
sir, that better times are in store for us. What if I do express myself vulgarly
—laugh at me!—but the dawn of a new life will shine, and truth will
triumph ... and it will be on our side the holiday will be. I shall not see it,
but our posterity shall.... I congratulate 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 the
window, 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 Iván
Dmítritch'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 of Nature will remain the
same. Men will be diseased, grow old, and die, just as now. However
glorious the dawn which enlightens your life, in the end of ends you will be
nailed down in a coffin and flung into a pit."
"But immortality?"
"Nonsense!"
"You do not believe, but I believe. Dostoyeffsky or Voltaire or someone said
that if there were no God men would have invented one. And I am deeply
convinced that if there were no immortality it would sooner or later have
been invented by the great human intellect."
"You speak well," said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling with pleasure. "It is well
that you believe. With such faith as yours you would live happily though
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 tranquillity in
any environment. The free and profound thought which aspires to the

comprehension of life; and high contempt for the vanity of the world—
these are two blessings higher than which no man can know. And these 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 the earth."
"Your Diogenes was a blockhead!" cried Iván Dmítritch gloomily. "What do
you tell me about Diogenes and the understanding of life?" He spoke
angrily, and sprang up. "I love life, love it passionately. I have the mania of
persecution, a ceaseless, tormenting terror, but there are moments when I
am seized by the thirst of life, and in those moments I fear to go out of my
mind. I long to live ... terribly!"
He walked up and down the ward in agitation, and continued in a lower
voice:
"When I meditate I am visited by visions. Men come to me, I hear voices
and music, and it seems to me that I am walking through woods, on the
shores of the sea; and I long passionately for the vanities and worries of
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 new doctor, Khobótoff, a young man."
"He has been here. A fool?"
"Yes, an uneducated man. It is strange, do you know. If you judge by
metropolitan life there is no intellectual stagnation in Russia, but genuine
activity; in other words, there are real men. But for some reason or other
they always send such fellows here. It is an unfortunate town.'"
"An unfortunate town," sighed Iván Dmítritch. "And what news is there
generally? What have you in the newspapers and reviews?"
In the ward it was already dark. The doctor rose, and told his patient what
was being written in Russia and abroad, and what were the current
tendencies of the world. Iván Dmítritch listened attentively, and asked
questions. But suddenly, as if he had just remembered something terrible,

he seized his head and threw himself on the bed, with his back turned to the
doctor.
"What is the matter?" asked Andréi Yéfimitch. "You will not hear another
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. As he
passed through the hall, he said: "Suppose you were to clear some of this
away; Nikita.... The smell is frightful."
"Yes, your Honour!"
"What a delightful young man!" thought Andréi Yéfimitch, as he walked
home. "He is the first man worth talking to whom I have met all the time I
have lived in this town. He can reason and interests himself only with what
is essential."
As he read in his study, as he went to bed, all the time, he thought of Iván
Dmítritch. When he awoke next morning, he remembered that he had made
the acquaintance of a clever and interesting man. And he decided to pay
him another visit at the first opportunity.

X

Iván Dmítritch lay in the same position as on the day before, holding his
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, keeping his
face turned towards the pillow, "and in the second, you are troubling
yourself in vain; you will not get from me a single word." "That is strange,"
said Andréi Yéfimitch. "Yesterday we were speaking as friends, but
suddenly you took offence and stopped short.... Perhaps I spoke awkwardly,
or expressed opinions differing widely from your own."

"You won't catch me!" said Iván Dmítritch, rising from the bed and looking
at the doctor ironically and suspiciously. "You may go and spy and 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 assume that 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, suppose I 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 the dock or in
prison would you be worse off than here? In exile or penal servitude you
would not suffer any more than now.... What, then, do you fear?"
Apparently these words affected Iván Dmítritch. He sat down quietly.
It was five o'clock, the hour when Andréi Yéfimitch usually walked up and
down his room and Dáryushka asked him whether it was time for his beer.
The weather was calm and clear.
"After dinner I went out for a walk, and you see where I've come," said the
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!" said Iván
Dmítritch, rubbing his red eyes as if he were sleepy, "and then to return to a
warm comfortable study ... and to be cured of headache by a decent
doctor.... For years past I have not lived like a human being.... Things are
abominable here,—intolerable, disgusting!"
After last evening's excitement he was tired and weak, and he spoke
unwillingly. His fingers twitched, and from his face it was plain that his
head ached badly.

"Between a warm, comfortable study and this ward there is no difference,"
said Andréi Yéfimitch. "The rest and tranquillity of a man are not outside
but within him."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Ordinary men find good and evil outside, that is, in their carriages and
comfortable rooms; but the thinking man finds them within himself."
"Go and preach that philosophy in Greece, where it is warm and smells of
oranges—it doesn't suit this climate. With whom was it I spoke of
Diogenes? With you?"
"Yes, yesterday with me."
"Diogenes had no need of a study and a warm house, he was comfortable
without them.... Lie in a tub and eat oranges and olives! Set him down in
Russia—not in December, but even in May. He would freeze even in May
with the cold."
"No. Cold, like every other feeling, may be disregarded. As Marcus
Aurelius said, pain is the living conception of pain; make an effort of the
will to change this conception, cease to complain, and the pain disappears.
The wise man, the man of thought and penetration, is distinguished by his
contempt for suffering; he is always content and he is surprised by nothing."
"That means that I am an idiot because I suffer, because I am discontented,
and marvel at the baseness of men."
"Your discontent is in vain. Think more, and you will realise how trifling
are all the things which now excite you.... Try to understand life—in this is
true beatitude."
"Understand!" frowned Iván Dmítritch. "External, internal.... Excuse me,
but I cannot understand you. I know only one thing," he continued, rising
and looking angrily at the doctor. "I know only that God created me of
warm blood and nerves; yes! and organic tissue, if it be capable of life, must
respond to irritation. And I respond to it! Pain I answer with tears and cries,
baseness with indignation, meanness with repulsion. In my mind, that is
right, and it is that which is called life. The lower the organism the less
susceptible is it, and the more feebly it responds to irritation; the higher it is
the more sensitively it responds. How is it you do not know that? A doctor

