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Title: Short-story masterpieces, Vol. 3
        Russian

Editor: J. Berg Esenwein

Translator: John Cournos

Release date: July 19, 2024 [eBook #74071]

Language: English

Original publication: Massachusetts: The Home correspondence school

Credits: Andrés V. Galia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORT-STORY MASTERPIECES, VOL. 3 ***



                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

In the plain text version text in italics is enclosed by underscores
(_italics_); small caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS;
words in bold are represented as in =bold=, and superscript text is
represented with the sign ^{text}.

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated
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                   *       *       *       *       *


                   [Illustration: =Nikolai V. Gogol=]




                              SHORT-STORY
                             MASTERPIECES

                          VOLUME III--RUSSIAN

                           DONE INTO ENGLISH
                            BY JOHN COURNOS

                          INTRODUCTIONS   BY

                           J. BERG ESENWEIN
                   _Editor of Lippincott’s Magazine_

                    THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL
                      Springfield, Massachusetts
                                 1913


           Copyright 1912 and 1913--J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
            Copyright 1913--THE HOME CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL




                         CONTENTS - VOLUME III

                                                          PAGE

            General Introduction:
               The Russian Short-Story                     5

            Pushkin and the New Era                       13
               Story: The Snow-Storm                      31

            Gogol, the First Russian Realist              53
               Story: The Cloak                           69

            Turgenev the Emancipator                     125
               Story: The District Doctor                139

            Tolstoi, Artist and Preacher                 157
                Story: A Long Exile                      175




                        THE RUSSIAN SHORT-STORY


In introducing the volumes of this series which deal with the work
of French fictionists I commented upon the real distinction existing
between the French short-story and the short-story in French, asserting
that the former is a precise term because the greater number of worthy
short-stories in French really exhibit the typical French spirit and
are therefore French.

The Russian short-story is even more pronouncedly national in
theme, in tone, and in treatment than is its French contemporary;
indeed, Muscovite literature is the most markedly national of any
in Europe. This would not be so significant a statement were modern
Russian literature--by which I mean all such literature which really
counts--more than a century old; but this ancient, remote, and
self-sufficient people really lived for so long a time apart from the
great highways of Continental thought that they were not nationally
conscious of those titanic upheaving and levelling passions whose
fitful and at times appalling force shook France, England, and even
Poland to the very heart and forced their thinkers to express the
spirit of the revolutionary era in undying prose.

Instead, Russian writers of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth
centuries occupied their pens with imitations of foreign--chiefly
French--literature, or wrote minute local descriptions which were
important not so much for what they were as for what they pointed to--a
new national consciousness.

                   *       *       *       *       *

But in order to get an understanding of modern Russian literature we
turn backward in our swift survey. When Peter the Great, that much
magnified and more maligned potentate, ascended the throne, he found
Russia the home of bigotry, prejudice, and barbarism. But before his
unceremonious blows the doors swung reluctantly open, and from the
west a steady concourse of European ideas, often accompanied in person
by their thinkers, moved through the gates and penetrated every upper
circle. Naturally, literature was the first of the arts to throb
with this infusion of outside blood, and naturally, also, its first
expressions were in that form of flattery which is alleged to be most
sincere.

But when national consciousness is awakened, national pride soon
begins to utter lusty sounds, and its theme is certain to be as
national as its form of expression. So, with the dawn of the nineteenth
century--Lomonosoff, Kantemier, Sumarakov, the Empress Catherine,
Von Viezin, Derzhavin, Karamsin, and Zhukovski having in the previous
century done fine service in poetry, history, and the drama--there
opened a new era: the period of artistic Russian fiction. The barbaric
richness and fearless crudity of the old poetry were exchanged for
sophisticated prose.

Kriloff deserves special mention here, even though to Gogol and Pushkin
must go the trail-blazers’ honor. His fables and tales were distinctly
in advance of previous similar work, but the real fictive creators were
yet to come. Kriloff was at once the last of the old and the first of
the new prose-writers.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It is a curious coincidence that the youngest two literatures of the
world, American and Russian, should each have contributed so materially
to the development of the short-story. During the eighteenth century
American literature was compassing a slow growth; but in Russia
literature was virtually sleeping. Later, both come to effective
expression at about the same time. While Irving, Hawthorne, Poe,
Harte, Stockton, James, and O. Henry were telling wonderful stories in
our land, Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoevski, Korolenko,
Garshin, Chekhov, Andreev, and Gorki were doing the like in Russia.
The balance dips toward America for literary art, but for sheer
strength it unmistakably drops on the side of the Slav. Thus throughout
the nineteenth century and till now the short-story has been a form to
be reckoned with in any adequate estimate of Russian writers, just as
in the two other literatures whose recent development follows similar
lines--American and French.

When the modern short-story was born in its technical perfection
in America, France, and Russia almost simultaneously, the French
Revolution had worn out most of its evil effects and the New Spirit was
beneficently at work in every enlightened land. The superior value of
human beings, the benumbing effects of slavery, the priceless qualities
of real liberty, and the absolute necessity for an enlightenment which
should be something more than education, became ideals worth fighting
and dying for.

It is important to note here that great short-stories from that day to
this have developed themes vital to the people for whom and by whom
they were written.

                   *       *       *       *       *

But we must look deeper than the spirit of an _era_ if we are to
account for a national tone in any given literature, and in the
characteristic Russian temperament we shall in this case find the
inspiring cause.

The word _Slav_ has given to the world our word _slave_. In the
pathetic and expressive phrase of Waliszewski, “The Slav race, the
latest comer into the world of civilization, has always been at school,
always under some rod or sway. Whether it be the Oriental and material
conquests of the thirteenth century, or the Western and moral one of
the eighteenth, it merely undergoes a change of masters.” Yet in the
face of all this the Russian people has persistently maintained, and
even accentuated, its personality. To me, this personality is marked
by six great characteristics: _hugeness_, _passion_, _simplicity_,
_religiousness_, _suffering_, and _fatalism_. Herzen said that
“sadness, skepticism, irony, are the three strings of Russian
literature--the skepticism is not typical; the other qualities are.”

In looking for the typical and distinctive elements of national
character in Russian literature we must remember that they are more to
be observed in the tone of the author considered than in the characters
he portrays, and this for a perfectly obvious reason: Russia is a land
of extremes, not alone of condition but of advancement. One class
outrivals the Parisian in refinement of desires, while no people in
Europe can surpass the remoter peasant in his stolidity; the greatest
wealth is just across the way from the most tax-oppressed poverty;
high-minded patriotism sits on the same park-bench with a Red maniac;
skepticism and religious credulity run to astounding contra extremes.

Of course, the Russian composite character is modified by the antipodal
nature of its society, but its literature is enriched by a vast variety
of types, and when, as in the stories of Tolstoi, these types appear in
dramatic juxtaposition; the effect is unique.

It would be interesting to trace here each of these six nationally
characteristic traits, but all are either dwelt upon in the succeeding
introductory studies or are clearly illustrated in the accompanying
stories; it may therefore be enough to point out in brief how naturally
each takes its place in the sum total of Russian temperament.

The physical vastness of this self-sufficient land, with its sweep of
continent-wide, continent-long domain, must at once suggest the bigness
of its spirit. Even its people grow big and Norse-like in frame, while
the centuries of indifference to the outlanders’ views and ideals
culminate readily in direct, fearless self-expression.

Passion, too, finds a similar origin, encouraged by Tartar fire,
Cossack physicality, and the composite life bred of oriental contact.

Simplicity is often in our day written down as the sign of ignorance,
or at least of inexperience of the great world; but in the Russian
character it has mainly a nobler origin. What need for hesitation,
finesse, caution in word and attitude, when one is certain of being the
chosen of Heaven? Not even the Jew is more firmly convinced and poised
than the Muscovite.

The essential religiousness--the mystical religiousness--of the Slav
is as old as his history. In fact, his Aryan origin, so often boasted
of, points to the Hindu origin of his religious attitude of mind. True,
many of his matter-of-fact appeals to divine things are habitual rather
than reverential and often have too close association with base dealing
to be convincing; still the peasant particularly is colored in all his
life by his church and her tenets.

The Russian countenance is typically sad, almost despairing. The yoke
worn for so many ages by the masses, the bitterness of a life devoted
to service for the “big man,” the hopelessness born of petty and major
oppressions, result for the Russian, as for all barbaric peoples--for
Russia is still largely barbaric--in a resigned suffering which has not
yet begun to be mitigated by the great increase of revolutionary ideas
among the people. Indeed, protest against the ruling order has thus
far yielded only greater present sadness, how hopeful soever the future
may be.

And lastly we have that most terrible, most pathetic, most depressing
temper--fatalism. And yet this is not the precise word, for no single
English word expresses the pessimism, the apathy, the expectation of
nothing, the anticlimax of ambition in which a whole race begins as a
Napoleon and--peters out.

All this may sound unlovely. And doubtless it is, for loveliness is not
the tone of Nihilism, nor is beauty the consort of despair. Yet the
towering ambition that ends in puny deeds shows even now signs of a
more effective result, and larger liberties, the outgrowth of contact
with the world without, must sooner or later bring to life a more
ardent and hope-cherishing Russia.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The short-story of today in Russia is strong--terribly strong, for the
most part, for it is not charming, certainly. But as an augury of what
the Russian people will yet become it has a thousand-fold more promise
than may be found in the perfumed politeness of an anæmic fiction such
as floods the magazines of England and America. Notwithstanding all her
gloom, Russia’s strength is her bow of promise.




                        PUSHKIN AND THE NEW ERA


Alexander Sergyevitch Pushkin was born in Moscow, June 7, 1799, at a
time when Russia was aswirl with various currents. Therefore, to gain
some clear vision of the distinguished service which he rendered the
literature of his native land, we must at least glance at the great
intellectual and political tides--they were largely coincident--which
swept Russia, first away from her own self-sufficient life, then toward
France, next in the direction of Germany, and finally out into a
national thought-channel of her own.

Pushkin is one of those writers who are big enough to have founded and
dominated an era, not solely because of his own preëminent genius, but
for the deeper reason that he represented in himself the culmination of
a series of national steps, each as definite as it was important.

For all the centuries of her life up to the nineteenth, Russia had
lived a separate existence from that of her great neighbors. In seeking
a cause for this condition, we must remember that the imperial bigness
of Russia, and her remote location, are not the only factors entering
into her segregate character. The _great_ factor is that Russia is
much more largely Asiatic in spirit than it is European. The typical
Slav of today is, temperamentally, though not in a precise sense
racially, a mixture of Tartar fierceness, old Slavonic stolidity, and
Hindu _Nirvana_, which, being translated into Russian, is essentially
Nihilism. Yet, today as for many centuries, the Slavic race is as truly
homogeneous as any can be.

During this long era of Russia’s ultra-exclusiveness, the polished
periods of Montaigne and the brilliant dramas of Corneille, Racine,
and Molière were delighting France, and Spenser, Milton, and Dryden
were doing rare things for English literature. At the same time,
nationally unconscious of all this, Russia was singing its epical and
ballad folk-songs, with only now and then a note of premeditated art
sounding forth. Here indeed was a true poetry _of_ the people--which,
as Dr. Gummere has pointed out, is a very different thing from that
pseudo-folk-poetry which is merely _about_ the people. Still, it
required influences from without to bring Russian literature to
artistic national expression.

The great autocratic rulers of Russia, and her leading nobles, at last
began to feel the allurement of the French, and Peter the Great even
travelled abroad, coming home imbued with new ideas for a progressive
nation. When a giant people, long content to be sufficient unto
itself, awakens to see that other ideals of life, other habits of
thought, other standards of conduct, have brought other great nations
to a brilliancy of position which its own solitary bigness has not
enabled it to attain, the first feeling is one of contempt for “those
others,” as the French would say. Later comes a naïve passion to
imitate. And finally, enter a whole train of foreign influences, good
and bad.

So it was with Russia after the powerful, rough, and somewhat
benevolently autocratic reign of Catherine II, at whose court Pushkin’s
father was a complacent noble. The French tongue, which even Pushkin
himself called “the language of Europe,” already prevailed at the
Russian court, and the literature of the country consisted chiefly of
imitations of the pseudo-classical French school, adaptations, or even
translations, from other languages, and here and there a struggling
voice which lifted itself with difficulty above the imitative clack.
All three of these types Catherine herself fostered--intermittently,
though still with some success.

But the alarming revolutionary ideas bruited from France, and the
Napoleonic campaign against Russia, caused a powerful revulsion of
feeling toward Germany and away from France. In Germany, however,
Young Russia met the same humanistic tendencies and passion for free
thought with which France had been gradually impregnating the empire of
the Slavs. Add to this the influence of Byron’s poetry, now stirring
Europe, and we have the external forces which drove Russia to look
at her own self with honest eyes--forces which at length found their
literary climax in Pushkin’s giving to his native land a literature
which was of the Russians, for the Russians, and by a Russian--a
literature born of the Russian spirit, breathing her ideals, speaking
her marvellously expressive tongue in new combinations of beauty, and
set against a background of her soil and her cities.

A further remarkable influence was operating to prepare both Russia
and Pushkin for the work of new creation: in the hands of Zhukovski
and others who immediately preceded our author, the Russian language
began suddenly to assume a flexibility and richness which, as I have
intimated, were destined to be still more greatly enlarged by the gifts
of Pushkin.

The author-to-be wasted no time beginning his career. Even at the
age of ten, while an unstudious but omnivorously reading school-boy,
he made deft imitations of French verse and the French drama, while
at twelve he knew four or five languages and was reading Rousseau,
Voltaire, and Molière with avidity. At this age the lad became a pupil
in the College Tsarskoïé-Siélo, in 1811, the year of its founding by
Alexander I. But while he absorbed enough to cause his wild genius to
flourish, he was incorrigible, and always in hot-water--except among
his comrades, by whom his dash, impudence, and wit made him to be both
admired and feared.

When Pushkin was only fifteen, the _European Messenger_ published
anonymously a series of clever but obscene Russian verses in the style
of Ossian and Parny. The name of the author soon leaked out, however,
and when the following year the boy read on a public speech-day a
suitable poem entitled “Recollections of Tsarskoïé-Siélo,” he was
hailed as a gifted poet. The poetic form was miraculous--the thought,
just about what a precocious lad could produce.

In 1817 Pushkin was graduated, and entered the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. At once he was lionized by literary society, and became the
leader of a brilliant but rakish clique--the story of their escapades
would read like a tenderloin police-docket. At length, in 1820, the
year when “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” his first great poem, was published,
he committed some folly too outrageous to be condoned--probably an
especially licentious expression in verse--and was banished to South
Russia, where, wandering among the Caucasus ranges which color all
his later work, and living near the romantic Black Sea, he remained
for several years; until, in 1824, his banishment was commuted to
confinement to his father’s estates. In a literary way this date marks
the beginning of his new era, for he now began to bring into final form
the master-poem, “Eugene Onyegin,” on which he had been working for
several years--of which more presently.

Some--why, I cannot conceive--have attributed Pushkin’s ungovernable
disposition to the mixed blood that flowed in his veins, as was the
case with the elder Dumas. Pushkin’s maternal great-grandfather was
that Abram Hannibal, “Peter the Great’s Arab favorite,” who was really
an Abyssinian slave. The African youth was educated in France by his
royal master and godfather, later admitted to his friendship, and
eventually married to a Russian lady. Their son became a great Russian
general. The poet himself bore unmistakable marks of his ancestry in
his short curly hair and thick, sensuous lips, though his eyes were
blue, his skin fair, and his hair light in hue.

During these earlier years of his short life, Pushkin was profoundly
influenced by Byron, and even was willing to be called “the Russian
Byron.” Indeed, his license-loving and liberty-adoring nature was
quite like that of his English model. This influence is seen not only
in his poetic methods, but in his teachings and in his themes. The
poem “Poltava,” published in 1829, takes Mazeppa for its hero, and his
poetic masterpiece, “Eugene Onyegin,” published in 1828, is really
Don-Juanesque. Nor is it difficult to trace other evidences of this
frankly admiring spirit.

Singularly enough, “Eugene Onyegin” (which Tschaikovsky has made
the subject of an opera) is at once in the style of Byron (somewhat
resembling his “Beppo”), while in theme, locale, and handling it throws
off the trammels of Byronism, and indeed all foreignism, and becomes
the first really great work of modern Russian literature. Whatever the
original debt Pushkin owed to the author of “Don Juan,” in this and
later work he strikes out with all the self-confidence and attainment
of an original genius. So tender, so pathetic, yet so humorous, so full
of human understanding, so informed with the spirit of contemporary
Russian society, is this remarkable work, that its author achieved
immortality in its writing. Thus did the years of exile on the paternal
manor bear notable fruit.

Because this creation sets so lasting an initial mark, by establishing
Russian literature upon a basis of art, it seems worth while to recite
its argument here in full.

Eugene Onyegin is a “Byronic young society man,” who is recalled to
the country from his city dissipations by his father’s death. Here he
lives, for a long time avoiding all contact with his less cultivated
neighbors. A young poet, Vladimir Lensky, the son of one of these
manorial families, returns from abroad, and a congenial friendship
springs up between the young men. Lensky, who is betrothed to Olga
Larin, persuades Onyegin to call upon her family with him. Tatyana,
Olga’s elder sister, at once falls in love with Onyegin, and writes him
a letter of frank avowal--one of the most famous passages of the drama.
But Onyegin gently turns her aside by assuming the rôle of a fatherly
adviser, and the incident remains unknown to all except themselves
and Tatyana’s old nurse. Soon afterwards, Lensky induces Onyegin to
go to the Larins’ on the occasion of Tatyana’s name-day festival. For
the sake of preventing gossip in a district given over to small talk,
Onyegin yields and goes. At table, by the innocent scheming of her
family, he is placed opposite to Tatyana, and finds the situation so
embarrassing that he determines to revenge himself on the innocent
Lensky by flirting with Olga, who is shortly to become Lensky’s wife.
During the evening, Olga, pretty but weak-natured, accepts Onyegin’s
attentions with such interest that Lensky challenges him. Heart-sick
at the results of his momentary unjust anger, Onyegin would gladly
apologize, were it not that Lensky has chosen as his representative
an old fire-eater and tattler who would misrepresent his motives and
perhaps compromise Tatyana. Therefore, he accepts--and Lensky falls.
Onyegin then goes off on his travels. Olga soon consoles herself with
a handsome officer, and after their marriage goes with him to his
regiment. Tatyana, however, who is of a reserved, intense character,
pines, refuses all offers of marriage, and, by the advice of friends,
is finally taken to Moscow for the winter. There, as a wall-flower
at her first ball, she captivates a prince from St. Petersburg--a
distinguished and socially important general. She follows her parents’
wishes and marries him. When Onyegin returns to the capital a few
years later, he finds, to his great astonishment, “that the little
country girl whom he has patronized, rejected, almost scorned, is
one of the great ladies of the court and society.” He falls madly
in love with her, in his turn, but she gives him not the slightest
sign of friendship. Driven to despair by this coldness, he writes her
three letters, but she does not reply. Then, entering her boudoir
unexpectedly, through the carelessness of her servants, he finds her in
tears, reading his letter. He again avows his love. She is obliged to
confess that she loves him still, but finally makes him understand that
she will be true to her kind and high-minded husband. Thus the drama
ends.

After the production of his masterpiece, followed a notable poetic
tragedy, “Boris Godunov,” in which may be discerned the author’s
admiration for the methods of Shakespeare, to whom he turned, yet not
slavishly, after freeing himself from the overshadowing Byron.

It is inevitable that we should speculate upon the splendid work which
might have come from the pen of this greatest of Russian poets had he
not fallen in his prime. The story is sad and sordid enough. In 1831,
having been restored to imperial favor, he had married the beautiful
Natalya Nikolaevna Gontcharoff, and they plunged into society, loaded
with recognition by the court.

He had been married but five years when society began to gossip about
“the lovely Madame Pushkin” and Baron George Hekkeren-Dantes, the
natural son of the Dutch minister to Russia. Pushkin attached no blame
to his wife for the indiscretions of the infatuated young chevalier
of the Guards, but challenged him nevertheless. Dantes averted a
meeting by marrying Pushkin’s sister. Still the gossip persisted, and
eventually, being refused access to the Pushkin home, Dantes made his
persecutions so patent, and was so seconded by the elder Hekkeren,
that the poet challenged the father. The son intervened, adopted the
quarrel, and in a duel at St. Petersburg Pushkin was killed, January
29, 1837, being only thirty-eight years old.

The last six years of Pushkin’s life established his claim to greatness
not only as a poet and a dramatist, but also as a master of Russian
prose. We may not term him a novelist, but as a writer of prose tales
he set a new mark in the literature of his land. When we recall that
it was in the first years of that significant decade, 1830-1840,
that Poe, Balzac, and Mérimée perfected and brought to its modern
form the short-story, we shall realize what a great forward step was
being made in Russia at the very same time when Pushkin produced his
“Prose Tales.” His longer tales, “A Prisoner of the Caucasus” and
“The Captain’s Daughter,” exhibit little plot, but they are notable
impressionistic stories, full of rich and effective coloring.

Two of his shorter stories I outline, both on account of their
intrinsic interest and for the fact that they illustrate the romantic
vein which runs through all of Pushkin’s work. Else how could he ever
have turned to Byron? Gogol, a contemporary of Pushkin and in some
senses his successor, was the father of Russian realism. The two may be
said to be the joint parents of Russian fiction.

“The Queen of Spades” is like a “Weird Tale” by Hoffmann, or a
conception of Poe’s. It ranks as one of the world’s great short-stories.

At the house of a cavalry officer, several young Russians are gambling.
One of them asks Herman why he never plays. He replies, “Play interests
me greatly, but I hardly care to sacrifice the necessities of life for
uncertain superfluities.”

Tomsky says that he can understand Herman’s being economical, but
that he cannot understand why his own grandmother, the Countess Anna
Fedorovna, should not play, for, although she is eighty years of age,
she knows a secret which makes winning at faro certain. Tomsky then
goes on to relate how the old woman secured the secret from a friend
of hers in order to save her from the disastrous results of enormous
losses in cards. The secret consists of choosing three certain cards in
succession. This plan she followed, winning every time, and was soon
out of debt.

Being in need of funds, Herman is impressed with the story, and begins
to haunt the outside of the aged Countess’s home. In order to gain
admission and learn the secret, he contrives to flirt with Lisaveta
Ivanovna, the Countess’s ward, who at length arranges a way in which he
can gain admission to the house while the family are attending a ball.
He is to pass through the Countess’s apartments and await the girl in
her sitting-room, but instead of doing this the young officer secretes
himself in the apartments of the Countess. After she is in bed he
emerges and demands the names of the three cards, placing a pistol at
her brow, but assuring her that he means no harm if she will do as he
asks. She tremblingly tells him that it was only a jest, that there is
nothing in the report of her knowledge, but Herman insists, and after a
short time he grasps her arm roughly and is about to renew his threats
when he finds that she is dead.

Presently Herman makes his way to Lisaveta’s apartment, where he tells
her all. She realizes that she is not loved, and discerns the true
reason why the young man has sought her acquaintance. However, she
helps him to get out of the house safely.

The next night he drinks heavily and throws himself on his bed without
undressing. During the night he awakes with a start and sees looking
in at the window some one who quickly disappears. Presently he hears
the shuffling of loose slippers, the door of his room opens, and a
woman in white enters. As she comes close to his bed, the terrified man
recognizes the Countess. “I have come to you against my will,” she says
abruptly, “but I was commanded to grant your request. The trey, the
seven, and the ace are the magic cards. Twenty-four hours must elapse
after the use of each card, and after the three have been used you must
never play again.”

The phantom then turns and walks away.

