Short Fiction

I

On the twelfth of July, Captain Hlopov entered the low door of my earth-hut. He was wearing epaulettes and carrying a sword, which I had never seen him do before since I had reached the Caucasus.

“I come straight from the colonel’s,” he said in answer to my questioning look. “Tomorrow our battalion is to march.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“To N⁠⸺ N⁠⸺. The forces are to assemble there.”

“And from there, I suppose, they will go into action?”

“I expect so.”

“In what direction? What do you think?”

“What’s there to think about? I am telling you what I know! A Tartar galloped here last night and brought orders from the general for the battalion to march with two days’ rations of rusks. But where to? Why, and for how long? We do not ask, my friend; we are told to go⁠—and that’s enough!”

“But if you are to take only two days’ rations of rusks, it proves that the troops won’t be out longer than that.”

“It proves nothing at all!”

“How’s that?” I asked with surprise.

“Because it is so. We went to Dargo, and took one week’s rations of rusks, but we stayed there nearly a month.”

“Can I go with you?” I asked after a pause.

“You could, no doubt. But my advice is, don’t. Why run risks?”

“Oh, but you must allow me not to take your advice. I have been here a whole month, solely on the chance of seeing an action, and you wish me to miss it!”

“Well, if you like! But really you had better stay behind. You could wait for us here, and might go hunting⁠—and we would go our way and it would be splendid,” he said with such conviction that for a moment it really seemed to me too that it would be “splendid.” However, I told him decidedly that nothing would induce me to stay behind.

“And what is there for you to see?” the captain went on, still trying to dissuade me. “Do you want to know what battles are like? Read Mikhaylovsky Danilevsky’s Description of War. It’s a fine book; it gives a detailed account of everything. It gives the position of every corps, and describes how battles are fought.”

“All that does not interest me,” I replied.

“What is it then? Do you simply wish to see how people are killed?⁠—In 1832 we had a fellow here, also a civilian, a Spaniard I think he was. He took part with us in two campaigns, wearing some kind of blue mantle. Well, they did for the fine fellow. You won’t astonish anyone here, friend!”

Humiliating though it was that the captain so misjudged my motives, I did not try to disabuse him.

“Was he brave?” I asked.

“Heaven only knows: he always used to ride in front; and where there was firing, there he always was.”

“Then he must have been brave,” said I.

“No. Pushing oneself in where you are not needed, does not prove you to be brave.”

“Then what do you call brave?”

“Brave?⁠—Brave?⁠—” repeated the captain, with the air of one to whom such a question presents itself for the first time. “He who does what he ought to do is brave,” he said, after thinking awhile.

I remembered that Plato defines courage as “The knowledge of what should and what should not be feared,” and despite the looseness and vagueness of the captain’s definition, I thought that the fundamental ideas of the two were not so different as they might appear, and that the captain’s definition was even more correct than that of the Greek philosopher. For if the captain had been able to express himself like Plato, he would no doubt have said that, “He is brave, who fears only what should be feared and not what should not be feared.”

I wished to explain my idea to the captain.

“Yes,” said I, “It seems to me that in every danger there is a choice; and a choice made under the influence of a sense of duty⁠—is courage, but a choice made under the influence of a base motive⁠—is cowardice. Therefore a man who risks his life from vanity, curiosity, or greed, cannot be called brave; while, on the other hand, one who avoids a danger from honest consideration for his family, or simply from conviction, cannot be called a coward.”

The captain looked at me with a curious kind of expression while I was speaking.

“Well, that I cannot prove to you,” he said, filling his pipe, “but we have a cadet here who is fond of philosophizing. You should have a talk with him. He also writes verses.”

I had known of the captain before I left Russia, but I had only made his acquaintance in the Caucasus. His mother, Mary Ivanovna Hlopova, a small and poor landowner, lives within two miles of my estate. Before I left for the Caucasus, I had called on her. The old lady was very glad to hear that I should see her “Pashenka,” by which pet name she called the grey-haired elderly captain, and that I, “a living letter,” could tell him all about her, and take him a small parcel from her. Having treated me to excellent pie and smoked goose, Mary Ivanovna went into her bedroom and returned with a good-sized black amulet, to which was attached a black silk ribbon.

“Here, this is the icon of our Mother Mediatress of the Burning Bush,” said she, crossing herself and kissing the icon of the Virgin and placing it in my hands. “Please let him have it. You see, when he went to the Caucasus I had a Mass said for him, and promised, if he remained alive and safe, to order this icon of the Mother of God for him. And now, for eighteen years, the Mediatress and the Holy Saints have had mercy on him: he has not been wounded once, and yet in what battles has he not taken part?⁠—What Michael, who went with him, told me, was enough, believe me, to make one’s hair stand on end. You see, what I know about him is only from others. He, my pet, never writes me about his campaigns, for fear of frightening me.”

(After I reached the Caucasus I learnt, and then not from the captain himself, that he had been severely wounded four times, and of course never wrote to his mother either about his wounds or his campaigns.)

“So let him now wear this holy image,” she continued, “I give it him with my blessing. May the most Holy Mediatress guard him. Especially when going to battle let him wear it. Tell him so, dear friend; say ‘Your mother wishes it.’ ”

I promised to carry out her instructions carefully.

“I know you will grow fond of my Pashenka,” continued the old lady. “He is such a splendid fellow! Will you believe it, he never lets a year pass without sending me some money, and he also helps my daughter, Annoushka, a good deal, and all out of his pay! I thank God for having given me such a child,” she continued with tears in her eyes.

“Does he often write to you?” I asked.

“Seldom, my dear: perhaps once a year. Only when he sends the money, not otherwise. He says, ‘If I don’t write to you, mother, that means I am alive and well. Should anything befall me, which God forbid, they’ll tell you without me.’ ”

When I handed his mother’s present to the captain (it was in my own quarters) he asked for a bit of paper, carefully wrapped it up, and then put it away. I told him many things about his mother’s life. He remained silent, and when I had finished speaking he went to a corner of the room, and busied himself for what seemed a long time, filling his pipe.

“Yes, she’s a splendid old woman!” he said from there, in rather a muffled voice. “Will God let me ever see her again?” These simple words expressed much love and sadness.

“Why do you serve here?” I asked.

“One has to serve,” he answered with conviction. “And to get double pay, as we do here in the Caucasus, means a great deal to poor men like myself.”

The captain lived economically, did not gamble, rarely went carousing, and smoked the cheapest tobacco (which, for some reason, he called homegrown tobacco). I had liked the captain before; and after this talk I felt a sincere regard for him. He had one of those simple, calm, Russian faces which are easy and pleasant to look straight in the eyes.

II

Next morning, at four o’clock, the captain came for me. He wore an old threadbare coat without epaulettes, wide Caucasian trousers, a white sheepskin cap, the wool of which had grown yellow and limp, and had a shabby Asiatic sword strapped round his shoulders. The small white horse he rode ambled along with short strides, hanging its head down and swinging its thin tail. Although the worthy captain’s figure was not very martial, nor even good-looking, it expressed such equanimity towards everything around him, that it involuntarily inspired respect.

I did not keep him waiting a single moment, but mounted my horse at once, and we rode together through the gates of the fortress. The battalion was some five hundred yards in front of us, and looked like a dense, oscillating, black mass. It was only possible to guess that it was an infantry battalion by the bayonets which looked like needles standing close together, and by the sounds of the soldiers’ songs which occasionally reached us, the beating of a drum, and the delightful voice of the fifth company’s second tenor, which had so often charmed me in the fortress. The road lay along the middle of a deep and broad ravine, by the side of a stream which had overflowed its banks. Flocks of wild pigeons whirled above it, now alighting on the rocky banks, now turning in the air in rapid circles and vanishing out of sight.

The sun was not yet visible, but the crest of the right side of the ravine was just beginning to be lit up. The grey and whitish rock, the yellowish-green moss, the dew-covered bushes of Christ’s-Thorn, dogberry and dwarf elm, appeared extraordinarily distinct and salient in the golden morning light; but the other side and the valley, wrapt in thick mist which floated in uneven strata, were damp and gloomy, and presented an indefinite mingling of colours: pale purple, almost black, dark green and white. Right in front of us, strikingly distinct against the dark-blue horizon, rose the bright dead-white masses of the snowy mountains, with their shadows and outlines, fantastic and yet exquisite in every detail. Crickets, grasshoppers, and thousands of other insects, awoke in the tall grasses and filled the air with their clear and ceaseless sounds: it was as if innumerable tiny bells were ringing inside our very ears. The air was full of the scent of water, grass, and mist⁠—the scent of a lovely early summer morning. The captain struck a light and lit his pipe, and the smell of his cheap tobacco and of the tinder seemed extraordinarily pleasant to me.

To overtake the infantry more quickly we left the road. The captain appeared more thoughtful than usual, did not take his Daghestan pipe out of his mouth, and at every step touched with his heels his horse, which swaying from side to side left a scarcely perceptible green track on the tall wet grass. From under its very feet, with the cry and the whirr of wings which involuntarily sends a thrill through every sportsman, rose a pheasant, which flew slowly upwards. The captain did not take the least notice of it.

We had nearly overtaken the battalion, when we heard the thud of a galloping horse behind us, and that same minute a good-looking youth, in an officer’s uniform and a white sheepskin cap, galloped past us. In passing he smiled, nodded to the captain, and flourished his whip. I had only time to notice that he sat his horse and held his reins with peculiar grace, that he had beautiful black eyes, a fine nose, and only the first signs of a moustache. What specially pleased me about him was that he could not repress a smile when he noticed that we admired him. This smile alone showed him to be very young.

“Where is he galloping to?” muttered the captain, with a dissatisfied air, without taking the pipe out of his mouth.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Ensign Alanin, a subaltern in my company⁠—. He came from the Cadet Corps only a month ago.”

“I suppose he is going into action for the first time,” I said.

“That’s why he is so delighted,” answered the captain, thoughtfully shaking his head. “Youth.”

“But how could he help being pleased? I can fancy how interesting it must be for a young officer.”

The captain remained silent for a minute or two.

“That is just why I say ‘Youth,’ ” he added in a deep voice. “What is there to be pleased at without ever having seen the thing? When one has seen it many times, one is not so pleased. There are now, let us say, twenty of us officers here: one or other is sure to be killed or wounded, that is quite certain; today it may be I, tomorrow, he; the next day a third. So what is there to be pleased about?”

III

As soon as the bright sun appeared above the hill and lit up the valley along which we were marching, the wavy clouds of mist cleared away and it grew hot. The soldiers, with muskets and sacks on their shoulders, stepped slowly along the dusty road. Now and then Little-Russian words and laughter could be heard in their ranks. Several old soldiers in white blouses (most of them noncommissioned officers) walked together by the roadside smoking their pipes and conversing gravely. Three-horsed heavily-laden wagons moved steadily along, raising thick clouds of dust that hung motionless in the air. The officers rode on in front: some of them caracoled, i.e. they whipped their horse, made it take three or four leaps, and then, turning its head back, stopped abruptly. Others were occupied with the singers, who in spite of the heat and sultriness sang song after song. With the mounted Tartars, about two hundred yards ahead of the infantry, rode a tall handsome lieutenant in Asiatic costume, on a large white horse. He was known in the regiment as a desperate daredevil who would spit the truth out at anybody. He wore a black tunic trimmed with gold braid, leggings to match, soft closely-fitting gold-braided oriental shoes, a yellow coat and a tall sheepskin cap pushed back from his forehead. Fastened to the silver strap that lay across his chest and back, he carried a powder-flask and a pistol behind him. Another pistol and a silver-mounted dagger hung from his girdle, and above these a sword in a red-leather sheath and a musket in a black cover, were swung over his shoulder. By his clothing, by the way he sat his horse, by his general bearing, in fact by his every movement, one could see that he tried to resemble a Tartar. He even talked in a language I did not know, to the Tartars with whom he was riding, but from the bewildered and amused looks with which they glanced at one another, I surmised that they did not understand him either. He was one of our young officers, daredevil braves who shape their lives on the model of Lermontov’s and Marlinsky’s heroes. These officers see the Caucasus only through the prism of such books as the Heroes of Our Times, and Mullah-Nur,1 and are guided in their actions not by their own inclinations, but by the examples of their models.

The lieutenant, for instance, may perhaps have liked the company of well-bred women and of men of rank: generals, colonels, and aides-de-camp (it is even my conviction that he liked such society very much, for he was exceedingly ambitious), but he considered it his imperative duty to turn his roughest side to all important men, though he was strictly moderate in his rudeness to them; and when any lady came to the fortress, he considered it his duty to walk with his bosom-friends in a red shirt, and with slippers on his bare feet, before her window and to shout and swear at the top of his voice.

But all this he did not so much with the intention of offending her, as to let her see what beautiful white feet he had, and how easy it would be to fall in love with him, should he desire it. Or he would often go with two or three friendly Tartars to the hills at night, to lie in ambush by the roadside, and to watch for passing hostile Tartars and to kill them: and though his heart told him more than once that there was nothing valiant in this, he considered himself bound to cause suffering to people, with whom he affected to be disillusioned, and whom he chose to hate and despise. He always carried two things: a large icon hanging round his neck, and a dagger which he wore over his shirt even when in bed. He sincerely believed that he had enemies. To persuade himself that he must avenge himself on someone and wash away some insult with blood was his greatest enjoyment. He was convinced that hatred, vengeance, and contempt for the human race, were the noblest and most poetic of feelings. But his mistress (a Circassian, of course) whom I happened to meet subsequently, used to say that he was the kindest and mildest of men, and that every evening he wrote down his dismal thoughts in his diary, as well as his accounts on ruled paper, and prayed to God on his knees. And how much he suffered, merely to appear in his own eyes what he wished to be! For his comrades and the soldiers could never see him as he wished to appear. Once, on one of his nocturnal expeditions on the road with his bosom friends, he happened to wound a hostile Chechen with a bullet in the leg, and took him prisoner. After that, the Chechen lived for seven weeks with the lieutenant, who attended to him and nursed him as he would have nursed his dearest friend; and when the Chechen recovered he gave him presents and set him free.

After that, during one of our expeditions, when the lieutenant was retreating with the soldiers of the cordon and was firing to keep back the foe, he heard someone among the enemy call him by name, and the man he had wounded rode forward and made signs to the lieutenant to do the same.

The lieutenant rode up to his friend and pressed his hand. The hillsmen stood some way back and did not fire, but scarcely had the lieutenant turned his horse to return, before several men shot at him and a bullet grazed the small of his back. Another time, at night, when a fire had broken out in the fortress and two companies of soldiers were putting it out, I myself saw how the tall figure of a man, mounted on a black horse, and lit up by the red glow of the fire, suddenly appeared among the crowd and, pushing through, rode up to the very flames. When quite close, the lieutenant jumped from his horse and rushed into the house, one side of which was burning. Five minutes later he came out, with singed hair and burned elbow, carrying in his bosom two pigeons which he had rescued from the flames.

His name was Rosenkranz; yet he often spoke of his descent, deducing it somehow from the Varangians (the first rulers of Russia), and clearly demonstrated that he and his ancestors were pure Russians.

IV

The sun had done half its journey, and through the glowing air cast its hot rays on the dry earth. The dark blue sky was perfectly clear: only the base of the snowy mountains began to clothe itself in lilac-tinged white clouds. The motionless air seemed full of transparent dust: the heat was becoming unbearable.

Halfway on their march, the troops reached a small stream and halted. The soldiers stacked their muskets and rushed to the stream; the commander of the battalion sat down in the shade on a drum, his full face assuming the correct expression denoting the greatness of his rank. He, together with some other officers, prepared to have a snack. The captain lay down on the grass under his company’s wagon. The brave Lieutenant Rosenkranz and some other young officers disposed themselves on their outstretched cloaks and got ready for a drinking-bout, as could be gathered from the bottles and flasks arranged round them, as well as from the peculiar animation of the singers, who standing in a semicircle before them sang a Caucasian dance-song with a whistling obbligato interjected.

Shamyl, he began to riot
In the days gone by,
Try, ry, rataty,
In the days gone by!

Among these officers was the young ensign who had overtaken us in the morning. He was very amusing: his eyes shone, he spoke rather thickly, and he wished to kiss, and declare his love to, everyone. Poor boy! He did not know that he might appear funny in such a position, that the frankness and the tenderness with which he assailed everyone, predisposed them not to the affection he so longed for, but to ridicule; nor did he know that when, quite heated, he at last threw himself down on the cloak, and rested on his elbow with his thick black hair thrown back, he looked uncommonly charming.

Two officers sat by the wagon, playing cards on a canteen box. I listened with curiosity to the conversation of the soldiers and officers, and attentively watched the expression of their faces, but could find absolutely no trace of the anxiety I myself experienced: jokes, laughter, and anecdotes, expressed the general carelessness and indifference to the impending danger: as if it were quite out of the question that some of us would never return along that road.

V

Towards seven that evening, dusty and tired, we entered the wide fortified gate of Fort N⁠⸺. The sun was already setting, and threw its rosy slanting rays on the picturesque little batteries, and on the gardens with their tall poplars, which surrounded the fortress, on the yellow gleaming cultivated fields, and on the white clouds that, crowding round the snowy peaks, had, as if trying to imitate them, formed a range not less fantastic and beautiful.

On the horizon the new moon appeared, delicate as a little cloud. In the Tartar village that lay at the gates of the fortress, from the roof of a hut, a Tartar was calling the faithful to prayer; and our singers lifted their voices with renewed energy and vigour.

After a rest, and after tidying myself up a bit, I went to an adjutant of my acquaintance, to ask him to let the general know of my intention. On my way from the suburb where I had put up, I noticed in Fort N⁠⸺ something I did not at all expect: a pretty little brougham, which overtook me, in which I caught sight of a fashionable bonnet, and from which I overheard some French words. The sounds of some “Lizzie” or “Kitty” polka, played on a bad ramshackle piano, reached me through the windows of the commander’s house. In a little grocery and wine shop which I passed, some clerks with cigarettes in their fingers sat drinking wine: and I heard one of them say to another, “No, excuse me, as for politics, Mary Gregoryevna is first among our ladies.” A Jew in a worn-out coat, with a bent back and sickly countenance, was dragging along a wheezy barrel-organ, and the whole suburb resounded with the tones of the finale of Lucia. Two women in rustling dresses, with silk kerchiefs on their heads, and carrying bright-coloured parasols, passed by, along the planks that did duty for a pavement. Two girls, one in a pink, the other in a blue, dress, stood bareheaded beside the earth-embankments of a low-roofed house, and shrieked with high-pitched, forced laughter, evidently to attract the attention of passing officers. The officers, dressed in new uniforms, with glittering epaulettes and white gloves, flaunted along the street and on the boulevard. I found my acquaintance on the ground-floor of the general’s house. I had scarcely had time to explain my wishes to him, and to get his reply, that they could easily be fulfilled, when the pretty little brougham I had noticed outside rattled past the window we were sitting at. A tall well-built man, in an infantry major’s uniform and epaulettes, got out and entered the house.