—yet you do not know such truisms! If you would despise suffering, be
always contented, and marvel at nothing, you must lower yourself to the
condition of that...." Iván Dmítritch pointed to the fat, greasy muzhik, "or
inure yourself to suffering until you lose all susceptibility—in other words,
cease to live. Excuse me, but I am not a wise man and not a philosopher,"
continued Iván Dmítritch irritably, "and I do not understand these things. I
am not in a condition to reason."
"But you reason admirably."
"The Stoics whom you travesty were remarkable men, but their teaching
died two thousand years ago, and since then it has not advanced, nor will 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 study and trifled with gospels
of all sorts; the majority never understood it.... A creed which teaches
indifference to wealth, indifference to the conveniences of life, and
contempt for suffering, is quite incomprehensible to the great majority who
never knew either wealth or the conveniences of life, and to whom
contempt for suffering would mean contempt for their own lives, which are
made up of feelings of hunger, cold, loss, insult, and a Hamlet-like terror of
death. All life lies in these feelings, and life may be hated or wearied of, but
never despised. Yes, I repeat it, the teaching of the Stoics can never have a
future; from the beginning of time, life has consisted in sensibility to pain
and response to irritation.[1] Iván Dmítritch suddenly lost the thread of his
thoughts, ceased speaking, and nibbed his forehead irritably.
"I had something important to say, but have gone off the track," he
continued. "What was I saying? Yes, this is it. One of these Stoics sold
himself into slavery to redeem a friend. Now what does that mean but that
even a Stoic responded to irritation, for to perform such a magnanimous
deed as the min of one's self for the sake of a friend demands a disturbed
and sympathetic heart I have forgotten here in prison all that I learnt,
otherwise I should have oilier illustrations. But think of Christ! Christ
rebelled against actuality by weeping, by smiling, by grieving, by anger,
even by weariness. Not with a smile did He go forth to meet suffering, nor
did He despise death, but prayed in the 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 a
man," he continued. "Suppose that we must despise suffering and marvel at
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 is
rational."
"But I wish to know why in this matter of understanding life, despising
suffering, and the rest of it, you consider yourself competent to judge? Have
you ever suffered? What is your idea of suffering? Were you ever 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 official
with a long nose and a yellow neck. But what of you? In your whole life no
one has ever laid a finger on you, and you are as healthy as a 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 years you have lived in free
lodgings, with free fire and free lights, with servants, with the right to work
how, and as much as, you like, or to do nothing. By character you were an
idle and a feeble man, and you strove to build up your life so as to avoid
trouble. You left your work to feldschers and other scoundrels, and sat at
home in warmth and quiet, heaped up money, read books, and enjoyed your
own reflections about all kinds of exalted nonsense, and"—Iván Dmítritch
looked at the doctor's nose—"drank beer. In one word, you have not seen
life, you know nothing about it, and of realities you have only a theoretical
knowledge. Yes, you despise suffering and marvel at nothing for very good
reasons; because your theory of the vanity of things, external and internal
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? let him 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 the woman who drinks dies also! A woman comes to
you with a toothache. Well, what of that? Pain is the conception of pain,
without sickness you cannot live, all must die, and therefore take yourself
off, my good woman, and don't interfere with my thoughts and my vodka!

A young man comes to you for advice: what should he do, how ought he to
live? Before answering, most men would think, but your answer is always
ready: Aspire to understand life and to real goodness! And what is this
fantastic real goodness? No answer! We are imprisoned behind iron bars,
we rot and we are tortured, but this, in reality, is reasonable and beautiful
because between this ward and a comfortable warm study there is no real
difference! A convenient philosophy; your conscience is clean, and you feel
yourself to be a wise man. No, sir, this is not philosophy, not breadth of
view, but idleness, charlatanism, somnolent folly.... Yes," repeated Iván
Dmítritch angrily. "You despise suffering, but squeeze your finger in the
door and you will howl for your life!"
"But suppose I do not howl," said Andréi Yéfimitch, smiling indulgently.
"What! Well, if you had a stroke of paralysis, or if some impudent fellow,
taking advantage of his position in the world, insulted you' publicly, and
you had no redress—then you would know what it meant to tell others to
understand life and aspire to real good."
"This is original," said Andréi Yéfimitch, beaming with satisfaction and
rubbing his hands. "I am delighted with your love of generalisation; and the
character which you have just drawn is simply brilliant. I confess that
conversation with you gives me great pleasure. Rut now, as I have heard
you out, will you listen to me...."