The next night he enters a fashionable gambling club in St. Petersburg,
stakes forty thousand rubles, and wins a huge sum. The next night he
chooses a seven-spot and wins ninety-four thousand rubles.

    The following evening he went again. His appearance was the
    signal for the cessation of all occupation, every one being
    eager to watch the development of events. He selected his
    card--an ace.

    The dealing began: to the right, a queen; to the left, an ace.

    “The ace wins,” remarked Herman, turning up his card without
    glancing at it.

    “Your queen is killed,” remarked Tchekalinsky quietly.

    Herman trembled; looking down, he saw, not the ace he had
    selected, but the queen of spades. He could scarcely believe
    his eyes. It seemed impossible that he could have made such a
    mistake. As he stared at the card, it seemed to him that the
    queen winked one eye at him mockingly.

    “The old woman!” he exclaimed involuntarily.

    The croupier raked in the money while he looked on in stupid
    terror. When he left the table, all made way for him to pass.
    The cards were shuffled, and the gambling went on.

    Herman became a lunatic. He was confined at the hospital
    at Oboukov, where he spoke to no one, but kept constantly
    murmuring in a monotonous tone: “The trey, seven, ace! The
    trey, seven, queen!”

“The Shot” is in a different vein, being a tale of singular dramatic
intensity. There is a legend that it is largely biographical, Pushkin
himself having coolly eaten cherries, as did the Count, while under
fire in a duel.

A group of military men stationed in the dull little town of N----
welcome to their society the one eligible civilian, a certain Silvio, a
taciturn man of thirty-five, who has retired from the Hussars. He lives
meagrely in a small house, where he frequently entertains the officers
with the best he has, which always includes plenty of champagne. The
walls of this house are punctured with bullet-holes, for its occupant
is a marvellous shot with the pistol. Regarding his past, he says
practically nothing, but every one feels that some tragic event has
stamped his career.

One day a new-comer among the officers quarrels with Silvio, and slaps
his face. Much to the surprise and disappointment of all, Silvio does
not challenge him, but accepts a lame explanation. It takes some time
for Silvio to rehabilitate himself with his friends, but his good
qualities at last accomplish this, except with one officer, who tells
the story.

One day Silvio, all excitement, announces that a change has come in his
affairs, and that he must leave N----. He packs his goods, and invites
the officers to a final feast. At its close he asks the narrator to
remain, and tells him this story, to explain why he avoided challenging
his offender.

Some years before, while serving in the Hussars, Silvio was known as a
great rake and an incorrigible duellist. His popularity waned, however,
with the advent of a brilliant young Count, of whom he soon became
jealous, and upon whom he fixed a quarrel. In the duel which followed,
the Count won the first shot, and pierced his adversary’s cap, but
showed such nonchalance--having coolly eaten cherries while standing
to receive Silvio’s shot--that the latter decided to relinquish his
chance until a later time. In all these years a favorable opportunity
had not come in which to make the Count show fear, and that was why
Silvio was not willing to risk his life by engaging in another duel,
even though he knew he was a remarkable shot: he was holding himself
for his revenge. And now his opening had come, for he had just learned
that the Count had married a beautiful young woman and was enjoying his
honeymoon.

The narrator never sees Silvio again, but some time after the latter
has left N----, the narrator goes back to his own native village, and
there meets Count and Countess B----. At their first meeting their
visitor is interested by seeing two bullet-holes which have pierced
a painting. It transpires that Count B---- is the very one with whom
Silvio fought his duel. The Count then narrates the sequel.

Shortly after their marriage, the Count returned with his bride to
his estates, where he was startled to find Silvio, claiming the right
of the shot which was his due. The Count gallantly yielded to him and
stood up in his drawing-room, but Silvio a second time declined to
shoot, and proposed that they again draw for the first shot. The Count
won, and shot over Silvio’s head, making one of the two bullet-holes.
At this juncture the Countess came in and flung herself at Silvio’s
feet. In shame, the Count made her rise, and Silvio prepared to take
his shot, whereupon the Countess threw herself upon her husband’s
breast. As he saw Silvio point his weapon at them both, at last the
Count showed terror, although not for himself. Being satisfied with
this exhibition of fear, natural though it was, Silvio declined to
shoot. As he left the room, he turned, however, and, almost without
looking, took a parting shot at the painting, which he penetrated with
a bullet-hole precisely below that which had been made by the Count’s
bullet. And so this strange man passed out of their lives.

                   *       *       *       *       *

“The Snow-Storm” seems to me to be Pushkin’s greatest short-story. It
has a well-defined plot, a surprising dénouement, the action marches
on to its climax, and both local color and characterization are of a
high order. It is especially remarkable for its having been produced
at the very opening of the decade which gave to the world the modern
short-story.




                            THE SNOW-STORM
                        _By Alexander Pushkin_


Towards the close of the year 1811, during that very memorable epoch,
there lived in the village of Nenaradova the good Gavrila Gavrilovich
R----. He was famed throughout the district for his hospitality and
good-nature; and his neighbors continually kept coming to his house
to partake of food and drink, and to play the game of Boston at five
kopecks with his wife, Prascovia Petrovna. Others came, however,
to inspect their daughter, Maria Gavrilovna, a graceful, pale,
seventeen-year-old girl. She was considered a rich match, and many a
visitor had had designs upon her for himself or for his son.

Maria Gavrilovna had been brought up on French novels, and consequently
was in love. The object chosen by her for her love was a poor army
lieutenant, who was now on a leave of absence in his native village.
It goes without saying that the young man returned her passion. The
parents of the girl, however, having noted the mutual inclinations of
the pair, forbade their daughter even to think of him; while him they
received even worse than if he were a dismissed petty official.

Our lovers exchanged notes, and saw each other every day, alone, in
the pine wood or in the old chapel. There they vowed to each other
eternal love, bewailed their fate, and formed all sorts of plans.
Their discussions carried on in this way naturally brought them to the
following conclusion: “If we can’t exist without each other, and the
will of stern parents stands in the way of our felicity, why shouldn’t
we manage without them?” Needless to say, this happy idea originated
in the mind of the young man, and that it appealed strongly to the
romantic imagination of Maria Gavrilovna.

Winter came on, and interrupted their meetings. This, however, only
served to quicken the correspondence. Vladimir Nikolaevich, in every
letter, entreated her to give herself to him, to wed secretly, to
remain in concealment a while, and then to throw themselves at the feet
of the parents, who, to be sure, would be touched finally by the heroic
constancy and unhappiness of the lovers, and undoubtedly say to them,
“Children, come to our arms!”

Maria Gavrilovna hesitated a long time; and several of the plans to run
away she rejected. At last she consented. On the appointed day she was
to do without supper and escape to her room on the plea of a headache.
Her maid was in the plot. The two of them were to make their way into
the garden by means of the back-stairs. Outside the garden a sledge
would stand ready to take them straight to the church of Jadrino, a
village five versts away, where Vladimir would await them.

On the eve of the decisive day Maria Gavrilovna hardly slept at all.
She spent the night in packing some linens and dresses to take with
her; and wrote a long letter to a sentimental girl friend, and another
to her parents. She bade them farewell in the most touching terms,
and excused her action on grounds of a terrible overruling passion,
concluding by saying that she should consider it the most blessed
moment of her life when she should be permitted to throw herself at
the feet of her beloved parents. Having sealed both letters with a
Toula seal, on which were engraved two flaming hearts, accompanied by
an appropriate inscription, she threw herself on her bed just before
daybreak, and dozed off.

Terrible dreams, however, kept crowding upon her and constantly
awakened her. Now it seemed to her that the very moment she entered
the sledge for her journey her father stopped her and with a most
painful rapidity dragged her over the snow and cast her into a dark,
bottomless abyss.... Then she flew about precipitately, with an
indescribable oppression of the heart. Then she saw Vladimir lying on
the grass, pale, bleeding. Dying, he entreated her in shrill voice to
make haste to wed him.... Still other shapeless, incoherent visions
continued to pass before her. In the end she arose, looking more pale
than usual, with a real headache. Her father and her mother noticed her
agitation; their gentle solicitude and their ceaseless inquiries, “What
is the matter with you, Masha? Are you ill, Masha?” rent her heart. She
tried to quiet them, to appear cheerful, but she could not.

The evening came. The thought that this was the last day she would
spend in the midst of her family oppressed her. She scarcely could
breathe. Secretly she was bidding each one a separate farewell, as well
as all the objects which surrounded her. When the supper was announced
her heart beat violently. In a trembling voice she said that she could
not eat, and wished her father and her mother good-night. They kissed
her and, according to their custom, also blessed her.

Once in her own room, she threw herself into the arm-chair and wept.
Her maid tried to prevail upon her to be calm and to take courage;
everything was ready--in another half-hour Masha would leave forever
her paternal home, her room, her quiet, girlish life....

Outdoors, the snow was falling; the wind howled, the shutters rattled
and shook; all seemed to her to assume the aspect of a warning, the sad
presaging of disaster. Soon everything in the house grew quiet and sank
into slumber.

Masha wrapped a shawl around her, put on a long, warm mantle, took into
her hands her treasure-casket, and walked down the back-stairs. The
maid followed her with two bundles. They entered the garden. The storm
did not subside; the wind blew in their faces, as if it sought to stop
the young culprit. With the greatest difficulty, they reached the end
of the garden. On the road a sledge awaited them. The chilled horses
would not stand still, and Vladimir’s coachman was restlessly walking
in front of them, trying to quiet them. He assisted the young lady
and her maid into the sledge, and in disposing of the bundles and the
casket, then seized the reins, and off the horses flew.

Having thus committed the maiden to the care of fate and the skill of
Tereshka, the coachman, we will now return to our young lover.

The whole day long Vladimir spent in driving about. His first morning
errand was to the priest at Jadrino--it was with the greatest
difficulty that he prevailed upon him; he then journeyed to find
witnesses from among the neighboring land-owners. The first to whom he
appeared was the retired, forty-year-old cornet Dravin, who consented
with alacrity. This adventure, he assured Vladimir, recalled to him
his earlier days and his pranks in the Hussars. He persuaded Vladimir
to remain for dinner, and assured him that there would be no trouble
about the other two witnesses. Indeed, immediately after dinner there
appeared Surveyor Schmidt, with mustaches and spurs, and the son of
the chief of police, a youngster of sixteen years, who had only lately
joined the Uhlans. Not only were they in sympathy with Vladimir’s
plans, but they even swore to lay down their lives for him. Vladimir
embraced them joyously, and returned home to get everything ready.

It had already been dark for some time. He sent off the trusty
Tereshka to Nenaradova with his troika, after giving him most exact
instructions; while for himself he ordered a small sledge with a
single horse. He left alone for Jadrino, where two hours hence Maria
Gavrilovna was also due to arrive. The road was familiar to him; and
altogether it meant a twenty-minute journey.

Hardly, however, had Vladimir reached the open field, when the wind
rose; immediately it developed into a blinding snow-storm, so that he
could not see anything. In a remarkably short time the road became
hidden under the snow, while the surrounding landmarks were obliterated
in the nebulous, yellowish haze through which flew about great white
flakes of snow. The sky and the earth merged into one. Vladimir found
himself in the field, and it was in vain that he tried to find the road
again. The horse advanced at random, and now drove into a snowdrift
and now fell into a hole--the sledge kept on upsetting. Vladimir made
an effort not to lose the right direction. It seemed strange to him,
however, that after a half-hour’s driving he had not yet reached the
Jadrino wood.

Another ten minutes passed--still no wood in sight. Vladimir drove
across a field which was intersected by deep ditches. The storm did not
abate, the sky did not clear. The horse began to grow tired, and the
perspiration rolled down his body in large drops, notwithstanding the
fact that he was being half-buried in snow almost continually.

At last Vladimir concluded that he was not driving in the right
direction. He stopped, tried to recall, to consider, and decided that
he ought to take to the right; which he did. His horse made way
slowly. He had been on the road more than an hour. Jadrino could not
be very distant. On and on he drove his horse, but there seemed to be
no end to the field--only snowdrifts and ditches. The sledge kept on
upsetting, he kept on righting it. Time passed; Vladimir began to fret.

At last a dark shape seemed to loom up ahead. Vladimir jerked the reins
in that direction. On closer approach, he saw it was a wood. “Thank
God!” he thought, “now it is near.” He kept going along the edge of the
wood, hoping to strike the familiar road, or to make a detour of the
forest. Jadrino, he knew, was situated somewhere behind it. He soon
found the road, and drove into the darkness among the trees, which
stood in their winter nakedness. The wind could not make much headway
here; the road was smooth; the horse braced itself, and Vladimir
regained confidence.

On and on he continued his journey--and still no Jadrino in sight;
there was no end to the road. In consternation, Vladimir became aware
that he had entered an unfamiliar forest. Despair seized hold of him.
He lashed the horse; the poor animal went off at a canter, but soon
slowed down, and after a quarter of an hour relapsed into a walk,
despite all exertions on the part of the unhappy Vladimir.

Gradually the wood grew less dense, and Vladimir came out again into
the open. No Jadrino in sight. It must have been about midnight. Tears
gushed from his eyes; he drove about at random. The storm quieted down,
the clouds dispersed; before him lay a valley, covered with a white,
undulating carpet. The night was sufficiently clear. He discerned
not far off a tiny village, consisting of some four or five houses.
Vladimir drove towards it. At the very first cottage he sprang out of
his sledge, ran to the window, and began to knock. In a few minutes the
wooden shutter went up, and an old man stuck out his gray beard.

“What do you want?”

“Is Jadrino far from here?”

“Is Jadrino far from here!”

“Yes, yes, is it far?”

“Not far--ten versts or so!”

At this answer Vladimir caught hold of his hair and stood motionless,
like one condemned to death.

“And where do you come from?” continued the old man.

Vladimir had no courage left to reply to the question.

“Can you, old man,” he asked, “procure me horses to take me to
Jadrino?”

“How should we have horses?” answered the peasant.

“Can you at least give me a guide? I will pay as much as he wants.”

“Wait,” said the old man, lowering the shutter. “I’ll send my son out
to you. He’ll guide you.”

Vladimir waited. A minute had not elapsed when he began knocking again.
The shutter went up again, the same gray beard made its appearance.

“What do you want?”

“Well, where’s your son?”

“He’ll be out soon. He’s putting on his boots. Are you cold? Step in
and warm yourself.”

“Thanks, send your son out quickly.”

The gate creaked; a lad came out with a heavy stick in hand. He went
in front, now indicating, now searching for, the road hidden under
snowdrifts.

“What hour is it?” Vladimir asked him.

“It will soon be daylight,” replied the young peasant.

Vladimir spoke not another word.

The cocks were crowing and it was already light when they reached
Jadrino. The church was closed. Vladimir paid his guide and drove to
the priest’s house. His troika was not there. What news awaited him!

Let us return, however, to the good land-owners of Nenaradova and see
what is passing there.

Nothing out of the way.

The old people had had their sleep and had gone to the
dining-room--Gavrila Gavrilovich in his night-cap and flannel jacket,
Prascovia Petrovna in her dressing-gown of wadding. The samovar
was brought in, and Gavrila Gavrilovich sent the maid to ask Maria
Gavrilovna about her health and how she had rested. The maid returned,
announcing that the young lady had slept badly, but was feeling better
now, and that presently she would be in to breakfast. Very shortly, in
fact, the door opened, and Maria Gavrilovna came forward to greet her
papa and mamma.

“How is your head, Masha?” asked Gavrila Gavrilovich.

“Better, Papa,” replied Masha.

“Masha, you must have got a headache yesterday from the fumes of the
heater,” said Prascovia Petrovna.

“Perhaps so, Mamma,” answered Masha.

The day passed happily, but by night Masha was taken ill. A doctor was
sent for from town. He arrived towards evening and found the sick girl
in delirium. She developed high fever, and for two weeks the poor girl
was at death’s door.

No one in the house knew what had happened. The letters written by her
on the eve of her planned elopement were burned; her maid, fearing the
wrath of her master, had said a word to no one. The priest, the retired
cornet, the mustached surveyor, and the little Uhlan were quiet, and
with good reason. Tereshka, the driver, never uttered a superfluous
word, even when in drink. The secret was thus well kept by more than
a half-dozen conspirators. Maria Gavrilovna herself gave away her
secret while in delirium. Her words, however, were so incoherent that
her mother, who never left her bedside, could only gather that her
daughter was passionately in love with Vladimir Nikolaevich, and that
this love was apparently the cause of her illness. She held counsel
with her husband, and with some of the neighbors, and in the end they
unanimously decided that there was no getting around fate, that poverty
was no crime, that the man was the thing--not wealth, and so on. Such
moral discourses are astonishingly useful in those instances when we
are at a loss to find justification for our actions.

In the meantime, the young lady was returning to health. Vladimir
hadn’t been seen for a long time in the house of Gavrila Gavrilovich.
He had been frightened away by the previous receptions accorded him.
It was proposed to send for him and to announce to him his unawaited
good fortune: the consent to marriage. Imagine the amazement of the
proprietors of Nenaradova when in answer to their proposal they
received from him a half-insane letter! He informed them that his foot
would never be set in their house, and implored them to forget an
unhappy man, for whom death alone remained as an alleviation. In the
course of a few days it was learned that Vladimir had joined the army.
This was in the year 1812.

For a long time they dared not tell this to the convalescent Masha. She
never spoke about Vladimir. Several months having passed, she one day
discovered his name among the distinguished and the dangerously wounded
at the battle of Borodino, whereupon she fainted, and it was feared
that high fever would recur. God be thanked, however, the fainting fit
had no serious consequences.

Another sorrow visited her: Gavrila Gavrilovich died, leaving her
heiress to all his estates. But her wealth did not comfort her; she
free-heartedly shared the affliction of the poor Prascovia Petrovna,
and vowed never to part with her. Together they left Nenaradova, the
place of their sorrowful memories, and went to live on one of their
estates.

Here also many suitors paid court to the lovely heiress; but she gave
none the slightest hope. Her mother occasionally tried to persuade her
to choose a mate; in answer, Maria Gavrilovna would only shake her head
and grow thoughtful. Vladimir no longer existed; he had died in Moscow,
on the eve of the entry of the French. His memory Masha held sacred; at
least, she kept all that could remind her of him: there were the books
he had read, his drawings, his notes, and poems he had copied for her.
The neighbors, who knew her story, wondered at her constancy, and with
great curiosity awaited the hero who would in the end triumph over the
melancholy fidelity of this virgin Artemis.

In the meantime, the war ended with glory. Our regiments were returning
from alien soil. The nation greeted them with joy. The musicians played
the victorious songs, “_Vive Henri-Quatre_,” Tyrolese waltzes, the airs
from “Joconda.” Some of the officers who had entered upon the campaign
mere lads were returning from the battles grown into manhood, decorated
with crosses. The soldiers talked gaily among themselves, mingling
constantly with their speech German and French words. It was a
never-to-be-forgotten time! A time of glory and joy! How strongly beat
the Russian heart at the word “fatherland”! How sweet were the tears at
meeting again! How harmoniously did we combine the feeling of national
pride with love for the Czar! And for him--what a moment!

Women--the Russian women--were in those days incomparable! Their usual
coldness vanished. Their rapture was really intoxicating when, upon
meeting the victors, they cried, “Hurrah!” and threw their caps into
the air....

Who from among the officers of that day does not confess that to the
Russian women he owed his best, most valued reward?... During that
brilliant time Maria Gavrilovna lived with her mother in the ----
Province, and did not see how both capitals celebrated the return of
the troops. In the country districts and in the villages the general
enthusiasm was perhaps even stronger. The appearance of an officer in
such places was always the occasion of real triumph to him, and the
lover in the frock coat had a hard time of it in his presence.

We have already stated that, notwithstanding her coldness, Maria
Gavrilovna, as before, was surrounded by suitors. All of them,
however, were compelled to step aside when there appeared one day in
her castle the wounded Colonel of the Hussars, Bourmin, with the cross
of St. George in his buttonhole, and with “an interesting pallor” on
his face, to use the words of the young ladies of the place. He seemed
to be about twenty-six years old. He arrived, on leave, at his estate,
which neighbored upon that of Maria Gavrilovna. Maria showed him
distinction. Before him her usual pensiveness vanished. It cannot be
said that she played the coquette with him; but the poet, making note
of her conduct, would have said:

    _Se amor non è, che dunche?..._

Bourmin was indeed a most charming young man. He possessed precisely
that sense which is pleasing to women--a sense of decorum and
alertness, without pretensions; and an easy humor. His behavior towards
Maria Gavrilovna was simple and free; but, no matter what she said
or did, his soul and his glances followed her. He seemed a quiet,
unassuming sort of man, though rumor had it that he had been quite a
rake in his day, which did not, however, injure him in the eyes of
Maria Gavrilovna, who (like young ladies generally) was most willing
to overlook little larks which indicated boldness and a spirited
character.

But above all (more than his gentleness, more than his agreeable
speech, more than his interesting pallor, more than his bandaged arm)
the silence of the young Hussar stirred her curiosity and imagination.
She could not but feel conscious that she pleased him immensely;
undoubtedly, he too, with his keenness of perception, and experience,
had noted her preference for him; and she could not explain why she
had not yet seen him at her feet and had not heard his declaration.
What restrained him? Was it the timidity which is inseparable from true
love, or pride, or the coquetry of a shrewd wooer? This was a riddle to
her. Having reflected on the matter, she concluded that timidity was
the sole reason; and this decided her to encourage him with greater
attention, and, if the circumstances permitted it, even tenderness. She
anticipated the most surprising dénouement; and with impatience awaited
a romantic explanation. A secret, whatever its nature may be, is always
oppressive to the feminine heart. Her aggressive tactics had the
desired result; at least, Bourmin fell into such a pensive mood, and
his dark eyes fixed themselves with such a fire upon Maria Gavrilovna,
that the decisive moment seemed close at hand. The neighbors talked of
the forthcoming marriage as of a thing settled, and the good Prascovia
Petrovna rejoiced that her daughter had found at last a worthy mate.

The old mother was sitting one day in the drawing-room, playing
patience, when Bourmin entered and immediately inquired after Maria
Gavrilovna.

“She is in the garden,” answered the old lady. “You go out to her, and
I’ll await you here.”

Bourmin went into the garden, and the old lady crossed herself and
thought, “The matter will be settled today.”

At the pond, under a willow, Bourmin found Maria Gavrilovna, dressed
in white, looking like a real heroine of a novel. After the first
questions, Maria Gavrilovna purposely refrained from sustaining
the conversation, intending in this manner to create a mutual
embarrassment, from which it was possible to free oneself only by an
instant and decisive explanation. That was, in fact, what happened.
Bourmin, feeling the embarrassment of his position, said that he had
long sought an opportunity to reveal his heart to her, and requested a
moment’s attention from her. Maria Gavrilovna closed the book and cast
down her eyes as a sign of assent.

“I love you,” said Bourmin. “I love you passionately.” (Maria
Gavrilovna blushed and inclined her head even lower.) “I have behaved
imprudently in yielding to the sweet pleasure of seeing and hearing
you every day.” (Maria Gavrilovna recalled the first letter of St.
Preux.[1]) “It is too late now to resist my fate: the mere recollection
of you, your lovely, incomparable image, shall be the torment and
consolation of my life. It is still left to me, however, to execute a
weighty responsibility, to reveal to you a terrible secret which will
raise between us an insurmountable barrier.”

“It has always existed,” interrupted Maria Gavrilovna, in an excited
manner. “I could never be your wife.”

“I know,” he answered quietly. “I know that you once loved; and that he
died, and that you had mourned for three years.... My good, adorable
Maria Gavrilovna! Please don’t deprive me of my last consolation:
the thought that you would have consented to make my happiness
if----Please, not a word--for God’s sake, not a word! You torture me.
Yes, I know it, that you would have been willing to become mine, but
I--I am a most unhappy creature.... I am already married!”