“Oh, please excuse me,” said the adjutant, rising; “I must go and announce them to the general.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“The countess,” he replied and, buttoning his uniform, rushed upstairs.

A few minutes later a very handsome man in a frock coat without epaulettes, a white cross in his buttonhole, went out into the porch. He was not tall, but remarkably good-looking. He was followed by the major, the adjutant, and a couple of other officers. The general’s gait, voice, and all his movements, showed him to be a man well aware of his own value.

“Bonsoir, Madame la Comtesse,” he said, offering his hand through the carriage-window.

A small hand in a kid glove pressed his, and a pretty smiling face in a yellow bonnet appeared at the carriage-window.

Of the conversation, which lasted several minutes, I only overheard the general say laughingly, as I passed by:

“Vous savez que j’ai fait vœu de combattre les infidèles: prenez donc garde de le devenir.”

A laugh answered from inside the carriage.

“Adieu donc, cher Général!”

“Non, à revoir,” said the general, ascending the steps of the porch. “N’oubliez pas, que je m’invite pour la soirée de demain.”

The carriage rattled off. “Here again,” I thought as I walked home, “is a man who possesses all that Russians strive after: rank, riches, distinction; and this man, on the day before an engagement, the outcome of which is known only to God, jokes with a pretty woman and promises to have tea with her next day, just as if they had met at a ball!”

At that same adjutant’s, I met a young man who surprised me even more. It was a young lieutenant of the K⁠⸺ regiment, who was noted for his almost feminine meekness and timidity, and who had come to the adjutant to pour out his vexation and resentment against those who, he said, had intrigued against him to keep him from taking part in the impending action. He said it was mean to behave in that way, that it was unfriendly, and that he would not forget it, and so forth. Intently as I watched the expression of his face and listened to the sound of his voice, I could not help feeling convinced that he was not pretending, but was genuinely filled with indignation and grief because he was not allowed to go and shoot Circassians and expose himself to their fire. He was grieved like a little child who has been unjustly birched. I could make nothing at all of it.

VI

The troops were to march at ten in the evening. At half-past eight I mounted and rode to the general’s, but, thinking that he and his adjutant were busy, I tied my horse to the fence and sat down on an earth-bank, intending to catch the general as soon as he came out.

The heat and glare of the sun were now replaced by the coolness of night and the soft light of the young moon, which had formed a pale glimmering semicircle around itself on the deep blue of the starry sky, and was already setting. Lights appeared in the windows of the houses, and shone through cracks in the shutters of the dugouts. The stately poplars, beyond the white moonlit dugouts, with their cane-thatched roofs, looked darker and taller than ever against the horizon. The long shadows of the houses, the trees and the fences, stretched out daintily on the dusty road. From the river came the ringing sounds of frogs;2 along the street came the sound of hurried steps and voices talking, or the galloping of a horse, and from the suburb the tones of a barrel-organ now playing “The winds are blowing,” now some “Aurora Waltz.”

I will not say what meditations I was absorbed in; first, because I should be ashamed to confess the gloomy waves of thought that insistently flooded my soul while around me I noticed nothing but gaiety and joy; and secondly, because it would not suit my story. I was so deep in thought that I did not even notice the bell strike eleven, and the general with his suite ride past me.

The rearguard was still within the fortress. I had great difficulty in making my way across the bridge among the guns, ammunition wagons, the carts of the different companies, and the officers noisily giving orders. Once outside the fortress gates, I passed at a trot the troops, who, stretched out over nearly three-quarters of a mile, were moving silently on through the darkness, and I overtook the general.

As I rode past the guns drawn out in single file, and the officers who rode between the guns, I was hurt, as by a discord in the quiet and solemn harmony, by the German accents of a voice shouting, “You devil, a linstock!” and the voice of a soldier hurriedly calling, “Shevchenko, the lieutenant wants a light!”

The greater part of the sky was now overcast with long strips of dark grey clouds; only here and there a few stars twinkled dimly among them. The moon had already sunk behind the near horizon of the black hills, visible to the right, and threw a faint trembling light on their peaks in sharp contrast to the impenetrable darkness which enveloped their base. The air was so warm and still that it seemed as if not one blade of grass, not one cloudlet, were moving. It was so dark that even objects close at hand could not be distinguished. On the sides of the road I seemed to see now rocks, now animals, now some strange kind of men, and I discovered that they were merely bushes only when I heard them rustle, or felt the dew with which they were sprinkled. In front of me I saw a dense heaving wall, followed by some dark moving spots: these were the cavalry vanguard, and the general with his suite. Another similar dark mass, only lower, moved beside us⁠—that was the infantry. The silence that reigned over the whole division was so great that all the mingling sounds of night, with their mysterious charm, were distinctly audible: the far-off, mournful howling of jackals, now like agonized weeping, then like chuckling; the monotonous, resounding song of crickets, frogs, and quails; a sort of rumbling I could not account for at all, but which seemed to draw nearer; scarcely audible motions of Nature, which can neither be understood nor defined, mingled into one beautiful harmony, which we call the stillness of night. This stillness was interrupted by, or rather combined with, the dull thud of hoofs and the rustling of the tall grass, produced by the slowly advancing detachment.

Only very occasionally you heard the clang of a heavy gun, the sound of bayonets striking together, hushed voices, or the snorting of a horse. Nature seemed to breathe with pacifying beauty and power. Can it be that there is not room for all men on this beautiful earth, under those immeasurable starry heavens? Can it be possible that in the midst of this entrancing Nature, feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the passion for exterminating their fellows, can endure in the souls of men? All that is unkind in the hearts of men, ought, one would think, to vanish at the touch of Nature: that most direct expression of beauty and goodness.

VII

We had been riding for more than two hours. I was beginning to shiver and feel drowsy. Through the gloom I still seemed to see the same indefinite forms; a little way in front, the same black wall and the moving spots. Close in front of me I saw the crupper of a white horse which swung its tail and threw its hind legs far apart; the back of a white Circassian coat, on which could be discerned a musket in a black case, and the glimmering butt of a pistol in an embroidered sheath; the glow of a cigarette illumined a fair moustache, a beaver collar, and a white chamois glove. Every now and then, I leant over my horse’s neck, shutting my eyes, and forgetting myself for a few minutes; then, startled by the familiar tramping and rustling, I glanced round, and felt as if I were standing still, and the black wall in front was moving towards me, or that it had stopped and I should in a moment ride into it. At one such moment the rumbling which increased and seemed to approach, and the cause of which I could not guess, struck me forcibly: it was the sound of water. We were entering a deep gorge and approaching a mountain-stream that was overflowing its banks. The rumbling increased, the damp grass grew thicker and taller and the bushes closer, while the horizon gradually narrowed. Now and then, here and there against the dark background of the hills, bright lights flashed and instantly vanished.

“Tell me, please, what are those lights?” I inquired, in a whisper, of a Tartar riding beside me.

“What, don’t you know?” he replied.

“I don’t.”

“It’s the hillsmen have tied straw to poles and are waving the lights about.”

“Why are they doing it?”

“So that everyone should know the Russians have come. Oh! oh! what a bustle is going on now in the aouls; everybody’s dragging his belongings into the ravine,” he said, laughing.

“Why, do they already know in the mountains that a detachment is on its way?” I asked him.

“Eh, how can one help knowing? They always know; our people are like that.”

“Then Shamil3 too is preparing for action?” I asked.

“No,” he answered, shaking his head, “Shamil won’t go into action; Shamil will send his naibs,4 and he himself will look on through a telescope from above.”

“Does he live far away?”

“Not far. To the left, some eight miles.”

“How do you know?” I asked. “Have you been there?”

“I have; our people have all been.”

“Have you seen Shamil?”

“Eh! such as we don’t see Shamil! There are a hundred, three hundred, a thousand murids, all round him, and Shamil’s in the centre,” he said, with an expression of servile admiration.

Looking up, it was possible to discern that the sky, now cleared, was beginning to grow lighter in the East, and the Pleiades to sink towards the horizon; but the ravine through which we were marching was still damp and gloomy.

Suddenly, a little way in front of us, several lights flashed through the darkness; at the same moment some whizzing bullets flew past, and shots and piercing cries resounded amid the surrounding silence. It was the enemy’s advanced picket. The Tartars that composed it raised a hue and cry, fired at random, and then ran in different directions.

All became silent again. The General called up an interpreter. A Tartar in a white Circassian coat rode up to him and, gesticulating and whispering, talked with him for a while.

“Colonel Hasanov! Order the cordon to take open order,” commanded the General, with a quiet but distinct drawl.

The detachment advanced to the river; the black hills and gorges were left behind; the dawn appeared. The vault of the heavens, in which a few pale stars were still dimly visible, seemed higher; the sunrise glow beyond shone brightly in the east; a fresh, penetrating breeze blew from the west, and the white mists rose like vapour above the rushing stream.

VIII

The guide pointed out a ford, and the cavalry vanguard, followed by the General, began crossing the stream. The water, which reached to the horses’ chests, rushed with tremendous force between the white boulders, which here and there appeared on a level with its surface, and formed foaming and gurgling ripples round the horses’ legs. The horses, surprised by the noise of the water, lifted their heads and pricked their ears, but stepped evenly and carefully, against the current, on the uneven bottom of the stream. Their riders lifted their feet and weapons. The infantry, literally in nothing but their shirts, linked arm-in-arm by twenties, and holding above the water their muskets, to which their bundles of clothing were fastened, made great efforts (as the strained expression of their faces showed) to resist the force of the current. The mounted artillerymen, with loud shouts, drove their horses at a trot into the water. The guns and the green ammunition-wagons, over which the water occasionally splashed, rang against the stony bottom, but the good little horses, churning the water, pulled at the traces in unity and, with dripping manes and tails, clambered out on the opposite bank.

As soon as the crossing was accomplished, the General’s face suddenly assumed a meditative and serious look, and he turned his horse and, followed by the cavalry, rode at a trot down a broad glade which opened out before us in the midst of the forest. A cordon of mounted Cossacks was scattered along the skirts of the forest.

In the woods we noticed a man on foot dressed in a Circassian coat and wearing a tall cap⁠—then a second and a third. One of the officers said: “Those are Tartars.” Then a puff of smoke appeared from behind a tree, a shot, and another.⁠ ⁠… Our rapid fire drowns the enemy’s. Only now and then a bullet, with a slow sound like the buzzing of a bee’s wings, passes by and proves that the firing is not all ours! Now the infantry at a run, and the guns at a trot, pass into the cordon. You can hear the boom of the guns, the metallic sounds of flying grapeshot, the hissing of rockets and the crackle of muskets. Over the wide glade you can see on all sides cavalry, infantry, and artillery. Puffs of smoke mingle with the dew-covered verdure and the mist. Colonel Hasanov, approaching the General at full gallop, suddenly reins in his horse.

“Your excellency, shall we order the cavalry to charge?” he says, raising his hand to his cap; “the enemy’s colours are in sight,” and he points with his whip to some mounted Tartars, in front of whom ride two men on white horses, with bits of blue and red stuff fastened to poles in their hands.

“Go, and God be with you, Ivan Mikhaylovich!” says the General. The Colonel turns his horse sharply round, draws his sword, and shouts “Hurrah!”

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” comes from the ranks, and the cavalry gallop after him.⁠ ⁠…

Everyone looks on with interest: there is a pennon, another, a third and a fourth.⁠ ⁠…

The enemy, not waiting for the attack, hides in the wood and thence opens a small-arms fire. Bullets come flying more and more frequently. “Quel charmant coup d’œil!” says the General, slightly rising, English fashion, in his saddle on his slim-legged black horse.

“Charmant!” answered the Major, rolling his r’s; and striking his horse, he rides up to the General: “C’est un vrai plaisir, que la guerre dans un aussi beau pays,” he says.

“Et surtout en bonne compagnie,” replies the General, with a pleasant smile. The Major bows.

At that moment a hostile cannonball, with a disagreeable whiz, flies past and strikes something. We hear behind us the moan of a wounded man.

This moaning strikes me in so strange a manner that the warlike scene instantly loses for me all its charm. But no one, except myself, seems to notice it: the Major laughs with apparently greater gusto; another officer repeats with perfect calm the first words of a sentence he was just saying; the General looks the other way, and with the quietest smile says something in French. “Shall we reply to their fire?” asks the commander of the artillery, galloping up.

“Yes, frighten them a bit!” carelessly replies the General, lighting a cigar.

The battery takes up its position, and the firing begins. The earth groans under the shots; fires flash incessantly, and smoke, through which it is scarcely possible to distinguish the artillerymen moving round their guns, veils your sight.

The aoul has been bombarded. Colonel Hasanov rides up again, and at the General’s command gallops towards the aoul. The war-cry is raised again, and the cavalry disappears in the cloud of dust which it raises.

The spectacle was truly magnificent. The one thing that spoilt the general impression for me, who took no part in the affair and was unaccustomed to it, was that this movement, and the animation and the shouting, appeared unnecessary. Involuntarily the comparison suggested itself to me of a man swinging his arms from the shoulders to cut the air with an axe.

IX

Our troops had taken possession of the village, and not a single soul of the enemy remained in it, when the General and his suite, with which I had mingled, rode up to it.

The long, clean huts, with their flat earthen roofs and shapely chimneys, stood on irregular stony mounds, between which flowed a small stream.

On one side you saw green gardens with enormous pear and plum trees, brightly lit up by the sun; on the other, strange upright shadows, and the perpendicular stones of the cemetery, and long poles, with balls and many coloured flags attached to their ends. (These marked the graves of the dzhigits.)

The troops were drawn up outside the gates.

A moment later, dragoons, Cossacks, and infantry spread with evident joy through the crooked lanes, and in an instant the empty village was animated again. There crashed a roof: an axe rings against the hard wood of a door that is being forced open: here a stack of hay, a fence, a hut, is set on fire, and a pillar of thick smoke rises up in the clear air. Here is a Cossack dragging along a sack of flour and a carpet; there a soldier, with a delighted look on his face, brings a tin basin and some rag out of a hut; another with outstretched arms is trying to catch two hens that are struggling and cackling beside a fence: a third has somewhere discovered an enormous pot of milk and, after drinking some of it, throws the rest onto the ground amid loud laughter.

The battalion with which I had come from Fort N⁠⸺ was also in the aoul. The Captain sat on the roof of a hut and sent thin whiffs of cheap tobacco smoke through his short pipe, with such an expression of indifference on his face that on seeing him I forgot that I was in a hostile aoul, and felt quite at home.

“Ah, you are here too?” he said when he noticed me.

The tall figure of Lieutenant Rosenkranz flitted here and there in the village. He unceasingly gave orders, and appeared exceedingly engrossed in his task. I saw him come with a triumphant air out of a hut, followed by two soldiers leading an old Tartar. The old man, whose only clothing consisted of a mottled tunic all in rags and patchwork trousers, was so frail that his arms, tightly-bound behind his bent back, seemed scarcely to hold to his shoulders, and he could hardly drag his bare crooked legs along. His face, and even part of his shaven head, were deeply furrowed. His wry toothless mouth kept moving beneath his short-cut moustache and beard, as if he were chewing something; but in his red lashless eyes there still sparkled a gleam, and they clearly expressed an old man’s indifference to life.

Rosenkranz, through an interpreter, asked him why he had not gone away with the others.

“Where should I go?” he answered, looking quietly away.

“Where the others have gone,” someone remarked.

“The braves have gone to fight the Russians, but I am an old man.”

“Are you not afraid of the Russians?”

“What will the Russians do to me? I am old,” he repeated, again glancing carelessly round the circle that had formed about him.

Later, as I was returning, I saw that old man bareheaded, with his arms tied, being jolted along behind the saddle of a Cossack, and he was looking round with the same expression of indifference on his face. He was wanted for the exchange of prisoners.

I climbed onto the roof and sat down beside the Captain.

“There don’t seem to have been many of the enemy,” I said, wishing to know his opinion of the action that had taken place.

“The enemy?” he repeated with surprise. “The enemy was not there at all! Do you call that the enemy?⁠ ⁠… Wait till the evening, when we go back, and you will see how they will speed us on our way: what a lot of them will pour out from there,” he said, pointing to a thicket that we had passed in the morning. “What is that?” I asked anxiously, interrupting the Captain and pointing to a group of Don Cossacks, who had collected round something not far from us.

A sound of something like a child’s cry came from there, and the words “Stop⁠ ⁠… don’t hack it⁠ ⁠… they’ll see⁠ ⁠… Have you a knife, Evstigneich?⁠ ⁠… Lend a knife⁠ ⁠…”

“They are up to something, the scoundrels⁠ ⁠…” calmly replied the Captain.

But at that moment the young ensign, his bonny face flushed and frightened, came suddenly running from behind a corner, and rushed, waving his arms, towards the Cossacks.

“Don’t touch it! Don’t kill it!” he cried in a childish voice.

Seeing the officer, the Cossacks stepped apart, and released a little white kid. The young ensign was quite abashed, muttered something, and stopped before us with a confused face.

Seeing the Captain and me on the roof, he blushed still more, and ran leaping towards us.

“I thought they were going to kill a child,” he said with a bashful smile.

X

The General went ahead with the cavalry. The battalion with which I had come from Fort N⁠⸺ remained in the rearguard. Captain Hlopov’s and Lieutenant Rosenkranz’s battalions retired together.

The Captain’s prophecy was quite correct. No sooner had we entered the narrow thicket which he had mentioned, than on both sides of us we caught glimpses of hillsmen, mounted and on foot, and so near were they that I could distinctly see how some of them ran stooping, rifle in hand, from behind one tree to another.