XI

This conversation, which lasted for an hour longer, apparently made a great
impression on Andréi Yéfimitch. He took to visiting the ward every day. He
went there in the morning, and again after dinner, and often darkness found
him in conversation with Iván Dmítritch. At first Iván 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 Yéfimitch
paid daily visits to Ward No. 6. Neither the feldscher, nor Nikita, nor the
nurses could understand his object; why he spent whole hours in the ward,
what he was talking about, or why he did not write prescriptions. His
conduct appeared strange to everyone. Mikhail Averyanitch sometimes
failed to find him at home, and Dáryushka was very alarmed, for the doctor
no longer drank his beer at the usual hour, and sometimes even came home
late for dinner.
One day—it was at the end of June—Doctor Khobótoff went to Andréi
Yéfimitch's house to sec him on a business matter. Not finding him at
home, he looked for him in the yard, where he was told that the old doctor
was in the asylum. Khobótoff entered the hall of the ward, and standing
there listened to the following conversation:
"We will never agree, and you will never succeed in converting me to your
faith," said Iván Dmítritch irritably. "You are altogether ignorant of realities,
you have never suffered, but only, like a leech, fed on the sufferings of
others. But I have suffered without cease from the day of my birth until
now. Therefore I tell you frankly I consider myself much higher than you,
and more competent in all respects. It is not for you to teach me."
"I certainly have no wish to convert you to my faith," said Andréi Yéfimitch
softly, and evidently with regret that he was misunderstood. "That is not the
question, my friend. Suffering and joy are transitory—leave them, God be
with them! The essence of the matter is that you and I recognise in one
another men of thought, and this makes 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 a clever man, and it is a pleasure to be with you."
Khobótoff opened the door and looked into the room. Iván Dmítritch with a
nightcap on his head and Doctor Andréi Yéfimitch sat side by side on the
bed. The lunatic shuddered, made strange faces, and convulsively clutched
his dressing-gown; and the doctor sat motionless, inclining his head, and his
face was red and helpless and sad. Khobótoff shrugged his shoulders,
laughed, and looked at Nikita. Nikita also shrugged his shoulders.
Next day Khobótoff again came to the wing, this time together with the
feldscher. They stood in the hall and listened:

"Our grandfather, it seems, is quite gone," said Khobótoff going out of the
wing.
"Lord, have mercy upon us—sinners!" sighed the pompous Sergéi
Sergéyitch, going round the pools in order to keep his shiny boots clear of
the mud. "I confess, my dear Yevgéniï Feódoritch, I have long expected
this."

XII

After this incident, Andréi Yéfimitch began to notice that he was
surrounded by a strange atmosphere of mystery.... The servants, the nurses,
and the patients whom he met looked questioningly at one another, and
whispered among themselves. When he met little Masha, the
superintendent's daughter, in the hospital garden, and smilingly went over to
her, as usual, to stroke her hair, for some inexplicable reason she ran away.
When the postmaster, Mikhail Averyanitch, sat listening to him he no longer
said: "Entirely true!" but got red in the face and stammered, "Yes, yes ... yes
..." and sometimes, looking at his friend thoughtfully and sorrowfully,
advised him to give up vodka and beer. But when doing this, as became a
man of delicacy, he did not speak openly, but dropped gentle hints, telling
stories, now of a certain battalion 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 Andréi
Yéfimitch was visited by his colleague Khobótoff, who also asked him to
give up spirits, and, without giving him any reason, advised him to try
bromide of potassium.
In August Andréi Yéfimitch received a letter from the Mayor asking him to
come and see him on very important business. On arriving at the Town Hall
at the appointed time he found awaiting him the head of the recruiting
department, the superintendent of the district school, a member of the Town
Council, Khobótoff, and a stout, fair-haired man, who was introduced as a
doctor. This doctor, who bore an unpronounceable Polish name, lived on a

stud-farm some thirty versts away, and was passing through the town on his
way home.
"Here is a communication about your department," said the Town
Councillor, turning to Andréi Yéfimitch. "You see, Yevgéniï Feódoritch says
that there is no room for the dispensing room in the main building, and that
it must be transferred to one of the wings. That, of course, is easy, it can be
transferred any day, but the chief thing is that the wing is in want of repair."
"Yes, we can hardly get on without that," answered Andréi Yéfimitch after a
moment's thought. "But if the corner wing is to be fitted up as a dispensary
you will have to spend at least five hundred roubles on it. It is unproductive
expenditure."
For a few minutes all were silent.
"I had the honour to announce to you, ten years ago," continued Andréi
Yéfimitch in a soft voice, "that this hospital, under present conditions, is a
luxury altogether beyond the means of the town. It was built in the forties,
when the means for its support: were greater. The town wastes too much
money on unnecessary buildings and sinecure offices. I think that with the
money we spend we could keep up two model 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 medical
department to the Zemstvo."
"Yes, and hand over to the Zemstvo funds which 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 recruiting
department, apparently in a state of confusion, touched Andréi Yéfimitch'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'm

afraid." And all agreed that it was tiresome for any decent man to live in
such a town. Neither theatres, nor concerts, and at the last dub-dance about
twenty women present and only two men. Young men no longer danced, but
crowded round the supper-table or played cards together. And Andréi
Yéfimitch, in a slow and soft voice, without looking at those around him,
began to lament that the citizens wasted their vital energy, their intellects,
and their feelings over cards and scandal, and neither cared nor knew how
to pass the time in interesting conversation, in reading, or in taking
advantage of the pleasures which intellect alone yields. Intellect is the only
interesting and distinguished 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 the tone of
examiners convinced of their own incapacity, asked Andréi Yéfimitch 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 recruiting department
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 been
before a commission appointed to test his mental sanity. He remembered
the questions put to him, reddened, and for the first time in his life felt pity
for the medical art.
"My God!" he thought. "These men have only just been studying psychiatry
and passing examinations! Where does their monstrous ignorance come
from? They have no ideas about psychiatry." For the first time in his life he
felt insulted and angry.