Maria Gavrilovna looked at him in amazement.

“Yes, I am married,” continued Bourmin; “and this is the fourth year
of my marriage, and I don’t know--who my wife is, where she is, or
whether I shall ever see her.”

“What are you saying?” exclaimed Maria Gavrilovna. “How strange! But
continue--I also have something to tell--do me the kindness, continue!”

“In the beginning of the year 1812,” resumed Bourmin, “I was making
haste to rejoin my regiment at Wilna. Having arrived late one night at
a station, I ordered horses to be harnessed immediately, when suddenly
a terrible snow-storm broke out, and the station-master and the
drivers advised me to wait. At first I agreed, but an incomprehensible
restlessness took possession of me; it seemed to me as if some one
were prodding me on. The storm, however, showed no signs of abatement.
I could stand it no longer, ordered the horses to be harnessed, and
proceeded on my journey in the very height of the storm. The driver
took a notion into his head to drive along the river, which would
shorten the journey by three versts. The banks were buried under
snowdrifts; we drove past the place where we should have turned into
the road, and so chance took us into strange parts. The storm did
not quiet down. I saw a small light in the distance, and asked to be
driven there. We arrived in a village; there was light in the wooden
church. The church was open; within the outside enclosure stood
several sledges; people could be seen walking about on the porch of the
church. ‘This way! This way!’ cried a number of voices. I ordered my
man to drive up closer. ‘What made you so late, pray?’ some one said
to me. ‘The bride has fainted; the priest doesn’t know what to do; we
were just getting ready to go home. Come quickly!’ Silently I sprang
out of my sledge and entered the church, which was but dimly lighted by
two or three candles. The girl was sitting on a bench in a dark corner
of the church; another was rubbing her temples. ‘Thank God,’ said the
latter, ‘you have made up your mind to come! You have almost killed
her!’ The old priest approached me with the question, ‘Shall we begin?’
‘Begin, begin, Father,’ I replied absently. The girl was raised on her
feet. She seemed to me not at all bad-looking .... An incomprehensible,
unforgivable heedlessness .... I stood beside her before the pulpit;
the priest made haste; three men and the maid supported the bride, and
were giving her all their attention. We were married. ‘Now kiss each
other,’ they said to us. My wife turned towards me her pale face. I
made a movement to kiss her .... She cried out, ‘Oh, it is not he, not
he!’ and fainted away. The witnesses directed on me their frightened
eyes. I turned round and left the church without the slightest
interference, threw myself into my sledge, and cried out, ‘Let her go!’”

“My God!” cried out Maria Gavrilovna. “And you don’t know what became
of your poor wife?”

“I don’t know,” answered Bourmin. “I even don’t know the name of the
village where I was married. I can’t remember by what station I went.
At that time I attached so little importance to my wicked lark, that,
after leaving the church, I slept soundly and awakened only next
morning, having reached by that time the third station. My servant, who
was then with me, died in the campaign, so that I haven’t the slightest
hope of finding her upon whom I played such a horrible joke, and who
now is so terribly avenged.”

“My God! My God!” said Maria Gavrilovna, grasping his hand. “So, then,
it was you! And you do not recognize me?”

Bourmin became pale ... and threw himself at her feet ....


                              FOOTNOTES:

[1] In _La Nouvelle Heloise_, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.




                   GOGOL, THE FIRST RUSSIAN REALIST


Professor William Lyon Phelps has noted that the year 1809 gave many
great men to literature, among them Darwin, Tennyson, Poe, Lincoln,
Gladstone, Holmes, and Gogol. Thus in a period of expanding ideas the
Russian genius was born, March 19 (March 31), of a small land-owner’s
family, at the town of Sorotchintzi, government of Poltava, in the land
of the Cossacks--in Little Russia, or the Ukraine, as it is variously
called.

When the lad of twelve was sent to school at Niéjine, a town near
Kiev, he found that the pupils prided themselves upon having their
own college journal. In this he soon published an early novel, “The
Brothers Tviérdislavitchy,” and later a tragedy, “The Robbers.” He
also contributed certain satires and ballads--all equally sophomoric.
Certainly in these beginnings there were no deep marks of genius. To
record that Gogol was a poor student is to bring to mind amusingly the
number of great littérateurs who were either dismissed from college
or showed no genius for application. I have often wondered how, in
the face of such alluring evidence, professors of literature succeed
in convincing ambitious young quill-drivers that their better course
would be conscientious devotion to the curriculum. At all events, Gogol
really derived more benefit from the training he secured while writing
for the school theatre than from his mathematical and linguistic
studies.

Upon leaving college, in 1828, the young enthusiast--romantic,
dreaming of great deeds for his country, and taking himself much too
seriously--went to the inevitable St. Petersburg, thinking that he
could easily secure employment there. But he was disillusionized, for
his talent excited no interest whatever. So, taking some hardly-saved
money which his mother had sent him for another purpose, he embarked
for foreign parts--some say for America. But his heart failed him, and
he got no farther than Lübeck, where he left the boat, and, after three
days’ wandering about the city, returned to St. Petersburg and secured
employment as a copying clerk in the Ministry of Domain. Let us not
forget this experience as we read “The Cloak.”

In this billet he remained for a year, chafing under the grinding
routine, whose pressure at length compelled him to resign. He took up
acting next, but his voice was not considered to be strong enough, and
he then became a tutor in the families of the nobility in the Russian
capital. Eventually he was appointed to a professorship of history in
the University. His opening address was altogether brilliant, but,
never a thorough student, he soon sounded the depths of his knowledge,
and his students complained that he put them to sleep. That ended his
teaching.

All these successive failures--for such they really were--drove him to
the one means of self-expression: literature. He now published a few
modest essays in the leading journals. These attracted some attention
and brought about his introduction to Pushkin, who received him warmly,
and advised him to write of the land and people that he knew so well.
This wise counsel resulted in a collection of brilliant fictional
sketches entitled “Evenings at a Farm Near Dikanka” (1828-1831).

The most important of these is probably “St. John’s Eve.” It is
instinct with the superstitious beliefs of his native province. The
story is soon told, how that a young man, finely favored of body,
falls in love with the daughter of his farmer-employer. His attentions
having been discovered, he is flatly dismissed, whereupon a certain
Mephistophelian character who has been doing tricksy things about
the village offers to procure for the youth a plentiful supply of
gold wherewith to win the favor of the girl’s father. This leads to
a night meeting with a witch, accompanied with all the traditional
manifestations. Under an incantation, the young man digs, finds a
coffer, and is about to take out the gold, when the witch admonishes
him that he first must perform a duty--thrust a knife into a large bag
which stands before him. He refuses, and tears open the bag, when to
his horror the form of his sweetheart’s little brother is disclosed.
The demon-man pictures all that the youth is about to lose by his
unwillingness to murder the child; and, thus tempted, he plunges in the
knife.

Thereafter all things go according to promise--he has plenty of gold,
wins the favor of the father, and marries the girl, but he can never
get over his settled melancholy as he thinks upon his terrible deed.
Eventually--quite in the manner of all the tales which involve the sale
of the soul to the devil--he disappears and goes to his Master.

The whole story is told with a remarkable handling of the weird.
Perhaps no tale of witchcraft was ever more vividly and brilliantly
handled--it is typical, both in matter and manner, of the Ukraine.

And this leads me to say that those writers are most interesting who
are the most distinctly national, and by “national” I mean those who
temperamentally exhibit the typical characteristics of their land, who
glory in its peculiar traits, and who in their writings picture and
interpret its spirit.

Little Russia is neither north nor south, but, for reasons which the
scientists may explain, displays quite marvellously the elements of
both north and south in the two great seasons of the year. The few
short summer months are saturated with flaring sunshine, causing the
fields fairly to leap toward the farmer, full-handed with harvests. In
these halcyon days the people revel in the miraculous transformation of
nature, but when winter comes, the land of the Dnieper feels the sweep
of icy northern winds quite as bitterly as do the dwellers on the Neva.

The population, too, is just as antipodal--in fact, it is really
complex. Little Russia was at one time dominated by the Turks, who left
many of their oriental traits among the people they had conquered;
later, the Ukraine was subdued by Poland, which “transmitted something
of its savage luxury to its vassals;” then Tartar hordes constantly
swept across its borders and kept alive the joy of savage warfare;
finally the Cossack leagues established themselves in the Ukraine and
set up a wild chivalry upon whose picturesque exploits the Little
Russian has ever since dwelt with prideful interest.

Gogol was born with a full measure of the Cossack spirit, descended, as
he was, directly from this stock. His native Poltava is the very heart
of the Cossack country, and Gogol’s grandfather, who was his first
teacher, infused the young spirit with all the imagery and fanciful
extravagance of Cossack folk-lore. His mother, too, of whom he speaks
most tenderly in his “Confessions of an Author,” poured into his ears
the legends of her land.

This primal literary equipment was bestowed upon a temperament
that never ceased to be mystical, religious, and at the last
melancholy--traits that are characteristic of almost every great
Russian writer.

Gogol was also a humorist, but from the strangest reason, a reason
which, unhappily, several other humorists shared with him: he wrote
grotesque and laughter-provoking conceits to keep his mind from
brooding on dark and depressing visions. Perhaps it may have been
bodily weakness--for Gogol was small, weazened, unlovely to look upon,
and often ill--or perhaps the result of an intensely religious nature
turned in upon itself, but some cause constantly evoked in him the
wildest hallucinations. Once while suffering the extremes of chilling
penury in St. Petersburg, he contemplated suicide. He saw Death, and
thus writes of the vision to his mother:

    Mother, dearest mother, I know you are my truest friend.
    Believe me, even now, though I have shaken off something
    of the dread, even now, at the bare recollection of it, an
    indescribable agony comes over my soul. It is only to you that
    I speak of it. You know that I was in my boyhood endowed with
    a courage beyond my years. Who, then, could have expected I
    should prove so weak? But I saw her--no, I cannot name her--she
    is too majestic, too awful for any mortal, not merely for me,
    to name. That face, whose brilliant glory in one moment burns
    into the heart; those eyes that quickly pierce the inner soul;
    that consuming, all-penetrating gaze: these are the traits of
    none that is born of woman. Oh, if you only had seen me in that
    moment! True, I could hide myself from all, but how hide myself
    from myself? The pains of hell, with every possible torture,
    filled my breast. Oh, what a cruel condition! I think, whatever
    the hell prepared for sinners may be, its tortures cannot equal
    mine. No, that was not love. At least, I never heard of love
    like that.... And then, my heart softened; I recognized the
    inscrutable finger of Providence that ever watches over us, and
    I blessed Him, who thus marvellously had pointed out the path
    wherein I should walk. No; this being whom He sent to rob me of
    quiet, and to topple down my frail plans, was no woman.... But
    I pray you, do not ask me who she is. She is too majestic, too
    awful, to be named.

A later series of short-stories and sketches appeared from 1831 to 1833
under the title of “Mirgorod.”

The first part of this collection constitutes one of the great romances
of history--“Taras Bulba.” It is long enough to be a short novel,
and, indeed, it is a novel in plot. Briefly, it tells the story of
a mighty Cossack colonel, whose name gives the work its title. The
romance opens with his two sons, Ostap and Andríi, coming home from
school and meeting their Homeric old father and gentle, homely, and
adoring mother. The father cannot be convinced that his boys have not
been injured by their course at school until he engages in violent
fisticuffs with Ostap. Almost immediately, to the heart-breaking of the
old lady, who plays a small part in the whole scheme of her husband’s
life, Taras Bulba personally takes his boys away to the great Cossack
camp, where these corsairs of the steppes are gathered waiting for some
chance of foray, or a war that may promise them spoils. The revelling
scenes of the camp are pictured with tremendous verve, and the doughty,
fear-despising, Jew-abusing Cossack is pictured to the life.

At length, a cause of war against the Tartars is cooked up and their
city besieged. One night, Andríi, the younger son of Taras Bulba, is
awakened by the gliding of a woman’s figure near his sleeping quarters.
She proves to be the servant of a beautiful Tartar maiden, the daughter
of the Governor of the beleaguered city, who with all the other
inhabitants is dying of starvation. Andríi gathers some provisions and
follows the old woman by a secret underground passage into the city,
where he meets the young beauty, who had previously enchanted him with
a single glance while he was on the march from his home to the Cossack
camp. For the sake of her love he renounces his own people and fights
tremendously against them in the subsequent battle. During the mêlée
he meets his father, who slays him with a single blow and scarcely
regrets the death of his traitorous son. Ostap is captured and carried
away to a distant city. Knowing that his son is to be executed with
torture, old Taras Bulba arises from his bed of many wounds and, after
a long journey, makes his way to the foot of the scaffold in the public
square. The boy suffers terribly, but is brave to the end.

    But when they took him to the last deadly tortures, it seemed
    as though his strength were failing. He turned his eyes about.

    Oh, God! all strangers, all unknown faces! If only some of his
    relatives were present at his death! He would not have cared
    to hear the sobs and anguish of his feeble mother, or the
    unreasoning cries of a wife, tearing her hair and beating her
    white breast; he would have liked to see the strong man who
    could refresh him with a wise word, and cheer his end. And his
    strength failed him, and he cried in the weakness of his soul,
    “Father, where are you? Do you hear all?”

    “I hear!” rang through the universal silence, and all that
    million of people shuddered in concert.

Force is its prime quality--physical, mental, religious. “In this
story,” writes Professor Phelps, “the old Cossacks, centuries dead,
have a genuine resurrection of the body. They appear before us in all
their amazing vitality, their love of fighting, of eating and drinking,
their intense patriotism, and their blazing devotion to their religious
faith. Never was a book more plainly inspired by passion for race and
native land. It is one tremendous shout of joy”--which even tragedy
cannot silence.

Gogol was a stylist of no mean order, as “Taras Bulba” well
demonstrates. It is full of Homeric passages, whose pungent vigor even
survives translation. And for sheer beauty what can surpass this, the
opening passage of “Night in May”?

    Do you know the beauty of the nights of Ukraine? The moon looks
    down from the deep, immeasurable vault, which is filled to
    overflowing and palpitating with its pure radiance. The earth
    is silver; the air is deliciously cool, yet almost oppressive
    with perfume. Divine, enchanting night! The great forest
    trees, black, solemn, and still, reposing as if oppressed with
    thought, throw out their gigantic shadows. How silent are the
    ponds! Their dark waters are imprisoned within the vine-laden
    walls of the gardens. The little virgin forest of wild cherry
    and young plum-trees dip their dainty roots timidly into the
    cold waters; their murmuring leaves angrily shiver when a
    little current of the night wind stealthily creeps in to caress
    them. The distant horizon sleeps, but above it and overhead
    all is palpitating life; august, triumphal, sublime! Like the
    firmament, the soul seems to open into endless space; silvery
    visions of grace and beauty arise before it. Oh, the charm of
    this divine night!

    Suddenly life, animation, spreads through forest, lake, and
    steppe. The nightingale’s majestic trill resounds through the
    air; the moon seems to stop, embosomed in clouds, to listen.
    The little village on the hill is wrapt in an enchanted
    slumber; its cluster of white cottages gleams vividly in the
    moonlight, and the outlines of their low walls are sharply
    clear-cut against the dark shadows. All songs are hushed;
    silence reigns in the homes of these simple peasants. But here
    and there a twinkling light appears in a little window of some
    cottage, where supper has waited for a belated occupant.

Gogol’s reputation as a humorist is strongly supported by his comedy
“Revizor” (“The Inspector-General”). It is held to be the best comedy
in the Russian language, and, while it brought out no immediate
followers, it did arouse an immense amount of amused discussion at the
time of its production.

The plot is simple enough. The officials of a provincial government
office are looking for the arrival of an inspector, who is supposed to
be coming _incognito_ to inspect their accounts. A traveller happens
to arrive at the inn, and him they all suppose to be the dreaded
official. Made anxious by their guilty consciences, each attempts to
plead his own cause with the supposed judge, and no one hesitates to
denounce a colleague in order to better his own standing. The traveller
is at first amazed, but he is astute enough to accept the situation
and pocket the money. The confusion grows until the crash of the final
thunderbolt, when the real inspector arrives upon the scene.

In his “Confessions of an Author,” Gogol says: “In the ‘Revizor,’ I
tried to present in a mass the results arising from the one crying evil
of Russia, as I recognized it in that year; to expose every crime that
is committed in those offices, where the strictest uprightness should
be required and expected. I meant to satirize the great evil. The
effect produced upon the public was a sort of terror; for they felt the
force of my true sentiments, my real sadness and disgust, through the
gay satire.”

The play was received with uproarious laughter all over the empire, but
it is a singular comment upon the Russian character of the period to
observe that, while it produced so great a furor that the Czar read it
with tears of laughter and afterwards handsomely pensioned the author,
it led to no official reforms.

A single specimen of its dry humor will illustrate. I quote from
Turner’s “Studies in Russian Literature.”

    The prefect is alarmed at the intelligence that his superior,
    the revising [inspecting] officer, may be expected on any
    day or at any hour, and begs the postmaster to open all the
    letters that may in the meantime pass through his office.
    That exemplary official informs him that such has always been
    his custom, “not from any state reason,” as he takes care to
    explain, “but from curiosity;” some of the letters he had
    opened being so entertaining that he really could not find the
    heart to send them on, but had kept them in his desk. When
    reminded by a cautious colleague that this is likely to get
    him into trouble with the public, the prefect cuts short the
    remonstration by crying out, “Oh, _batoushka_ [a diminutive
    term of endearment, meaning practically ‘little father’],
    don’t you see this is a family affair of our own? What have the
    public to do with it?”

Gogol founded the realistic school in Russia when he produced his
masterpiece “Dead Souls,” a work sufficiently powerful to raise him at
once to the pinnacle of literary fame. The idea of the book consists of
the ingenious plan of a certain Tchitchikoff, who had lost his place
in consequence of his misdemeanors in the custom-house having been
discovered. In order to retrieve his fortune he visits different landed
proprietors and buys from them the names of all their serfs who have
died since the last census. Having thus established an ownership, he
succeeds in borrowing large sums of money by giving the names of the
dead serfs as security, since these dead souls have been legally made
over to him. Naturally, the bankers think that they are making the loan
upon good live collateral. What becomes of Tchitchikoff, we do not
know, for Gogol destroyed the manuscript of the last section of his
work--some say, in a fit of abstraction; others, under the influence of
religious enthusiasm.

Upon this framework, the author has produced a series of remarkable
descriptions--not pure realism, indeed, in our modern acceptation of
the term, but rather akin to the realism of Dickens. Its truthful
picture of Russian life, its repellent yet attractive qualities, its
penetratingly keen analysis of character, caused Pushkin to exclaim
when Gogol read him the first chapters of his book, “God, how miserable
life is in Russia!”

Rarely do power and delicacy unite in a stylist as they do in Gogol.
For the one, we may find an origin in his love for the sun-steeped
and snow-blown plains of his native Cossack country--a love which
constantly manifested itself in a real nostalgia, yet never brought
him back for long from his wanderings, especially in Italy. But for
the other, that delicate power of evocation--that compound of Loti’s
subtlety of nature-sense, Hoffmann’s light fantasy, and Daudet’s
airy narrative manner, half-humorous, half-pathetic--for this we
must look to some inborn faculty. In any other writer we might trace
this gossamer lightness to much commerce with the thoughts of women.
But no woman ever entered largely into Gogol’s life, and when he
died, on March 4, 1852, being not yet forty-three years of age, his
mother--always his mother--was still his only love. His last days were
shadowed by a growing ineptitude. His frail body weakened by religious
fastings, his resources scattered by prodigal gifts, his mind enfeebled
and depressed--his passing was sad, lonely, and almost unnoticed.

Gogol was the first great prose artist in Russian literature. In the
tale and the sketch, in comedy, in romance, and in realism, he not only
blazed new trails but penetrated so far into the unknown that others
for a long time followed only at a distance. But follow they did, for,
as one of his compatriot wits has observed, “We have all hidden under
‘The Cloak.’”

The masterpiece of fantastic narration and character delineation which
follows in translation was published, under the title “Shinel,” in
1839, when Gogol was thirty. It is overlong, according to our modern
standards, yet not as a piece of artistic workmanship. Its humor, its
suggestiveness, its pathos, its whimsicality, all rank it with the
world’s great short fictions.




                               THE CLOAK
                          _By Nikolai Gogol_


In the department of ------ but it is better not to name the
department. Nothing is more annoying than all kinds of departments,
regiments, law courts--in a word, any branch of public service.
Nowadays things have come to such a pass that every individual
considers all society offended in his person. Only lately, I have
heard it told, a complaint has been received from a district chief of
police--I don’t remember of what town--in which he sets forth clearly
that the Imperial institutions are on the wane, and that the Czar’s
sacred name is being uttered in vain; and in proof of his assertion
he appended to the petition a voluminous romance, in which a district
chief of police is made to appear at least once every ten pages,
often in a hopelessly drunken condition. Therefore, to avoid all
unpleasantness, it is better to designate the department in question as
a _certain department_.

                   *       *       *       *       *

So, in a _certain department_ there served a _certain official_--in no
way a remarkable official, at least in appearance; short of stature,
somewhat pockmarked, somewhat red-haired, somewhat even dull-sighted,
with a bald forehead, wrinkled cheeks, and a complexion that is known
as hemorrhoidal. Poor man--the St. Petersburg climate was to blame!
As for his official rank--with us a man’s rank comes before all!--he
was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, a type which, as
is well-known, has evoked the jests of many writers, following the
praiseworthy custom of belaboring those who cannot bite back.

The official’s name was Bashmachkin. As is quite evident, it
was derived from _bashmak_ [shoe]; but when, at what period,
and in what manner, nothing is known. It is certain that his
father and grandfather, and even brother-in-law--in fact, all the
Bashmachkins--wore shoes, which were reheeled three times a year.
His name was Akaki Akakievich. Perhaps it may seem to the reader as
somewhat odd and far-fetched; but he may rest assured that it was by no
means far-fetched, and that, owing to the circumstances which led to
it, any other name would have been impossible. This is how it happened.

Akaki Akakievich, if my memory serves me right, was born in the evening
of the 23rd of March. His mother, the wife of an official, and a very
good woman, made all the proper preparations for baptizing the child.
She lay on her bed opposite the door, and at her right hand stood the
godfather, a most excellent man, Ivan Ivanovich Eroshkin by name, who
served as the chief clerk of the Senate; and the godmother, Arina
Semenovna Bielobrushkova, the wife of an officer, and a woman of rare
virtues. They offered the mother her choice of three names: Mokiya,
Sossiya, and that of the martyr Khozdazat.

“No,” said the mother. “What a lot of names!”

So as to please her, they turned to another page in the calendar, and
hit upon the names of Traphili, Dula, and Varakhasi.

“That sounds like a judgment!” muttered the sick woman. “What names!
I truly never heard the like. Varadat and Varukh would have been bad
enough, but Traphili and Varakhasi!”

They turned to another page. The result was: Povsikakhi and Vakhtisi.

“Enough,” said the mother. “I now see that it is fate. And since it is
so, I think he had better be called after his father. Akaki was his
father’s name, let the son too be Akaki.”

In such manner he became Akaki Akakievich. The child was christened,
at which he wept and made a bad grimace, as if he foresaw that he was
to be a titular councillor. That is how it all came about. We have
mentioned it so the reader might judge for himself that it was entirely
due to circumstance, and that to have given him any other name would
have been impossible.