The Captain took off his cap and piously crossed himself, some of the older soldiers did the same. From the wood were heard war-cries, and the words “Iay giaour.” “Urus! iay!” Dry short rifle-shots, fast following one another, whizzed on both sides of us. Our men answered silently with a running fire, and only now and then remarks, like the following, were made in the ranks: “See where he5 fires from. It’s all right for him inside the wood. We ought to use the cannons,” and so forth.

Our ordnance was brought out and, after some grapeshot had been fired, the enemy seemed to grow weaker; but a moment later, and at every step taken by our troops, the enemy’s fire again grew hotter, and the shouting louder.

We had hardly gone seven hundred yards from the village before enemy cannonballs began whistling over our heads. I saw a soldier killed by a ball.⁠ ⁠… But why should I describe the details of that terrible picture, which I myself would give much to be able to forget! Lieutenant Rosenkranz kept firing his musket and incessantly shouted in a hoarse voice at the soldiers, and galloped from one end of the cordon to the other. He was rather pale, and this was very becoming to his warrior countenance.

The good-looking young Ensign was in raptures: his beautiful dark eyes shone with daring, his lips were slightly smiling, and he kept riding up to the Captain and begging permission to charge. “We will repel them,” he said persuasively, “we certainly will.”

“It’s not necessary,” abruptly replied the Captain. “We must retreat.”

The Captain’s company held the skirts of the wood, the men lying down and replying to the enemy’s fire.

The Captain, in his shabby coat and shabby cap, sat silent on his white horse, with loose reins, bent knees, his feet in the stirrups, and did not stir from his place. (The soldiers knew and did their work so well that there was no need to give them any orders.) Only at rare intervals he raised his voice to shout at those who exposed their heads.

There was nothing very martial about the Captain’s appearance, but there was something so true and simple in it, that I was extremely struck by it. “It is he who is really brave,” I involuntarily said to myself. He was just the same as I had always seen him: the same calm movements, the same guileless expression on his plain but frank face; only his eyes, which were lighter than usual, showed the concentration of one quietly engaged on his duties. “As I had always seen him,” is easily said, but how many different variations have I noticed in the behaviour of others; one wishing to appear quieter, another sterner, a third merrier, than usual; but the Captain’s face showed that he did not even see why he should appear anything but what he was.

The Frenchman who said at Waterloo, “La garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas,” and other, particularly French, heroes who uttered memorable sayings, were brave, and really uttered remarkable words, but between their courage and the Captain’s there was this difference, that even if a great saying had, in any circumstance, stirred the soul of my hero, I am convinced he would not have uttered it: first because, by uttering a great saying he would have feared to spoil a great deed; and secondly because, when a man feels within himself the capacity to perform a great deed, no talk of any kind is needed. That, I think, is a peculiar and a lofty characteristic of Russian courage; and, if that is so, how can a Russian heart help aching when our young Russian warriors utter trivial French phrases, intended to imitate antiquated French chivalry?

Suddenly, from the side where our bonny Ensign stood with his platoon, we heard a not very hearty or loud “Hurrah.” Looking round to where the shout came from, I saw some thirty soldiers, with sacks on their shoulders and muskets in their hands managing with very great difficulty to run across a ploughed field. They kept stumbling, but nevertheless ran on and shouted. Before them, sword in hand, galloped the young Ensign.

They all disappeared into the wood.⁠ ⁠…

After a few minutes of whooping and clatter, a frightened horse ran out of the wood, and soldiers appeared bringing back the dead and wounded. Among the latter was the young Ensign! Two soldiers supported him under his arms. He was as pale as a sheet, and his pretty head, on which only a shadow remained of the warlike enthusiasm which had animated it a few minutes before, was sunk in a dreadful way between his shoulders and drooped on his chest. There was a small spot of blood on the white shirt beneath his unbuttoned coat.

“Ah, what a pity,” I said, involuntarily turning away from this sad spectacle.

“Of course it’s a pity,” said an old soldier, who stood leaning on his musket beside me with a gloomy expression on his face. “He’s not afraid of anything; how can one do such things?” he added, looking intently at the wounded lad. “Young and still foolish, and now he has paid for it!”

“And you?” I asked, “Are you afraid?”

“What do you expect?”

XI

Four soldiers were carrying the Ensign on a stretcher, and behind them an ambulance soldier led a thin broken-winded horse with two green boxes containing surgical appliances on its back. They waited for the doctor. Officers rode up to the stretcher, and tried to cheer up and comfort the wounded lad.

“Well, friend Alanin, it will be some time before you will dance again with castanets,” said Lieutenant Rosenkranz, riding up to the stretcher with a smile.

He probably imagined that these words would keep up the young Ensign’s spirits, but, as far as one could judge by the latter’s coldly sad look, the words had not the desired effect.

The Captain rode up too. He looked intently at the wounded man, and his usually calm and cold face expressed sincere sympathy. “Well my dear Anatol Ivanich,” said he, in a voice of tender sympathy such as I never expected from him, “evidently it is God’s will.”

The wounded lad looked round, and his pale face lit up with a sad smile, “Yes, I disobeyed you.”

“Say rather, it was the will of God,” repeated the Captain.

The doctor arrived, and, having taken from his assistant bandages, a probe, and another implement, rolled up his sleeves and stepped up to the Ensign with an encouraging smile. “So it seems they have made a hole in a sound spot, for you too,” he said in a carelessly playful tone. “Let me see.”

The Ensign obeyed, but the look which he gave the merry doctor expressed astonishment and reproof, which the latter did not notice. The doctor began probing the wound and examining it from all sides; but the wounded Ensign, driven beyond the limits of endurance, pushed away the doctor’s hand with a deep groan.

“Leave me alone,” he said in a scarcely audible voice. “I shall die anyway.”

With those words he fell back, and five minutes later, when I passed the group that had formed round him, and asked a soldier, “How is the Ensign?” the answer was, “Passing away.”

XII

It was late in the day when the detachment, with songs, and formed into a broad column, approached the Fort. The sun had hidden behind the snowy mountain range and threw its last rosy beams on a long thin cloud that stretched motionless across the clear horizon. The snow peaks began to disappear in purple mists, and only their top outline was visible, wonderfully distinct on the crimson sunset glow. The delicate moon, risen long since, began to grow pale against the deep azure. The green of the grass and trees was turning black, and was becoming covered with dew.

The troops in dark masses moved with measured sounds along the luxuriant meadows. Tambourines, drums, and merry songs were heard here and there. The voice of the second tenor of the Sixth Company rang with full force, and the sounds of his clear chest-notes, full of feeling and power, floated away through the clear evening air.

I

In the middle of the winter of 185‒, a division of one battery was on service with the detachment operating in that part of the Terek Territory6 called the Great Chechnya. On the evening of February 14, knowing that the platoon which I, in the absence of any officer, was commanding, was to join a column told off to fell wood next day, and having given and received the necessary orders, I retired to my tent earlier than usual. As I had not contracted the bad habit of warming my tent with hot charcoal, I lay down without undressing on my bed, which was supported on stakes driven into the ground, drew my fur cap over my eyes, tucked myself up in my sheepskin cloak, and fell into that peculiar, heavy, and deep sleep which comes at times of anxiety, and when one is awaiting danger. The expectation of the next day’s affair had this effect on me.

At three next morning, while it was still quite dark, the warm sheepskin was pulled off me, and my eyes, heavy with sleep, were unpleasantly struck by the red light of a candle.

“Get up, please,” said a voice. I shut my eyes, unconsciously pulled the sheepskin back over myself, and again fell asleep. “Get up, please,” said Dmitry once more, remorselessly shaking me by the shoulder: “the infantry are starting.” The reality suddenly flashed on my mind, I sat up, and jumped to my feet. After hurriedly drinking a glass of tea and washing myself with icy water, I crept out of the tent and went to the “park” (the place where the cannons are). It was dark, misty, and cold. The dim red light of the night-fires, which, gleaming here and there in the camp, showed up the figures of the sleepy soldiers who lay near them, seemed but to make the darkness more intense.

Nearby, quiet regular snoring could be heard, and from farther off, sounds of movements, voices, and the clatter of the muskets of the infantry preparing to start. There was a smell of smoke, manure, torches, and mist; the morning air caused cold shivers to run down one’s back, and one’s teeth chattered involuntarily.

It was only by the snorting and occasional stamping of the horses harnessed to them that we could tell where the limbers and ammunition wagons stood in the impenetrable darkness; and only the fiery dots of the linstocks showed where the guns were. “God be with us!” With these words came the clanging sound of the first gun moving, then the noise of the ammunition wagon⁠—and the platoon started. We all took off our caps and crossed ourselves. Having occupied the interval between the infantry companies, the platoon stopped and waited a quarter of an hour for the whole column to collect and for the commander to appear.

“One of our men is missing, Nicholas Petrovich.” With these words a black figure approached me, whom I only knew by the voice to be the gun-sergeant of the platoon, Maksimov.

“Who is it?”

“Velenchuk is missing. He was there all the time they were harnessing⁠—I saw him myself⁠—but now he’s gone.”

As the column could not be expected to start at once, we decided to send Corporal Antonov to look for Velenchuk. Directly after that, several horsemen trotted past us in the dark. They were the commander and his suite; and immediately the head of the column moved and started, and so at last did we also, but Antonov and Velenchuk were still absent. We had, however, hardly gone a hundred yards before they both overtook us.

“Where was he?” I asked Antonov.

“Asleep in the ‘park.’ ”

“Why, has he had a drop too much?”

“Oh, no.”

“Then how is it he fell asleep?”

“I can’t make out.”

For about three hours we moved slowly on in silence and darkness, over some unploughed fields bare of snow, and over low bushes that crackled under the wheels of the gun-carriages. At last, after we had crossed a shallow but extremely rapid stream, we were stopped, and we heard the abrupt reports of vintovkas7 in the direction of the vanguard.

These sounds, as usual, had a most exhilarating effect on everyone. The detachment seemed to wake up: sounds of talking, movement, and laughter were heard in the ranks. Here a soldier wrestled with a comrade, there another hopped from foot to foot. Here was one chewing hardtack, or, to while away the time, shouldering and grounding arms. Meanwhile the mist began to grow distinctly whiter in the east, the damp became more intense, and the surrounding objects gradually emerged from the gloom. I could already discern the green gun-carriages and ammunition wagons, the brass of the guns, covered with moisture by the mist, the familiar figures of my soldiers, every minute detail of which I had involuntarily studied, the bay horses, and the lines of infantry with their bright bayonets, their bags, their ramrods, and the kettles they carried on their backs.

We were soon again moved forward a few hundred yards where there was no road, and then we were shown our position. To the right one could see the steep bank of a winding stream and the high wooden posts of a Tartar cemetery; to the left and in front a black strip was visible through the mist. The platoon unlimbered. The Eighth Company, which covered us, piled their muskets, and a battalion with axes and muskets went to the forest.

Before five minutes were over fires were crackling and smoking in all directions. The soldiers dispersed, blew the fires and stirred them with hands and feet, dragged logs and branches; while the forest resounded with the unceasing noise of hundreds of axes and the crashing of falling trees.

The artillery, with a certain rivalry of the infantry, heaped their pile high, and though it was already burning so that one could hardly come within two paces of it, and thick black smoke was rising through the frozen branches (from which drops fell sizzling into the flames) which the soldiers pressed down into the fire, and though the charcoal was glowing beneath and the grass was scorched all around, the soldiers were not satisfied, but kept throwing great logs onto the pile, feeding it with dry grass beneath, and heaping it higher and higher.

When I came up to the fire to smoke a cigarette, Velenchuk, always officious, but today feeling guilty and bustling about more than anyone, in a fit of zeal snatched a piece of charcoal from the fire with his bare hand, and, after tossing it from hand to hand a couple of times, dropped it on the ground.

“Light a twig and hold it up,” said a soldier.

“No, better get a linstock, lad,” said another.

When I had at length lit my cigarette without the aid of Velenchuk, who was again trying to take a piece of charcoal in his hand, he rubbed his burnt fingers on the skirts of his sheepskin coat, and then, probably for want of something else to do, lifted a large piece of plane-tree wood and swung it into the fire. When at last he felt free to rest a bit, he came close up to the fire, threw open his cloak which he wore like a mantle fastened by one button, spread out his legs, held out his big, black hands, and drawing his mouth a bit to one side, screwed up his eyes.

“Ah, I’ve gone and forgot my pipe. Here’s a go, lads!” said he after a short silence, not addressing anyone in particular.

II

In Russia there are three predominant types of soldier, under which the men of all our forces⁠—whether line, guards, infantry, cavalry, artillery, army of the Caucasus, or whatnot⁠—may be classified.

These principal types, including many subdivisions and combinations, are:

1. The submissive;

2. The domineering;

3. The reckless.

The submissive are divided into, (a) the calmly submissive, and (b) the bustlingly submissive.

The domineering are divided into, (a) the sternly domineering, and (b) the diplomatically domineering.

The reckless are divided into, (a) the amusingly reckless, and (b) the viciously reckless.

The type most often met with⁠—a type more lovable and attractive than the others, and generally accompanied by the best Christian virtues⁠—meekness, piety, patience, and devotion to the will of God⁠—is the submissive type in general. The distinctive feature of the calmly submissive is his invincible resignation to and contempt for all the reverses of fate which may befall him; the distinctive features of the submissive drunkard are a mild, poetic disposition and sensibility; the distinctive feature of the bustlingly submissive is limited mental capacity, combined with purposeless industry and zeal.

The domineering type in general is found chiefly among the higher grade of soldiers: the corporals, sergeants, sergeant-majors, and so on. The first subdivision, the sternly domineering, is a noble, energetic, preeminently military type, and does not exclude high poetic impulses (Corporal Antonov, with whom I wish to acquaint the reader, belonged to this type). The second subdivision, formed by the diplomatic domineering, has for some time past been increasing largely. A man of this type is always eloquent and literate,8 wears pink shirts, won’t eat out of the common pot, sometimes smokes tobacco of Mousatov’s brand, and thinks himself much superior to the common soldier, but is rarely himself as good a soldier as the domineering of the first subdivision.

The reckless type, like the domineering type, is good in its first subdivision, the amusingly reckless, whose characteristic traits are irresistible mirth, great capacity of all kinds, and a highly gifted and daring nature. As with the domineering class, the second subdivision is bad; the viciously reckless are terribly bad, but, to the honour of the Russian army it must be said that this type is very rare, and, when found, it is excluded from companionship by the public opinion of the soldiers themselves. Unbelief and a kind of boldness in vice are the chief traits characteristic of this class.

Velenchuk belonged to the bustlingly submissive. He was a Little-Russian by birth, had already served for fifteen years, and although not a showy or smart soldier, he was simple-minded, kindly, extremely though often inopportunely zealous, and also exceedingly honest. I say exceedingly honest, because an incident had occurred the year before which made this characteristic quality of his very evident. It must be remembered that almost every soldier knows a trade. The most usual trades are tailoring and bootmaking. Velenchuk taught himself the former, and judging from the fact that even Michael Dorofeich, the sergeant-major, ordered clothes from him, he must have attained some proficiency at his craft. Last year, in camp, Velenchuk undertook to make a fine cloth coat for Michael Dorofeich; but that very night, after he had cut out the coat and measured out the trimmings, and put them all under his pillow in the tent, a misfortune befell him: the cloth, that had cost seven rubles, disappeared during the night! Velenchuk, with tears in his eyes, trembling white lips and suppressed sobs, informed the sergeant-major of the occurrence. Michael Dorofeich was enraged. In the first moment of irritation he threatened the tailor; but afterwards, being a man with means and kindly, he just waved his hand and did not demand from Velenchuk payment of the value of the cloth. In spite of all the fuss made by the fussy Velenchuk, in spite of all the tears he shed when telling of his mishap, the thief was not found. A strong suspicion fell on the viciously reckless soldier Chernov, who slept in the same tent; but there were no positive proofs. The diplomatic domineering Michael Dorofeich, being a man with means, and having some little business transactions with the master-at-arms and the caterer of the mess (the aristocracy of the battery), very soon forgot all about the loss of his mufti coat. Not so Velenchuk. He did not forget his misfortune. The soldiers said they feared, at the time, that he might commit suicide or run away into the mountains, so great was the effect of his mishap upon him. He neither ate nor drank, and could not even work, but was continually crying. When three days had passed he appeared, quite pale, before Michael Dorofeich, took with trembling fingers a gold coin from under his cuff and gave it him, “Heaven’s my witness, Michael Dorofeich, that it’s all I have, and even that I borrowed from Zhdanov,” said he, sobbing again; “and the other two rubles I swear I will also return as soon as I have earned them. He” (whom “he” meant Velenchuk did not himself know) “has made me appear like a rascal before you. He⁠—with his loathsome, viper soul⁠—he takes the last morsel from his brother soldier, and I having served for fifteen years.⁠ ⁠…” To the honour of Michael Dorofeich be it said, he did not take the remaining two rubles, though Velenchuk brought them to him two months later.

III

Besides Velenchuk, five other soldiers of my platoon sat warming themselves by our fire.

In the best place, on a butt, with his back to the wind, sat Maksimov, the gun-sergeant of the platoon, smoking a pipe. The habit of commanding and the consciousness of his dignity were betrayed by the pose, the look, and by every movement of this man, not to mention his nankeen-covered sheepskin coat and the butt he was sitting on, which latter is an emblem of power at a halting-place.

When I came up he turned his head towards me without removing his eyes from the fire, and his look, following the direction his head had taken, only fell on me some time later. Maksimov was not a serf but a peasant-yeoman; he had some money, had qualified to take a class in the school-brigade, and had stuffed his head with erudition. He was awfully rich and awfully learned, so the soldiers said. I remember how once when we were practising plunging fire, with a quadrant, he explained to the soldiers gathered round, that a spirit level is nothing but as it occurs that atmospheric mercury has its motion. In reality, Maksimov was far from being stupid, and understood his work thoroughly; but he had the unfortunate peculiarity of sometimes purposely speaking so that there was no possibility of understanding him, and so that, I am convinced, he did not understand his own words. He was particularly fond of the words “as it occurs” and “continues,” so that when I heard him say “as it occurs” or “continues,” I knew beforehand that I should understand nothing of what followed. The soldiers, on the other hand, as far as I could judge, liked to hear his “as it occurs,” and suspected it of being fraught with deep meaning, though they did not understand a word of it any more than I did. This they attributed entirely to their own stupidity, and respected Theodor Maksimov all the more. In a word, Maksimov was one of the diplomatic domineering.