Towards evening Mikhail Averyanitch came to see him. Without a word of
greeting, the postmaster went up to him, took him by both hands, and said
in an agitated voice:
"My dear friend, my dear friend, let me see that you believe in my sincere
affection for you. Regard me as your friend!" And preventing Andréi
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 compel the doctors to hide the truth
from you, but I, in soldier style, will tell it to you flatly. You are unwell!
Excuse me, old friend, but that is the plain truth, and it has been noticed by
everyone around you. Only this moment Doctor Yevgéniï Feódoritch said
that for the benefit of your health you needed rest and recreation. It is
entirely true! And things fit in admirably. In a few days I will take my leave,
and go oft for change of air. Trove to me that you are my friend, and come
with me. 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, without
Dáryushka, without beer—suddenly to destroy the order of life observed for
twenty years—when he first thought of it, the project seemed wild and
fantastic. But he remembered the talk in the Town Hall, and the torments
which he had suffered on the w ay home; and the idea of leaving 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 the
happiest days of my life. An astonishing city! Come!"

XIII

A week after this conversation, Andréi Yéfimitch received a formal
proposal to take a rest, that is, to retire from his post, and he received the
proposal with indifference. Still a week later, he and Mikhail Averyanitch

were sitting in the post tarantass and driving to the railway station. The
weather was cool and clear, the sky blue and transparent. The two hundred
versts were traversed in two days and two nights. When they stopped at the
post-houses and were given dirty glasses for tea, or were delayed over the
horses, Mikhail Averyanitch grew purple, shook all over, and roared
"Silence! Don't argue!"... And as they sat in the tarantass he talked
incessantly of his travels in the Caucasus and in Poland. What adventures
he had, what meetings! He spoke in a loud voice, and all the time made
such astonished eyes that it might have been thought he was lying. As he
told his stories he breathed in the doctor's face and laughed in his ear. All
this incommoded the doctor and hindered his thinking and concentrating his
mind.
For reasons of economy they travelled third-class, in a non-smoking
carriage. Half of the passengers were clean. Mikhail Averyanitch struck 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 these tormenting railways.
Nothing but rascals around! What a different thing to ride on horseback; in
a single day you cover a hundred versts, and at the end feel wholesome and
fresh. Yes, and we had been cursed with famines as the result of the
draining of the Pinsky marshes! Everywhere nothing but disorder! Mikhail
Averyanitch lost his temper, spoke loudly, and allowed no one else to say a
word. His incessant chatter, broken only by loud laughter and expressive
gesticulations, bored Andréi Yéfimitch.
"Which of us is the more mad?" he asked himself. "I who do my best not to
disturb my fellow-travellers, or this egoist who thinks he is cleverer and
more interesting than anyone else, and gives no one a moment's rest?"
In Moscow, Mikhail Averyanitch donned his military tunic without
shoulder-straps, and trousers with red piping. Out of doors he wore an army
forage-cap and cloak, and was saluted by the soldiers. To Andréi Yéfimitch
he began to seem a man who had lost all the good points of the upper
classes and retained only the bad. He loved people to dance attendance on
him even when it was quite unnecessary. Matches lay before him on the
table and he saw them, yet he roared to the waiter to hand them to him; he
marched about in his underclothing before the chambermaid; he addressed
the waitresses—even the elderly ones—indiscriminately as "thou," and

when he was irritated called them blockheads and fools. This, thought
Andréi Yéfimitch, is no doubt gentlemanly, but it is detestable.
First of all, Mikhail Averyanitch brought his friend to the Iverskaya.[1] He
prayed piously, bowed to the ground, shed teal's, and when he had finished,
sighed deeply and said:
"Even an unbeliever feels himself at peace after he has prayed. Kiss the
image, dear!"
Andréi Yéfimitch got red in the face and kissed the image; and Mikhail
Averyanitch puffed out his lips, shook his head, prayed in a whisper; and
again into his eyes came tears. After this they visited the Kremlin and
inspected the Tsar-Cannon and the Tsar-Bell, touched them with their
fingers, admired the view across the Moscow River, and spent some time in
the Temple of the Saviour and afterwards in the Rumiantseff Museum.
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 gourmet who 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 Moscow Town 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 feelings
remained unchanged; he was vexed with Mikhail Averyanitch. He longed to
get a rest from his companion, to escape from him, but the postmaster
considered it his duty not to let him out of his sight, and to see that he tasted
every possible form of recreation. For two days Andréi Yéfimitch endured
it, but on the third declared that he was unwell, and would remain all day at
home. Mikhail Averyanitch said that in that case he also would remain at
home. And indeed, he added, a rest was necessary, otherwise they would
have no strength left. Andréi Yéfimitch lay on the sofa with his face to the
wall, and with clenched teeth listened to his friend, who assured him that
France would sooner or later inevitably destroy Germany, that in Moscow
there are a great many swindlers, and that you cannot judge of the merits of
a horse by its appearance. The doctor's heart throbbed, his ears hummed,
but from motives of delicacy he could not ask his friend to leave him alone
or be silent. But happily Mikhail Averyanitch grew tired of sitting in the
room, and after dinner went for a walk.
Left alone, Andréi Yéfimitch surrendered himself to the feeling of rest.
How delightful it was to lie motionless on the sofa and know that he was
alone in the room! Without solitude true happiness was impossible. The
fallen angel was faithless to God probably only because he longed for
solitude, which angels knew not. Andréi Yéfimitch wished to reflect upon
what he had seen and heard in the last few days. But he could not drive
Mikhail Averyanitch out of his mind.
"But then he obtained leave and came with me purely out of friendship and
generosity," he thought with vexation. "Yet there is nothing more detestable
than his maternal care. He is good and generous and a gay companion—but