When and how he entered the department, and who appointed him, no one
could remember. However much the directors and chiefs were changed, he
was always to be seen in the one and same spot, the same attitude, the
same occupation, always the letter-copying official, so that afterwards
the conviction grew that he came into the world as he was, in uniform
and with his bald spot. No one showed him the slightest respect in the
department. The porters not only did not rise from their seats when he
passed, but did not even glance at him; he might have been a common fly
that flew through the reception room. His chiefs treated him with a
sort of cold despotism. Some insignificant assistant to the head clerk
would thrust a paper under his very nose, without saying so much as
“Copy,” or “Here is an interesting little case,” or, in fact, anything
pleasant, as is usual among well-bred officials. And he would accept
the paper, without looking to see who gave it to him, and whether he
had a right to do so; he would take it and immediately start to copy it.

The young officials made merry at his expense so far as their official
wit would permit. In his presence they invented stories about his
life. Of his seventy-year-old landlady they said that she beat him;
they asked him when their wedding would be, and, strewing small pieces
of paper over his head, called it snow. Not a single word would Akaki
Akakievich answer to this, as though no one were near him. It did not
even affect his tasks; in the midst of all these taunts he made not
a single error in copying. Once, however, when the jesting became
unbearable, because they pushed his elbow while he was at his work, he
exclaimed:

“Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?”

And there was something strange in these words and the voice in which
they were uttered. There was something in it which stirred one’s
pity; so that, in fact, a young man, only recently appointed, who,
following the example of others, permitted himself to make fun of
him, suddenly stopped short, like one stunned, and from that time
everything seemed to him to undergo as it were a transformation and
to assume a new aspect. Some invisible power repelled him from his
companions, with whom he had become acquainted on the assumption that
they were well-bred, estimable men. And for a long time afterward,
even in his merriest moments, there appeared before his eye the little
official with the bald forehead, and his penetrating words: “Leave me
alone! Why do you insult me?” And in these touching words other words
resounded: “I am thy brother!” At this thought the young man would
cover his face with his hands, and many a time later in the course of
his life he shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man,
how much savage uncouthness hidden under the delicate and cultivated
worldliness, and, oh, God! even in the man whom the world acknowledges
as honorable and honest.

It would be no easy matter to find another man who attended so
faithfully to his duties. It is not enough to say that he labored
with zeal; no, he labored with love. This copying presented to him a
sufficiently varied and agreeable existence. Enjoyment showed on his
face; he had his favorites among the letters, and when they came his
way he was not himself; he would smile, wink, and work his lips, so
that by looking at his face it seemed that you could read every letter
which his pen put down. Were he rewarded according to the measure of
his ardor, he would, to his own astonishment, have been made even a
councillor of state. But his companions had their little joke about his
work.

It would be untrue to say that _no_ attention was paid him. One kindly
director, wishing to reward him for his long service, ordered him to
be given something more dignified to do than mere copying; namely, he
was requested to draw up some sort of report to another office of an
already concluded affair; all that he was required to do was to change
the heading, and to alter certain words from the first to the third
person. This entailed him such labor that he began to perspire, to
wipe his forehead, saying finally, “No, better give me copying.” From
that time on he was let alone in his copying. Aside from this copying,
nothing seemed to exist for him.

He gave no thought to his dress. His uniform was not green, but rather
a reddish-mealy color. Its collar was narrow and low, so that his neck,
though not really long, seemed inordinately long as it projected from
the collar, quite like the necks of the plaster cats with wagging heads
that one sees carried upon the heads of foreign peddlers. And something
always clung to his uniform; it was a bit of straw, or perhaps a
thread. Besides, he had the unfortunate tendency, while walking in
the street, to go past a window precisely at the moment when they
threw out of it all kinds of rubbish; hence he always carried about
on his hat pieces of melon-rind and articles of a similar nature. Not
once in his life did he direct his attention upon what was happening
daily in the street--quite unlike his colleague, the young official,
whose glance was sufficiently far-reaching and keen to observe when
any one’s trouser-straps became undone on the opposite sidewalk, which
always called forth upon his face a smile of gratification. But Akaki
Akakievich, when he happened to look at all, saw in everything only the
clear, even strokes of his written lines, and only when, from goodness
knows where, a horse’s head suddenly popped over his shoulder and sent
a whole gust of wind from its nostrils into his face, did he begin to
notice that he was not in the middle of a line, but in the middle of
the street.

On arriving home, he would sit down immediately at the table, gulp
down quickly his cabbage-soup, eat a piece of meat with onion without
noticing their taste, consuming everything--together with flies or
anything else which the Lord happened to send at the moment.

Becoming conscious of the swelling of his stomach, he would rise from
the table, take down a bottle of ink, and begin to copy papers which
he had brought home. If such were wanting, he had the habit of making a
special copy for his personal gratification, particularly if the paper
happened to be remarkable, not indeed so much on account of the beauty
of its style, but of its being addressed to some new or important
person.

Even in those hours when the gray sky of St. Petersburg became
altogether extinct, and the entire official multitude had already dined
to satiety, each as he could, according to his means and whim; when all
had rested after the departmental grating of pens, running about for
one’s own affairs and those urgent ones of strangers--indeed, all the
work which tireless man had willingly created for himself, even far
beyond any actual need; when officials hasten to devote the rest of
the evening to pleasure--the more alert going to the theatre; those on
the street employing their time looking at the bonnets; one spending
his evening in paying compliments to some pretty girl, the star of
a small official circle; another--and this being the more frequent
rule--visiting a colleague on the fourth or third floor, in two small
rooms, with an antechamber or kitchen, and some fashionable pretensions
such as a lamp or another article costing many sacrifices, perhaps
a dinner or an outing; in a word, at the very hour that all the
officials scatter among the confined quarters of their friends to play
whist, at the same time sipping their tea out of glasses with cheap
sugar, smoking long pipes, relating now and then titbits of gossip
emanating from superior society, which the Russian can never, under any
circumstances, deny himself, even when there is nothing to talk about,
repeating the eternal anecdote concerning the commandant to whom word
had been sent that the tails of the horses on the Falconet monument
had been cut off; in short, just at the hour when all seek to divert
themselves, Akaki Akakievich indulged in no kind of diversion. No one
could say that he had ever been seen at any kind of evening party.
Having written to his heart’s desire, he would go to bed, smiling
anticipatingly at the thought of the morrow: what will the Lord send
him for the next day’s copying?

So flowed on the peaceful life of this man, who on a salary of four
hundred rubles a year was yet content with his lot; and perhaps it
would have continued to flow on to a good old age, were it not for the
fact that the path of human life is strewn with all sorts of ills, not
alone for titular councillors, but also for private, actual, court, and
various other councillors, even for those who render counsel unto no
one, and take none themselves.

St. Petersburg contains a powerful enemy to all those receiving four
hundred rubles a year salary or thereabouts. This foe is none other
than our northern cold, though otherwise it is said to be very healthy.
At nine o’clock in the morning, precisely at the hour when the streets
are filled with officials on their way to their departments, the cold
begins to give them all, without discrimination, such powerful and
biting nips upon their noses that the poor officials are at a loss
where to hide them. At such a time, when even those occupying superior
positions suffer the pain of cold in their foreheads, and tears start
to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes unprotected.
Their only salvation lies in their ability to scamper quickly over
five or six streets in their scant cloaks, and then warm their feet in
the porter’s room; incidentally thawing out in the process all their
faculties and abilities for official service which had become frozen on
the way.

Akaki Akakievich had for some time felt the cold piercing his back and
shoulders with unwonted vigor, notwithstanding the fact that he tried
to cover the distance from his house to the department as quickly as
possible. He finally thought to see whether the fault did not lie in
his cloak. Examining the garment very carefully at home, he made a
discovery: that in two or three places--to be precise, in the back and
shoulders--it had become like a thin canvas; the cloth, in fact, was
threadbare to the point of transparency, while the lining too had gone
to pieces.

It should be mentioned that the cloak of Akaki Akakievich served as
an object of ridicule to the officials; they even had deprived it
of the dignified name of cloak and called it a cape. To confess the
truth, it was of a rather curious construction; year by year its collar
diminished more and more, because it served to patch other parts. The
patching itself did not exhibit much sartorial art; and was, in fact,
ill done and ugly. Seeing where the trouble lay, Akaki Akakievich
decided to take the cloak to Petrovich, a tailor who lived somewhere
on the fourth floor, up a dark staircase, and who, notwithstanding his
one eye and pockmarked face, busied himself, with fair success, mending
trousers and frocks of officials and others; that is to say, when he
was in sober condition and was not up to something or other.

It is really not necessary to speak much concerning this tailor, but
as it is customary that in a story the character of each person be
clearly defined, there is no help for it; so let us have Petrovich
too. Once he was known simply as Grigori and was a gentleman’s serf;
he began to call himself Petrovich when he received his release, and
started to drink in no small measure on all holidays, at first only
on the great ones, and afterwards indiscriminately upon all church
celebrations which were marked by a cross in the calendar. Again,
he was faithful to traditional custom, and in quarrelling with his
wife called her a street woman and a German. As we have mentioned
the wife, it becomes necessary for us to say a word or two about her
also; unfortunately, little is known about her, except that she was
Petrovich’s wife, that she wore a cap instead of a shawl, and could
not boast of good looks; at least, only the soldiers of the guard ever
looked under her cap upon meeting her, giving vent to their feelings by
fingering their mustaches and mumbling something in a peculiar voice.

Ascending the staircase leading to Petrovich, a staircase wet with
dishwater and reeking of that smell of spirits which affects the eyes,
and which is, as is well-known, a never-absent characteristic of all
dark stairways of St. Petersburg houses--ascending the staircase, Akaki
Akakievich was thinking of what Petrovich would demand for the job,
and he mentally decided not to give him more than two rubles. The door
was open, because the housewife was frying some sort of fish, and had
so filled the room with smoke that you could not see so much as the
roaches. Akaki Akakievich passed through the kitchen, unobserved even
by the housewife, and finally entered the room where he saw Petrovich
sitting on a large, unpainted wooden table, his legs tucked in under
him like a Turkish pasha. His feet, after the manner of tailors sitting
at their work, were bare, and first of all that caught one’s eye was
the big toe, very familiar to Akaki Akakievich, with its mutilated
nail as thick and as powerful as a turtle’s shell. On his neck hung
a skein of silk and thread, and upon his knees lay a garment. He had
already spent some three minutes in trying to thread his needle, and
was therefore very wroth at the darkness and even at the thread, and
growled under his breath: “It won’t crawl through, the barbarian!
You’ve pricked me, confounded rascal, you!”

Akaki Akakievich felt unhappy because he had come precisely at the
moment when Petrovich was angry; he preferred to deal with Petrovich
when that individual was somewhat discouraged, or, as his wife
expressed it, when “he had sunk down with brandy, the one-eyed demon!”
In such a condition Petrovich, as a rule, readily came down in price,
and thanked you profusely into the bargain. Afterwards, it is true,
his wife would visit the customer, saying, with weeping eyes, that
her husband had been drunk, and had charged too cheaply. Well, you
would add a ten-copeck piece, and have the best of it at that. On the
present occasion, however, Petrovich to all appearances was sober, and
therefore gruff, uncommunicative, and in a condition to demand the
devil only knows what a price! Akaki Akakievich felt this, and would
gladly have beat a retreat, but it was too late. Petrovich had already
fixed his one eye intently upon him, and Akaki Akakievich greeted him
rather unwillingly:

“How are you, Petrovich?”

“And how are you, sir?” returned Petrovich, and slanted his gaze
towards the hands of Akaki Akakievich, in order to see what sort of
booty he had brought.

“Ah--here I am to you, Petrovich, this----”

It should be noted that Akaki Akakievich expressed himself chiefly by
means of prepositions, adverbs, and particles of speech which have no
meaning whatsoever. And if the matter was very difficult, he was in
the habit of not completing his phrases, so that very often when his
sentence began with the words, “This, in fact, is quite----” nothing
would come of it, and he himself would forget to continue, thinking he
had said what he had to say.

“Well, what is it?” asked Petrovich, and at the same time surveyed with
his one eye the entire uniform from the collar to the cuffs, the back,
the coat-flaps, and the button-holes; they were all familiar to him,
for they were his own work. Such is the tailor’s habit; it is the first
thing he does upon meeting one.

“Well, I here--this, Petrovich--about the cloak--the cloth, you see,
everywhere in other places, is quite strong--it is a trifle dusty, and
looks old, but it is new, only here in one place, just a little on the
back, and a trifle too on the shoulder--bit worn through, and on this
shoulder a bit--do you see?--and that’s all. Not much to do----”

Petrovich took the cape, spread it on the table, examined it for a long
time, shook his head, and reached out his hand towards the window-sill
for his round snuff-box, on the lid of which was the portrait of some
general or other, whose identity was lost, however, because a finger
had been thrust straight through the face and the hole glued over with
a square bit of paper. Having taken a pinch of snuff, Petrovich held
up and examined the cape against the light, and again shook his head;
then turned it, lining upwards, and once more shook his head. Again
he removed the lid of his snuff-box, and, having applied some of its
contents to his nose, he pocketed the case, and finally said:

“No, it is impossible to mend it. It’s a miserable garment!”

Akaki Akakievich’s heart sank at these words.

“And why impossible, Petrovich?” he asked in a voice almost that of
an imploring child. “There’s nothing--only a bit worn-out at the
shoulders. You surely have some pieces----”

“It’s easy enough to find pieces,” answered Petrovich, “but how is one
to sew them on? The cloth is all rotten. Put a needle to it--and it
goes apart.”

“Let it; you can put another patch there.”

“There’s nothing to lay the patches on; there’s no way of strengthening
it--it is beyond all help. You may thank the stars that it’s cloth; or
else a wind would come along and blow it away.”

“Well, yes, better strengthen it. How is it, in fact, this----”

“No,” said Petrovich decisively, “nothing can be done. It’s a
thoroughly bad job. You’d better make gaiters out of it for cold
winter days, because stockings are not sufficiently warm. The Germans
invented them, in order to make more money.” (Petrovich took advantage
of every opportunity to make thrusts at the Germans.) “As for the
cloak, it’s quite evident you want a new one.”

At the word _new_ all grew dark before the eyes of Akaki Akakievich,
and everything in the room began to go round. Only one object he saw
clearly: the general with the mutilated face on the lid of Petrovich’s
snuff-box.

“How a new one?” he asked, as if he were in a dream. “Why, I have no
money for it.”

“Yes, a new one,” repeated Petrovich, with a savage calm.

“Well, and if I order a new one, how will it----?”

“That is, you want to know how much it would cost?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’d have to put down a hundred and fifty,” said Petrovich, and
compressed his lips significantly. He liked powerful effects, he liked
to stun suddenly and completely, and then to look askance in order to
see what kind of face the victim might make after such words.

“A hundred and fifty rubles for a cloak!” shrieked the poor Akaki
Akakievich, perhaps for the first time since his birth, for he had
always been distinguished for the subdued quality of his voice.

“Yes-s,” said Petrovich; “and that’s for a cheap one. If you wish a bit
of marten fur on the collar, and to line the hood with silk, it will
mount up to two hundred.”

“Petrovich, please!” said Akaki Akakievich in a pleading voice, not
hearing, and not trying to hear, the words of Petrovich and all his
effects. “Mend it somehow, so it will last just a little while longer.”

“No, it’s of no use--it will only be a waste of time and money,”
answered Petrovich.

After these words Akaki Akakievich left the place completely crushed.
As for Petrovich, he remained standing for a long time, compressing
his lips significantly; nor did he resume his work, but thought with
gratification of how he upheld his own dignity and at the same time did
not prove a traitor to sartorial art.

Akaki Akakievich went into the street feeling as in a dream. “Well,
what an affair!” he said to himself. “Well, really, I never thought
it would come to that!” After a brief silence he added: “So that’s
how it is! So at last it has come to that! And I, really, never even
imagined that the matter stood like that!” Another silence followed,
after which he muttered: “So that’s how it is! Well, really, somehow
unexpected--it’s impossible--a kind of predicament!” Having said this,
instead of going home, he went in the exactly opposite direction,
altogether unconscious of the fact.

On the way he collided with a chimney sweep, who blackened his
shoulder; a whole hatful of lime fell upon him from the top of an
unfinished house. He did not notice the things that happened to him,
and only when he ran against a watchman, who, having placed his halberd
beside him, was shaking snuff out of a case upon his horny hand, did he
become slightly conscious of where he was, and that only because the
watchman said: “Why do you push yourself into a man’s very face? What’s
a sidewalk for?” This caused him to look around and to turn homeward.

It was only at home that he began to collect his thoughts, and to view
the situation in its true and clear aspect. He began to argue with
himself no longer in an incoherent manner, but reasonably and frankly,
as with a sensible companion, with whom one might discuss any intimate
and personal matter.

“Well, no,” said Akaki Akakievich. “Just now Petrovich is not in the
right mood to talk with; he now that--his wife, it seems, must have
given him a beating. I had better go to him on Sunday morning; after
Saturday night he will be cross-eyed and sleepy; he will want to get
drunk, and his wife won’t give him the money, and at such a time a
ten-copeck piece in his hand--and he will be more sociable, and the
cloak then and there----”

So argued Akaki Akakievich with himself. He now felt more cheerful, and
waited until the first Sunday, when, seeing from afar Petrovich’s wife
leave the house, he made haste to carry out his plan. Petrovich was, in
fact, squint-eyed after Saturday; his head drooped, and he was quite
sleepy; notwithstanding all this, the moment he knew what the business
was about he at once grew alert, as if the very Satan prompted him.

“Impossible,” he said. “You must order a new one.”

At this, Akaki Akakievich slipped a ten-copeck piece into his hand.

“Thank you, sir; I will drink a bit to your health,” said Petrovich.
“As for the cloak, you need not worry about it; it is nothing but a
rag. I will make you a handsome new cloak; let us settle that.”

Akaki Akakievich still insisted on his mending it, but Petrovich would
not listen, and said:

“There’s no way out of it; I shall have to make you a new one; and
you may depend upon it, I will do my best. It is even possible that I
shall make it according to the new fashion: the collar will fasten with
silver hooks underneath.”

When Akaki Akakievich began to comprehend that a new cloak was an
absolute necessity, his spirits sank utterly. How indeed was it to be
done? Where was the money to come from? He could of course depend for a
great part of it upon his customary holiday gift. But there was a new
pair of trousers to order; there was the old debt to pay the cobbler
for putting on new tops to old boots; he also needed three shirts and
at least two undergarments which it is impolite to mention in print;
in a word, there would not be a copeck left, and even if the director
should prove so generous as to allot as his share forty-five or fifty
rubles instead of forty, there would be the merest trifle left, which,
considered in connection with the cloak money, would seem as a drop in
the sea; though of course he knew that Petrovich would sometimes get a
sudden notion to charge the devil knows what an exorbitant price, so
that even his wife could not restrain herself from exclaiming: “Are you
out of your wits, you fool! At one time he will take almost nothing
for his work, but at another time he is mad enough to ask more than
the thing is worth!” Although Akaki Akakievich knew quite well that
Petrovich would undertake to make the cloak for eighty rubles, where
were even the eighty rubles to come from? He could manage to provide
half of it, perhaps even a trifle more; but where was he to find the
other half?

First of all, the reader should be informed where the first half was to
come from. Akaki Akakievich had the habit of putting away, for every
ruble he spent, a two-copeck piece into a small box, kept under lock,
and with a small hole in the top for the dropping in of the money. At
the expiration of every six months he would exchange the collected
coppers for silver. He had been doing this for a long time, and in the
course of several years had managed in this manner to save more than
forty rubles.

With the first half in hand, the question now was: how to procure the
other half? After much deliberation, Akaki Akakievich decided that it
would be necessary to curtail the ordinary expenses for at least a
period of one year, to deprive himself of his evening tea, to light no
candles; and if there was anything that had to be done, to do it in
the landlady’s room by her candle. He also could, when in the street,
step more lightly and cautiously upon the stones, almost on tiptoe,
and save thereby his heels from wearing out too quickly. He could give
his laundress as little wash as possible; and, in order not to wear his
clothes out, could throw them off upon arriving home and remain solely
in his cotton dressing-gown, an ancient garment spared mercifully by
time.

To tell the truth, these deprivations came hard in the beginning, but
gradually he became used to them; he even learned to go hungry in
the evening; but in compensation he nourished himself spiritually,
eternally bearing in his thoughts the idea of the new cloak. From this
time on, it seemed as if his existence had become fuller, as if he had
married, as if some other person was living with him, as if he were
not alone, but some pleasant companion had consented to share his lot
in life with him--and this companion was none other than the cloak,
thickly wadded and so strongly lined as never to wear out. He became
as it were livelier, even more characterful, as befits a man who has
a clear and a firm aim in life. Doubt and indecision seemed to have
vanished from his face and manner, and indeed all his wavering and
more undefined characteristics became less noticeable. At times even a
sparkle showed in his eyes, and his mind indulged in the most daring
thoughts. Why not, for instance, marten on the collar? Such a thought
made him absent-minded; and upon one occasion, in copying a paper, he
almost made an error, which caused him to cry almost aloud, “Oh!” and
to make a sign of the cross.

At least once a month he visited Petrovich, to talk over the cloak
with him--where best to buy the cloth, the question of its color, and
its price--and, though somewhat agitated, he always returned feeling
happier in the thought that the time was at last approaching when
everything would be bought and the cloak made.

The matter went even faster than he anticipated. Surpassing all his
hopes, the director allotted him not forty or forty-five rubles, but
sixty! Perhaps he felt that Akaki Akakievich needed a cloak, or else it
was an accident, but the fact was, Akaki Akakievich found himself with
twenty unexpected rubles. This circumstance hastened matters. Another
two or three months of hunger, and Akaki Akakievich found himself with
eighty rubles. His heart, usually tranquil, began to throb.

On the first free day he went shopping with Petrovich. They purchased a
very good cloth, and at a reasonable price, because they had considered
the matter for a full six months before, and hardly a month passed
but that they visited the shops to inquire prices; besides, Petrovich
himself said that better cloth couldn’t be found. For lining, they
selected a cotton cloth, but so strong and thick that, to use the words
of Petrovich, it was better than silk, and in appearance even showy
and shiny. Marten fur proved too expensive, and so in its place they
purchased the very best obtainable cat-skin, which in the distance
could be mistaken for marten. Petrovich worked on the cloak two weeks;
there was much quilting, otherwise it would have been finished sooner.
For his labor Petrovich charged twelve rubles--he couldn’t possibly
take less; it was all done with silk, in small double stitches, which
afterwards Petrovich went over with his own teeth, creating various
patterns in the process.

It was--it is difficult to say precisely on what day; but probably
the most triumphant day in Akaki Akakievich’s life was when Petrovich
at last brought the cloak. He brought it in the morning, just before
the time necessary to start for the department. It could not have
arrived at a more opportune moment, because a severe cold had set in,
and it seemed to threaten to become even colder. Petrovich himself
brought the cloak, as befits a good tailor. His face expressed such
an extraordinary significance as Akaki Akakievich never had beheld
there before. It was evident that he felt he had done no small
thing, and that he had suddenly revealed in himself the abyss which
separates these tailors who sew on mere linings and do mending, from
those who make an entire new garment. He drew out the cloak from a
handkerchief in which he brought it. The handkerchief had just come
from the laundress; so, folding it, he put it in his pocket for use.
Holding up the cloak proudly in both hands, he very deftly threw it
on Akaki Akakievich’s shoulders, after which he pulled it down with
his hand from behind, and let it hang unbuttoned. Akaki Akakievich,
like a man wise in years, wished to try the sleeves. Petrovich helped
him into them. The sleeves too fitted well. In short, the cloak was
all that was wanted of it. Petrovich did not let the opportunity pass
to remark that only because he conducted his establishment without a
signboard and in a small street, and had known Akaki Akakievich for so
long, had he charged him so cheaply, and that on Nevski Prospect they
would have charged him seventy-five rubles for the work alone. Akaki
Akakievich did not wish to argue the matter with Petrovich, and feared
all large amounts, of which the tailor loved to speak soundingly. Akaki
Akakievich paid and thanked Petrovich, and set forth in his new cloak
to the department. Petrovich followed him, and for a long time his
gaze lingered on the cloak from a distance; then, making a short cut
through a side street, he reappeared to view the cloak from another
point--namely, directly in front.