The soldier next to him, who had bared his sinewy red legs and was putting on his boots again by the fire, was Antonov⁠—that same Corporal Antonov, who in 1837, remaining with only two others in charge of an exposed gun, persisted in firing back at a powerful enemy, and, with two bullets in his leg, continued to serve his gun and to reload it.

The soldiers used to say that he would have been made a gun-sergeant long ago but for his character. And his character really was very peculiar. No one could have been calmer, gentler, or more accurate than he was when sober; but when he had a fit of drinking he became quite another man; he would not submit to authority, fought, brawled, and became a perfectly good-for-nothing soldier. Only the week before this, during the Carnival, he had had a drinking-bout; and in spite of all threats, persuasions, and being tied to a cannon, he went on drinking and brawling up to the first day of Lent. During the whole of Lent, though the division had been ordered not to fast, he fed on dried bread, and during the first week would not even drink the regulation cup of vodka. But one had to see his sturdy thickset figure, as of wrought iron, on its stumpy bandy legs, and his shiny moustached visage when, in a tipsy mood, he took the balalaika in his sinewy hands, and looking carelessly round played Lady, or walked down the street with his cloak thrown loosely over his shoulders, his medals dangling, his hands in the pockets of his nankeen blue trousers, and a look on his countenance of soldierly pride, and of contempt for all that was not of the artillery⁠—one had to see all this in order to understand how impossible it was for him, at such a moment, to abstain from fighting an orderly, a Cossack, an infantryman, a peasant (in fact, anyone not of the artillery) who was rude to him, or happened merely to be in his way. He fought and rioted not so much for his own pleasure as to maintain the spirit of soldiership in general, of which he felt himself to be the representative.

The third soldier, who sat on his heels smoking a clay pipe, was the artillery driver Chikin. He had an earring in one of his ears, bristling little moustaches, and the physiognomy of a bird. “Dear old Chikin,” as the soldiers called him, was a wit. During the bitterest frost, or up to his knees in mud, or after going two days without food, on the march, on parade, or at drill, the “dear fellow” was always and everywhere making faces, twisting his legs about, or cracking jokes that convulsed the whole platoon with laughter. At every halting-place, and in the camp, there was always a circle of young soldiers collected round Chikin, who played Filka9 with them, told them stories about the cunning soldier and the English milord, personated a Tartar or a German, or simply made remarks of his own at which everyone roared with laughter. It is true that his reputation as a wit was so well established in the battery that it was sufficient for him to open his mouth and wink in order to produce a general guffaw, but really there was much in him that was truly humorous and surprising. He saw something special, something that never entered anybody else’s head, in everything, and, above all, this capacity for seeing the funny side of things was proof against any and every trial.

The fourth soldier was an insignificant-looking boy recruited the year before, and this was his first campaign. He stood surrounded by the smoke, and so near the flames that his threadbare cloak seemed in danger of catching fire, yet, judging by the way he extended the skirts of his cloak and bent out his calves, and by his quiet, self-satisfied pose, he was feeling highly contented.

The fifth and last of the soldiers was Daddy Zhdanov. He sat a little way off, cutting a stick. Zhdanov had been serving in the battery longer than anyone else, had known all the others as recruits, and they were all in the habit of calling him “daddy.” It was said of him that he never drank, smoked, or played cards (not even “noses”), and never used bad language. He spent all his spare time boot-making, went to church on holidays where that was possible, or else put a farthing taper before his icon and opened the Book of Psalms, the only book he could read. He seldom kept company with the other soldiers. To those who were his seniors in rank though his juniors in years, he was coldly respectful; with his equals he, not being a drinker, had few opportunities of mixing. He liked the recruits and the youngest soldiers best: he always took them under his protection, admonished them, and often helped them. Everyone in the battery considered him a capitalist because he had some twenty-five rubles, out of which he was always ready to lend something to a soldier in real need.

The same Maksimov who was now gun-sergeant, told me that ten years ago, when he first came as a recruit and drank all he had with the old soldiers who were in the habit of drinking, Zhdanov, noticing his unfortunate position, called him up, severely reprimanded him for his conduct and even beat him, delivered a lecture on how one should live in the army, and sent him away after giving him a shirt (which Maksimov lacked) and half-a-ruble in money. “He made a man of me,” Maksimov always used to say with respect and gratitude. He also helped Velenchuk (whom he had taken under his protection since he was a recruit) at the time of his misfortune. When the coat was stolen, he helped him as he had helped many and many another during the twenty-five years of his service.

One could not hope to find a man in the service who knew his work more thoroughly, or was a better or more conscientious soldier than he; but he was too meek and insignificant-looking to be made a gun-sergeant, though he had been bombardier for fifteen years. Zhdanov’s one enjoyment and passion was song. He had a few favourite songs, always collected a circle of singers from among the younger soldiers, and, though he could not sing himself, he would stand by them, his hands in the pockets of his cloak, his eyes closed, showing sympathy by the movements of his head and jaw. I don’t know why, but that regular movement of the jaws below the ears, which I never noticed in anyone else, seemed to me extremely expressive. His snow-white head, his blackened moustaches, and his sunburnt, wrinkled face, gave him at first sight a stern and harsh expression; but on looking closer into his large, round eyes, especially when they smiled (he never laughed with his lips), you were suddenly struck by something remarkable in their unusually mild, almost childlike look.

IV

“I’ll be blowed! I’ve gone and forgot my pipe. Here’s a go, lads!” repeated Velenchuk.

“You should smoke cikars, old fellow!” began Chikin, drawing his mouth to one side and winking. “There, now, I always smoke cikars when I’m at home⁠—them’s sweeter.”

Of course everybody burst out laughing.

“Forgot your pipe, indeed!” interrupted Maksimov without heeding the general mirth, and beating the tobacco out of his pipe into the palm of his left hand with the proud air of a superior; “where did you vanish to⁠—eh, Velenchuk?”

Velenchuk, half turning round to him, was about to raise his hand to his cap, but dropped it again.

“Seems to me you hadn’t your sleep out after yesterday⁠—falling asleep when you are once up! It’s not thanks the likes of you get for such goings on.”

“May I die, Theodor Maksimov, if a drop has passed my lips; I don’t myself know what happened to me,” answered Velenchuk. “Much cause I had for revelling,” he muttered.

“Just so; but we have to answer to the authorities because of the likes of you, and you continue⁠—it’s quite scandalous!” the eloquent Maksimov concluded in a calmer tone.

“It’s quite wonderful, lads,” Velenchuk went on after a moment’s silence, scratching his head and addressing no one in particular; “really quite wonderful, lads! Here have I been serving for the last sixteen years, and such a thing never happened to me. When we were ordered to appear for muster I was all right, but at the ‘park,’ there it suddenly clutches hold of me, and clutches and clutches, and down it throws me, down on the ground and no more ado⁠—and I did not myself know how I fell asleep, lads! That must have been the trances,” he concluded.

“True enough, I hardly managed to wake you,” said Antonov, as he pulled on his boot. “I had to push and push, just as if you’d been a log!”

“Fancy now,” said Velenchuk, “if I’d been drunk now!⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s just like a woman we had at home,” began Chikin; “she hardly got off the stove for two years. Once they began waking her⁠—they thought she was asleep⁠—and she was already dead. She used to be taken sleepy that way. That’s what it is, old fellow!”

“Now then, Chikin, won’t you tell us how you set the tone during your leave of absence?” said Maksimov, looking at me with a smile as if to say: “Would you, too, like to hear the stupid fellow?”

“What tone, Theodor Maksimov?” said Chikin, giving me a rapid side-glance. “In course I told them what sort of a Caw-cusses we’d got here.”

“Well, yes, how did you do it? There! don’t give yourself airs; tell us how you administrated it to them.”

“How should I administrate it? In course they asked me how we live,” Chikin began rapidly, with the air of a man recounting something he had repeated several times before. “ ‘We live well, old fellow,’ says I. ‘Provisions in plenty we get: morning and night a cup of chokelad for every soldier lad, and at noon barley broth before us is set, such as gentlefolks get, and instead of vodka we get a pint of Modera wine from Devirier, such as costs forty-four⁠—with the bottle ten more!’ ”

“Fine Modera!” Velenchuk shouted louder than anyone, rolling with laughter: “that’s Modera of the right sort!”

“Well, and what did you tell them about the Asiaites?” Maksimov went on to ask, when the general mirth had subsided a little.

Chikin stooped over the fire, poked out a bit of charcoal with a stick, put it to his pipe, and long continued puffing at his shag as though not noticing the silent curiosity awakened in his hearers. When he had at last drawn enough smoke he threw the bit of charcoal away, pushed his cap yet farther back, and, stretching himself, continued with a slight smile⁠—

“Well, so they asked, ‘What’s that Cherkes fellow or Turk as you’ve got down in your Caw-cusses,’ they say, ‘as fights?’ and so I says, ‘Them’s not all of one sort; there’s different Cherkeses, old fellow. There’s the Wagabones, them as lives in the stony mountains and eat stones instead of bread. They’re big,’ says I, ‘as big as a good-sized beam, they’ve one eye in the forehead, and wear burning red caps,’ just such as yours, old fellow,” he added, turning to the young recruit, who really wore an absurd cap with a red crown.

At this unexpected sally the recruit suddenly collapsed, slapped his knees, and burst out laughing and coughing so that he hardly managed to utter in a stifled voice, “Them Wagabones is the right sort!”

“ ‘Then,’ says I, ‘there’s also the Mopingers,’ ” continued Chikin, making his cap slip onto his forehead with a movement of his head: “ ‘these others are little twins, so big⁠ ⁠… all in pairs,’ says I, ‘they run about hand in hand at such a rate,’ says I, ‘that you couldn’t catch ’em on a horse!’⁠—‘Then how’s it, lad,’ they say, ‘how’s them Mopingers, be they born hand in hand?’ ” He said this in a hoarse bass, pretending to imitate a peasant. “ ‘Yes,’ says I, ‘he’s naturally like that. Tear their hands apart, and they’ll bleed just like a Chinaman: take a Chinaman’s cap off, and it’ll bleed.’⁠—‘And tell us, lad, how do they fight?’⁠—‘That’s how,’ says I, ‘they catch you and rip your belly up and wind your bowels round your arm, and wind and wind. They go on winding and you go on laughing till your breath all goes.’ ”

“Well, and did they believe you, Chikin?” said Maksimov with a slight smile, while all the rest were dying with laughter.

“Such queer people, Theodor Maksimov, they believe everything. On my word they do. But when I told them about Mount Kazbec, and said that the snow didn’t melt on it all the summer, they mocked at me! ‘What are you bragging for, lad,’ they says; ‘a big mountain and the snow on it don’t melt? Why, lad, when the thaw sets in here, every tiny bit of a hillock thaws first, while the snow still lies in the hollows.’ There now!” Chikin concluded with a wink.

V

The bright disk of the sun, shining through the milky-white mist, had already risen to a considerable height. The purple-grey horizon gradually widened, but though it had receded considerably, it was still as sharply outlined by a deceptive white wall of mist.

Beyond the felled wood a good-sized plain now opened in front of us. The black or milky-white or purple smoke of the fires expanded, and fantastic shapes of white mist-clouds floated above the plain. An occasional group of mounted Tartars appeared far in the distance before us, and at rare intervals the reports of our rifles10 and of their vintovkas and cannon were to be heard.

This, as Captain Hlopov said, was “not yet business, but only play.”

The commander of the 9th Company of Chasseurs, that formed our support, came up to our guns, pointed to three Tartars11 on horseback skirting the forest some 1,400 yards from us, and, with the fondness for artillery fire common among infantry officers in general, asked me to let off a ball or bomb at them.

“Do you see?” he said with a kind and persuasive smile, as he stretched his hand from behind my shoulder, “in front of those big trees there⁠ ⁠… one on a white horse and in a black Circassian cloak, and two others behind. Do you see? Could you not, please?”

“And there are three more riding at the outskirt of the forest,” said Antonov, who had astonishingly sharp eyesight, coming up to us, and hiding behind his back the pipe he had been smoking. “There, the one in front has taken his gun out of its case. They can be seen distinctly, y’r honor!”

“Look there! he’s fired, lads. D’ye see the white smoke?” said Velenchuk, who was one of a group of soldiers standing a little behind us.

“At our line surely, the blackguard!” remarked another.

“See what a lot of ’em come streaming out of the forest. Must be looking round⁠ ⁠… want to place a gun,” said a third.

“Supposing now a bomb was sent right into that lot, wouldn’t they spit!”

“And what d’ye think, old fellow⁠—that it would just reach ’em?” said Chikin.

“Twelve hundred or twelve hundred and fifty yards: not more than that,” said Maksimov calmly and as if speaking to himself, though it was evident he was just as anxious to fire as the rest: “if we were to give an elevation of forty-five lines to our ‘unicorn’12 we could hit the very point, that is to say, perfectly.”

“D’ye know, if you were now to aim at that group, you would be sure to hit somebody. There now, they are all together⁠—please be quick and give the order to fire,” the company commander continued to entreat me.

“Are we to point the gun?” suddenly asked Antonov in an abrupt bass, with a look as if of gloomy anger.

I must admit that I also felt a strong wish to fire, so I ordered the second gun to be trained.

I had hardly given the order before the shell was charged and rammed in, and Antonov, leaning against the cheek of the gun-carriage and holding two of his thick fingers to the base-ring, was directing the movement of the tail of the gun. “Right, left⁠—a bit to the left, a wee bit⁠—more⁠—more⁠—right!” he said, stepping from the gun with a look of pride.

The infantry officer, I, and Maksimov, one after the other, approached, put our heads to the sights, and expressed our various opinions.

“By Heavens, it will shoot over,” remarked Velenchuk, clicking his tongue, though he was only looking over Antonov’s shoulder, and therefore had no grounds for this supposition. “By Hea⁠—vens, it will shoot over; it will hit that there tree, my lads!”

I gave the order: “Two.”

The men stepped away from the gun. Antonov ran aside to watch the flight of the shot. The touch-hole flashed and the brass rang. At the same moment we were enveloped in a cloud of powder-smoke, and, emerging from the overpowering boom of the discharge, the humming, metallic sound of the flying shot receded with the swiftness of lightning and died away in the distance amid general silence.

A little beyond the group of horsemen a white cloudlet appeared; the Tartars galloped away in all directions, and the report of the explosion reached us. “That was very fine!” “Ah, how they galloped!” “The devils don’t like that!” came the words of approval and ridicule from the ranks of the artillery and infantry.

“If we had had the gun pointed only a touch lower we should just have caught him. I said it would hit the tree, and sure enough it did go to the right,” remarked Velenchuk.

VI

Leaving the soldiers to discuss how the Tartars galloped off when they saw the shell, why they had been riding there, and whether there were many of them in the forest, I went and sat down with the company commander under a tree a few steps off, to wait while the cutlets he had invited me to share were being warmed up. The company commander, Bolhov, was one of the officers nicknamed “Bonjourists” in the regiment. He was a man of some means, had formerly served in the Guards, and spoke French. But in spite of all this his comrades liked him. He was clever enough, and had tact enough, to wear a coat of Petersburg make, to eat a good dinner, and to speak French, without too much offending his fellow officers. After talking about the weather, the military operations, our mutual acquaintances among the officers, and having assured ourselves of the satisfactory state of each other’s ideas by questions and answers, and the views expressed, we involuntarily passed to more intimate conversation. And when people belonging to the same circle meet in the Caucasus, a very evident, even if unspoken, question arises: “Why are you here?” and it was to this silent question of mine that, as it seemed to me, my companion wished to reply.

“When will this expedition end?” he said lazily. “It is so dull.”

“I don’t think it dull,” said I. “It’s much worse on the staff.”

“Oh, it’s ten thousand times worse on the staff,” he said irascibly. “No, I mean when will the whole thing end?”

“What is it you want to end?” asked I.

“Everything⁠—the whole affair!⁠ ⁠… Are the cutlets ready, Nikolayev?”

“Then why did you come to serve here if you so dislike the Caucasus?” I said.

“Do you know why?” he answered with resolute frankness. “In obedience to tradition! You know there exists in Russia a most curious tradition about the Caucasus, making it out to be a ‘promised land’ for all unfortunates.”

“Yes, that is almost true,” said I. “Most of us⁠—”

“But the best of it is,” he said, interrupting me, “that all of us who came to the Caucasus in obedience to the tradition made a terrible mistake in our calculations, and I can’t for the life of me see why one should, in consequence of an unfortunate love affair or of financial troubles, choose to go and serve in the Caucasus rather than in Kazan or Kaluga. Why, in Russia they imagine the Caucasus to be something majestic: eternal virgin ice, rushing torrents, daggers, mantles, fair Circassians, and an atmosphere of terror and romance; but in reality there is nothing amusing in it. If they only realized that we never get to the virgin-ice, that it would not be at all amusing if we did, and that the Caucasus is divided into governments⁠—Stavropol, Tiflis, and so on.”

“Yes,” said I, laughing, “we look very differently at the Caucasus when we are in Russia and when we are here. It is like what you may have experienced when reading verses in a language you are not familiar with; you imagine them to be much better than they are.”

“I really don’t know; but I dislike this Caucasus awfully,” he said, interrupting me.

“Well, no; I still like the Caucasus, only in a different way.”

“Perhaps it is all right,” he continued irritably; “all I know is that I’m not all right in the Caucasus.”

“Why is that?” I asked, to say something.

“Well, first because it has deceived me. All that I, in obedience to tradition, came to the Caucasus to be cured of, has followed me here, only with the difference that there it was all on a big scale, and now it is on a little dirty one, where at each step I find millions of petty anxieties, shabbinesses, and insults; and next, because I feel that I am sinking, morally, lower and lower every day; but chiefly, because I do not feel fit for the service here. I can’t stand running risks. The fact of the matter is simply that I am not brave.”

He stopped and looked at me, not joking.

Though this unasked-for confession surprised me very much, I did not contradict him, as he evidently wished me to do, but waited for his own refutation of his words, which always follows in such cases.

“Do you know, in coming on this expedition I am taking part in an action for the first time,” he continued, “and you can’t think what was going on in me yesterday. When the Sergeant-major brought the order that my company was to join the column, I turned as white as a sheet and could not speak for excitement. And if you only knew what a night I had! If it were true that one’s hair turns white from fear, mine ought to be perfectly white today, because I don’t think anyone condemned to death ever suffered more in a night than I did; and even now, though I feel a bit easier than in the night, this is what goes on inside!” he added, turning his fist about before his chest. “And what is funny is that while a most fearful tragedy is being enacted, here one sits eating cutlets and onions and making believe that it is great fun.⁠—Have we any wine, Nikolayev?” he added, yawning.