tiresome! Intolerably tiresome! He is one of those men who say only clever
things, yet you cannot help feeling that they are stupid at bottom."
Next day Andréi Yéfimitch said he was still ill, and remained in his loom.
He lay with his face to the back of the sofa, was bored when he was
listening to conversation, and happy only when he was left alone. He was
angry with himself for leaving home, he was angry with Mikhail
Averyanitch, who every day became more garrulous and free-making; to
concentrate 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.... I will go home,
and things will be as before."
In St. Petersburg the incidents of Moscow were repeated; whole days he
never left his room, but lay on the sofa, and rose only when he wanted to
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 Yéfimitch
imploringly. "Go yourself, and let me go home. I beg you!"
"Not for a million!" protested Mikhail Averyanitch. "It is an astonishing
city! In Warsaw I spent the happiest days of my life."
Andréi Yéfimitch had not the character to persist, and with a twinge of pain
accompanied his friend to Warsaw. When he got there he stayed all day in
the hotel, lay on the sofa, and was angry with himself, and with the waiters
who stubbornly refused to understand Russian. Mikhail Averyanitch,
healthy, gay, and active as ever, drove from morning to night about the city
and sought out his old acquaintances. Several nights he stayed out
altogether. After one of these nights, spent it is uncertain where, he returned
early in the morning, dishevelled and excited. For a long time he walked up
and down the room, and at last stopped and exclaimed:
"Honour before everything!"
Again he walked up and down the room, seized his head in his hands, and
declaimed tragically:
"Yes! Honour before everything! Cursed be the hour when it entered my
head to come near this Babylon!... My dear friend," he turned to Andréi

Yéfimitch, "I have lost heavily at cards. Lend me five hundred roubles!"
Andréi Yéfimitch counted the money, and gave it silently to his friend.
Mikhail Averyanitch, purple from shame and indignation, cursed
incoherently and needlessly, put on his cap, and went out. After two hours'
absence he returned, threw himself into an armchair, sighed loudly, and
said:
"Honour is saved! Let us go away, my friend! Not another minute will I rest
in this accursed city! They are all scoundrels!... Austrian spies!"
When the travellers returned it was the beginning of November, and the
streets were covered with snow. Doctor Khobótoff occupied Andréi
Yéfimitch's position at the hospital, but lived at his own rooms, waiting
until Andréi Yéfimitch returned and gave up the official quarters. The ugly
woman whom he called his cook already lived in one of the wings.
Fresh scandals in connection with the hospital were being circulated in the
town. It was said that the ugly woman had quarrelled with the
superintendent, who had gone down before her on his knees and begged
forgiveness. On the day of his return Andréi Yéfimitch had to look for new
lodgings.
"My friend," began the postmaster timidly, "forgive the indelicate question,
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. "I ask
what means have you—generally?"
"I have told you already—eighty-six roubles.... Beyond that I have
nothing."
Mikhail Averyanitch was well aware that the doctor was an honest and
straightforward man. But he believed that he had at least twenty thousand
roubles in capital. Now learning that his friend was a beggar and 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
only three rooms and a kitchen. Of these rooms two, with windows opening
on the street, were occupied by the doctor, while in the third and in the
kitchen lived Dáryushka, the landlady, and three children. Occasionally the
number was added to by a drunken workman, Madame Byeloff's lover, who
made scenes at night and terrified Dáryushka and the children. When he
came, sat in the kitchen, and demanded vodka, the others were crowded out,
and the doctor in compassion took the crying children to his own room, and
put them to sleep on the floor. This always gave him great satisfaction.
As before, he rose at eight o'clock, took his breakfast, and sat down and
read his old books and reviews. For new books he had no money. But
whether it was because the books were old or because the surroundings
were changed, reading no longer interested him, and even tired him. So to
pass the time he compiled a detailed catalogue of his books, and pasted
labels on the backs; and this mechanical work seemed to him much more
interesting than reading. The more monotonous and trifling the occupation
the more it calmed his mind, he thought of nothing, and time passed
quickly. Even to sit in the kitchen and peel potatoes with Dáryushka or to
pick the dirt out of buckwheat meal interested him. On Saturdays and
Sundays he went to church. Standing at the wall, he blinked his eyes,
listened to the singing, and thought of his father, his mother, the university,
religion; he felt calm and melancholy, and when leaving the church,
regretted that the service had not lasted longer.
Twice he visited the hospital for the purpose of seeing Iván Dmítritch. But
on both occasions Gromof was unusually angry and excited; he asked to be
left in peace, declared that he had long ago wearied of empty chatter, and
that he would regard solitary confinement as a deliverance from these
accursed, base people. Was it possible they would refuse him that? When
Andréi Yéfimitch took leave of him and wished him good night, he snapped
and said:
"Take yourself to the devil!"