As for Akaki Akakievich, he walked on, experiencing exultation in every
part of his body. At every step he felt conscious of the new cloak
upon his shoulders, and several times he even smiled from internal
gratification. Indeed, the cloak had two advantages: it was warm and
it was handsome. He did not notice the road at all, and suddenly found
himself in the department. He threw off the cloak in the porter’s room,
and, after surveying it, he confided it to the special care of the
attendant. It is impossible to tell how every one in the department
suddenly knew that Akaki Akakievich had a new cloak, and that the cape
no longer existed. All at once ran into the porter’s room to inspect
the garment. They began to congratulate him, so that at the beginning
he smiled and afterwards even felt ashamed. When, however, every one
surrounding him said that the new cloak should be christened, and
that at least he should give them all a party some evening, Akaki
Akakievich lost his head completely, and did not know what to do,
what to say, and how to get out of it. For several minutes, blushing,
he tried to assure them, in a sufficiently naïve manner, that the
cloak was not at all a new one, that it was, in fact, an old cloak.
In the end, one of the officials, who served as assistant to the head
clerk, evidently wishing to show that he was not at all proud and did
not condescend towards his inferiors, said: “So be it. I, instead of
Akaki Akakievich, will give the party, and I invite you all to my house
tonight. As it happens, it is my birthday.” Naturally, the officials
then congratulated the head clerk’s assistant, and accepted the
invitation eagerly. Akaki Akakievich at first wished to decline, but
every one started to impress upon him how discourteous it was, and that
it was a shame and a disgrace, so that he could not refuse. Besides, he
afterwards began to feel pleasure in the thought that he would have an
opportunity to spend an evening in his new cloak.

That entire day was like a triumphant holiday for Akaki Akakievich.
He returned home in the happiest possible frame of mind, threw off
his cloak, and hung it carefully on the wall, his eye revelling once
more in the cloth and the lining; he afterwards held up beside it for
comparison the old cape, now all fallen to pieces. He laughed, so
great was the difference. And even a long time after dinner he smiled
each time the condition of his old cape occurred to him. He dined
cheerfully, and did not copy any papers afterwards, but rested upon
his bed until it grew dark. Afterwards, wasting no time, he dressed
himself, placed the cloak across his shoulders, and went into the
street.

Just where the inviting official lived, we unfortunately cannot say;
our memory is beginning to fail us, and the St. Petersburg streets
and houses have so badly massed and mixed themselves in our head that
it is most difficult to establish any kind of order out of all the
chaos. However that may be, at least it is certain that the official
lived in the better part of the city, from which may be guessed that
it was anywhere but near Akaki Akakievich’s neighborhood. At first he
had to pass through several dimly lighted, deserted streets, but in
proportion as he approached the official’s residence the streets grew
more lively, more populous, and more brightly illuminated; pedestrians
grew in greater numbers; women too, handsomely dressed, began to
appear; some of the men even wore beaver collars; peasants with their
wooden fence-rail sledges, hammered over with yellow-headed nails, were
more rarely met with; on the other hand, drivers with red velvet caps,
in lacquered sledges, with bearskin coverings, were becoming more
frequent; and beautifully ornamented carriages flew swiftly through the
street.

Akaki Akakievich gazed upon all this as upon a novelty; it was now
several years since he had passed an evening in the streets. He paused
with curiosity before a lighted shop-window, to look at a picture in
which was represented a handsome woman taking off her shoe and baring
her entire foot very prettily, while behind her a man with whiskers
and a handsome mustache peeped through the door of another room.
Akaki Akakievich shook his head and laughed, and then continued his
journey. Why did he laugh? Was it because he had met a thing altogether
unfamiliar to him, but for which, however, every one cherishes some
sort of feeling, or was it because he thought about it as many other
officials would? “Ah, those French! What is there to say? When they
want to do anything like that, they do it rather well!” And it is
possible that he did not think such a thing at all. After all, it is
impossible to steal into a man’s soul and to discover all that he
thinks.

At last he reached the house in which lived the head clerk’s assistant.
This man resided in grand style; the staircase was lighted by a lamp;
his quarters were on the second floor. Entering the vestibule, Akaki
Akakievich observed several rows of galoshes on the floor. Among
them, in the middle of the room, stood the samovar; it was humming
and emitting clouds of steam. The walls were covered with cloaks and
mantles, among which were even a few with beaver collars or with velvet
lapels. Behind the wall were audible the noise and conversation, which
suddenly grew clear and loud when the door opened and the servant came
out with a trayful of empty glasses, a cream-jug, and a sugar-bowl. It
was evident that the officials had arrived some time ago and had had
their first glass of tea.

Akaki Akakievich, having hung up his cloak himself, entered the room,
and his astonished gaze took in at once the lights, the officials,
the pipes, and the card-tables, and he was confused by the sound of
conversation rising from all sides and the noise of moving chairs. He
paused very awkwardly in the middle of the room, pondering what he
should do. But he had already been noticed, and he was received with
shouts; every one running towards the vestibule to survey his cloak
anew. Although Akaki Akakievich was somewhat astonished, still, being
a simple-hearted man, he could not help but feel flattered, seeing how
well his cloak was liked. Afterwards, it goes without saying, they
forgot him and his cloak, and returned quite properly to the tables
appointed for whist. All this--the noise, the conversation, and the
size of the gathering--all this was strange to Akaki Akakievich. He
simply did not know what to do with himself, where to put his hands,
his feet, and his entire body; finally he seated himself near the
players, looked at the cards, or into the face of now one, now another,
and after a time began to grow drowsy, and to feel a certain feeling of
weariness, all the more because his accustomed hour for going to bed
had long passed. He wished to bid his host good-night, but he was not
permitted to depart; they insisted that he drink a glass of champagne
in honor of his new garment. In another hour supper was served; it
consisted of a relish, cold veal, pastry, sweets, and champagne. Akaki
Akakievich was made to drink two glasses of champagne, after which
the room assumed to him a livelier aspect; nevertheless, he could
not forget that it was twelve o’clock, and that he should have been
home long ago. In order that the host might not detain him, he stole
silently out of the room, sought out in the anteroom his cloak, which,
to his sorrow, he found lying on the floor. He brushed it, removed
every speck of dust from it, put it on his shoulders, and descended
the stairs into the street.

The street was as yet all alight. Some of the petty shops, those
permanent clubs of servants and all sorts of people, were open; others,
however, which were closed, showed a long streak of light through
the entire length of the door-crack, suggesting that they did not
lack company, probably servants of both sexes, who were concluding
their gossip and conversation, and keeping their masters in complete
ignorance of their whereabouts. Akaki Akakievich walked on in a happy
frame of mind, started even to run, for an unknown reason, after a
woman who flashed by him like lightning. After this, however, he paused
and resumed his former leisurely pace, wondering at his own sudden
spurt. Very soon there stretched before him the deserted streets, not
particularly cheerful even by day, and much less so by night. Now they
seemed even more than usually dark and lonely; the lights were growing
further apart; then came wooden houses and fences; not a soul anywhere;
only the snow sparkled in the streets; and the slumbering, low-roofed
cabins with closed shutters looked melancholy against the snow. He was
approaching the spot where the street cut through a vast square, with
houses on the other side barely visible across the desert space.

In the distance, God knows how far, a tiny flame glimmered in a
watchman’s box, which seemed to verge on the edge of the world. Akaki
Akakievich’s cheerfulness diminished here perceptibly. He entered
the square not without a certain involuntary fear; not without some
foreboding of evil. He glanced behind him and on both sides--a sea
appeared to surround him. “No, it is better not to look,” he thought,
and walked on with closed eyes; and when he opened them to see whether
or not he had reached the end of the square, he suddenly beheld before
him, almost under his very nose, some bearded individuals, precisely
what sort he could not distinguish. Everything grew dark before his
eyes, and his heart began to throb.

“But, I say, the cloak is mine,” said one of the men in a loud voice,
seizing him by the collar.

Akaki Akakievich wished to cry out, “Help!” when the other man put his
fist, the size of an official’s head, to his very mouth, and said,
“Just try to make a noise!”

Akaki Akakievich only felt conscious of how they removed the cloak from
his shoulders, then gave him a parting kick, which sent him headlong
into the snow; after that he felt no more.

In a few minutes he recovered consciousness and rose to his feet, but
no one was to be seen. He felt cold, and the absence of his cloak; he
began to shout, but his voice did not seem to reach the bounds of the
square. Desperate, not ceasing to shout, he started to run across the
square straight towards the watchman’s box, beside which stood the
watchman, leaning upon his halberd, and looking, as it were, with eager
expectancy for an explanation as to this strange fellow’s running and
shouting. Akaki Akakievich, having reached him, began to shout in a
gasping voice that he was asleep and did not attend to his business,
and let people rob a man. The watchman replied that he saw nothing
except two men stop and talk to him in the middle of the square, and
that he thought they were his friends; he also suggested that rather
than waste time on talk he should report the matter to the police
captain, and that he would find the man who had taken the cloak.

Akaki Akakievich arrived home in complete disorder. His hair, which
thrived in no large numbers upon his temples and the back of his head,
was in a dishevelled state; while his entire body was covered with
snow. His old landlady, on hearing a loud knocking on the door, sprang
quickly out of bed, and with only one shoe on ran to open the door,
holding her night-gown, out of modesty, to her breast. Having opened
the door, she drew back upon seeing the condition of her lodger. When
he explained what had happened she wrung her hands and advised him to
inform the district chief of police at once; that a lesser official
would only promise without doing anything; besides, she had some
acquaintance with the chief, because Anna, her former cook, had just
become a nurse at his house. She saw him very often pass her house,
and, moreover, she knew that he went to church every Sunday, and
that as he prayed he looked cheerily at the same time upon all, and
therefore was, to all appearances, a good man. Having listened to this
suggestion, Akaki Akakievich very sadly betook himself to his room,
and how he spent the night there may be imagined by those who have the
faculty of putting themselves in the place of others.

Early next morning he visited the district chief and was told that he
was asleep; he went again at ten, with the same result; at eleven they
told him the chief was not at home; when he went at dinner-time, the
clerks in the anteroom would not admit him, but demanded to know the
business that brought him; so that finally Akaki Akakievich for once
in his life showed a spark of courage and said firmly that he must
see the district chief personally, that they dared not refuse him, as
he came from the department upon official business, and that if they
persisted he would present a complaint against them, which would make
them sorry. The clerks dared not reply to this, and one of them went in
to call the chief.

Instead of directing his attention to the important point of the case,
he began to cross-examine Akaki Akakievich. Why was he returning
home so late? Did he stop on the way in any disorderly house? In the
end Akaki Akakievich was so completely confused that he went out not
knowing whether anything would be done about the cloak or not.

The entire day he did not appear in the department--the first time
in his life. The next day he arrived at his place looking very pale
and in his old cape, which had grown even sadder-looking. The news of
the robbery of the cloak--notwithstanding the fact that some of the
officials did not permit even this opportunity to pass without laughing
at Akaki Akakievich--nevertheless touched many. They decided to take up
a collection for him, but succeeded in obtaining a mere trifle; as the
officials had already spent considerable money in subscribing for the
director’s portrait, and for a book, at the suggestion of the chief of
the bureau, who was a friend of the author; hence the insignificance of
the sum.

Some one, out of pity, wished at least to help Akaki Akakievich with
good advice; and so he told him not to go to the captain, for though
the captain might really wish to earn the approbation of the chiefs
and find the cloak in some way or other, the cloak itself would
nevertheless remain with the police, unless he could show legal proof
that it was his; he ought therefore to apply to a certain _important
personage_; and this _important personage_, by dealing with the proper
persons, could hasten and expedite matters. There was nothing else to
do but to turn to the _important personage_.

What was the precise function of the _important personage_ remains
unknown to this day. One point should be made clear: that this
particular _important personage_ only recently had become an important
personage, and that until quite lately he had been an unimportant
personage. And aside from that, his position was not even now
considered important when compared with that of other more important
personages. There will always be, however, a circle of people to whom
what is unimportant to other people is sufficiently important. Then,
again, he bent all his efforts to increase his importance through
numerous other means, as, for instance, he instituted the custom of
having his inferiors lined up on the stairway to greet his arrival
at the department; he also insisted that no one should venture to
appear before him directly, but that everything should follow in
most unrelenting order: the collegiate registrar should report to
the government secretary, the government secretary to the titular
councillor, or to whoever was the proper official, and that in this
manner the business should finally come to him.

This habit of imitation has infected all of Holy Russia: every one
imitates and mimics his superiors. It is even said that a certain
titular councillor, when promoted to the head of some small separate
office, immediately partitioned off a private room, calling it the
“audience chamber;” he placed at the door two attendants in red collars
and braid, whose sole duty consisted in taking the door by the handle
and opening it to every comer, although the “audience chamber” had
barely room enough to contain an ordinary writing-table.

The ways and manners of the _important personage_ were impressive and
imposing, but somewhat overdone. The main principle of his system
was strictness. “Strictness, strictness--and strictness,” he used
to say generally: and always when pronouncing the last word looked
significantly at the person whom he was addressing; although this
was altogether unnecessary, because the ten officials, constituting
the entire mechanism of his office, were afraid of him; and, seeing
him even from afar, they would stop all work and assume a respectful
attitude until their chief had passed through the room. His usual
conversation with his inferiors consisted almost entirely of three
phrases: “How dare you? Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you
realize who stands before you?” Otherwise, he was a good-natured man
and solicitous towards his comrades; but the rank of general unhinged
his mind completely. Upon receiving this rank, he lost his head, and
did not know what to do with himself. When he happened to be in the
company of his equals he still managed to do the proper thing, to be
a gentleman, and in many respects quite a clever fellow; but once in
the company of folk even a single rank below him, he simply became
helpless; he was silent, and his condition aroused sympathy, the more
so as he himself felt that he could have passed the time incomparably
happier. At times the desire to join in some conversation or circle
was strongly evident in his eyes; but the following thought always
arrested him: would it not be regarded as a familiarity, and would it
not detract from his importance? In consequence of such reasoning, he
remained in the same eternal mood of silence, uttering only rarely some
monosyllabic sounds; and thereby earning the name of a most wearisome
person.

Before an _important personage_ of this type appeared our Akaki
Akakievich, and at a most inopportune moment--that is to say, for
himself, but opportune for the _important personage_. The _important
personage_ was in his cabinet, conversing very cheerfully with an
old acquaintance and friend of his youth, whom he had not seen for
many years. It was at such a time that they told him of a certain
Bashmachkin who wished to see him. He asked abruptly, “Who is he?”
They answered him, “Some sort of official.” “Ah, let him wait, now
is not the time,” said the _important personage_. It is necessary to
mention here that the _important personage_ simply lied: he had the
time to spare; he had already talked over everything with his friend,
and the conversation had begun some time ago to lag with long silences;
and they merely continued to tap each other on the leg, and exclaim,
“That’s how it is, Ivan Abramovich!” “That’s so, Stephen Varlamovich!”
Nevertheless, he caused the official to wait, in order to show his
friend, a man some time out of the service and living in a village, how
long he compelled officials to wait for him in the anteroom.

Finally, having conversed to his heart’s content, and having had also
his fill of silence and smoked a cigar in a very comfortable chair with
an easy back, he bethought himself all of a sudden, as it were, and
said to the secretary who stood at the door with papers needing his
signature, “Oh, yes, I believe an official is waiting to see me; tell
him to come in.” On seeing Akaki Akakievich’s humble aspect and his
shabby uniform, he suddenly turned to him and said, “What is it you
wish?” He put this question abruptly and in a hard voice, which he had
practised in his own room, when alone, and before the mirror, a full
week before receiving his present position and rank.

Akaki Akakievich, who already felt a certain timorousness, became
somewhat confused, and, so far as his power of speech would permit,
explained, with an even more frequent employment than usual of the
word “that,” that his cloak was quite new, and had been stolen in a
most inhuman manner, and that he was now applying to him to use his
influence with the chief of police or some one else to find his cloak.

The general, for some reason or other, regarded such conduct as
familiar. “What, dear sir,” said he in his abrupt manner, “are you
ignorant of the rules? Why do you come to me? Do you not know how such
matters are managed? You should have first presented a petition to the
office; it would have then gone to the chief clerk, then to the clerk
of the division, then to the secretary, and the secretary would have
reported it to me----”

“But, Your Excellency,” said Akaki Akakievich, gathering together
his final remnant of courage, and breaking out into a terrible
perspiration, “I, Your Excellency, have presumed to trouble you
because, you see, the secretaries are that--an untrustworthy race----”

“What! what! what!” ejaculated the _important personage_. “Where do
you get the courage? Where did you get such ideas? What a spirit of
impertinence has spread among the young generation against their chiefs
and superiors!”

The _important personage_, apparently, had not noticed that Akaki
Akakievich was already a man of about fifty, and that if he could be
called a young person, it was only in comparison with one who was
seventy.

“Do you know to whom you are speaking? Do you realize who stands
before you? Do you realize it? Do you realize it? Answer me!”

At this point he stamped his foot, and raised his voice to such a
high pitch that even a man different from Akakievich would have been
frightened. Akaki Akakievich grew faint; he reeled; trembled from head
to foot; then his legs gave way under him; if several attendants had
not run in to support him, he would have fallen to the floor. They
carried him out more dead than alive. The _important personage_, much
gratified that the effect he produced far exceeded all expectation,
and thoroughly intoxicated with the thought that even a word from him
could deprive a man of his senses, looked askance at his friend, to
see how that individual regarded the matter, and observed, not without
satisfaction, that his friend was in a most uncomfortable state, and
was beginning to show on his part certain signs of fear.

How he managed to descend the stairway and into the street--of this
Akaki Akakievich remembered nothing. He was unconscious of either
hands or feet. Never before in his life had he been so reprimanded by
a superior, let alone an unfamiliar one. He walked in the snow-storm
which whistled through the streets; his mouth open, he staggered along
the sidewalks; the wind blew upon him in St. Petersburg fashion from
all four sides and every crossing. In an instant it had blown a quinsy
down his throat, and he arrived at home all swollen and too weak to
utter a word. He lay down on his bed.

The next day a high fever developed. Thanks to the generous assistance
of the St. Petersburg climate, the illness advanced more rapidly than
could be expected; and when the doctor appeared and felt his pulse,
there was nothing for him to do except to prescribe a poultice, for no
other reason but that the patient be not deprived of the beneficent
aid of medicine; at the same time he predicted his inevitable end in
thirty-six hours, after which he turned to the landlady and said: “And
you, my woman, had better not lose any time about it, and order a pine
coffin for him, as an oak one will be too expensive.”

Did Akaki Akakievich hear these fatal words? And if he heard them,
did they agitate him? Did he bewail the bitterness of his life? It
is uncertain, because he spent his last hours in fever and delirium.
Visions, one stranger than the other, continued to appear before him.
Now he saw Petrovich and ordered him to make a cloak with traps for
thieves who he imagined were constantly under his bed; and he more
than once called for his landlady to drag a thief from under his
bed-cover. Then he inquired why the old cloak hung in front of him when
he had a new one. Several times he fancied himself as standing before
the general, addressing him as “Your Excellency,” and pleading with
him after the reprimand; and finally he began to utter imprecations,
employing the most terrible words, so that the aged housekeeper, never
before having heard the like, made a sign of the cross, all the more
since these curses usually followed after the words “Your Excellency.”
Later he began to utter sheer nonsense; one thing, however, was
evident: all his incoherent words and thoughts hovered around the one
and the same cloak.

At last poor Akaki Akakievich gave up his spirit. The usual legal
procedure with regard to his room and his effects was not followed,
because in the first place there were no heirs, and in the second,
because he left so little property, namely, a bundle of goose-quills,
a quire of white official paper, three pairs of socks, two or three
buttons that had come off his trousers, and the cape already familiar
to the reader. To whom all this fell, God knows; this, I must confess,
did not interest even him who relates this story.

They bore Akaki Akakievich away and buried him. And so St. Petersburg
was left without Akaki Akakievich, as though he had never been
there. A being disappeared, who was protected by none, dear to none,
interesting to none, and who did not even attract to himself the
attention of the student who does not let an opportunity slip by to put
a pin through a common fly and to examine it under the microscope--a
being who endured humbly the ridicule of his brother officials and went
to his grave without having experienced a single notable event, but
for whom nevertheless, at the very close of his life, came a radiating
guest in the shape of a cloak, which cheered for an instant his sorry
existence; and upon whom there afterwards descended an intolerable
misfortune, such as descends even on the heads of the mighty of this
world!

A few days after his death, an attendant was sent to his house to
request him to report immediately at the department; but the attendant
returned to his chief with the rather unsatisfactory answer that he
could not come, and to the question, “Why?” replied, “Well, you see,
he’s dead. He was buried four days ago.” In this manner did they hear
of Akaki Akakievich’s death in the department, and the next day, in
his place sat a new official, much taller in stature, and forming his
letters not quite so upright, but very much inclined and aslant.

But who could have imagined that this was not the end of Akaki
Akakievich, and that he was destined to live through several stirring
days after his death, in compensation, as it were, for his unnoticed
life? But it so happened, and our poor history takes an unexpectedly
fantastic conclusion.

St. Petersburg was suddenly startled by rumors that on the Kalinkin
Bridge and in its vicinity there had begun to appear nightly a corpse,
in the shape of an official, seeking a stolen cloak, and that, under
the pretense that it was the stolen cloak, he dragged off, regardless
of rank or calling, every one’s cloak from his shoulders, whether it
was cat-skin, beaver, raccoon, fox, or bear--in short, every variety
of fur and skin which man had thought of for his covering. One of the
department officials saw the dead with his own eyes, and immediately
recognized in him Akaki Akakievich; this, however, so frightened him
that he began to run with all his might, and was therefore unable to
observe him closely, but only saw him raise a threatening finger from
afar.

Complaints began to come in from all quarters that the backs and
shoulders, not alone of titular, but even of court, councillors were
being exposed to the danger of a cold, because of this frequent
deprivation of their cloaks. The police made arrangements to catch the
corpse, at all costs, either alive or dead, and to deal with him most
severely, as an example to others. In this they almost succeeded. A
watchman in Kirishkin Lane seized the corpse by the collar on the very
spot of his misdeeds; for he was in the act of dragging off the frieze
cloak of a retired musician, who in his day had blown the flute. The
watchman’s shout for help fetched two comrades to his side, and into
their hands he committed the marauder, while he himself thrust his
hand for a moment into his boot for his snuff-box, in order to refresh
temporarily his frozen nose. The snuff, however, must have been of such
poor quality that even the corpse could not stand it. Ere the watchman,
who had closed his right nostril with his thumb, had time to apply
a half-handful of the snuff to his left nostril, the corpse sneezed
so violently that the three of them were soon wiping their eyes; and
while they were doing this he vanished so completely that they were
not even sure whether he had been actually in their hands. Henceforth
the watchmen were so apprehensive of dead men that they even refrained
from laying their hands on the living, and only dared to exclaim at a
distance, “Hey, there, go your way!” As for the dead official, he began
to appear even beyond the Kalinkin Bridge, creating no slight terror
among all timid people.