“That’s him, my lads!” came the excited voice of one of the soldiers, and all eyes turned towards the border of the distant forest.

In the distance a puff of bluish smoke expanded and rose, blown about by the wind. When I had understood that this was a shot fired at us by the enemy, all before my eyes at the moment assumed a sort of new and majestic character. The piles of arms, the smoke of the fires, the blue sky, the green gun-carriages, Nikolayev’s sunburnt, moustached face⁠—all seemed telling me that the ball that had already emerged from the smoke and was at that moment flying through space, might be directed straight at my breast.

“Where did you get the wine?” I asked Bolhov lazily, while deep in my soul two voices spoke with equal clearness. One said, “Lord receive my soul in peace,” the other, “I hope I shall not stoop, but smile, while the ball is passing,” and at that moment something terribly unpleasant whistled past our heads, and a cannonball crashed down a couple of paces from us.

“There now, had I been a Napoleon or a Frederick, I should certainly have paid you a compliment,” Bolhov remarked, turning towards me quite calmly.

“You have done so as it is,” I answered, with difficulty hiding the excitement produced in me by the danger just passed.

“Well, what if I have?⁠—no one will write it down.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Well, if you do put it down, it will only be ‘for critikism,’ as Mischenkov says,” he added with a smile.

“Ugh! the damned thing!” just then remarked Antonov behind us, as he spat over his shoulder with vexation, “just missed my legs!”

All my attempts to seem calm, and all our cunning phrases, suddenly seemed to me insufferably silly after that simple exclamation.

VII

The enemy had really placed two guns where we had seen the Tartars riding, and they fired a shot every twenty or thirty minutes at our men who were felling the wood. My platoon was ordered forward to the plain to answer the enemy’s fire. A puff of smoke appeared on the outskirts of the forest, then followed a report and a whistle, and a ball fell in front or behind us. The enemy’s shots fell fortunately for us, and we sustained no losses.

The artillerymen behaved splendidly, as they always do; loaded quickly, pointed carefully at the spots where the puffs of smoke were, and quietly joked with one another.

The infantry supports lay near in silent inaction awaiting their turn. The wood-fellers went on with their work, the axes rang faster and more unintermittently through the forest; but when the whistle of a shot became audible all were suddenly silent, and, in the midst of the deathly stillness, voices not quite calm exclaimed, “Scatter, lads!” and all eyes followed the ball ricochetting over wood piles and strewn branches.

The mist had now risen quite high and, turning into clouds, gradually disappeared into the dark-blue depths of the sky; the unveiled sun shone brightly, throwing sparkling reflections from the steel bayonets, the brass of the guns, the thawing earth, and the glittering hoarfrost. In the air one felt the freshness of the morning frost together with the warmth of the spring sunshine; thousands of different hues and tints mingled in the dry leaves of the forest, and the shining, beaten track plainly showed the traces left by wheels and the marks of roughshod horses’ feet.

The movement became greater and more noticeable between the two forces. On all sides the blue smoke of the guns appeared more and more frequently. Dragoons rode forward, the streamers of their lances flying; from the infantry companies one heard songs, and the carts laden with firewood formed into a train in our rear. The general rode up to our platoon and ordered us to prepare to retire. The enemy settled in the bushes on our left flank, and their snipers began to molest us seriously. A bullet came humming from the woods to the left and struck a gun-carriage, then came another, and a third.⁠ ⁠… The infantry supports that had been lying near us rose noisily, took up their muskets and formed into line.

The small-arm firing increased, and bullets flew more and more frequently. The retreat commenced, and consequently the serious part of the action, as is usual in the Caucasus.

Everything showed that the artillerymen liked the bullets as little as the infantry had liked the cannonballs. Antonov frowned, Chikin imitated the bullets and joked about them, but it was easy to see he did not like them. “It’s in a mighty hurry,” he said of one of them; another he called “little bee”; a third, which seemed to fly slowly past overhead with a kind of piteous wail, he called an “orphan,” which caused general laughter.

The recruit, who, unaccustomed to such scenes, bent his head to one side and stretched his neck every time a bullet passed, also made the soldiers laugh. “What, is that a friend of yours you’re bowing to?” they said to him. Velenchuk also, usually quite indifferent to danger, was now excited: he was evidently vexed that we did not fire case-shot in the direction whence the bullets came. He repeated several times in a discontented tone, “Why is he allowed to go for us and gets nothing in return? If we turned a gun that way and gave them a taste of case-shot they’d hold their noise, no fear!”

It was true that it was time to do this, so I ordered to fire a last bomb and then to load with case-shot.

“Case-shot!” Antonov called out briskly as he went through the thick of the smoke to sponge out the gun as soon as it was discharged.

At that moment I heard, just behind me, the rapid whiz of a bullet suddenly stopped with a dull thud by something. My heart stopped beating. “Someone of the men has been hit,” I thought, while a sad presentiment made me afraid to turn round. And, really, that sound was followed by the heavy fall of a body, and the heartrending “Oh-o-oh” of someone who had been wounded. “I’m hit, lads!” a voice I knew exclaimed with an effort. It was Velenchuk. He was lying on his back between the limbers and a cannon. The cartridge-bag he had been carrying was thrown to one side. His forehead was covered with blood, and a thick red stream was running down over his right eye and nose. He was wounded in the stomach but hardly bled at all there; his forehead he had hurt against a log in falling.

All this I made out much later; the first moment I could only see an indistinct mass, and, as it seemed to me, a tremendous quantity of blood.

Not one of the soldiers who were loading said a word, only the young recruit muttered something that sounded like “Dear me! he’s bleeding,” and Antonov, frowning, gave an angry grunt; but it was clear that the thought of death passed through the soul of each. All set to work very actively and the gun was loaded in a moment, but the ammunition-bearer bringing the case-shot went two or three steps round the spot where Velenchuk still lay groaning.

VIII

Everyone who has been in action undoubtedly knows that strange and though illogical yet powerful feeling of aversion for the spot where someone has been killed or wounded. It was evident that for a moment my men gave way to this feeling when Velenchuk had to be taken to the cart that came up to fetch him. Zhdanov came up angrily to the wounded man, and, taking him under the arms, lifted him without heeding his loud screams. “Now then, what are you standing there for? take hold!” he shouted, and about ten assistants, some of them superfluous, immediately surrounded Velenchuk. But hardly had they moved him when he began screaming and struggling terribly.

“What are you screaming like a hare for?” said Antonov roughly, holding his leg; “mind, or we’ll just leave you.”

And the wounded man really became quiet, and only now and then uttered, “Oh, it’s my death! Oh, oh, oh, lads!”

When he was laid in the cart he even stopped moaning, and I heard him speak to his comrades in low clear tones, probably saying farewell to them.

No one likes to look at a wounded man during an action, and, instinctively hurrying to end this scene, I ordered him to be taken quickly to the ambulance, and returned to the guns. But after a few minutes I was told that Velenchuk was asking for me, and I went up to the cart.

The wounded man lay at the bottom of the cart holding on to the sides with both hands. His broad healthy face had completely changed during those few moments; he seemed to have grown thinner and years older, his lips were thin and pale, and pressed together with an evident strain. The hasty and dull expression of his glance was replaced by a kind of bright clear radiance, and on the bloody forehead and nose already lay the impress of death. Though the least movement caused him excruciating pain, he nevertheless asked to have a small cherez13 with money taken from his left leg.

The sight of his bare, white, healthy leg, when his jackboot had been taken off and the purse untied, produced on me a terribly sad feeling.

“Here are three rubles and a half,” he said, as I took the purse: “you’ll take care of them.”

The cart was starting, but he stopped it.

“I was making a cloak for Lieutenant Sulimovsky. He gave me two rubles. I bought buttons for one and a half, and half a ruble is in my bag with the buttons. Please let him have it.”

“All right! all right!” said I. “Get well again, old fellow.”

He did not answer; the cart started, and he again began to groan and cry out in a terrible, heartrending voice. It was as if, having done with the business of this life, he did not think it necessary to restrain himself, and considered it permissible to allow himself this relief.

IX

“Where are you off to? Come back! Where are you going?” I shouted to the recruit, who, with his reserve linstock under his arm and a stick of some sort in his hand, was, in the coolest manner, following the cart that bore the wounded man.

But the recruit only looked at me lazily, muttered something or other, and continued his way, so that I had to send a soldier to bring him back. He took off his red cap and looked at me with a stupid smile.

“Where were you going?” I asked.

“To the camp.”

“Why?”

“Why?⁠ ⁠… Velenchuk is wounded,” he said, again smiling.

“What’s that to you? You must stay here.”

He looked at me with surprise, then turned quietly round, put on his cap, and went back to his place.

The affair in general was successful. The Cossacks, as we heard, had made a fine charge and brought back three dead Tartars;14 the infantry had provided itself with firewood, and had only half a dozen men wounded; the artillery had lost only Velenchuk and two horses. For that, two miles of forest had been cut down, and the place so cleared as to be unrecognizable. Instead of the thick outskirts of the forest you saw before you a large plain covered with smoking fires, and cavalry and infantry marching back to camp.

Though the enemy continued to pursue us with artillery and small-arm fire up to the cemetery by the little river we had crossed in the morning, the retirement was successfully accomplished. I was already beginning to dream of the cabbage-soup and mutton ribs with buckwheat that were awaiting me in the camp, when a message came from the General ordering a redoubt to be constructed by the river, and the 3rd battalion of the K⁠⸺ Regiment and the platoon of the 4th Battery to remain there till next day.

The carts with the wood and the wounded, the Cossacks, the artillery, the infantry with muskets and faggots on their shoulders, all passed us with noise and songs. Every face expressed animation and pleasure, caused by the escape from danger and the hope of rest. Only we and the 3rd battalion had to postpone these pleasant feelings till tomorrow.

X

While we of the artillery were busy with the guns⁠—parking the limbers and the ammunition wagons, and arranging the picket-ropes⁠—the infantry had already piled their muskets, made up campfires, built little huts of branches and maize straw, and begun boiling their buckwheat.

The twilight had set in. Bluish white clouds crept over the sky. The mist, turning into fine dank drizzle, wetted the earth and the soldiers’ cloaks; the horizon narrowed, and all the surroundings assumed a gloomier hue. The damp I felt through my boots and on my neck, the ceaseless movement and talk in which I took no part, the sticky mud on which my feet kept slipping, and my empty stomach, all combined to put me into the dreariest, most unpleasant frame of mind after the physical and moral weariness of the day. I could not get Velenchuk out of my head. The whole simple story of his soldier-life depicted itself persistently in my imagination.

His last moments were as clear and calm as his whole life had been. He had lived too honestly and been too artless for his simple faith in a future heavenly life to be shaken at the decisive moment.

“Your honour!” said Nikolayev, coming up to me, “the Captain asks you to come and have tea with him.”

Having scrambled through, as best I could, between the piles of arms and the campfires, I followed Nikolayev to where Bolhov was, thinking with pleasure of a tumbler of hot tea, and a cheerful conversation which would disperse my gloomy thoughts.

“Have you found him?” I heard Bolhov’s voice say from inside a maize-hut in which a light was burning.

“I’ve brought him, y’r honour,” answered Nikolayev’s bass voice.

Inside the hut Bolhov was sitting on a dry mantle, with unbuttoned coat and no cap. A samovar stood boiling by his side, and on a drum were light refreshments. A bayonet holding a candle was stuck into the ground.

“What do you think of it?” he asked, looking proudly round his cosy establishment. It really was so nice inside the hut that at tea I quite forgot the damp, the darkness, and Velenchuk’s wound. We talked of Moscow, and of things that had not the least relation to the war or to the Caucasus.

After a moment of silence, such as sometimes occurs in the most animated conversation, Bolhov looked at me with a smile.

“I think our conversation this morning struck you as being very strange,” he said.

“No, why do you think so? It only seemed to me that you were too frank; there are things which we all know, but which should never be mentioned.”

“Why not? If there were the least possibility of changing this life for the lowest and poorest without danger and without service, I should not hesitate a moment.”

“Then why don’t you return to Russia?” I asked.

“Why?” he repeated. “Oh, I have thought about that long ago. I can’t return to Russia now until I have the Ann and Vladimir orders: an Ann round my neck, and the rank of major, as I planned when I came here.”

“Why?⁠—if, as you say, you feel unfit for the service here.”

“But what if I feel still more unfit to go back to Russia to the same position that I left? That is also one of the traditions in Russia, confirmed by Passek, Sleptsov, and others, that one need only go to the Caucasus to be laden with rewards. Everyone expects and demands it of us; and I have been here for two years, have been on two expeditions, and have got nothing. But still I have so much ambition that I won’t leave on any account until I am a major with a Vladimir and Ann round my neck. I have become so concerned about it that it upsets me when Gnilokishkin gets a reward and I don’t. And then, how am I to show myself in Russia, to the village elder⁠—the merchant Kotelnikov⁠—to whom I sell my corn; to my Moscow aunt; and to all those good people, if after two years spent in the Caucasus I return without any reward? It is true I don’t at all wish to know all those people, and they, too, no doubt, care very little about me; but man is so made that, though I don’t want to know them, yet on account of them I’m wasting the best years of my life, all my life’s happiness, and am ruining my future.”

XI

Just then we heard the voice of the commander of the battalion outside, addressing Bolhov.

“Who is with you, Nicholas Fedorovich?”

Bolhov gave him my name, and then three officers scrambled into the hut⁠—Major Kirsanov; the adjutant of his battalion; and Captain Trosenko.

Kirsanov was not tall but stout, he had black moustaches, rosy cheeks, and oily little eyes. These eyes were his most remarkable feature. When he laughed, nothing remained of them but two tiny moist stars, and these little stars, together with his wide-stretched lips and outstretched neck, often gave him an extraordinarily senseless look. In the regiment Kirsanov behaved himself and bore himself better than anyone else; his subordinates did not complain of him, and his superiors respected him⁠—though the general opinion was that he was very limited. He knew the service, was exact and zealous, always had ready money, kept a carriage and a man-cook, and knew how to make an admirable pretence of being proud.

“What were you talking about, Nicholas Fedorovich?”

“Why, about the attractions of the service here.”

But just then Kirsanov noticed me, a cadet, and to impress me with his importance he paid no attention to Bolhov’s reply, but looked at the drum and said⁠—

“Are you tired, Nicholas Fedorovich?”

“No, you see we⁠—” Bolhov began.

But again the dignity of the commander of the battalion seemed to make it necessary to interrupt, and to ask another question.

“That was a famous affair today, was it not?”

The adjutant of the battalion was a young ensign recently promoted from being a cadet, a modest, quiet lad with a bashful and kindly-pleasant face. I had met him at Bolhov’s before. The lad would often come to Bolhov’s, bow, sit down in a corner, and remain silent for hours making cigarettes and smoking them; then he would rise, bow, and go away. He was the type of a poor Russian nobleman’s son, who had chosen the military career as the only one possible to him with his education, and who esteemed his position as an officer above everything else in the world⁠—a simple-minded and lovable type, notwithstanding the comical appurtenances inseparable from it: the tobacco-pouch, dressing-gown, guitar, and little moustache-brush we are accustomed to associate with it. It was told of him in the regiment, that he bragged about being just but strict with his orderly, and that he used to say, “I punish seldom, but when I am compelled to do it, it’s no joke,” and that when his tipsy orderly robbed him outrageously and even began to insult him, he, the master, took him to the guardhouse and ordered everything to be prepared for a flogging, but was so upset at the sight of the preparations that he could only say, “There now, you see, I could⁠—” and, becoming quite disconcerted, ran home in great confusion, and was henceforth afraid to look his man Chernov in the eyes. His comrades gave the simple-minded boy no rest, but teased him continually about this episode, and more than once I heard how he defended himself, and, blushing to the tips of his ears, assured them that it was not true, but just the contrary.

The third visitor, Captain Trosenko, was a thoroughgoing old Caucasian⁠—that is, a man for whom the company he commanded had become his family; the fortress where the staff was, his home; and the soldiers’ singing his only pleasure in life. He was a man for whom everything unconnected with the Caucasus was contemptible and scarcely worthy of being considered probable, and everything connected with the Caucasus was divided into two halves: ours and not ours. The first he loved, the second he hated with all the power of his soul; but above all he was a man of steeled, calm courage, wonderfully kind in his behaviour to his comrades and subordinates, and desperately frank and even rude, to aides-de-camp and “Bonjourists,” for whom, for some reason, he had a great dislike. On entering the hut he nearly caved the roof in with his head, then suddenly sank down and sat on the ground.

“Well?” he said, and then suddenly remarking me, whom he did not know, he stopped and gazed at me with a dull, fixed look.

“Well, and what have you been conversing about?” asked the Major, taking out his watch and looking at it, though I am perfectly certain he had no need to.

“Why, I’ve been asked my reasons for serving here⁠—”

“Of course. Nicholas Fedorovich wishes to distinguish himself here, and then to return home,” said the Major.

“Well, and you, Abram Ilyich,” said Bolhov, addressing Kirsanov, “tell me why you are serving in the Caucasus.”

“I serve because, in the first place, as you know, it is everyone’s duty to serve.⁠ ⁠… What?” he then added, though no one had spoken. “I had a letter from Russia yesterday, Nicholas Fedorovich,” he continued, evidently wishing to change the subject; “they write that⁠ ⁠… they ask such strange questions.”

“What questions?” asked Bolhov.

The Major began laughing.

“Very queer questions.⁠ ⁠… They ask, can jealousy exist where there is no love.⁠ ⁠… What?” he asked, turning round and glancing at us all.

“Dear me!” said Bolhov, with a smile.

“Yes, you know, it is nice in Russia,” continued the Major, just as if his sentences flowed naturally from one another. “When I was in Tambov in ’52, they received me everywhere as if I had been some emperor’s aide-de-camp. Will you believe it, that at a ball at the Governor’s, when I came in, you know⁠ ⁠… well, they received me very well. The General’s wife herself, you know, talked to me, and asked me about the Caucasus, and everybody was⁠ ⁠… so that I hardly knew.⁠ ⁠… They examined my gold sabre as if it were some curiosity; they asked for what I had received the sabre, for what the Ann, for what the Vladimir⁠ ⁠… so I just told them.⁠ ⁠… What? That’s what the Caucasus is good for, Nicholas Fedorovich!” he continued, without waiting for any reply:⁠—“There they think very well of us Caucasians. You know a young man that’s a staff-officer and has an Ann and a Vladimir⁠ ⁠… that counts for a good deal in Russia.⁠ ⁠… What?”