And Andréi Yéfimitch felt undecided as to whether he should go a third
time or not. But he wished to go.
In the old times Andréi Yéfimitch had been in the habit of spending the time
after dinner in walking about his rooms and thinking. But now from dinner
to tea-time he lay on the sofa with his face to the wall and surrendered
himself to trivial thoughts, which he found himself unable to conquer. He
considered himself injured by the fact that after twenty years' service he had
been given neither a pension nor a grant. True he had not done his duties
honestly, but then were not pensions given to all old servants
indiscriminately, without regard to their honesty or otherwise? Modern
ideas did not regard rank, orders, and pensions as the reward of moral
perfection or capacity, and why must he alone be the exception? He was
absolutely penniless. He was ashamed to pass the shop where he dealt or to
meet the proprietor. For beer alone he was in debt thirty-two roubles. He
was in debt also to his landlady. Dáryushka secretly 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 his journey
the thousand roubles which he had saved. What could he not do with a
thousand roubles now? He was annoyed, also, because others would not
leave him alone. Khobótoff considered it his duty to pay periodical visits to
his sick colleague; and everything about him was repulsive to Andréi
Yéfimitch—his sated face, his condescending bad manners, the word
"colleague," and the high boots. But the greatest annoyance of all was that
he considered it his duty to cure Andréi Yéfimitch, and even imagined he
was curing him. On every occasion he brought a phial of bromide of
potassium and a rhubarb pill.
Mikhail Averyanitch also considered it his duty to visit his sick friend and
amuse him. He entered the room with affected freeness, laughed
unnaturally, and assured Andréi Yéfimitch that to-day he looked splendid,
and that, glory be to God! he was getting all right. From this alone it might
be concluded that he regarded the case as hopeless. He had not yet paid off
the Warsaw debt, and being ashamed of himself and constrained, he laughed
all the louder, and told ridiculous anecdotes. His stories now seemed
endless, and were a source of torment both to Andréi Yéfimitch and to
himself.

When the postmaster was present, Andréi Yéfimitch usually lay on the sofa,
his face turned to the wall, with clenched teeth, listening. It seemed to him
that a crust was forming about his heart, and after; every visit he felt the
crust becoming thicker, and; threatening to extend to his throat. To exorcise
these trivial afflictions he reflected that he, and Khobótoff, and Mikhail
Averyanitch would, sooner or later, perish, leaving behind themselves not a
trace. When a million years had passed by, a spirit flying through space
would see only a frozen globe and naked stones. All—culture and morals—
everything would pass away; even the burdock would not grow. Why, then,
should he trouble himself with feelings of shame on account of a
shopkeeper, of insignificant Khobótoff, of the terrible friendship of Mikhail
Averyanitch. It was all folly and vanity.
But such reasoning did not console him. He had hardly succeeded in
painting a vivid picture of the frozen globe after a million yearn of decay,
when from behind a naked rock appeared Khobótoff in his top boots, and
beside him stood Mikhail Averyanitch, with an affected laugh, and a
shamefaced whisper on his lips: "And the Warsaw debt, old man, I will
repay in a few days ... without fail!"

XVI

Mikhail Averyanitch arrived after dinner one evening when Andréi
Yéfimitch was lying on the sofa. At the same time came Khobótoff with his
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 complexion is
much healthier than yesterday. You are a hero! I swear to God, a hero!"
"It's time, indeed it's time for you to recover, colleague," said Khobótoff,
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 friend on
the knee. "We'll show how the trick is done! Next summer, with God's will,
we'll fly away to the Caucasus, and gallop all over the country—trot, trot,
trot! And when we come back from the Caucasus we'll dance at your
wedding!"
Mikhail Averyanitch winked slyly. "We'll marry you, my friend, we'll find
the bride!"
Andréi Yéfimitch felt that the crust had risen to his throat. His heart beat
painfully.
"This is absurd," he said, rising suddenly and going over to the window. "Is
it possible you don't understand that you are talking nonsense?"
He wished to speak to his visitors softly and politely, but could not restrain
himself, and, against his own will, clenched his fists, and raised them
threateningly above his head.
"Leave me!" he cried, in a voice which was not his own. His face was
purple and he trembled all over. "Begone! Both of you! Go!"
Mikhail Averyanitch and Khobótoff rose, and looked at him, at first in
astonishment, then in tenor. "Begone both of you!" continued Andréi
Yéfimitch. "Stupid idiots! Fools! I want neither your friendship nor your
medicines, idiots! This is base, it is abominable!"
Khobótoff and the postmaster exchanged confused glances, staggered to the
door, and went into the hall. Andréi Yéfimitch seized the phial of bromide
of potassium, and flung it after them, breaking it upon the threshold.
"Take yourselves to the devil!" he cried, running after them into the hall.
"To the devil!"
After his visitors had gone he lay on the sofa, trembling as if in fever, and
repeated—
"Stupid idiots! Dull fools!"
When he calmed down, the first thought that entered his head was that poor
Mikhail Averyanitch must now be terribly ashamed and wretched, and that