We have, however, wholly neglected a _certain important personage_,
who had been the actual cause of the fantastic turn taken by this true
history. First of all, in justice to the _certain important personage_,
it is necessary to say that immediately after the departure of the
poor, totally crushed Akaki Akakievich he experienced an emotion akin
to pity. It was not new to him--this feeling of sympathy; his heart
was really accessible to many good impulses, notwithstanding the fact
that his rank often interfered with their outward manifestation. No
sooner had his friend gone than he began to think about the poor Akaki
Akakievich. And nearly every day thereafter there appeared before him
the pale Akaki Akakievich, who was unable to bear up under an official
reprimand. The thought agitated him to such an extent that after a
week had passed he resolved even to send an official to learn his
condition, and to see whether he could really assist him. When it was
reported to him that Akaki Akakievich had died suddenly of fever, he
was dumbfounded, suffered the reproaches of conscience, and was in poor
spirits all day long.

Desiring some diversion and to drive away the disagreeable impression,
he went in the evening to the house of one of his friends, where he
found a likely crowd, all the more pleasant because nearly every
one was of the one and the same rank, so that he was not in any way
embarrassed. This fact had a most astounding effect on his spirits.
He opened his heart, made himself very agreeable in conversation; in
short, he passed a charming evening. After supper he drank two glasses
of champagne, an excellent method, as every one knows, of arousing
cheerfulness.

The champagne communicated in him an inclination towards various
enterprises, and he decided not to go directly home, but to visit a
certain well-known lady named Karolina Ivanovna--probably of German
extraction--with whom he was on quite friendly terms. It should be
mentioned that the _important personage_ was no longer a young man, but
a good husband and the respectable father of a family. His two sons,
one of whom was already in the government service, and a good-looking,
sixteen-year-old daughter, with a trifle arched but rather pretty
little nose, came in every morning to kiss his hand, and say, “_Bon
jour, Papa_.” His wife, a woman still fresh and not at all bad-looking,
first gave him her hand to kiss and then kissed his. The _important
personage_, however, though content with his domestic caresses, thought
it elegant to maintain friendly relations in another part of the city.
This friend was hardly prettier or younger than his wife; but many such
mysteries exist on earth, and to solve them is none of our affair.

The _important personage_, therefore, descended the staircase, entered
his sledge, and said to the driver, “To Karolina Ivanovna!” Then,
wrapping himself luxuriously in his warm cloak, he settled into that
happy mood, better than which cannot be even imagined by the Russian.
It is that state when you are not thinking of anything in particular,
but the thoughts crowd in upon you of themselves, one pleasanter than
the other, and calling for no exertion on your part to pursue them or
seek them. Gratified beyond measure, he recalled all the gay features
of the evening, all the remarks and all the stories that made the
little circle laugh. Many of these he repeated in a low voice, and
found them just as funny as before.

Occasionally, however, he was hindered by an impetuous wind, which,
arising suddenly, God only knows whence and why, cut his face, and beat
snow into it, or caused the collar of his cloak to burst out like a
sail, and then blew it back over his head, with a supernatural force,
as it were, and this gave him no end of trouble to disentangle his head
out of its folds.

Suddenly the _important personage_ felt some one grip him by the
collar. Turning around, he noticed a man of small stature, dressed in
a shabby old uniform, and, not without terror, recognized in him Akaki
Akakievich. The face of the man was pale as snow, like that of a dead
man. But the horror of the _important personage_ exceeded all bounds
when he saw the mouth of the corpse open, and, while it breathed upon
him the terrible odor of the grave, he heard it utter the following
remarks: “Ah, so here you are at last! At last I have you that--caught
you by the collar! I need your cloak! You didn’t give a thought to
mine, and even reprimanded me. Well, now give me yours!”

The poor _important personage_ almost died of fright--despite his
manifestation of character in his office and before his inferiors
generally, and although every one, on noting his manly figure and
aspect, could not help but remark, “What a strong character!” Here,
however, he, like many others possessed of an heroic exterior, was so
terrified that, not without cause, he felt as though he would die on
the spot. With his own hands he flung the cloak off his shoulders, and
shouted to the driver in an unnatural voice, “Home, at full speed!” The
driver, hearing the tone, generally employed in critical moments, and
accompanied in this case by something much more emphatic, assumed the
physical attitude of an emergency, flourished his whip, and darted off
like an arrow.

In six minutes or so, the _important personage_ was before his own
house. Pale, frightened, and without his cloak, instead of being at
Karolina Ivanovna’s, he was in his own house; and he managed somehow
to reach his own room, where he passed the night in great agitation,
so that the next morning at tea his daughter said, “You are very pale
today, Papa.” But Papa was silent, and said not a word to any one about
what had happened, where he had been, and whither he was bound. This
event made a powerful impression on him. He even much more rarely said
to his subordinates, “How dare you? Do you realize who stands before
you?” and if he did utter these words, it was not until he had heard
out all the facts of the case.

Still more remarkable was it that from that day on the corpse of the
official ceased to appear. Evidently the general’s cloak fitted his
shoulders perfectly; at least, no more stories were heard about the
dragging-off of cloaks. Many active and anxious people, however, were
very apprehensive, and insisted that the corpse was still at large in
certain remote sections of the city. In fact, one watchman in the
Kolomen district saw with his own eyes the apparition stalk forth
from behind a house; but, being rather weak physically, he dared not
arrest him, but simply followed him in the darkness, until at last the
apparition suddenly turned upon him and said, “What do you want?” and
displayed such a fist as is never seen on a living man. The watchman
replied, “Nothing,” and started back. The apparition, however, looking
very tall and wearing enormous mustaches, directed his footsteps
seemingly towards the Obukhov Bridge and vanished in the nocturnal
darkness.




                       TURGENEV THE EMANCIPATOR


Turgenev was the most cosmopolitan of the Russian fiction-writers, yet
with all his long residence in Berlin, Baden, and Paris, with all his
broad culture and varied linguistic attainments, he never ceased to
choose Russian themes and yield a passionate devotion to his fatherland.

Ivan Sergieevich Turgenev was born on the 28th of October, 1818, in
the government of Orel. His father, a dissipated Russian military
officer, died while Ivan was still young, leaving the lad in charge
of his mother, who was about six years the senior of her husband. The
woman was even less fitted by temperament to be a careful mother than
was Lady Byron, and the youth of the future novelist was stained with
bitter tears. Her vindictive spirit she retained to the last, and,
dying in old age, she constantly refused to receive the visits of her
son.

Doubtless these disillusioning home experiences affected young
Turgenev, for he early declared that he would never marry--and
maintained his resolution. Likewise, his ideals of motherhood seem to
have suffered, for the maternal qualities of his women characters never
rise to the highest.

German, French, and English he early learned from instructors at
home--Russian he picked up from the servants of the ancestral estate
on which he was born. First, he went to Moscow to study, later the
University at St. Petersburg held him for three years as a student, and
Berlin completed his academic training--particularly in philosophy, for
the subject was at that time interdicted in the Russian schools for
fear of its levelling effects.

That was a vitally formative thought-period for Europe, the years
between 1835 and 1842, and during such of them as Turgenev spent in
the German capital he became impregnated with free thought in all its
phases, and never thereafter could he breathe without oppression the
air of his restricted Russia. Thus the propaganda of emancipation which
the great novelist subtly spread by means of his fiction, without ever
becoming a physically present leader, was first of all inspired by his
life at home and fanned to enthusiasm by contact with intrepid thinkers
in Germany.

There must have been something sweetly noble in this fine, robust young
giant for him to have emerged from his sad and jarring home-life, and
the autocracy of his natal “Nest of Nobles,” with so deeply rooted a
hatred of serfdom and all cruel inequalities. Like the young Lincoln,
he swore to strike a blow against slavery; like Lincoln, he lived to
witness its overthrow, though upon a more equitable and permanently
satisfactory basis than did his American contemporary.

Turgenev, however, was not a militant emancipator. He was too calm,
too forbearing, too much the typical man of culture, for this. Indeed,
the Russian literary system of dealing with abuses may be said to be
typified by Turgenev’s method--he merely described. But his pictures
were so vital that he must have mixed his reds with the bloody sweat
of knouted serfs, and gotten his blacks from the smoky gloom of
pestilent cabins which lined the noisome roadways on ten thousand
manors. All Russia saw and gasped--and reformed. Thus did his first
work of distinction, the twenty-five “Sportsman’s Sketches”--published
from 1847 to 1851, and in book-form in 1852--do their mighty work for
mankind.

In earlier days Turgenev was, with all enlightened Russia, an admirer
of the poet-fictionist Gogol. A letter in eulogy of this author on his
death in 1852 was severely rebuked by the Czar’s banishing its writer
to his estates, where he remained, busily engaged in writing, until
1855. Then he saw that Russia could best be served at a distance. He
was out of sympathy with the extreme Slavophile party, yet he loved
Russia. What better course opened before him than to live in an
atmosphere where freedom could breathe, and where his powerful pen
might not only do service for Russia among Russians, but in all of
Europe as well.

And this ambition he abundantly realized. His residence in Baden as
the friend of Madame Viardot, and, be it said, of her husband, and his
later life in Paris, whither he repaired shortly after the close of
the Franco-Prussian War--for he never lived again in Russia--brought
him brilliantly before a constantly increasing company of notables, of
whom he was at the last easily chief. His gigantesque figure, crowned
with that silvery hair and beard, was a loved and familiar sight until
he succumbed to a malignant cancer which attacked the spinal cord, and
Turgenev passed over, on the 3rd of September, 1883, at the age of
sixty-five.

A pessimist is one who looks upon the unequal struggle of life and
can discern no hand to succor the deserving weak from the rapacious
strong. Sitting while a lad in a Russian garden, Turgenev beheld a
fight-to-a-finish between a serpent and a toad. Then and there began
his doubts of a beneficent Providence, which culminated in his quiet,
and never aggressive, spiritual pessimism. In this he is only one with
most great Russian literary artists. And, singularly enough, he too
passed into a final era of mysticism, though not so completely as did
his compeer Tolstoi, as witness that fine symbolical sketch, “The Song
of Triumphant Love.”

An interesting contrast presents itself in the characters of Tolstoi
and Turgenev. The one, aggressively Christian, harsh in the judgment
of his opponents, and intolerant of what he adjudged to be error;
the other, meek, gentle, considerate, largely tolerant, and quietly
forceful. Tolstoi was the lion aroused and warring even when preaching
non-resistance; Turgenev, the lion resting with dignified forbearance
because of a great serenity within. Both were men of might, yet
ethically and artistically at variance. It is pleasant to record,
however, that the quarrel which separated them for sixteen years
did not prevent Turgenev from responding at once when in later life
Tolstoi sought a reconciliation. The interview was charged with
amity, but, naturally, Turgenev could not adopt his old-time friend’s
extreme religious views. So when they had parted, Tolstoi’s praise was
modified--Turgenev was “an unpleasant man”--while the latter had only
warm words for the religionist. In a later essay in this series it is
recorded how Turgenev from his death-bed besought Tolstoi to return to
the field of Romance, in which “thou hast no rival amongst us.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

Turgenev was one of the greatest novelists of all time--the greatest,
as it seems to me, of all impressionistic novelists. Except in the
one quality of unity--for his work was on its surface fragmentary
in structure--this preëminent Russian met perfectly Poe’s ideal of
impressionism: he felt an impression of character or of nature and then
reproduced in his reader just what he himself felt. And this impression
was oftenest elevated above the merely physical. Brutalities,
gaucheries, physicalities, were to him expressions of the man in whose
inner life the novelist was more deeply interested than in the outer.
Thus his realism is neither so physical as Zola’s nor so materialistic
in philosophy as Maupassant’s. Turgenev’s pessimism is social, and
not primarily moral; hence character is always the big element in his
novels and shorter fictional pieces.

As with Tolstoi, so with Turgenev, plot is a negligible quantity.
Yet in a way that quite defies any explanation but one, the final
impression is fairly unified, and certainly tremendously effective.
That one explanation is that all the scattered pictures of traits,
appearances, oddities, mannerisms of bearing and speech, and, above
all, the marvellous reproduction of _characteristically_ personal
language, result in an individual presentment of character unequalled
for vividness in all fiction. Turgenev lets no significant detail
escape. The units may be trivial, the entire effect is almost always
big. The little thing he seizes upon shows us with the infallibility of
a master diagnostician the trends of character. The sum of it all is
wizardry.

All this is true primarily of his great novels. Here I have space only
for mention, at the same time venturing to place them in the order
of their importance: “A House of Gentlefolk” (“A Nest of Nobles”), a
masterpiece of depiction; “Fathers and Children,” a severe castigation
of the old and the new in Russia; “On the Eve,” a pessimistic inquiry
as to whether there is hope of better things for his fatherland;
“Rudin,” a character study of unusual penetration; “Torrents of
Spring,” in which a devilish woman ruins the hero; “Smoke,” a brilliant
but bitter satire on things Russian; and “Virgin Soil,” whose
“villain,” as in all of the author’s novels, is a woman!

                   *       *       *       *       *

In discussing Turgenev’s shorter fictions, we must remember that
most of them were written from seventy to forty years ago, and all
show that fine disregard of form which only a master may entertain
without inviting failure. Here, as in his novels, character is all.
Other story-tellers often make the story preëminent--Turgenev never.
His favorite method is to hold up many facets of a character, letting
the light--here a gleam, there a full radiance--fall on each. He is
a master of monologue and of dialogue. Even the jerky pauses are
eloquent. The vagueness of a mind is never asserted; it is shown
indubitably. The inept man, the supernumerary of society, the man
who is engrossed in self, the despairing peasant bound to the wheel,
the reflective but weak-willed dreamer--speech, physical habits, and
physical traits reveal them all as relentlessly as a scalpel uncovers
diseased tissue. This is the wonder of Turgenev’s fictional power. He
has brought suggestive description to the _n_^{th} power. No fictionist
has even approached him in this respect.

One further quality deserves special mention, for I have already
referred to his hatred of serfdom and his scorn for the superfluous
social orders it built up. It is that of nature description. Turgenev
was an Englishman in his love of gunning (although in later life he
disapproved of the needless slaughter of innocents). Consequently,
many of his tales--particularly his notable “A Sportsman’s
Sketches”--abound in fine nature passages. Here is one from “Yermolaï
and the Miller’s Wife.”

    A quarter of an hour before sunset in springtime you go out
    into the woods with your gun, but without your dog. You seek
    out a spot for yourself on the outskirts of the forest, take a
    look round, examine your caps, and glance at your companion.
    A quarter of an hour passes; the sun has set, but it is still
    light in the forest; the sky is clear and transparent; the
    birds are chattering and twittering; the young grass shines
    with the brilliance of emerald.... You wait. Gradually the
    recesses of the forest grow dark; the blood-red glow of the
    evening sky creeps slowly on to the roots and the trunks of
    the trees, and keeps rising higher and higher, passes from
    the lower, still almost leafless branches, to the motionless,
    slumbering tree-tops.... And now even the topmost branches
    are darkened; the purple sky fades to dark-blue. The forest
    fragrance grows stronger; there is a scent of warmth and damp
    earth; the fluttering breeze dies away at your side. The birds
    go to sleep--not all at once--but after their kinds; first the
    finches are hushed, a few minutes later the warblers, and after
    them the yellow buntings. In the forest it grows darker and
    darker. The trees melt together into great masses of blackness;
    in the dark-blue sky the first stars come timidly out. All
    the birds are asleep. Only the red starts and the nuthatches
    are still chirping drowsily.... And now they too are still.
    The last echoing call of the peewit rings over our heads;
    the oriole’s melancholy cry sounds somewhere in the distance;
    then the nightingale’s first note. Your heart is weary with
    suspense, when suddenly--but only sportsmen can understand
    me--suddenly in the deep hush there is a peculiar croaking and
    whirring sound, the measured sweep of swift wings is heard, and
    the snipe, gracefully bending its long beak, sails smoothly
    down behind a dark bush to meet your shot.

It is illuminating to observe Turgenev’s well-nigh invariable method
of story-telling. First he will draw in a setting with much attention
to detail and introducing characters who add nothing to the story
proper but do add immeasurably to the atmosphere--and atmosphere is
miraculously handled by this master. Then he will begin to show phases
of the leading character. And when at last we have formed a perfect
picture of the person in his surroundings, a dramatic, a pathetic,
a deep-revealing flash comes forth in the form of an anecdote or an
incident--and the story is done. Character pictures, mostly _in statu
quo_--these are the master’s offerings. Plot, in the modern sense, is
almost unknown to Turgenev--as character-drawing, alas, is almost a
lost art to the short-story writer of today! But it must be said that
only an artist of the first order could carry his method to success.

A list of Turgenev’s short fictional pieces--technical short-stories
they are not--would number more than fifty, many of them almost
novelettes in length. Some of the best are “Assia,” “The Jew,” “A Lear
of the Steppes,” “Mumu,” “First Love,” “The Brigadier,” and “The Song
of Triumphant Love.”

In the following outline and translated passages taken from M. de
Vogüé’s distinguished discussion of “Russian Novelists,” we may gain a
good view of Turgenev’s method and style.

In “A Living Relic,”[2] Turgenev as the narrator strongly wakes a
human chord. On a hunting expedition, he enters by chance an abandoned
shed, where he finds a wretched human being, a woman, deformed, and
unable to move. He recognizes in her a former serving-maid of his
mother’s, once a gay, laughing girl, now paralyzed, stricken by
some strange and terrible disease. This poor creature, reduced to a
skeleton, lying forgotten in this miserable shed, has no longer any
relations with the outside world. No one takes care of her; kind people
sometimes replenish her jar with fresh water. She requires nothing
else. The only sign of life, if life it can be called, is in her eyes
and her faint respiration. But this hideous wreck of a body contains
an immortal soul, purified by suffering, utterly resigned, lifted
above itself, this simple peasant nature, into the realms of perfect
self-renunciation.

Lukerya relates her misfortune: how she was seized with this illness
after a fall in the dark; how she had gone out one dark evening to
listen to the songs of the nightingales; how gradually every faculty
and every joy of life had forsaken her.

Her betrothed was so sorry; but, then, afterwards he married; what else
could he do? She hopes he is happy. For years her only diversion has
been to listen to the church-bells, and the drowsy hum of the bees in
the hives of the apiary near-by. Sometimes a swallow comes and flutters
about in the shed, which is a great event, and gives her something to
think about for several weeks. The people that bring water to her are
so kind, she is so grateful to them! And gradually, almost cheerfully,
she goes back with the young master to the memories of old days, and
reminds him how vain she was of being the leader in all the songs and
dances; at last, she even tries to hum one of those songs.

“I really dreaded to have this half-dead creature try to sing. Before
I could speak, she uttered a sound very faintly, but the note was
correct; then another, and she began to sing ‘In the Fields.’... As
she sang there was no change of expression in her paralyzed face or in
her fixed eyes. This poor little forced voice sounded so pathetic, and
she made such an effort to express her whole soul, that my heart was
pierced with the deepest pity.”

Lukerya relates her terrible dreams, how Death has appeared before
her; not that she dreads his coming, but he always goes away and will
not deliver her. She refuses all offers of assistance from her young
master; she desires nothing, needs nothing, is perfectly content. As
her visitor is about to leave her, she calls him back for a last word.
She seems to be conscious (how feminine is this!) of the terrible
impression she must have made upon him, and says:

“Do you remember, master, what beautiful hair I had? You know it
reached to my knees.... I hesitated a long time about cutting it off,
but what could I do with it as I am? So--I cut it off.... Adieu,
master!”

                   *       *       *       *       *

In “The District Doctor,” which is appended in a new translation, we
find a fuller and even more characteristic specimen of Turgenev’s
story-telling. Both reveal the warm heart of the great man, and his
unfailing sympathy, which his own painful despair was never allowed to
suppress.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[2] From “A Sportman’s Sketches.”




                          THE DISTRICT DOCTOR
                          _By Ivan Turgenev_


Returning from a distant field one autumn day, I fell ill with a bad
cold. Luckily for me, the fever caught me in the district town, in a
hotel. I sent for the doctor. After a half-hour, the district physician
appeared--a dark, meagre little man. He prescribed the customary
sudorific and a mustard-plaster; and dexterously inserting into his
cuff my five-ruble note--coughing dryly and glancing sideways as he did
so--he was about to depart, but somehow began to talk and remained.
The fever made me restless; anticipating a sleepless night, I was glad
to have some one to chat with. Tea was brought in. The doctor was in
a conversational mood. He was not a bad fellow, and expressed himself
well and divertingly. How strange it is with men! You have known one
for a long time and are intimate with him, yet not once have you
ventured to talk with him frankly, from your very soul; another you
have hardly become acquainted with, and yet--either you tell him or
else he tells you, as if in confessional, his very inmost thoughts. I
do not know how I earned the confidence of my new acquaintance; but
he somehow or other “got started,” as they say, and told me a really
remarkable tale, which I present here to the sympathetic reader. I
shall try to express the story in the doctor’s own words.

“You don’t know,” he began in a faltering, trembling voice (such is the
effect of the unmixed Berezovsk snuff)--“you don’t know the judge of
this place, Pavel Luikich Muilov?... No?... Well, it doesn’t matter.”
The doctor coughed and wiped his eyes. “Any way, to be exact, it
happened during Lent, in the thaw season. I was sitting in the judge’s
house, playing ‘preference.’ Our judge is a good fellow, and loves
to play the game. Suddenly”--the doctor employed the word _suddenly_
often--“I was informed that some one came for me. ‘What does he want?’
I asked. ‘It’s some one with a note; it must be from a sick person.’ I
read the note, and, sure enough, it was from some one ill.... Well, all
right--that, you see, is my bread.... The note was from a widow, and
here was the case as she put it:

    “My daughter is dying; come at once, for God’s sake! I am
    sending the horses to fetch you.”

“But that was not all.... Her house was some twenty versts from town;
a black night outdoors, and the roads simply mean! She was as poor
as a mouse, too. ‘Lucky,’ I thought, ‘if I get two rubles.’ Still,
duty before everything--you can’t let a person die! Suddenly I handed
over my cards to Councillor Kalliopin, and started for home. To be
sure, there was a coach waiting for me near the porch; and a couple of
working horses, very big-bellied, and with hides like felt; the driver,
out of respect, was sitting with his hat off. ‘Well,’ said I to myself,
‘it’s plain to be seen your masters haven’t got much gold.’... You
may laugh, but here is a fact worth considering.... When the driver
sits like a prince, and keeps his cap on his head, and even laughs
under his beard, and flourishes his whip--you may count on a couple
of bank-notes! But this, you could see, was an altogether different
matter. Still, there was no way out of it; duty before everything.
Quickly I collected my most indispensable medicines, and off I went.

“Believe me, I don’t see how I got there. A wretched road, puddles,
snow, mud, ruts, suddenly a dam burst somewhere--misery, in short! Any
way, I got there. It was a small, thatched-roofed house. There was a
light in the windows. It meant they were awaiting me. I was met by a
little old lady, very dignified-looking, in a cap. ‘Save her!’ she
cried. ‘She is dying!’ ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ I told her, and asked to be
shown the patient.... ‘This way, please!’

“I was led into a small but clean room, in one corner of which hung an
ikon-lamp. On the bed lay a twenty-year-old maiden, unconscious; in a
high fever. Here also were her two sisters, frightened and in tears.
‘Only yesterday,’ they said, ‘she was altogether well, and ate with
appetite; but this morning she complained of pains in her head, and
tonight suddenly she is like this.’... ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ I once more
reassured them--as you know, it’s one of the doctor’s obligations--and
proceeded to my task. I bled her, applied mustard-plasters, and
prescribed a mixture. And all the time I couldn’t take my eyes from
her--upon my word, I never saw such a face ... a beauty, in fact! I
was torn by compassion. Such a lovely face, and eyes!... There, thank
God, she had grown quieter; perspiration had set in. She was coming
to herself; she glanced around her, smiled, moved her hand across her
face.... Her sisters bent over her, they asked her, ‘What is the matter
with you?’ ‘Nothing,’ she answered, and turned away.... When I looked
again she was asleep. I advised quiet; and so we all, on our tiptoes,
made our way out, and the maid alone remained in the room, in case of
an emergency.