“And you, no doubt, piled it on a bit, Abram Ilyich?” said Bolhov.

“He⁠—he!” laughed the Major, stupidly. “You know one has to do that. And didn’t I feed well those two months!”

“And tell me, is it nice there in Russia?” said Trosenko, inquiring about Russia as though it were China or Japan.

“Yes, and the champagne we drank those two months, it was awful!”

“Eh, nonsense! You’ll have drunk nothing but lemonade. There now, I’d have burst to let them see how Caucasians drink. I’d have given them something to talk about. I’d have shown them how one drinks; eh, Bolhov?” said Trosenko.

“But you, Daddy, have been more than ten years in the Caucasus,” said Bolhov, “and you remember what Ermolov15 said?⁠ ⁠… And Abram Ilyich has been only six.”

“Ten indeed!⁠ ⁠… nearly sixteen.⁠ ⁠… Well, Bolhov, let us have some sage-vodka. It’s damp, b-r-r-r!⁠ ⁠… Eh?” said Trosenko, smiling, “Will you have a drink, Major?”

But the Major had been displeased by the old Captain’s first remarks to him, and plainly drew back and sought refuge in his own grandeur. He hummed something, and again looked at his watch.

“For my part, I shall never go there!” Trosenko continued without heeding the Major’s frowns. “I have lost the habit of speaking and walking in the Russian way. They’d ask, ‘What curious creature is this coming here? Asia, that’s what it is.’ Am I right, Nicholas Fedorovich? Besides, what have I to go to Russia for? What does it matter? I shall be shot here some day. They’ll ask, ‘Where’s Trosenko?’ ‘Shot!’ What will you do with the 8th Company then, eh?” he added, always addressing the Major.

“Send the officer on duty!” shouted the Major, without answering the Captain, though I again felt sure there was no need for him to give any orders.

“And you, young man, are glad, I suppose, to be drawing double pay?”16 said the Major, turning to the Adjutant of the battalion after some moments of silence.

“Yes, sir, very glad of course.”

“I think our pay now very high, Nicholas Fedorovich,” continued the Major; “a young man can live very decently, and even permit himself some small luxuries.”

“No, really, Abram Ilyich,” said the Adjutant bashfully. “Though it’s double it’s barely enough. You see, one must have a horse.”

“What are you telling me, young man? I have been an ensign myself and know. Believe me, one can live very well with care. But there! count it up,” added he, bending the little finger of his left hand.

“We always draw our salaries in advance; isn’t that account enough for you?” said Trosenko, emptying a glass of vodka.

“Well, yes, but what do you expect.⁠ ⁠… What?”

Just then a white head with a flat nose thrust itself into the opening of the hut, and a sharp voice said with a German accent⁠—

“Are you here, Abram Ilyich? The officer on duty is looking for you.”

“Come in, Kraft!” said Bolhov.

A long figure in the uniform of the general staff crept in at the door, and began shaking hands all round with peculiar fervour.

“Ah, dear Captain, are you here too?” said he, turning to Trosenko.

In spite of the darkness the new visitor made his way to the Captain, and to the latter’s extreme surprise and dismay, as it seemed to me, kissed him on the lips.

“This is a German trying to be hail fellow well met,” thought I.

XII

My surmise was at once confirmed. Captain Kraft asked for vodka, calling it a “warmer,” croaked horribly, and, throwing back his head, emptied the glass.

“Well, gentlemen, we have scoured the plains of Chechnya today, have we not?” he began, but, seeing the officer on duty, stopped at once to allow the Major to give his orders.

“Have you been round the lines?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have the ambuscades been placed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then give the company commanders orders to be as cautious as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Major screwed up his eyes in profound contemplation.

“Yes, and tell the men they may now boil their buckwheat.”

“They are already boiling it, sir.”

“All right! you may go, sir.”

“Well, we were just reckoning up how much an officer needs,” continued the Major, turning to us with a condescending smile. “Let us count. You want a uniform and a pair of trousers, don’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“That, let us say, is 50 rubles for two years; therefore 25 rubles a year for clothes. Then for food, 40 kopecks a day⁠—is that right?”

“Oh yes, that is even too much.”

“Well, never mind, I’ll leave it so. Then for a horse and repair of harness and saddle⁠—30 rubles. And that is all. So it’s 25, and 120, and 30⁠—that’s 175 rubles. So you have for luxuries⁠—tea, sugar, tobacco⁠—a matter of 20 rubles left. So you see⁠ ⁠… Isn’t it so, Nicholas Fedorovich?”

“No, but excuse me, Abram Ilyich,” said the Adjutant timidly, “nothing remains for tea and sugar. You allow one suit in two years; but it’s hardly possible to keep oneself in trousers with all this marching. And boots? I wear out a pair almost every month. Then underclothing⁠—shirts, towels, leg-bands,17⁠—it all has to be bought. When one comes to reckon it all up nothing remains over. That’s really so, Abram Ilyich.”

“Ah, it’s splendid to wear leg-bands,” Kraft suddenly remarked after a moment’s silence, uttering the word “leg-bands” in specially tender tones. “It’s so simple, you know; quite Russian!”

“I’ll tell you something,” Trosenko remarked. “Reckon what way you like and you’ll find we might as well put our teeth away on a shelf, and yet here we are all alive, drinking tea, smoking tobacco, and drinking vodka. When you’ve served as long as I have,” he went on, turning to the ensign, “you’ll have also learned how to live. Why, gentlemen, do you know how he treats the orderlies?”

And Trosenko, dying with laughter, told us the whole story about the ensign and his orderly, though we had all heard it hundreds of times.

“Why do you look so like a rose, old chap?” continued he, addressing the ensign, who blushed, perspired, and smiled, so that it was pitiful to see him. “Never mind, old chap! I was just like you once, and now look what a fine fellow I am. You let a young fellow straight from Russia in here⁠—haven’t we seen them?⁠—and he gets spasms or rheumatism or something; and here am I settled here, and it’s my house and my bed and all, d’you see?”

And thereupon he drank another glass of vodka, and looking fixedly at Kraft, said, “Eh?”

“That is what I respect! Here’s a genuine old Caucasian! Permit me to shake hands.”

And Kraft, pushing us all aside, forced his way to Trosenko, and catching hold of his hand shook it with peculiar emotion.

“Yes,” continued Kraft, “we may say we have gone through every kind of experience here. In ’45 you were present, Captain, were you not?⁠—you remember the night between the 12th and 13th, when we spent the night knee-deep in mud and next day captured the barricades they had made of felled trees. I was attached to the commander-in-chief at the time, and we took fifteen barricades that one day⁠—you remember, Captain?”

Trosenko nodded affirmatively, stuck out his nether lip and screwed up his eyes.

“You see⁠ ⁠…” began Kraft, with great animation, making unsuitable gestures with his hands, and addressing the Major.

But the Major, who had, in all probability, heard the story more than once, suddenly looked at the speaker with such dim, dull eyes, that Kraft turned away from him and addressed me and Bolhov, looking alternately at one and the other. But he did not give a single glance at Trosenko during the whole of his narration.

“Well then, you see, when we went out in the morning, the commander-in-chief said to me, ‘Kraft, take those barricades!’ Well, you know, a soldier’s duty is not to reason⁠—it’s hand to cap, and ‘Yes, your Excellency!’ and off. Only as we drew near the first barricade I turned and said to the soldiers, ‘Now then, lads, don’t funk it, but look sharp. If anyone hangs back I’ll cut him down myself!’ With Russian soldiers, you know, one has to speak straight out. Suddenly a bomb⁠ ⁠… I look, one soldier down, another, a third⁠ ⁠… then bullets came whizzing⁠ ⁠… vzin!⁠ ⁠… vzin!⁠ ⁠… vzin!⁠ ⁠… ‘On!’ I cry, ‘On, follow me!’ Just as we got there, I look and see a⁠ ⁠… a⁠ ⁠… you know⁠ ⁠… what do you call it?” and the narrator flourished his arms, trying to find the word he wanted.

“A scarp?” suggested Bolhov.

“No⁠ ⁠… Ach! what is the word? Good heavens, what is it?⁠ ⁠… A scarp!” he said quickly. “So, ‘fix bayonets! Hurrah! ta-ra, ta-ta-ta!’ not a sign of the enemy! Everybody was surprised, you know. Well, that’s all right; we go on to the second barricade. Ah, that was a totally different matter. Our mettle was now up, you know. Just as we reached it I look and see the second barricade, and we could not advance. There was a what’s-its-name⁠ ⁠… now, what do you call it? Ach! what is it?⁠ ⁠…”

“Another scarp, perhaps,” I suggested.

“Not at all,” he said crossly: “not a scarp but⁠—oh dear, what do you call it?” and he made an awkward gesture with his hands. “Oh, good heavens, what is it?” He seemed so distressed that one involuntarily wished to help him.

“A river, perhaps,” said Bolhov.

“No, only a scarp! Hardly had we got down, when, will you believe it, such a hell of fire⁠ ⁠…”

At this moment someone outside the tent asked for me. It was Maksimov. And as, after having heard the different histories of these two barricades, there were still thirteen left, I was glad to seize the excuse to return to my platoon. Trosenko came out with me.

“It’s all lies,” he said to me when we were a few steps from the hut; “he never was near those barricades at all,” and Trosenko laughed so heartily that I, too, enjoyed the joke.

XIII

It was already dark, and only the watch-fires dimly lit up the camp when, after the horses were groomed, I rejoined my men. A large stump lay smouldering on the charcoal. Only three men sat round it: Antonov, who was turning a little pot of ryabco18 on the fire; Zhdanov, who was dreamily poking the embers with a stick, and Chikin, with his pipe, which never would draw well. The rest had already lain down to sleep⁠—some under the ammunition wagons, some on the hay, some by the campfires. By the dim light of the charcoal I could distinguish familiar backs, legs, and heads, and among the latter that of the young recruit who, drawn close to the fire, seemed to be already sleeping. Antonov made room for me. I sat down by him and lit a cigarette. The smell of mist and the smoke of damp wood filled the air and made one’s eyes smart, and, as before, a dank drizzle kept falling from the dismal sky.

One could hear the regular sound of snoring nearby, the crackling of branches in the fire, a few words now and then, and the clattering of muskets among the infantry. The camp watch-fires glowed all around, lighting up within narrow circles the dark shadows of the soldiers near them. Where the light fell by the nearest fires, I could distinguish the figures of naked soldiers waving their shirts close over the fire. There were still many who had not lain down, but moved and spoke, collected on a space of some eighty square yards; but the gloomy dull night gave a peculiar mysterious character to all this movement, as if each one felt the dark silence and feared to break its calm monotony.

When I began to speak, I felt that my voice sounded strange, and I discerned the same frame of mind reflected in the faces of all the soldiers sitting near me. I thought that before I joined them they had been talking about their wounded comrade; but it had not been so at all. Chikin had been telling them about receiving supplies at Tiflis, and about the scamps there.

I have noticed always and everywhere, but especially in the Caucasus, the peculiar tact with which our soldiers avoid mentioning anything that might have a bad effect on a comrade’s spirits. A Russian soldier’s spirit does not rest on easily inflammable enthusiasm which cools quickly, like the courage of Southern nations; it is as difficult to inflame him as it is to depress him. He does not need scenes, speeches, war-cries, songs, and drums; on the contrary, he needs quiet, order, and an absence of any affectation. In a Russian, a real Russian, soldier, you will never find any bragging, swagger, or desire to befog or excite himself in time of danger; on the contrary, modesty, simplicity, and a capacity for seeing in peril something quite else than the danger, are the distinctive features of his character. I have seen a soldier wounded in the leg, who, in the first instant, thought only of the hole in his new sheepskin cloak; and an artillery outrider, who, creeping from beneath a horse that was killed under him, began unbuckling the girths to save the saddle. Who does not remember the incident at the siege of Gergebel, when the fuse of a loaded bomb caught fire in the laboratory and an artillery sergeant ordered two soldiers to take the bomb and run to throw it into the ditch, and how the soldiers did not run to the nearest spot, by the Colonel’s tent, which stood over the ditch, but took it farther on, so as not to wake the gentlemen asleep in the tent, and were consequently both blown to pieces. I remember also, how, in the expedition of 1852, something led a young soldier, while in action, to say he thought the platoon would never escape, and how the whole platoon angrily attacked him for such evil words, which they did not like even to repeat. And now, when the thought of Velenchuk must have been in the mind of each one, and when we might expect Tartars to steal up at any moment and fire a volley at us, everyone listened to Chikin’s sprightly stories, and no one referred either to the day’s action, or to the present danger, or to the wounded man; as if it had all happened goodness knows how long ago, or had never happened at all. But it seemed to me that their faces were rather sterner than usual, that they did not listen to Chikin so very attentively, and that even Chikin himself felt he was not being listened to, but talked for the sake of talking.

Maksimov joined us at the fire, and sat down beside me. Chikin made room for him, stopped speaking, and started sucking at his pipe once more.

“The infantry have been sending to the camp for vodka,” said Maksimov after a considerable silence; “they have just returned.” He spat into the fire. “The sergeant says they saw our man.”

“Is he alive?” asked Antonov, turning the pot.

“No, he’s dead.”

The young recruit suddenly raised his head in the little red cap, looked intently for a minute over the fire at Maksimov and at me, then quickly let his head sink again and wrapped himself in his cloak.

“There now, it wasn’t for nought that death had laid its hand on him when I had to wake him in the ‘park’ this morning,” said Antonov.

“Nonsense!” said Zhdanov, turning the smouldering log, and all were silent.

Then, amid the general silence, came the report of a gun from the camp behind us. Our drummers beat an answering tattoo. When the last vibration ceased Zhdanov rose first, taking off his cap. We all followed his example.

Through the deep silence of the night rose an harmonious choir of manly voices:

“Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from the evil one.”

“We had a man in ’45 who was wounded in the same place,” said Antonov, when we had put on our caps and again sat down by the fire. “We carried him about with us on a gun for two days⁠—do you remember Shevchenko, Zhdanov⁠—and then we just left him there under a tree.”

At this moment an infantryman with tremendous whiskers and moustaches, carrying a musket and pouch, came up to our fire.

“Give me a light for my pipe, comrades,” said he.

“All right, smoke away: there’s fire enough,” remarked Chikin.

“I suppose it’s about Dargo19 you are telling, comrade,” said the infantry soldier to Antonov.

“Yes, about Dargo in ’45,” Antonov replied.

The infantryman shook his head, screwed up his eyes, and sat down on his heels near us.

“Yes, all sorts of things happened there,” he remarked.

“Why did you leave him behind?” I asked Antonov.

“He was suffering much with his stomach. As long as we halted it was all right, but as soon as we moved on he screamed aloud and asked for God’s sake to be left behind⁠—but we felt it a pity. But when he began to give it us hot, killed three of our men from the guns and an officer besides, and we somehow got separated from our battery⁠ ⁠… It was such a go! We thought we should not get our guns away. It was muddy and no mistake!”

“The mud was worst under the Indeysky20 Mountain,” remarked one of the soldiers.

“Yes, it was there he got more worse! So we considered it with Anoshenka⁠—he was an old artillery sergeant. ‘Now really he can’t live, and he’s asking for God’s sake to be left behind; let us leave him here.’ So we decided. There was a tree, such a branchy one, growing there. Well, we took some soaked hardtack Zhdanov had, and put it near him, leant him against the tree, put a clean shirt on him, and said goodbye⁠—all as it should be⁠—and left him.”

“And was he a good soldier?”

“Yes, he was all right as a soldier,” remarked Zhdanov.

“And what became of him God only knows,” continued Antonov; “many of the likes of us perished there.”

“What, at Dargo?” said the infantryman, as he rose, scraping out his pipe, and again half-closing his eyes and shaking his head; “all sorts of things happened there.”

And he left us.

“And have we many men still in the battery who were at Dargo?” I asked.

“Many? why, there’s Zhdanov, myself, Patsan, who is now on furlough, and there may be six others, not more.”

“And why’s our Patsan holiday-making all this time?” said Chikin, stretching out his legs, and lying down with his head on a log. “I reckon he’s been away getting on for a year.”

“And you, have you had your year at home?” I asked Zhdanov.

“No, I did not go,” he answered unwillingly.

“You see, it’s all right to go,” said Antonov, “if they’re well off at home, or if you are yourself fit to work; then it’s tempting to go and they’re glad to see you.”

“But where’s the use of going when one’s one of two brothers?” continued Zhdanov. “It’s all they can do to get their bread; how should they feed a soldier like me? I’m no help to them after twenty-five years’ service. And who knows whether they’re alive still?”

“Haven’t you ever written?” I asked.

“Yes, indeed! I wrote two letters, but never had an answer. Either they’re dead, or simply won’t write because they’re living in poverty themselves; so where’s the good?”

“And is it long since you wrote?”

“I wrote last when we returned from Dargo⁠ ⁠… Won’t you sing us ‘The Birch-Tree’?” he said, turning to Antonov, who sat leaning his elbows on his knees and humming a song.

Antonov began to sing “The Birch-Tree.”

“This is the song Daddy Zhdanov likes most best of all,” said Chikin to me in a whisper, pulling at my cloak. “Sometimes he right down weeps when Philip Antonov sings it.”

Zhdanov at first sat quite motionless, with eyes fixed on the glimmering embers, and his face, lit up by the reddish light, seemed very gloomy; then his jaws below his ears began to move faster and faster, and at last he rose, and spreading out his cloak, lay down in the shadow behind the fire. Either it was his tossing and groaning as he settled down to sleep, or it may have been the effect of Velenchuk’s death and of the dull weather, but it really seemed to me that he was crying.

The bottom of the charred log, bursting every now and then into flames, lit up Antonov’s figure, with his grey moustaches, red face, and the medals on the cloak that he had thrown over his shoulders; or it lit up someone’s boots, head, or back. The same gloomy drizzle fell from above, the air was still full of moisture and smoke, all around were the same bright spots of fires, now dying down, and amid the general stillness came the mournful sound of Antonov’s song; and when that stopped for an instant, the faint nocturnal sounds of the camp⁠—snoring, clanking of sentries’ muskets, voices speaking in low tones⁠—took part.