the scene that had passed was something very terrible. Nothing of the kind
had ever happened before. What had become of his intellect and tact?
Where were now his understanding of the world and his philosophical
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 apologised to 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. "No man
should trouble over such trifles.... Lubiakin!" he roared so loudly that the
clerks and visitors trembled. "Bring a chair!... And you just wait!" he cried
to a peasant woman, who held a registered letter through the grating. "Don't
you see that I am engaged? ... We will forget 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 strange thing, I
understand that. Yesterday your fit frightened both the doctor and myself,
and we talked of you for a long time. My dear friend, why will you not pay
more attention to your complaint? Do you think you can go on living in this
way? Forgive the plain speaking of a friend." He dropped his voice to a
whisper. "But you live among hopeless surroundings—closeness,
uncleanliness, no one to look after you, nothing to take for your ailment....
My dear friend, both I and the doctor implore you with all our hearts—
listen to our advice—go into the hospital. There you will get wholesome
food, care and treatment. Yevgéniï Feódoritch—although, between
ourselves, de mauvais ton—is a capable man, and you can fully rely upon
him. He gave me his word that he would take care of you."
Andréi Yéfimitch was touched by the sincere concern of his friend, and the
tears that trickled down the postmaster's cheeks.
"My dear friend, don't believe them!" he whispered, laying his hand upon
his heart. "It is all a delusion. My complaint lies merely in this, that in
twenty years I found in this town only one intelligent man, and he was a
lunatic. I suffer from no disease whatever; my misfortune is that I have

fallen into a magic circle from which there is 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 in
everything."
"I give you my word. But I repeat that I have fallen into a magic circle.
Everything now, even the sincere concern of my friends, tends only to the
same thing—to my destruction. I am perishing, and I have the courage to
acknowledge it."
"Nonsense, you will get all right!"
"What is the use of talking like that?" said Andréi Yéfimitch irritably.
"There are very few men who at the close of their lives do not experience
what I am experiencing now. When people tell you that you have disease of
the kidneys or a dilated heart, and set about to cure you; when they tell you
that you are a madman or a criminal—in one word, when they begin to turn
their attention on to you—you may recognise 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 no human efforts will save you. So it seems to me."
All this time, people were gathering at the grating. Andréi Yéfimitch
disliked interrupting the postmaster's work, and took his leave. Mikhail
Averyanitch once more made him give his word of honour, and escorted
him to the door.
The same day towards evening Khobótoff, in his short fur coat and high
boots, arrived unexpectedly, and, as if nothing had happened the day before,
said: "I have come to you on a matter of business, colleague, I want you to
come with me to a consultation. Eh?"
Thinking that Khobótoff wanted to amuse him with a walk, or give him
some opportunity of earning money, Andréi Yéfimitch dressed, and went
with him into the street. He was glad of the chance to redeem his rudeness
of the day before, thankful for the apparent reconciliation, and grateful to
Khobótoff for not hinting at the incident. From this uncultured 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 entered the hall,
Nikita as usual jumped up and stretched himself.
"One of them has such strange complications in the lungs," whispered
Khobótoff 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 face buried in
the pillow; the paralytic sat motionless, and wept softly and twitched his
lips; the fat muzhik and the ex-sorter slept. It was very quiet.
Andréi Yéfimitch sat on Iván Dmítritch's bed and listened. Half an hour
passed by, but Khobótoff did not come. Instead of Khobótoff came Nikita
carrying 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 your bed,
this way, please," he added, pointing at a vacant bed, evidently only just set
up. "And don't take on; with God's will you will soon be well!"
Andréi Yéfimitch understood. Without a Word he walked over to the bed
indicated by Nikita and sat upon it. Then, seeing that Nikita was waiting, he
stripped himself and felt ashamed. He put on the hospital clothing; the
flannels were too small, the shirt was too long, and the dressing-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 gathering the
dressing-gown around him, and feeling like a convict in his new garments.
"It is all the same. In dress clothes, in uniform ... or in this dressing-gown."
But his watch? And the memorandum book in his side pocket? And the
cigarettes? Where had Nikita taken his clothes? To the day of his death he
would never again wear trousers, a waistcoat, or boots. It was strange and
incredible at first. Andréi Yéfimitch was firmly convinced that there was no
difference whatever between Madame Byelof's house and Ward No. 6, and
that all in this world is folly and vanity; but he could not prevent his hands
trembling, and his feet were cold. He was hurt, too, by the thought that Iván
Dmítritch would rise and see him in the dressing-gown. He rose, walked up
and down the room, and again sat down.
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 these others 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 to end 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 that his whole face
smelt of dried fish. He walked up and down the ward.
"This is some misunderstanding...." he said, opening his arms. "It only
needs an explanation, it is a misunderstanding...."
At this moment Iván Dmítritch awoke. He sat up in bed, rested his head on
his hands, and spat. Then he looked idly at the doctor, apparently at first
understanding nothing. But soon his sleepy face grew contemptuous and
malicious.
"So they have brought you here, my friend," he began in a voice hoarse
from sleep. He blinked one eye. "I am very glad! You drank other men's
blood, and now they will drink yours! Admirable!"
"It is some misunderstanding ..." began Andréi Yéfimitch, frightened by the
lunatic's words. He shrugged his shoulders and repeated. "It is a
misunderstanding of some kind."
Iván Dmítritch again spat, and lay down on his bed.

"Accursed life!" he growled. "But what is most bitter, most abominable of
all, is that this life ends not with rewards for suffering, not with apotheoses
as in operas, but in death; men come and drag the corpse by its arms and
legs into the cellar. Brrrrrr!... Well, never mind!... For all that we have
suffered in this, in the other world we will be repaid with 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 his hand, and
said:
"Give me a kopeck!"