“In the drawing-room the samovar was steaming. They gave me tea, and
I was invited to stay overnight.... I agreed; it was late, where else
could I go? The little old lady continued to sigh. ‘Don’t worry,’ I
said to her. ‘Your daughter shall live. And you too need some rest--it
is two o’clock.’... ‘And you’ll see that I’m awakened if anything
should happen?’ ... I promised.

“The old lady and the girls went to their rooms; my own bed was made in
the drawing-room. I lay down, but could not sleep, which was unusual
for me. I could not get my patient out of my mind. Finally, I could
stand it no longer, and arose. I thought to myself I’d take a peep at
her and see how she was coming along. Her bedroom was right next to the
drawing-room. I opened the door quietly--and my heart beat violently.
There was the maid asleep, her mouth agape; and snoring, mind you,
the wretch! As for the patient, she lay with her face turned in my
direction, her arms stretched out, poor girl! I approached closer.
Suddenly she opened her eyes and fixed them on me!... ‘Who are you?
Who are you?’... I became confused. ‘Don’t be frightened, miss. I’m
the doctor come to attend to you.’ ‘You are the doctor?’ ‘Yes, the
doctor.... Your mother sent to town for me; and in a day or two, with
God’s help, we’ll put you on your feet.’ ‘Yes, yes, Doctor, please
don’t let me die ... please.’ ‘Miss, what are you saying!’ ‘She’s
feverish again,’ I thought to myself. I felt her pulse; sure enough,
high fever. She looked at me ... and suddenly she took my hand.... ‘I
will tell you,’ she went on, ‘why I do not wish to die. I will tell
you, I will tell you ... now we are alone; only to you, to no one
else.... Listen.’... I bent over her; she placed her lips to my very
ear, brushing my cheek with her hair--I must confess, it made my head
swim--and began to whisper.... I understood nothing.... Delirious....
She continued to whisper very rapidly; it didn’t at all sound like
Russian. When she ceased she trembled, let her head drop on the pillow,
and shook a warning finger at me. ‘Remember, Doctor, tell no one!’...
Somehow, I managed to quiet her; I then gave her a drink, awakened the
maid, and left her.”

At this juncture the doctor again, with a movement of exasperation,
took a pinch of snuff, and for an instant seemed affected.

“However,” he continued, “the next day, contrary to my expectation,
my patient did not improve. After some deliberation on my part,
I suddenly made up my mind to remain, despite the fact that other
patients were awaiting me.... As you know, one can’t afford to neglect
these--the practice suffers. Well, in the first place, my patient was
really in desperate straits; and then again, to confess the truth to
you, I felt strongly attracted towards her; besides, I took a liking to
the entire family. Though poor people, they were highly educated....
The father of the family was a learned man, an author; I need not
add that he died poor. He managed, however, to give his children an
excellent bringing-up. He also left quite a number of books. Whether
it was because of this that I attended the patient so assiduously or
for other reasons, there is no question that those in the house grew to
love me like one of their own kin....

“In the meantime the thaw made the roads very bad; all communication,
one might say, was cut off. The medicine was obtained from town with
considerable difficulty.... The patient did not improve.... Days came,
and days went.... Just then something ... something----” The doctor
paused. “Upon my word, I don’t know how to express myself.”... Once
more he helped himself to the snuff; he laughed, and swallowed his tea
in a gulp. “Well, not to beat about the bush, my patient ... how should
one put it? ... she fell in love with me.... Or rather, you see, it
was not exactly that ... but ... upon my word, how should one----” The
doctor grew embarrassed and blushed.

“No,” he went on with some animation; “how could she fall in love with
me? One must know one’s own value. She was an educated, clever, and
well-read girl; while I had almost entirely forgotten even the little
Latin that I once knew. As for my looks”--the doctor surveyed himself
with a smiling glance--“it seems to me I also have nothing to boast of.
Still, God did not make me a fool; I will not call black that which is
white. I know a thing or two. For instance, I understood perfectly that
Alexandra Andreyevna--that was her name--did not actually love me, but
rather felt a sort of friendliness towards me, or perhaps it was just
respect. Though it is possible she herself misunderstood this feeling,
yet she was in such a state that--well, you may judge for yourself....
However,” the doctor added, as he continued his broken speeches, which
he uttered without stopping to take breath, and with evident confusion,
“it seems I have gotten off the track somewhat.... You simply will not
understand what I am saying.... Well, I will try to tell everything in
its order.”

He finished his glass of tea, and, speaking more calmly, resumed his
story.

“That’s the way it happened. My patient grew worse and worse. You,
my friend, are not a physician; therefore, it is hard for you to
understand just what the young doctor experiences in his soul when
he begins to suspect that the disease is mastering him. Where is his
self-confidence then? Your courage simply oozes out of you; words can’t
describe it. A notion takes possession of you that you have forgotten
all you ever knew, that the patient has lost faith in you, and that
the others are beginning to notice your bewilderment and to report
new symptoms to you reluctantly; they glance at you from under their
eyebrows, they whisper among themselves.... How mortifying! There
should be some medicine, you permit yourself to think, to counteract
this disease--if you only knew which one! Perhaps that’s the one. You
try it--no, that’s not it! You haven’t given the mixture sufficient
time to work ... and you try another. Or you turn the pages of your
pharmacopœia ... thinking you might hit upon something.... In the
meantime a person is dying; another doctor might have saved him. A
consultation is necessary, you argue to yourself; you don’t feel like
taking the entire responsibility. What a fool you are made to look,
under the circumstances! After a time, of course, you get used to it.
A person dies--well, it isn’t your fault, you have done everything
according to rules. It is even more painful when the relatives show
blind faith in you, while in your own heart you know you are unable to
help.

“It was such a faith that the family of Alexandra Andreyevna exhibited
towards me, forgetting that the daughter was in danger. I too, on my
part, reassured them that it was nothing; and all the time my heart
was in my mouth. To add to my misfortunes, the roads grew so bad from
the thaw that it took the driver a whole day sometimes to fetch the
medicines.

“As for me, I remained in the room of the patient, couldn’t tear myself
away. I used to tell her amusing anecdotes and to play cards with
her. I sat through whole nights with her. Her mother used to thank me
with tears in her eyes; but I thought to myself, ‘I’m not worthy of
your thanks.’ To be candid with you--nothing is to be gained now by
concealing the truth--I fell in love with my patient. And Alexandra
Andreyevna too became attached to me; there were times indeed when
she wouldn’t permit any one but me in her room. She loved to chat
with me--she’d ask me where I had studied, how I lived, who were my
kin, whom did I know? I felt that she had no right to talk; and yet
I couldn’t think of forbidding her. I’d sometimes put my hands to my
head, and I’d reproach myself: ‘What are you doing, murderer?’...
And she’d take my hand and hold it, and continue to look at me long,
very long; at times she would turn away, utter a sigh, and then she
would mutter, ‘How good you are!’ Meanwhile her hands were burning;
her eyes grew large and dark. ‘Yes,’ she would say; ‘you are a good,
kind man, not at all like our neighbors ... not in the least.’...
How my poor heart would go a-fluttering! And all the time ‘Alexandra
Andreyevna, be quiet,’ I’d say to her.... ‘Believe me, I am grateful,
I don’t know how I have earned it ... only, please be quiet, for
God’s sake, be quiet.... Everything shall come out all right, and
you shall get well.’ I should tell you, however,” added the doctor,
bending forward and raising his eyebrows, “that they had had little
to do with the neighbors, because the poorer folk weren’t up to them,
while pride stood between them and the rich. I tell you, they were a
highly-educated family--which was flattering to me, to be sure.

“From my hands alone she would take her medicine.... She’d raise
herself, poor girl, with my help, swallow it, and then glance at
me.... How my poor heart would go a-fluttering! And all the time she
was growing worse and worse. ‘She will die,’ was my thought, ‘she will
certainly die.’ Believe me, I would as lief have descended into the
grave myself; and there was her mother standing about; her sisters
too were anxious, as they looked into my eyes.... Surely their faith
couldn’t last much longer. ‘Well, what today?’ they’d ask. ‘Nothing,
nothing,’ I’d reply; but, in truth, my mind was in a whirl.

“One night I sat as usual at the bedside of my patient. The maid too
was sitting in the room, and snoring for all she was worth.... She too,
poor girl, was exhausted. Alexandra Andreyevna had been feeling badly
all that evening; the fever tormented her. Until midnight she tossed
about, and finally fell asleep; at least, she lay motionless. In a
corner, before the ikon, a lamp was burning. I sat there, my head in my
hands, dozing.

“Suddenly--it was as if some one gave me a thrust in the side--I raised
my head.... Good God! Alexandra Andreyevna, with her eyes wide open,
was gazing at me.... Her lips were parted, her cheeks burning. ‘What
is the matter?’ ‘Doctor, am I going to die?’ ‘God forbid!’ ‘No, Doctor,
no, please don’t tell me that I shall live ... don’t tell me.... If you
only knew ... listen to me, for God’s sake, don’t conceal from me my
true state!’ She said this with panting breath. ‘If I were only sure
that I shall die ... I’d tell you all, all!’ ‘Alexandra Andreyevna,
I entreat you!’ ‘Listen to me,’ she said: ‘I haven’t slept at all; I
have been looking at you a long time.... For God’s sake! ... I believe
you; you are a good man and an honest man; I conjure you by all
that is holy upon earth--to tell me the truth! If you only knew how
important it is that I should know!... Doctor, for God’s sake, tell
me, am I in danger?’ ‘What am I to tell you, Alexandra Andreyevna, I
beg of you?’ ‘I entreat you, for God’s sake!’ ‘I can’t conceal it from
you, Alexandra Andreyevna, you are really in danger, but the Lord is
merciful.’... ‘I shall die, I shall die!’... And she actually seemed
overjoyed; her face lit up with radiance; I became alarmed. ‘Don’t
be afraid, don’t be afraid; death does not terrify me.’ Suddenly she
raised herself, and propped herself up on her elbow. ‘Well, now I can
tell you that I am grateful to you from my very soul, that you are a
good, honest man, and that I love you.’... I gazed on her as on one
mad; it was painful to me, as you may well understand.... ‘Do you hear?
I love you!’... ‘Alexandra Andreyevna, how have I earned your love?’
‘No, no, you don’t understand me ... thou dost not understand me.’[3]
... And suddenly she stretched out her arms, seized my head between her
hands, and kissed me.... Believe me, I nearly cried out.... I threw
myself on my knees and hid my head in the pillows. She was silent;
her fingers trembled in my hair; I could hear her weeping. I tried
to quiet her, to reassure her.... I really don’t know what I said to
her. ‘You’ll awaken the maid, Alexandra Andreyevna,’ I said to her....
‘Indeed, I am grateful ... believe me ... calm yourself.’ ‘Enough,
enough,’ she repeated. ‘God be with them all; let them awaken, let
them come--it is all the same; since I shall die.... But why do you
tremble, why are you afraid? Lift your head.... Or perhaps you don’t
love me, perhaps I have been deceived.... If so, please forgive me.’
‘Alexandra Andreyevna, what are you saying? ... I love you, Alexandra
Andreyevna.’ She looked straight into my eyes, and opened her arms.
‘Then embrace me.’...

“To speak candidly, I can’t quite comprehend how it was that I didn’t
lose my mind that night. There was the feeling that she was consuming
herself, also that she was not in her senses; and that were it not
for the fact that she considered herself as dying, she wouldn’t have
thought of me. Say what you will, it’s a hideous thought to be dying
at twenty years of age without having loved some one; that is what
tortured her, that is why in her desperation she clung to me--do you
grasp the idea? She held me there in her embrace. ‘Have pity on me,
Alexandra Andreyevna, and have pity on thyself,’ I said to her. ‘Why,
should I?’ was her reply. ‘What is there to pity, since I must die?’...
She repeated this incessantly. ‘If I only knew that I’d remain alive
and go among respectable young ladies, I’d feel ashamed, dreadfully
ashamed ... but what does it matter to me now?’ ‘Who told you you’re
going to die?’ ‘Oh, no, enough of this, you shan’t fool me, you
don’t know how to lie, look at yourself.’ ‘You shall live, Alexandra
Andreyevna, I shall save you; then we will ask your mother for her
blessing.... We will marry, we will be happy.’ ‘No, no, I have your
word for it, I must die.... You had promised me.... You told me so.’...

“I felt bitter at heart, and for many reasons. And judge for yourself;
often small things happen, trifling in themselves, yet they are
painful. It occurred to her to ask me my Christian name. As ill luck
will have it, I am called Trifon; yes, Trifon, Trifon Ivanich. In the
house I was simply called Doctor. There was no help for it. ‘Trifon,
miss,’ I replied. She looked amused, and she shook her head; then
she whispered something in French--something that didn’t sound quite
nice; then she laughed; it was unpleasant to me, I assure you. In such
a manner I passed almost the entire night with her. In the morning
I left her, almost not in my own senses. I reëntered her room later
in the morning, after tea. Good God! she was hardly recognizable; a
corpse couldn’t have looked worse. I swear to you, upon my honor, I
really can’t understand how I endured the torture. Three days and
three nights more my patient lingered ... and what nights they were!
And the things she said to me!... Then the final night--imagine to
yourself; I was sitting beside her, and there was in my heart but
one prayer to God: ‘Take her as soon as possible, and me also.’...
Suddenly, unexpectedly, her mother entered the room.... I had already
told her the day before that there was but little hope, and that it
would be well to have a priest. The sick girl, seeing her mother,
blurted out, ‘I’m glad you came.... Look at us, we love each other, we
have promised ourselves to each other!’ ‘What is she saying, Doctor,
what is she saying?’ I grew deathly pale. ‘She’s delirious, it’s the
fever.’... But she went on: ‘Enough, enough, only a little while ago
you spoke differently to me, and even accepted a ring from me ... why
do you dissemble? My mother is good-hearted, she will forgive. She will
understand; but I’m dying--there’s no reason why I should lie; give me
your hand.’... I sprang up and ran out of the room. The old mother, of
course, guessed the true state of affairs.

“I’ll not go on, however, tiring you with any further details. As it
is, I find it painful to recall it all. The girl died the next day. May
the Holy Kingdom be hers!” added the doctor quickly and with a sigh.
“Before she died she requested her kin to go out of the room and to
leave me alone with her. ‘Forgive me,’ she said to me. ‘I perhaps am
guilty before you ... my illness ... but, believe me, I never loved
any one so much ... don’t forget me ... take care of my ring.’”

The doctor turned away his face; I took his hand.

“Eh!” he sighed, “let’s chat about something else, or perhaps you’d
rather have a game of ‘preference,’ for a trifle? It’s not for our
kind to give way to elevated feelings. There’s but one thing left for
us--to manage that our children don’t squall, and our wives don’t
scold. Since those days, you see, I have entered, as one might say,
into the legal bonds of matrimony.... Well.... I married a merchant’s
daughter, who brought me a _dot_ of seven thousand rubles. Her name is
Akulina; it goes just right with Trifon. She is an ill-tempered dame,
but fortunately she sleeps all day long.... Did you say ‘preference’?”

We began to play preference, at a copeck. Trifon Ivanich succeeded in
winning from me two rubles and a half, and left late, much gratified
with his victory.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[3] The change from _you_ to _thou_ is significant here, because among
the Russians _thou_ is employed only in familiar or intimate sense.




                     TOLSTOI, ARTIST AND PREACHER


As a man of letters, Lyoff Nikolaievitch, Count Tolstoi, holds
undisputed place in the first rank; as a philosophical preacher of
reform, his position is much less secure. And it is sadly ironical that
one who was so ready to lay aside those fictional laurels which all men
yielded to him readily, has not been accorded the preëminence among
moralists which he held to be of so much greater worth.

The last twenty years of his abundant life disclosed in this greatest
of all Russians that which was always really present--the single eye,
with its gaze constantly set upon ethical ideals. Even a swift survey
of his life and its so closely interpenetrating work will bear out this
estimate--perhaps surprisingly.

In 1828, on September 9--August 28, old style--Tolstoi was born at
Yasnaia Polyana, in the government of Tula, Russia. For several
centuries his wealthy and noble family was distinguished in military
and state affairs as well as in literature, one of his ancestors, Peter
Tolstoi, having been the intimate of Peter the Great. Lyoff’s father,
Nikolai, and his mother, the Princess Volkhonsky, died while he was yet
a lad, leaving him in charge of an aunt. He inherited a rich estate
which his father had succeeded in thriftily disencumbering from the
debts of extravagance contracted by his own father.

The future author was educated at home, spent some time (1843-44)
at the University of Kazan, did further private work at home, for a
while studied law in St. Petersburg, alternated between his estates
and the social life of the great cities, and eventually entered the
army in 1851. It was during this period that he gathered much of the
material for his early stories, notably “The Cossacks,” a short novel
of unmistakable power and insight; and the rambling autobiographical
stories, “Childhood,” “Boyhood,” and “Youth,” generally combined under
the first title. When the Crimean War broke out, in 1853, Tolstoi was
transferred to the army of the Danube, and distinguished himself for
bravery before Sevastopol--as well as by his three notable sketches
which bear the name of this great siege, “Sevastopol in December,”
“Sevastopol in May,” and “Sevastopol in August.”

Tolstoi’s life as a soldier was that of a rake--in which he differed
not at all from the young noblemen of the period. But this wild career
does not seem to have interfered with his fondness for moralizing,
nor with his conviction that he was the spiritual Moses, divinely
commissioned to lead the Russian people out of the wilderness. His
youthful diary confesses that the three passions to which he yielded,
gambling, sensuality, and vanity, were moral stumbling-blocks; and
with naïve premonition he wrote: “There is something in me which
makes me think that I was not born to be just like everybody else.”
But the most remarkable youthful forecast is found in the words which
Professor Phelps quotes from Tolstoi’s journal of this period: “The man
who has no other goal than his own happiness is a bad man. He whose
goal is the good opinion of others is a weak man. He whose goal is
the happiness of others is a virtuous man. He whose goal is God is a
great man.” In these cumulative epigrams we have a summary of Tolstoi’s
creed. However far afield he wandered in middle years, distressed by
doubts and confused by jangling voices, the sturdy seeking-soul of
him followed this great light with the single eye of an honest man,
and this altruistic doctrine he preached with increasing loftiness,
through excommunication and charges of insanity, down to the very end.
That so extreme a theory should lead him often into blind avenues, and
that the phantoms of many inconsistencies should challenge his way,
was inevitable; yet Tolstoi stands before the world today as a good
man and an earnest one, who never lay upon a couch of down while he
preached abnegation for others.

An insatiable psychological curiosity possessed the Russian master
from youth to the close of his fiction-writing years. In the exercise
of this minute observing power, he is as amazing a realist as was
Balzac, and when he confines his examinations to humans he is quite
as profoundly interesting, but rather tiresome when he records the
numberless details of inanimate nature.

A character so given to scrutiny would naturally be introspective, so
that his novels are markedly autobiographical. And it is always the
struggling, set-upon, brooding character which the novelist chooses
through which to depict his own nature. How different from the romantic
self-exploitation of Byron! In “Childhood,” _Nikolenka_ is Tolstoi
himself, as _Olénine_ is in “The Cossacks.” So too in _Levine_ of “Anna
Karenina,” _Pozdnichev_, of “The Kreutzer Sonata,” and _Nekhlioudov_,
of “Resurrection” (his final creed-summary), we have pictures of the
self-recognized characteristics and beliefs of the author.

Each of these distinguished novels exhibits the same loosely-knit,
diffuse, and digressive literary method, and the same marvellous
perfection of character analysis and description. Each, also, advances
a step toward that morbid idealism which was always seeking a new
expression for a philosophy which was never finally set, but remained a
shifting formulary to the last.

“War and Peace” is a huge study of the times of Napoleon and Alexander,
brilliant and tedious by turns, and requiring leisure for its
reading--in the last analysis, a really great novel. “Anna Karenina”
treats with great frankness and high moral purpose contemporaneous
Russian society. Both these remarkable books abound in striking
comparisons, witty comments, well differentiated character work, and
convincing pictures of their times.

Shortly after finishing these works, Tolstoi emerged from his groping,
pessimistic, skeptical, nihilistic philosophy and “discovered” the
Sermon on the Mount. Thenceforward he was the Preacher. It is true
that, as his devoted wife playfully said, he changed his views every
two years, yet his devotion to his altruistic creed--the creed of his
youth, as we have seen--was so firm that neither the dying adjurations
of his friend Turgenev nor the clamors of the forty-five peoples into
whose separate languages his writings have been translated could induce
him to return to fiction--he felt that the mantle of a new spiritual
leadership was upon his shoulders, and thenceforward the story-teller’s
art, when exercised at all, was to be merely a means to the ulterior
end of teaching.

A great number of didactic essays wearing the transparent gauze of
fiction came from Tolstoi’s pen in this period, as well as many
religious and ethical treatises, besides one astounding, ideal-smashing
discussion, “What is Art?” Radicalism is the native air of reform, and
our author was fond of drastic measures in practice and in theory. The
communism of his middle period found new emphasis in the later long
essay, “What, Then, Must be Done?” Yet his was a directly contrary
individualism of personal philosophy. Contradictory again was his
abandonment of the city and adoption of the peasant life on his own
estates. Indeed, one looks in vain for consistency in the working-out
of his whole career; and yet, while the general course swerved
startlingly time and again, no one could doubt the naïve sincerity
of this sophisticated, simple mind, this nobleman peasant, this
iconoclastic gentle man, this nihilistic Christian, this pessimistic
idealist, this contradictory soul of single purpose, this incarnation
of selfish unselfishness. For there can be no doubt that Tolstoi’s
character was greater than his confused system of ethics, just as
his intellect was greater than his philosophy. Think of the supreme
selfless egoism that could permit a wife with whom he lived as with a
sister for years--probably ever since he propounded his extreme marital
theories in “The Kreutzer Sonata”--to copy as often as ten times the
myriad pages of his works, all laboriously by hand! And yet, because
his followers demanded that he should exemplify his doctrines, and
partly also because this eighty-two-year-old father of ten children
could not live peacefully under stress of the divided beliefs of the
home, he broke the heart of this devoted woman by leaving home secretly
by night, and died thus in retreat shortly after, November 20 (O. S.
Nov. 7), 1910. For four days the Countess Sophia was beneath the roof
where her husband lay ill, yet only at the last did she venture to come
into his room, drop on her knees by his bedside, and kiss the hand that
for conscience’ sake had smitten her! Strange contradiction of human
life when this idealizer of family love, this apostle of gentleness,
this generous soul who could withhold nothing from the needy, make
over his estate to his family years before he died, refuse to receive
royalties from his books, beg the public to forget his masterpieces
of fiction and read only his tractates, labor in the fields and eat
peasant bread--when this great soul could love-starve the aged
helpmeet who had been his strength for three-score years!