“Second watch! Makatyuk and Zhdanov!” cried Maksimov.

Antonov stopped singing. Zhdanov rose, sighed, stepped across the log, and went slowly towards the guns.

I

It was past six o’clock in the evening, after drinking tea, that I set out from a posting-station, the name of which I have forgotten, though I remember that it was somewhere in the Don Cossack district, near Novotcherkask. It was quite dark as I wrapped myself in my fur cloak and fur rug and settled myself beside Alyoshka in the sledge. Under the lee of the station-house it seemed warm and still. Though there was no snow falling, there was not a star to be seen overhead, and the sky seemed extraordinarily low and black in contrast with the pure, snowy plain stretched out before us.

As soon as we had driven out of the village, passing the dark figures of some windmills, one of which was clumsily waving its great sails, I noticed that the road was heavier and thicker with snow, and the wind began to blow more keenly on my left, tossed the horses’ tails and manes on one side, and persistently lifted and blew away the snow as it was stirred up by the sledge-runners and the horses’ hoofs. The tinkle of the bell died away, a draught of cold air made its way through some aperture in my sleeve and blew down my back, and I recalled the advice of the overseer of the station that I should do better not to start that night, or I might be out all night and get frozen on the way.

“Don’t you think we might get lost?” I said to the driver. But receiving no reply, I put the question more definitely, “What do you say, shall we reach the next station? Shan’t we lose the way?”

“God knows,” he answered, without turning his head. “How it drives along the ground! Can’t see the road a bit. Lord, ’a’ mercy!”

“Well, but you tell me, do you expect to get to the next station or not?” I persisted in inquiring. “Shall we manage to get there?”

“We’ve got to get there,” said the driver, and he said something more which I could not catch in the wind.

I did not want to turn back; but to spend the night driving in the frost and the snowstorm about the absolutely desolate steppe of that part of the Don Cossack district was a very cheerless prospect. And although in the dark I could not see my driver distinctly, I somehow did not take to him, and felt no confidence in him. He was sitting with his legs hanging down before him exactly in the middle of his seat instead of on one side. His voice sounded listless; he wore a big hat with a wavering brim, not a coachman’s cap, and besides he did not drive in correct style, but held the reins in both hands, like a footman who has taken the coachman’s place on the box. And what prejudiced me most of all was that he had tied a kerchief over his ears. In short, the serious, bent back before my eyes impressed me unfavourably and seemed to promise no good.

“Well, I think it would be better to turn back,” said Alyoshka; “it’s poor fun being lost.”

“Lord, ’a’ mercy! how the snow is flying; no chance of seeing the road; one’s eyes choked up entirely.⁠ ⁠… Lord, ’a’ mercy!” grumbled the driver.

We had not driven on another quarter of an hour, when the driver, pulling up the horses, handed the reins to Alyoshka, clumsily extricated his legs from the box, and walked off to look for the road, his big boots crunching in the snow.

“Where are you going? Are we off the road, eh?” I inquired, but the driver did not answer. Turning his head to avoid the wind, which was cutting straight in his face, he walked away from the sledge.

“Well, found it?” I questioned him again, when he had come back.

“No, nothing,” he said with sudden impatience and annoyance, as though I were to blame for his having got off the road, and deliberately tucking his big feet back again under the box, he picked up the reins with his frozen gloves.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, as we started again.

“What are we to do? Go whither God leads us.”

And we drove on at the same slow trot, unmistakably on no sort of road; at one moment in snow that was soft and deep, and the next over brittle, bare ice.

Although it was so cold, the snow on my fur collar melted very quickly; the drifting snow blew more and more thickly near the ground, and a few flakes of frozen snow began falling overhead.

It was evident that we were going astray, because after driving another quarter of an hour, we had not seen a single verst post.

“Come, what do you think,” I asked the driver again, “can we manage to get to the station?”

“To which station?⁠ ⁠… We shall get back all right if we let the horses go as they please, they’ll take us there; but I doubt our getting to the other station; only lose our lives, maybe.”

“Well, then let us go back,” said I. “And really⁠ ⁠…”

“Turn back then?” repeated the driver.

“Yes, yes, turn back!”

The driver let the reins go. The horses went at a better pace, and though I did not notice that we turned round, the wind changed and soon the mills could be seen through the snow. The driver plucked up his spirits and began talking. “The other day they were driving back from the next station like this in a snowstorm,” said he, “and they spent the night in some stacks and only arrived next morning. And a good job they did get into the stacks, or they’d have all been clean frozen to death⁠—it was a frost. As it was, one had his feet frostbitten; and he died of it three weeks after.”

“But now it’s not so cold and the wind seems dropping,” said I; “couldn’t we manage it?”

“Warmer it may be, but the snow’s drifting just the same. Now it’s behind us, so it seems a bit quieter, but it’s blowing hard. We might have to go if we’d the mail or anything; but it’s a different matter going of our own accord; it’s no joke to let one’s fare freeze. What if I’ve to answer for your honour afterwards?”

II

At that moment we heard the bells of several sledges behind us, overtaking us at a smart pace.

“It’s the mail express bell,” said my driver; “there’s only one like that at the station.”

And certainly the bells of the foremost sledge were particularly fine; their clear, rich, mellow and somewhat jangled notes reached us distinctly on the wind. As I learned afterwards, it was a set of bells such as sportsmen have on their sledges⁠—three bells, a big one in the middle, with a “raspberry note,” as it is called, and two little bells pitched at the interval of a third up and down the scale. The cadence of these thirds and the jangling fifth ringing in the air was uncommonly striking and strangely sweet in the desolate dumb steppe.

“It’s the post,” said my driver, when the foremost of the three sledges was level with us. “How’s the road, can one get along?” he shouted to the hindmost of the drivers; but the latter only shouted to his horses without answering him.

The music of the bells quickly died away in the wind as soon as the post had passed us. I suppose my driver felt ashamed.

“Suppose we go on, sir!” he said to me; “folks have driven along the road, and now their tracks will be fresh.”

I assented and we turned, facing the wind again, and pushing on through the deep snow. I watched the road at the side, that we might not go off the tracks made by the sledges. For two versts their track was distinctly visible; then only a slight unevenness could be detected below the runners, and soon I was utterly unable to say whether there was a track or simply a crease blown by the wind in the snow. My eyes were dazed by watching the snow flying monotonously by under our runners, and I began looking straight before me. The third verst post we saw, but the fourth we could not find; just as before we drove against the wind and with the wind, to the right and to the left, and at last things came to such a pass that the driver said we were too much to the right; I said too much to the left; and Alyoshka maintained that we were going straight back. Again we pulled up several times, and the driver extricated his long legs and clambered out to seek the road, but always in vain. I, too, got out once to see whether something I fancied I descried might not be the road. But scarcely had I struggled six steps against the wind and satisfied myself that there was nothing but regular, uniform white drifts of snow everywhere, and that I had seen the road only in imagination, when I lost sight of the sledge. I shouted “Driver! Alyoshka!” but my voice I felt was caught up by the wind out of my very mouth and in one second carried far away from me. I went in the direction where the sledge had been⁠—there was no sledge there. I went to the right, it was not there. I am ashamed when I remember the loud, shrill, almost despairing, voice in which I shouted once more, “Driver!” when he was only a couple of paces from me. His black figure, with his whip and his huge hat flapping down on one side, suddenly started up before me. He led me to the sledge.

“We must be thankful, too, that it’s warm,” said he; “if the frost gets sharp, it’s a bad lookout.⁠ ⁠… Lord, ’a’ mercy!”

“Let the horses go, let them take us back,” I said, settling myself in the sledge. “They’ll take us back, driver, eh?”

“They ought to.”

He put down the reins, gave the shaft horse three strokes about the pad with his whip, and we started off again. We drove for another half-hour. All at once we heard ahead of us bells, which I recognised as the sportsman’s set of bells and two others. But this time the bells were coming to meet us. The same three sledges, having delivered the post, were returning to their station with their change of horses tied on behind. The three stalwart horses of the express sledge with the sporting bells galloped swiftly in front. There was only one driver in it. He was sitting on the box-seat, shouting briskly and frequently to his horses. Behind, in the inside of the emptied sledge, there were a couple of drivers; we could hear their loud, cheerful talk. One of them was smoking a pipe, and its spark, glowing in the wind, lighted up part of his face. Looking at them I felt ashamed of having been afraid to go on, and my driver must have had the same feeling, for with one voice we said, “Let us follow them.”

III

Without waiting for the hindmost sledge to get by, my driver began turning awkwardly and ran his shafts into the horses tied on at the back of it. One team of three started aside, broke their rein, and galloped away.

“Ah, the cross-eyed devil doesn’t see where he’s turning to⁠—right into people!⁠ ⁠… The devil!” scolded a short driver in a husky, cracked voice⁠—an old man, as I inferred from his voice and figure. He jumped nimbly out of the hindmost sledge and ran after the horses, still keeping up his coarse and cruel abuse of my driver.

But the horses would not let themselves be caught. The old man ran after them, and in one moment horses and man vanished in the white darkness of the snowstorm.

“Vassily⁠—y! give us the bay here; there’s no catching them like this,” we heard his voice again.

One of the drivers, a very tall man, got out of the sledge, unyoked his three horses, pulled himself up by the head onto one of them, and crunching over the snow at a shuffling gallop vanished in the same direction.

In company with the two other sledges we pushed on without a road, following the express sledge which ran ahead at full gallop with its ringing bells.

“What! he catch them!” said my driver, referring to the man who had run to catch the horses. “If it won’t join the other horses of itself⁠—it’s a vicious beast⁠—it’ll lead him a fine dance, and he won’t catch it.”

From the time that he turned back, my driver seemed in better spirits and was more conversational, and as I was not sleepy I did not fail of course to take advantage of it. I began asking him where he came from, how he came here, and what he was; and soon learned that he was from my province, a Tula man, a serf from the village of Kirpitchny, that they had too little land, and that the corn had given up yielding any crop at all ever since the cholera year. There were two brothers at home, a third had gone for a soldier; they hadn’t bread enough to last till Christmas, and lived on what they could earn. His younger brother, he told me, was the head of the house because he was married, while he himself was a widower. Every year gangs of men from his village came here as drivers, though he hadn’t himself ever been a driver before; but now he had gone into the posting service so as to be a help to his brother. That he earned, thank God, one hundred and twenty roubles a year here, and sent a hundred of them home, and that it would be a pleasant life, too, “but the mail men were a brutal lot, very, and, indeed, all the people in these parts were a rough lot.”

“Now, why did that driver abuse me? Lord, ’a’ mercy on us! Did I set the horses loose on purpose? Am I a man to do anyone a mischief? And what did he gallop after them for? They’d have got home by themselves. He’s only wearing out his horses, and he’ll be lost himself too,” repeated the God-fearing peasant.

“And what’s that blackness?” I asked, noticing several black objects ahead of us.

“Why, a train of wagons. That’s a pleasant way of travelling!” he went on, as we overtook the huge wagons on wheels, covered with hemp sacking, following one another. “Look, not a man to be seen⁠—they’re all asleep. The clever mare knows the way of herself, there’s no making her stray off the road.⁠ ⁠… I’ve driven with a train of wagons too,” he added, “so I know.”

Truly it was strange to look at those huge wagons, covered with snow from their sacking top down to the wheels, moving along quite alone. But in the corner of the foremost the snow-covered sacking was lifted a little on two fingers, and a cap emerged from it for an instant when our bells were ringing close to the wagons. The big, piebald horse, stretching its neck and dragging with its back, stepped evenly along the completely buried road, and rhythmically shook its shaggy head under the whitened yoke. It pricked up one snowy ear as we came up to it.

After we had driven on another half-hour, my driver addressed me again.

“Well, what do you think, sir, are we going right?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“The wind was this way, sir, before, but now we’re going with our backs to the weather. No, we’re not going the right way, we’re astray again,” he concluded with complete serenity.

It was clear that though he was very timorous, even death, as they say, is pleasant in company; he had become perfectly composed since we were a large party, and he had not to be the guide and responsible person. With great coolness he made observations on the mistakes of the driver of the foremost sledge, as though he had not the slightest interest in the matter. I did notice, indeed, that the foremost sledge was sometimes visible in profile on my left, sometimes on the right; it positively seemed to me as though we were going round in a very small space. This might, however, have been an illusion of the senses, just as sometimes it looked to me as though the first sledge were driving uphill, or along a slope, or downhill, though the steppe was everywhere level.

We had driven on a good while longer, when I discerned⁠—far away, it seemed to me, on the very horizon⁠—a long black moving streak. But a minute later it was evident to me that this was the same train of wagons we had overtaken before. Just as before, the snow lay on the creaking wheels, some of which did not turn at all, indeed. As before, all the men were asleep under the sacking covers, and as before, the piebald horse in front, with inflated nostrils, sniffed out the road and pricked up its ears.

“There, we’ve gone round and round, and we’ve come back to the same wagons again!” said my driver in a tone of dissatisfaction. “The mail horses are good ones, and so he can drive them in this mad way; but ours will come to a dead stop if we go on like this all night.”

He cleared his throat.

“Let us turn back, sir, before we come to harm.”

“What for? Why, we shall get somewhere.”

“Get somewhere! Why, we shall spend the night on the steppe. How the snow does blow!⁠ ⁠… Lord, ’a’ mercy on us!”

Though I was surprised that the foremost driver, who had obviously lost both the road and the direction, did not attempt to look for the road, but calling merrily to his horses drove on still at full trot, I did not feel inclined now to drop behind the other sledges.

“Follow them!” I said.

My driver went on, but he drove the horses now with less eagerness than before, and he did not address another syllable to me.

IV

The storm became more and more violent, and fine frozen snow was falling from the sky. It seemed as though it were beginning to freeze; my nose and cheeks felt the cold more keenly; more often a draught of cold air crept in under my fur cloak, and I had to wrap myself up more closely. From time to time the sledge jolted over a bare, broken crust of ice where the snow had blown away. Though I was much interested in seeing how our wanderings would end, yet, as I had been travelling six hundred versts without stopping for a night, I could not help shutting my eyes and I dropped into a doze. Once when I opened my eyes, I was struck by what seemed to me for the first minute the bright light shed over the white plain. The horizon had grown noticeably wider; the black, lowering sky had suddenly vanished; on all sides one could see the white, slanting lines of falling snow; the outlines of the horses of the front sledge were more distinctly visible, and when I looked upwards it seemed to me for the first minute that the storm-clouds had parted and that only the falling snow hid the sky. While I had been dozing, the moon had risen and cast its cold, bright light through the thin clouds and falling snow. All that I could see distinctly was my own sledge with the horse and driver and the three sledges with their horses ahead of us. In the first, the mail sledge, the one driver still sat on the box driving his horses at a smart trot. In the second there were two men, who, letting go their reins and making themselves a shelter out of a cloak, were all the time smoking a pipe, as we could see from the gleaming sparks. In the third sledge no one was to be seen; the driver was presumably asleep in the middle of it. The driver in front had, when I waked, begun stopping his horses and looking for the road. Then, as soon as we stopped, the howling of the wind became more audible, and the astoundingly immense mass of snow driving in the air was more evident to me. I could see in the moonlight, veiled by the drifting snow, the short figure of the driver holding a big whip with which he was trying the snow in front of him. He moved backwards and forwards in the white darkness, came back to the sledge again, jumped sideways on the front seat, and again through the monotonous whistling of the wind we could hear his jaunty, musical calling to his horses and the ringing of the bells. Every time that the front driver got out to search for signs of the road or of stacks, a brisk self-confident voice from the second sledge shouted to him⁠—

“I say, Ignashka, we’ve gone right off to the left! Keep more to the right, away from the storm.” Or, “Why do you go round and round like a fool? Go the way of the snow, you’ll get there all right.” Or, “To the right, go on to the right, my lad! See, there ’s something black⁠—a verst post maybe.” Or, “What are you pottering about for? Unyoke the piebald and let him go first; he’ll bring you on the road in a trice. That’ll be the best plan.”

The man who gave this advice did not himself unyoke the trace-horse, nor get out into the snow to look for the road; he did not so much as poke his nose out beyond the shelter of the cloak, and when Ignashka in reply to one of his counsels, shouted to him that he’d better ride on in front himself as he knew which way to go, the giver of good advice answered that, if he were driving the mail horses, he would ride on and would soon bring them onto the road. “But our horses won’t lead the way in a storm!” he shouted; “they’re not that sort!”

“Don’t meddle then!” answered Ignashka, whistling merrily to his horses.

The other driver, sitting in the same sledge as the counsellor, said nothing to Ignashka, and refrained altogether from taking part in the proceedings, though he was not yet asleep, as I concluded from his still glowing pipe, and from the fact that when we stopped I heard his regular, continuous talk. He was telling a tale. Only once, when Ignashka stopped for the sixth or seventh time, apparently vexed at the interruption in his enjoyment of the drive, he shouted to him⁠—

“Why, what are you stopping again for?⁠ ⁠… Trying to find the road, indeed! Don’t you see, there’s a snowstorm! The land-surveyor himself couldn’t find the road now; you should drive on as long as the horses will go. We shan’t freeze to death, I don’t suppose.⁠ ⁠… Do go on!”

“I dare say! A postillion was frozen to death last year, sure enough!” my driver retorted.

The man in the third sledge did not wake up all the time. Only once, while we were halting, the counsellor shouted⁠—

“Filip, aye⁠ ⁠… Filip!” And receiving no reply, he remarked, “I say, he’s not frozen, is he?⁠ ⁠… You’d better look, Ignashka.”

Ignashka, who did everything, went up to the sledge and began to poke the sleeper.

“I say, one drink has done for him. If you’re frozen, just say so!” he said, shaking him.

The sleeping man muttered some words of abuse.

“Alive, lads!” said Ignashka, and he ran ahead again, and again we drove on, and so fast indeed that the little sorrel trace-horse of my sledge, who was constantly being lashed about its tail, more than once broke into a clumsy gallop.

V

It was, I think, about midnight when the old man and Vassily, who had gone in pursuit of the strayed horses, rode up to us. They had caught the horses, and found and overlook us. But how they managed to do this in the dark, blinding blizzard, across the bare steppe, has always remained a mystery to me. The old man with his elbows and legs jogging, trotted up on the shaft-horse (the other two horses were fastened to the yoke; horses cannot be left loose in a blizzard). On overtaking us, he began railing at my driver again.