XVIII

Andréi Yéfimitch went across to the window, and looked out into the fields.
It was getting dark, and on the horizon rose a cold, livid moon. Near the
hospital railings, a hundred fathoms away, not more, rose a lofty, white
building, surrounded by a stone wall. It was the prison.
"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 away from the
window, and saw before him a man with glittering stars and orders 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 there was
nothing peculiar at all, that even sane men wear orders, and that the best of
things in their turn rot and turn into dust. But despair suddenly seized him,
he took hold of the grating with both hands, and jerked it with all his
strength. But the bars stood firm.
That it might be less terrible, he went to Iván Dmítritch's bed, and sat upon
it.

"I have lost my spirits, friend," he said, stammering, trembling, and rubbing
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 there is no
philosophy; but all philosophise, even triflers. But the philosophising of
triflers does no harm to anyone," said Andréi Yéfimitch as if he wanted to
cry. "By why, my dear friend, why this malicious laughter? Why should not
triflers philosophise if they are not satisfied? For a clever, cultivated, proud,
freedom-loving man, built in the image of God, there is no course left but to
come as doctor to a dirty, stupid town, and lead a life of jars, leeches, and
gallipots. Charlatanry, narrowness, baseness! Oh, my God!"
"You chatter nonsense! If you didn't want to be a doctor, why weren't you a
minister of state?"
"I could not. We are weak, my friend. I was indifferent to things, I reasoned
actively and wholesomely, but it needed but the first touch of actuality to
make me lose heart, and surrender.... We are weak; we are worthless!... And
you also, my friend. You are able, you are noble, with your mother's milk
you drank in draughts of happiness, yet hardly had you entered upon life
when you wearied of it.... We are weak, weak!"
In addition to terror and the feeling of insult, Andréi Yéfimitch had been
tortured by sonic importunate craving ever since the approach of evening.
Finally he came to the conclusion that he wanted to smoke and drink beer.
"I am going out, my friend," he said. "I will tell them to bring lights.... I
cannot in this way.... I am not in a state...."
He went to the door and opened it, but immediately Nikita jumped up and
barred the way.
"Where are you going to? You can't, you can't!" he cried. "It's time for bed!"
"But only for a minute.... I want to go into the yard.... I want to have 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 out what
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 edifying tone.
"The devil knows what is the meaning of this!" suddenly screamed Iván
Dmitri tch, jumping from his bed. "What right has he to refuse to let us go?
How dare they keep us here? The law allows no man to be deprived of
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 door
with 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 ... For a
minute!"
"To-morrow he will come all right."
"They will never let us go!" cried Iván Dmítritch. "We will all die here! 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, and flung himself against the door. "I
will dash my brains out! Assassins!"
Nikita flung open the door, and with both hands and his knees roughly
pushed Andréi Yéfimitch back into the room, and struck him with his
clenched fist full in the face. It seemed to Andréi Yéfimitch that a great salt
wave had suddenly dashed upon his head and flung him upon his bed; in his
mouth was a taste of salt, and the blood seemed to burst from his gums. As
if trying to swim away from the wave, he flourished his arms and seized the
bedstead. But at this moment Nikita struck 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 iron bars,
and on the floor lay a network shadow. All were terrified. Andréi Yéfimitch
lay on the bed and held his breath in terror, awaiting another blow.

It seemed as if someone had taken a sickle, thrust it into his chest and
turned it around. In his agony he bit his pillow and ground his teeth, and
suddenly into his head amid the chaos flashed the intolerable thought that
such misery had been borne year after year by these helpless men who now
lay in the moonlight like black shadows about him. In twenty years he had
never known of it, and never wanted to know. He did not know, he had no
idea of their wretchedness, therefore he was not guilty; but conscience, as
rude and unaccommodating as Nikita's fists, sent an icy thrill through him
from head to foot. He jumped from his bed and tried to scream with all his
might, to fly from the ward and kill Nikita, and Khobótoff, and the
superintendent, and the feldscher, and himself. But not a sound came from
his throat, his feet rebelled against him, he panted, he tore his gown and
shirt, and fell insensible on the bed.

XIX

Next morning his head ached, his cars hummed, and he was weak. The
memory of his weakness of the day before made him feel ashamed.
Yesterday he had shown a petty spirit, he had feared even the moon, and
honestly expressed feelings and thoughts which he had never suspected
could exist in himself. For instance, the thought about the discontent of
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 shall not
answer.... It is all the same...."
After dinner Mikhail Averyanitch brought him a quarter of a pound of tea
and a pound of marmalade. Dáryushka also came, and for a whole hour
stood beside the bed with a dull expression of uncomprehending affliction.
Doctor Khobótoff also paid him a visit. He brought a phial of bromide of
potassium, and ordered Nikita to fumigate the ward.
Towards evening Andréi Yéfimitch died from an apoplectic stroke. At first
he felt chill, and sickness; something loathsome like rotting sour cabbage or

bad eggs seemed to permeate his whole body even to his fingers, to extend
from his stomach to his head, and to flow in his eyes and ears. A green film
appeared before his eyes. Andréi Yéfimitch realised 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 which he had been reading the day before, rushed
past him; then a woman stretched out to him a hand holding a registered
letter.... Mikhail Averyanitch said something. Then all vanished and Andréi
Yéfimitch died.
The servants came in, took him by the shoulders and legs, and carried him
to the chapel. There he lay on a table with open eyes, and at night the moon
shone down upon him. In the morning came Sergéi Sergéyitch, piously
prayed before a crucifix, and closed the eyes of his former chief. Next day
Andréi Yéfim itch was buried. Only Mikhail Averyanitch and Dáryushka
were present at the funeral.

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