                   *       *       *       *       *

In the midst of so many vague and divergent expressions throughout
his whole literary career, and especially in “My Religion” and
“Resurrection,” it is difficult to crystallize what Tolstoi taught. But
this seems to me to be the gist:

We have two natures: the animal nature, which decays and dies, and the
spiritual, which lives forever. Life consists in doing those things
which gratify our desires, and thus bring happiness. But when we
attempt to live and gain happiness by the gratification of our animal
natures we meet only disappointment, for animal desires can never
be really satisfied. Therefore we need to be regenerated, which is
nothing more than the enthronement of our spiritual natures and the
denying or casting-out of our animal natures. The gratification of
our spiritual selves is found in Love, the only good, and the essence
of love consists not in self-pleasing but in seeking our happiness
in the happiness and well-being of others. Thus do we obey the law
of God and become one with Him. In the exercise of our desires for
the well-being of others we will not only deny ourselves all carnal
desires, but never oppose force by force--love will be sufficient to
overcome all enemies. We must not even flee from suffering, danger, or
death, but accept each as good, whereupon it will cease to have power
to harm us. This life of love is opposed to all selfish acquisition of
property. To be truly happy, we must get back to the soil, abandon the
artificialities of city life, labor for our food, and give to others.

Though Tolstoi turned so often, and finally without backsliding, to the
peasant class, he did not so much champion their cause as he gemmed a
crown for the obscure life as such. He could not pity those whose ways
were laborious, because to him no other career than bodily toil could
bring the highest good. The outbursting, fiercely passionate soul of
all his later years was for the pitiable masses who still chose swords
rather than plowshares, who preferred a lawsuit to a loss, who loved
the city more than the country, who saw joy in the factory and none in
the farm.

Those who have only a shivering admiration for the terrors of Russian
fiction in general will find in Tolstoi’s short-stories much that
is sweet and gentle; yet, being the most Russian of all Russian
fiction-writers, he could but cry aloud with the pity of his people.
But greater than his pity was his passion for preaching.

Sermons big and little lurk in every corner of his stories to fix
you with their relentless eyes. Even when the tale is not clearly
didactic, a swift vision of moral relations is sure to come to him who
reads. For an instance, take “My Dream,” the story of a Russian prince
whose daughter runs away with a married man and bears him a child. At
length the sister-in-law of the prince pleads with him to forgive his
daughter. Here is his severe reply:

    “I have suffered enough. I have now but one desire, and that
    is to put her in such a position that she will be independent
    of others, and that she shall have no further need of
    communicating with me. Then she can live her own life, and my
    family and I need know nothing more about her. That is all I
    can do.”

But the woman-heart crystallizes the teaching of the story when she
replies:

    “Michael, you say nothing but ‘I.’ She too is ‘I.’”

There is a fine, high spirit, too, in “Where Love is, There God is
Also.”

Martin Andyeeich was an honest Russian cobbler whose wife and children
had died, leaving him with but one child, a small boy, upon whom he had
set his heart. But that child also died, and Martin reproached God. At
length a pilgrim monk directed him to the gospels, and the cobbler
became a devout follower of their teachings.

One day he heard a Voice which bade him look tomorrow into the street,
for Christ would come to him. The Lord did not appear, however, and
for a long while the only one with whom Martin conversed was a chilled
old snow-sweeper, to whom the cobbler gave hot tea to drink, as he
explained to him the gospel; after which the grateful old man left.
Martin continued to look for Christ, but He did not come--though he
did see a poorly clad woman with a little child. These he fed and
warmed, hearing her story and bestowing an old jacket to cover her thin
summer garments. He next acted as mediator between an old woman and a
mischievous boy who had stolen her apples; and to her also he expounded
the new truth which had possessed him--the doctrine of love. Thus all
day long he had looked for the Christ and had not seen him. But now
as he returned to his cellar a Presence declared itself as He who had
said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these My brethren,
ye have done it unto Me.” “And Martin then understood that his dream
had not deceived him, and that the Saviour had really come to him that
day, and he had really received Him.”

One of the stories in Tolstoi’s earlier style is “A Prisoner in the
Caucasus.”

Zhilin was an officer in the Caucasus in wartime. His aged mother
persuaded him to come home once more to see her, and to marry the girl
she had chosen to be his bride. The roads were impassable. The Tartars
killed or carried into the mountains all Russians they captured.
For this reason a military escort passed twice a week from fortress
to fortress. Travelling thus, Zhilin became impatient at delays and
decided to ride on alone. Kostuilin, another mounted officer, decided
to go with him. They had not gone far when they were taken by the
Tartars, bound, and held in a Tartar village for ransom. After many
weeks, they escaped, only to be retaken and brought back to the
village. And now the hut in which they were thrown and their food were
worse than before. Again, after many weeks, Zhilin, with the aid of a
Tartar maid, escaped, and finally reached the fortress. “You see,” he
told his comrades, “I was going home to be married. But no; that is
evidently not to be my fate.” Eventually he and his comrades ransomed
Kostuilin for five thousand rubles.

I relate this perfectly plotless tale to show how on a slender thread
of actual incident Tolstoi could hang a tremendous weight, for this
story, with its naked truth-telling as to conditions, forced the
government to act, by the sheer force of public opinion, and this is a
miracle in Russia.

Another plotless story whose ten thousand words pile up a tremendous
impression of character is “An Old Acquaintance.” The narrative,
told in the first person by Prince Nelshiludof, is of how, during an
expedition in the Caucasus, he met an acquaintance from Moscow. The
splendor of the night in the open and the recreations of the officers
are given in gems of description.

During a game of skittles, Guskof, a cashiered officer who now lives
with the adjutant, comes to the prince, who seems faintly to recollect
having met him before. After some general conversation, the officers
retire for either sleep or gambling, leaving the prince and Guskof
alone. Upon being asked if they had not met before, Guskof reminds the
prince of their having met at the home of Guskof’s sister in Moscow,
and this leads to further reminiscences.

During a long walk that night, Guskof, who constantly by his own story
exhibits his weakness of character, tells how he once was of the
highest society of St. Petersburg, but had been--through a liaison
and a resulting duel--put under arrest and later cashiered. But this
weakness is further shown when he goes on to lament his treatment at
the hands of other officers with whom he comes in contact. He expresses
a feeling of great disgust at their mode of spending their leisure
hours. He admits that he is a moral coward--which is proven later. At
length, after further conversation, which inspires a mixed feeling of
disgust and pity in the prince, Guskof borrows from him some money.
Suddenly, the bursting of a shell causes Guskof to cringe in abject
terror, and in the confusion he disappears, but later is seen by the
prince in a tent offering in a maudlin voice the money which he had
borrowed, and boasting of how “his friend the prince” was rich, and how
he had just gotten ten rubles from him.

Perhaps the pity of life, and the tragic results of its sins, are
nowhere more piercingly set forth than in Tolstoi’s short-story “Korney
Vasiliev”--structurally, his most perfect little fiction, for generally
situation rather than plot makes the stronger appeal to our author.

Korney, a well-to-do merchant, after a temporary absence, is returning
to his home. While en route, Kuzma, his driver, tells him that Martha,
Korney’s wife, has taken a new workman in the house--Yevstiquey, her
former lover, and that she is again living with him. The affair, says
Kuzma, is the talk of the village.

Korney does not know whether to believe the unreliable Kuzma, but on
arriving home sets out to find out for himself. He distributes the
presents he had brought back with him--one for his little daughter
Agatha, one for his son Theodore, one for his wife, and so on. At
bedtime, no longer able to restrain himself, he blurts out his
suspicions to his wife, who first ridicules them, but finally, under
her husband’s blows, admits their truth, and spitefully suggests that
little Agatha is not a child of Korney’s, but of Yevstiquey’s. The
child, coming into the room, is brutally used by him--her arm being
broken. At the end of this violent scene, Korney leaves his home.

After seventeen years, now a broken old man, Korney is returning home,
begging his way. After he left his wife he had taken to drink, spent
all his money, and, being unreliable, no one would keep him long at
work. The idea takes hold of him that it is his wife who has been the
cause of all his misery, and his one thought is, before she dies, to
go to her and show her what she has made of him. He is very weak, but
manages to make his way to a village, where a kindly young peasant
woman, seeing his plight, takes him in for the night and gives him
food, drink, and shelter. Noticing that she has a lame arm, he mentions
it, and the fact is revealed that she is Agatha, in whose eyes he
recognizes Yevstiquey. He breaks down, but does not reveal himself,
though in his heart he is sorry for what he did to the girl.

In the morning he trudges on toward his wife’s village. He knocks
on the door, and a woman comes out. He recognizes his wife, but how
old and haggard she has grown--she who had been so beautiful and so
strong! And all the resentment vanishes from his heart, and in its
place springs up a terrible pity. Everything else about the place
seems also to have undergone change. Even after he says appealingly,
“Martha, let us die together!” she still pretends not to recognize him,
takes him for a tramp, and tells him to go from the door. However, his
son Theodore--an image of his father when he was young--takes pity
on the old man, not knowing who he is, and, angry at his mother for
her unkindness, brings to the old man some black bread. The father is
touched, and, even weaker than he was, drags himself back to Agatha’s
village and begs for shelter, which is given him.

In the meantime, Martha’s conscience gives her no peace, and, learning
what direction old Korney has taken, she follows. Arrived at her
daughter’s house, she finds a crowd there mourning the old man, who has
died, and from his dignified old face she does not know whether he had
forgiven her or not.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The story that follows in translation is one of the most representative
of all the Russian’s shorter work. It speaks its own praises.




                             A LONG EXILE
        (Early title, “God Sees the Truth, but Bides His Time”)

                          _By Lyoff Tolstoi_


In the town of Vladimir there lived a young merchant, Aksenof by name.
He owned two shops and a home.

Aksenof was a fair, curly-headed, handsome fellow, always jolly and
singing. In his youth, Aksenof drank much, and when he was intoxicated
his ways were rough. Since his marriage, however, he had stopped
drinking, except upon rare occasions.

One day, in summer, Aksenof prepared to go to Nijni Novgorod, to the
fair. When he was bidding good-by to his wife she said to him:

“Ivan Dmitrievich,[4] don’t go this time. I dreamt a bad dream about
you.”

Aksenof laughed and replied:

“You are always afraid that I might get a bit jolly at the fair!”

His wife said:

“I myself hardly know why I’m afraid, but I dreamt evil. I dreamt that
you came home from town, and took off your hat; and I saw that your
head was gray.”

Aksenof laughed.

“Well, that means good luck. You’ll see. I’ll make some nice bargains,
and bring fine presents home.”

He bid his family farewell, and departed.

In the middle of his journey he met a merchant he knew, and they took
lodgings together for the night. First they drank tea, and then they
went to sleep in separate rooms which were near each other. Aksenof was
not a heavy sleeper. Awaking in the middle of the night, and wishing
to take advantage of its cool for travelling, he roused the driver and
ordered him to harness the carriage. Having paid his host, he took his
departure.

After he had covered some forty versts, he stopped again for food;
and, having rested and had his dinner in the shelter of the hotel, he
ordered tea, got hold of a guitar, and began to play. Suddenly there
arrived a troika, jingling its bells, and from the carriage descended
an official, accompanied by two soldiers. He approached Aksenof and
asked, “Who are you? Where are you from?” Aksenof answered properly,
and invited the official to tea. The latter, however, persisted in his
inquiries: “Where did you sleep the past night?”... “Alone or with the
merchant?”... “Did you see the merchant in the morning?”... “Why did
you depart so early from the hotel?” Aksenof told all as it happened,
and added, “Why do you ask all these questions? I’m not a thief or
a highwayman. I’m travelling on my business, and I do not see why I
should be asked questions.”

It was then that the official called to the soldiers, and said:

“I am a police official, and I am asking these questions because the
merchant with whom you lodged the past night has been found murdered.
Show us your things.... Search him!”

They entered the room, seized his travelling bag and sack, and started
to unbind and search. Suddenly the official brought forth a knife from
the sack, and roared out:

“Whose knife is this?”

Aksenof looked, and saw that a knife smeared with blood had been taken
out of his sack, and he was frightened.

“And why is there blood on this knife?”

Aksenof wished to reply, but he couldn’t utter a word.

“I--I don’t know. I--the knife is--I--not mine----”

Then the official said:

“This morning the merchant was found stabbed in his bed. It wasn’t
possible for any one else to do it. The house was locked from the
inside, and there was no one else in the house but you. Besides, the
knife covered with blood has been found in your sack; and your face too
shows it. Tell me, how did you kill him, and how much money did you
get?”

Aksenof swore that he was not the guilty man, that he did not see the
merchant after he had had tea with him, that the eight thousand rubles
in his possession were his own money, and that the knife was not his.
But his voice quavered, his face was pale, and he trembled from head to
foot, like one guilty.

The official called the soldiers, ordered him bound and taken into the
carriage. When, with his feet fast, he was thrust into the carriage,
Aksenof crossed himself and began to cry. Aksenof’s things and money
were taken from him, and he was sent to prison in a near-by city.
Inquiries were made in Vladimir to find out what sort of man he was,
and it was generally agreed among the merchants and inhabitants of the
city that while from the time of his youth Aksenof drank and had had a
good time, he was a good-hearted man. Then began his trial. The charge
against him was that he had killed the merchant and had stolen his
twenty thousand rubles.

Aksenof’s wife suffered intensely, and did not know what to think. Her
children were still young, one a suckling. She took them all with her
and arrived in the city where her husband was imprisoned. At first she
was refused admission, but after many petitions she was led to her
husband. When she saw him in prison apparel, in chains, among a lot of
cut-throats, she fell to the ground, and it was a long time before she
came to herself. Then she placed her children around her, sat down at
his side, and began to tell him all about the domestic affairs and to
ask him about all that had happened to him. After he had told her all,
she said:

“Well, what’s to be done now?”

He replied:

“It is necessary to send a petition to the Czar. It is wrong to let an
innocent person suffer.”

To this, his wife said that a petition to the Czar had already been
sent, but that it had not reached him. Thereupon Aksenof grew silent,
and seemed much downcast. Then she reminded him:

“There was something, after all, in that dream--do you remember?--in
which I saw you gray-headed. There, from sorrow you’ve really grown
gray. You shouldn’t have gone on the journey.”

And as she ran her fingers through his hair, she said:

“Vania, my dear one, tell your wife the truth: didn’t you really do it?”

Aksenof replied, “And you too believe it!” He covered his face with his
hands and wept. Later a soldier entered, and said that it was time for
the visitors to depart. And Aksenof for the last time bid farewell to
his family.

After his wife had gone, Aksenof began to recall his conversation with
her. When he remembered that his wife too suspected him and asked him
whether he had killed the merchant, he said to himself, “Now I see
that, except God, no one can know the truth, and that it is only to Him
we must appeal, and then await His mercy.” From that time on, Aksenof
ceased to send petitions, ceased to hope, and only prayed to God.

Aksenof was sentenced to the knout and hard labor.

The sentence was carried out. He was lashed with the knout, and when
the wounds healed he was driven with other convicts to Siberia.

In Siberia the convict lived twenty-six years, doing hard labor. The
hair on his head grew white like snow, while his beard grew long,
sparse, and gray. All his joy was gone. He was bent, walked slowly,
said little, never laughed, and prayed to God often.

In prison Aksenof learned to make boots, and with the money earned
thereby he purchased the Books of the Martyrs and read them when there
was sufficient light in his cell; but on holidays he attended the
prison chapel, read the Apostles, and sang in the choir--his voice
still remained good. The authorities liked Aksenof for his quiet
behavior, while his prison comrades held him in esteem and called him
“grandfather” and “holy man.” When the prisoners had any petitions to
make to the authorities they always sent Aksenof as their spokesman;
and when they had any quarrels among themselves, they always came
before Aksenof for judgment.

From home Aksenof received no letters, and he did not know whether or
not his wife and children were alive.

Once a new batch of convicts arrived at the prison. In the evening all
the old convicts gathered around the new arrivals and put all sorts of
questions to them, as to what town or village they had come from, and
for what crime they had been sentenced. Aksenof also sat down on a
bench near the new convicts, and, hanging his head, listened to what
was being said. Among the new convicts was a tall, robust old man of
sixty, with gray, trimmed beard. He was telling why he was sent away.
He said:

“Well, brothers, it wasn’t for anything that I’ve got here. I
unharnessed a horse from a shed. Got caught; stole the horse, they
said. ‘I only wished to get there quicker,’ said I, ‘and I let the
horse loose. And the driver was a friend of mine, besides. There’s
nothing wrong in that,’ said I. ‘No,’ they said; ‘you stole the horse.’
But they couldn’t really say what and where I stole. Well, I’ve done
things in my time for which I should have got here long ago if they had
only caught me at it; but this once I’ve been driven here not according
to law. To be honest, I’ve been in Siberia, but didn’t remain long.”

“Where do you come from?” asked one of the convicts.

“I’m from the town Vladimir, native of the place. I’m called Makar--and
my paternal name Semenovich.”

Aksenof raised his head and asked:

“And have you heard, Semenich, in Vladimir town, of the Aksenofs,
merchants? Are they alive?”

“To be sure, I’ve heard! They are rich merchants, though their father
is in Siberia--a sinner like the rest of us. And you, old man, why are
you here?”

Aksenof did not like to talk about his sorrow; so he sighed and said:

“For my sins I’ve been here twenty-six years at hard labor.”

Makar Semenof, however, persisted:

“But what sort of sins?”

Aksenof replied, “I must have deserved what I got.” Further than that
he would not say, but the other prisoners told the new-comer why
Aksenof was sent to Siberia. They related how some one had murdered a
merchant while on a journey and had foisted the knife upon Aksenof, who
had been sentenced, though innocent.

When Makar Semenof heard this he looked at Aksenof, clapped his hands
upon his knees, and exclaimed:

“Well, that’s strange! Certainly is strange! You’ve grown old,
grandfather!”

The rest began to ask him why he was astonished, and where he had seen
Aksenof, but Makar Semenof made no reply. He only said:

“A miracle, brothers! That we should meet here!”

And these words suggested to Aksenof the thought that this man knew
perhaps who had killed the merchant. He asked:

“Tell me, Semenich, have you heard about my case before? And have you
ever seen me before?”

“Why shouldn’t I have heard! News flies quickly. But it was such a long
time ago that what I had heard I had forgotten,” said Makar Semenof.

“Perhaps you’ve heard who killed the merchant?” asked Aksenof.

Makar Semenof broke into a laugh and said:

“To be sure, he killed him in whose sack was found the knife. And if
some one else did slip the knife in the sack! Not caught, not a thief!
Besides, how could any one have slipped the knife into the sack, since
it was at your very head? You surely would have heard.”

When Aksenof heard these words, the thought came to him that this very
man had killed the merchant. He arose and went away. Aksenof could not
sleep the entire night. A melancholy came upon him, and images began
to rise up before him. First, he imagined he saw his wife the same as
she looked when she saw him off to the fair for the last time. He saw
her as in life; he saw her face and eyes, and heard how she spoke and
laughed. Then he saw his children as they were then, little ones,
one in a fur coat, another at the breast. And he recalled himself as
he had been once--joyous, young; he recalled too how he looked as he
sat in the hotel when they arrested him; how he played on the guitar,
and how happy he had felt at that moment. And he recalled the place
of execution, where he was knouted, and the man with the knout, and
the throng all around, and the chains, and the convicts, and all the
twenty-six years of his prison life; and his old age too he recalled.
And such a melancholy came upon Aksenof, that death itself would have
been welcome.

“And all on account of that scoundrel!” thought Aksenof.

Then came into his heart such a vindictiveness against Makar Semenof
that he felt willing to die himself if only to revenge himself upon
him. He read prayers the entire night, but could not calm himself. Next
day he did not go near Makar Semenof and did not look at him.

So passed two weeks. Aksenof could not sleep nights, and such a
melancholy would come upon him that he did not know what to do with
himself.

Once at night, walking through the prison, he observed a stirring of
soil under one of the sleeping-bunks. He stopped to look. Suddenly
Makar Semenof leaped from under the bunk, and his frightened eyes
looked at Aksenof. Aksenof wished to go on, so as not to notice him;
but Makar caught him by the hand, and told him how he had dug a passage
under the walls, and how every day he disposed of dirt by carrying it
out with him in his boots and emptying it in the street, when sent out
to work. He continued:

“Only be silent, old man, and I’ll show you the way out. But if you
tell, I’ll get a knouting, which will be the worse for you--I’ll kill
you.”

When Aksenof looked at his enemy, he trembled from wrath, released his
hand from Makar’s, and said:

“I have no reason for escaping, and you can’t kill me, for you’ve
killed me long ago. As to telling on you, I may do it or not--as God
wills it, so I shall do.”

The next day, when the convicts were sent out to work, the soldiers
noticed that Makar Semenof was emptying dirt out of his boots. They
searched the prison and discovered a hole. Presently the superintendent
arrived and questioned every one who had dug the hole. All denied
it. Those who knew would not give Makar Semenof away, because they
knew that for this affair he would be knouted half to death. Then the
superintendent turned to Aksenof. He knew that the exile was a just
man, and so he said to him:

“Old man, I know you to be truthful; tell me, before God, who did this?”

Makar Semenof stood there as if nothing were happening, looked at the
superintendent, and did not even glance at Aksenof. Aksenof, however,
stood with his hands and lips all a-tremble, and for a long time he
could not utter a word. He thought, “Suppose I should hide him--but
why should I forgive him, when he has ruined me? Why shouldn’t I be
revenged for my misery? Then, again, to tell on him would mean a
knouting. But what put the thought into my head? Would it make my
burden lighter to bear?”

The superintendent repeated his question:

“Now, come, old man, tell the truth: who did the digging?”

Aksenof glanced at Makar Semenof and said:

“I can’t tell, Your Honor. God forbids me to tell. And I won’t tell, do
with me whatsoever you will--I’m at your mercy.”

The superintendent struggled with him, but Aksenof would say nothing
more.

So they never knew who had dug the hole.

The next night, when Aksenof lay down in his bunk and had hardly closed
his eyes, he became conscious that some one came near him and sat down
at his feet. He looked into the dark and recognized Makar. Aksenof
spoke first:

“What more do you want from me? What are you up to now?”

Makar Semenof remained silent. Aksenof raised himself and said:

“What is it you want? Begone! Or else I’ll call a soldier.”

Makar Semenof bent over close to Aksenof and said in a whisper:

“Ivan Dmitrievich, forgive me!”

Aksenof said, “Forgive you for what?”

“It was I who killed the merchant, and it was I who slipped the knife
into your sack. I wished to kill you too, but there was a noise
outdoors, and so I slipped the knife in and crawled out through the
window.”

Aksenof was silent, and he did not know what to say. Makar Semenof let
himself down from the bunk, performed a genuflection, and said:

“Ivan Dmitrievich, forgive me, forgive me for God’s sake! I will let
them know that I killed the merchant, and they will let you go free.
Then you can return home.”

Aksenof replied:

“It is easy for you to say that, but it is for me to suffer. Where can
I go now?... My wife is dead; my children have forgotten me; there is
nowhere for me to go....”

Makar Semenof did not rise from the ground; he beat his head against
the earth and continued saying:

“Ivan Dmitrich, forgive me! When they put the lash on me, it was much
easier for me to bear than to look at you now.... And to think that you
had pity on me--and did not tell. Forgive me, for the sake of Christ!
Forgive me, accursed wretch that I am!”

Then he began to weep.

When Aksenof saw that Makar Semenof was weeping, he too wept, and said:

“God will forgive you; perhaps I am a hundredfold worse than you!”

And all at once he felt as if something were lifted from his soul. And
he ceased to yearn for home, and did not wish to leave the prison, but
thought only of the final hour.

Makar Semenof did not listen to Aksenof, and confessed his guilt. But
when Aksenof’s release arrived, he was already dead.


                              FOOTNOTES:

[4] It will be observed that Aksenof is also called Dmitrievich (_Son
of Dmitri_) and Dmitrich, and that the name of another character is
variously spelled Semenof, Semenovich, and Semenich. The translator has
preserved these forms as they are in the original. Such changing of
name-forms is by no means uncommon in Russian stories.





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