“You see, you cross-eyed devil, what a⁠ ⁠…”

“Hey, Uncle Mitritch,” shouted the storyteller from the second sledge, “alive are you?⁠ ⁠… Come in to us.”

But the old man, making no answer, went on scolding. When he judged he had said enough, he rode up to the second sledge.

“Caught them all?” was asked him from the sledge.

“I should think so!”

And his little figure bent forward with his breast on the horse’s back while it was at full trot; then he slipped off into the snow, and without stopping an instant ran after the sledge, and tumbled into it, pulling his legs up over the side. The tall Vassily seated himself as before, in silence, in the front sledge with Ignashka, and began looking for the road with him.

“You see what an abusive fellow⁠ ⁠… Lord ’a’ mercy on us!” muttered my driver.

For a long while after this we drove on without a halt over the white wilderness, in the cold, luminous, and flickering twilight of the snowstorm.

I open my eyes. The same clumsy cap and back, covered with snow, are standing up in front of me; the same low-arched yoke, under which, between the tight, leather reins, the head of the shaft-horse shakes up and down always at the same distance away, with its black mane blown rhythmically by the wind in one direction. Over its back on the right there is a glimpse of the bay trace-horse with its tail tied up short and the swinging bar behind it knocking now and then against the framework of the sledge. If I look down⁠—the same crunching snow torn up by the sledge runners, and the wind persistently lifting it and carrying it off, always in the same direction. In front the foremost sledge is running on, always at the same distance; on the right and left everything is white and wavering. In vain the eye seeks some new object; not a post, not a stack, not a hedge⁠—nothing to be seen. Everywhere all is white, white and moving. At one moment the horizon seems inconceivably remote, at the next closed in, two paces away on all sides. Suddenly a high, white wall shoots up on the right, and runs alongside the sledge, then all at once it vanishes and springs up ahead, to flee further and further away, and vanish again. One looks upwards; it seems light for the first minute⁠—one seems to see stars shining through a mist; but the stars fly further and further away from the sight, and one can see nothing but the snow, which falls past the eyes into the face and the collar of one’s cloak. Everywhere the sky is equally light, equally white, colourless, alike and ever moving. The wind seems to shift; at one time it blows in our faces and glues our eyes up with snow, then teazingly it flings one’s fur collar on one’s head and flaps it mockingly in one’s face, then it drones behind in some chink of the sledge. One hears the faint, never-ceasing crunch of hoofs and runners over the snow, and the jingle of the bells, dying down as we drive over deep snow. Only at times when we are going against the wind and over some bare, frozen headland, Ignashka’s vigorous whistling and the melodious tinkle of the bells with the jangling fifth float clearly to one’s hearing, and these sounds make a comforting break in the desolateness of the snowy waste, and then again the bells fall back into the same monotonous jingle, with intolerable correctness ringing ever the same phrase, which I cannot help picturing to myself in musical notes.

One of my legs began to get chilled, and when I turned over to wrap myself up closer, the snow on my collar and cap slipped down my neck and made me shiver; but on the whole, in my fur cloak, warmed through by the heat of my body, I still kept warm and was beginning to feel drowsy.

VI

Memories and fancies followed one another with increased rapidity in my imagination.

“The counsellor, that keeps on calling out advice from the second sledge, what sort of peasant is he likely to be? Sure to be a red-haired, thickset fellow with short legs,” I thought, “somewhat like Fyodor Filippitch, our old butler.” And then I see the staircase of our great house and five house-serfs, who are stepping heavily, dragging along on strips of coarse linen a piano from the lodge. I see Fyodor Filippitch, with the sleeves of his nankin coat turned up, carrying nothing but one pedal, running on ahead, pulling open bolts, tugging at a strip of linen here, shoving there, creeping between people’s legs, getting in everyone’s way, and in a voice of anxiety shouting assiduously.

“You now, in front, in front! That’s it, the tail end upwards, upwards, upwards, through the doorway! That’s it.”

“You only let us be, Fyodor Filippitch, we’ll do it by ourselves,” timidly ventured the gardener, squeezed against the banisters, and red with exertion, as, putting out all his strength, he held up one corner of the piano.

But Fyodor Filippitch would not desist.

“And what is it?” I reflected. “Does he suppose he’s necessary to the business in hand, or is he simply pleased God has given him that conceited, convincing flow of words and enjoys the exercise of it? That’s what it must be.”

And for some reason I recall the pond, and the tired house-serfs, knee-deep in the water, dragging the draw-net, and again Fyodor Filippitch running along the bank with the watering-pot, shouting to all of them, and only approaching the water at intervals to take hold of the golden carp, to let out the muddy water, and to pour over them fresh.

And again it is midday in July. I am wandering over the freshly-mown grass of the garden, under the burning sun straight above my head. I am still very young; there is an emptiness, a yearning for something in my heart. I walk to my favourite spot near the pond, between a thicket of wild rose and the birch-tree avenue, and lie down to go to sleep. I remember the sensation with which, as I lay there, I looked through the red, thorny stems of the rose at the black earth, dried into little clods, and at the shining, bright blue mirror of the pond. It was with a feeling of naive self-satisfaction and melancholy. Everything around me was so beautiful; its beauty had such an intense effect on me that it seemed to me I was beautiful myself, and my only vexation was that there was no one to admire me.

It is hot. I try to console myself by going to sleep. But the flies, the intolerable flies, will not even here give me any peace; they begin to gather together about me and persistently, stolidly, as it were like pellets, they shoot from forehead to hand. A bee buzzes not far from me, right in the hottest spot; yellow butterflies flutter languidly, it seems, from stalk to stalk. I look upwards, it makes my eyes ache; the sun is too dazzling through the bright foliage of the leafy birch-tree, that gently swings its branches high above me, and I feel hotter than ever. I cover my face with my handkerchief; it becomes stifling, and the flies simply stick to my moist hands. Sparrows are twittering in the thickest of the clump of roses. One of them hops on the ground a yard from me; twice he makes a feint of pecking vigorously at the earth, and with a snapping of twigs and a merry chirrup flies out of the bush. Another, too, hops on the ground, perks up his tail, looks round, and with a chirrup he too flies out like an arrow after the first. From the pond come the sounds of wet linen being beaten with washing-bats in the water, and the blows seem to echo and be carried over the surface of the pond. There is the sound of laughter, chatter, and the splashing of bathers. A gust of wind rustles in the treetops at a distance; it comes closer, and I hear it ruffling up the grass, and now the leaves of the wild roses tremble and beat upon the stems; and now it lifts the corner of the handkerchief and a fresh breath of air passes over me, tickling my moist face. A fly flies in under the lifted kerchief and buzzes in a frightened way about my damp mouth. A dead twig sticks into me under my spine. No, it’s no good lying down; I’ll go and have a bathe. But suddenly close to my nook, I hear hurried footsteps and the frightened voices of women.

“Oh, mercy on us! What can we do! and not a man here!”

“What is it, what is it?” I ask, running out into the sunshine and addressing a serf-woman, who runs past me, groaning. She simply looks round, wrings her hands and runs on. But here comes Matrona, an old woman of seventy, holding on her kerchief as it falls back off her head, limping and dragging one leg in a worsted stocking, as she runs towards the pond. Two little girls run along, hand in hand, and a boy of ten, wearing his father’s coat, hurries behind, clinging to the hempen skirt of one of them.

“What has happened?” I inquire of them.

“A peasant is drowning.”

“Where?”

“In our pond.”

“Who? one of ours?”

“No; a stranger.”

The coachman Ivan, struggling over the newly-mown grass in his big boots, and the stout bailiff, Yakov, breathing hard, run towards the pond, and I run after them.

I recall the feeling that said to me, “Come, jump in, and pull out the man, save him, and they will all admire you,” which was just what I was desiring.

“Where? where is he?” I ask of the crowd of house-serfs gathered together on the bank.

“Over yonder, near the deepest pool, towards that bank, almost at the bathhouse,” says a washerwoman, getting in her wet linen on a yoke. “I saw him plunge in; and he comes up so and goes down again, and comes up again and screams, ‘I’m drowning, mercy!’ and again he went down to the bottom, and only bubbles came up. Then I saw the man was drowning. And I yelled, ‘Mercy on us, the peasant’s drowning!’ ”

And the washerwoman hoists the yoke onto her shoulder, and bending on one side, walks along the path away from the pond.

“My word, what a shame!” says Yakov Ivanov, the bailiff, in a voice of despair: “what a to-do we shall have now with the district court⁠—we shall never hear the last of it!”

A peasant with a scythe makes his way through the throng of women, children, and old people crowding about the bank, and hanging his scythe in the branches of a willow, begins deliberately pulling off his boots.

“Where, where did he sink?” I keep on asking, longing to throw myself in, and do something extraordinary.

But they point to the smooth surface of the pond, broken into ripples here and there by the rushing wind. It is inconceivable to me that he is drowned while the water stands just as smooth and beautiful and untroubled over him, shining with glints of gold in the midday sun, and it seems to me that I can do nothing, can astonish no one, especially as I am a very poor swimmer. And the peasant is already pulling his shirt over his head, and in an instant will plunge in. Everyone watches him with hope and a sinking heart; but when he has waded in up to his shoulders, the peasant slowly turns back and puts on his shirt again⁠—he cannot swim.

People still run up; the crowd gets bigger and bigger; the women cling to each other; but no one does anything to help. Those who have only just reached the pond give advice, and groan, and their faces express horror and despair. Of those who had arrived on the scene earlier some, tired of standing, sit down on the grass; others go back. Old Matrona asks her daughter whether she has shut the door of the oven; the boy in his father’s coat flings stones with careful aim into the pond.

But now Trezorka, Fyodor Filippitch’s dog, comes running downhill from the house, barking and looking round in perplexity; and the figure of Fyodor himself, running down the hill and shouting something, comes into sight behind the thicket of wild rose.

“Why are you standing still?” he shouts, taking off his coat as he runs. “A man’s drowning, and they do nothing.⁠ ⁠… Give us a cord!”

All gaze in hope and dread at Fyodor Filippitch, while leaning on the shoulder of an obliging house-serf he kicks off his right boot with the tip of his left one.

“Over there, where the crowd is; over there, a little to the right of the willow, Fyodor Filippitch, over there,” says someone.

“I know,” he answers, and knitting his brows, probably in acknowledgment of symptoms of outraged delicacy in the crowd of women, he takes off his shirt and his cross, handing the latter to the gardener’s boy, who stands obsequiously before him. Then stepping vigorously over the mown grass, he goes to the pond.

Trezorka, who had stood still near the crowd, eating some blades of grass from the water’s edge, and smacking his lips, looks inquiringly at his master, wondering at the rapidity of his movements. All at once, with a whine of delight, he plunges with his master into the water. For the first minute there is nothing to be seen but frothing bubbles, which float right up to us. But soon Fyodor Filippitch is seen swimming smartly towards the further bank, his arms making a graceful sweep, and his back rising and sinking regularly at every fathom’s length. Trezorka, after swallowing a mouthful of water, hurriedly turns back, shakes himself in the crowd, and rolls on his back on the bank. While Fyodor Filippitch is swimming towards the further bank, the two coachmen run round to the willow with a net rolled round a pole. Fyodor Filippitch, for some reason or other, raises his hands above his head, and dives, once, twice, thrice; every time a stream of water runs out of his mouth, he tosses his hair with a fine gesture, and makes no reply to the questions which are showered upon him from all sides. At last he comes out on the bank, and, as far as I can see, simply gives orders for the casting of the net. The net is drawn up, but in it there is nothing except weed and a few carp struggling in it. While the net is being cast a second time, I walk round to that side.

Nothing is to be heard but the voice of Fyodor Filippitch giving directions, the splashing of the water through the wet cords, and sighs of horror. The wet cordage fastened to the right beam is more and more thickly covered with weed, as it comes further and further out of the water.

“Now pull together, all at once!” shouts the voice of Fyodor Filippitch. The butt-ends of the beams come into view covered with water.

“There is something; it pulls heavy, lads,” says someone.

And now the beams of the net in which two or three carp struggle, splashing and crushing the weed, are dragged onto the bank. And through the shallow, shifting layer of muddy water something white comes into sight in the tightly-strained net. A sigh of horror passes over the crowd, subdued but distinctly audible in the deathlike stillness.

“Pull all together, pull it onto dry land!” cries Fyodor Filippitch’s resolute voice. And with the iron hook they drag the drowned man over the cropped stalks of dock and agrimony towards the willow.

And here I see my kind old aunt in her silk gown; I see her fringed, lilac parasol, which seems somehow oddly incongruous with this scene of death, so awful in its simplicity. I see her face on the point of shedding tears. I recall her look of disappointment that in this case arnica could be of no use, and I recall the painful sense of mortification I had when she said to me with the naive egoism of love, “Let us go, my dear. Ah, how awful it is! And you will always go bathing and swimming alone!”

I remember how glaring and hot the sun was, baking the dry earth that crumbled under our feet; how it sparkled on the mirror of the pond; how the big carp struggled on the bank; how a shoal of fish dimpled the pond’s surface in the middle; how a hawk floated high up in the sky, hovering over the ducks, who swam quacking and splashing among the reeds in the centre of the water; how the white, curly storm-clouds gathered on the horizon; how the mud brought onto the bank by the net gradually slipped away; and how, as I crossed the dike, I heard the sounds of the washing-bat floating across the pond.

But the blows of the bat ring out as though there were two bats and another chiming in, a third lower in the scale; and that sound frets me, worries me, especially as I know the bat is a bell, and Fyodor Filippitch can’t make it stop. And the bat, like an instrument of torture, is crushing my leg, which is chilled. I wake up.

I was waked up, it seemed to me, by our galloping very swiftly, and two voices talking quite close beside me.

“I say, Ignat, eh⁠ ⁠… Ignat!” said the voice of my driver; “take my fare; you’ve got to go anyway, and why should I go on for nothing⁠—take him!”

The voice of Ignat close beside me answered⁠—

“It’s no treat for me to have to answer for a passenger.⁠ ⁠… Will you stand me a pint bottle of vodka?”

“Go on with your pint bottle!⁠ ⁠… A dram, and I’ll say done.”

“A dram!” shouted another voice: “a likely idea! tire your horses for a dram!”

I opened my eyes. Still the same insufferable wavering snow floating before one’s eyes, the same drivers and horses, but beside me I saw a sledge. My driver had overtaken Ignat, and we had been for some time moving alongside. Although the voice from the other sledge advised him not to accept less than a pint, Ignat all at once pulled up his horses.

“Move the baggage in! Done! it’s your luck. Stand me a dram when we come tomorrow. Have you much baggage, eh?”

My driver jumped out into the snow with an alacrity quite unlike him, bowed to me, and begged me to get into Ignat’s sledge. I was perfectly ready to do so; but evidently the God-fearing peasant was so pleased that he wanted to lavish his gratitude and joy on someone. He bowed and thanked me, Alyoshka, and Ignashka.

“There, thank God too! Why, Lord ’a’ mercy, here we’ve been driving half the night, and don’t know ourselves where we’re going! He’ll take you all right, sir, but my horses are quite done up.”

And he moved my things with increased energy. While they were shifting my things, with the wind at my back almost carrying me off my legs, I went towards the second sledge. The sledge was more than a quarter buried in the snow, especially on the side where a cloak had been hung over the two drivers’ heads to keep off the wind; under the cloak it was sheltered and snug. The old man was lying just as before with his legs out, while the storyteller was still telling his story: “So at the very time when the general arrived in the king’s name, that is, to Mariya in the prison, Mariya says to him, ‘General! I don’t want you, and I cannot love you, and you are not my lover; my lover is that same prince.’⁠ ⁠… So then”⁠—he was going on, but, seeing me, he paused a moment, and began pulling at his pipe.

“Well, sir, are you come to listen to the tale?” said the other man, whom I have called the counsellor.

“Why, you are nice and cheerful in here!” I said.

“To be sure, it passes the time⁠—anyway, it keeps one from thinking.”

“Don’t you know, really, where we are now?” This question, it struck me, was not liked by the drivers.

“Why, who’s to make out where we are? Maybe we’ve got to the Kalmucks altogether,” answered the counsellor.

“What are we going to do?” I asked.

“What are we to do? Why, we’ll go on, and maybe we’ll get somewhere,” he said in a tone of displeasure.

“Well, but if we don’t get there, and the horses can go no further in the snow, what then?”

“What then? Nothing.”

“But we may freeze.”

“To be sure, we may, for there are no stacks to be seen now; we must have driven right out to the Kalmucks. The chief thing is, we must look about in the snow.”

“And aren’t you at all afraid of being frozen, sir?” said the old man, in a trembling voice.

Although he seemed to be jeering at me, I could see that he was shivering in every bone.

“Yes, it’s getting very cold,” I said.

“Ah, sir! You should do as I do; every now and then take a run; that would warm you.”

“It’s first-rate, the way you run after the sledge,” said the counsellor.

VII

“Please get in: it’s all ready!” Alyoshka called to me from the front sledge.

The blizzard was so terrific that it was only by my utmost efforts, bending double and clutching the skirts of my coat in both hands, that I managed to struggle through the whirling snow, which was blown up by the wind under my feet, and to make the few steps that separated me from the sledge. My former driver was kneeling in the middle of the empty sledge, but on seeing me he took off his big cap; whereupon the wind snatched at his hair furiously. He asked me for something for drink, but most likely had not expected me to give him anything extra, for my refusal did not in the least disappoint him. He thanked me for that too, put on his cap, and said to me, “Well, good luck to you, sir!” and tugging at his reins, and clucking to his horses, he drove away from us. After that, Ignashka too, with a swing of his whole body forward, shouted to his horses. Again the sound of the crunching of the hoofs, shouting, and bells replaced the sound of the howling of the wind, which was more audible when we were standing still.

For a quarter of an hour after moving I did not go to sleep, but amused myself by watching the figures of my new driver and horses. Ignashka sat up smartly, incessantly jumping up and down, swinging his arm with the whip over the horses, shouting, knocking one leg against the other, and bending forward to set straight the shaft-horse’s breech, which kept slipping to the right side. He was not tall, but seemed to be well built. Over his full coat he had on a cloak not tied in at the waist; the collar of it was open, and his neck was quite bare; his boots were not of felt, but of leather, and his cap was a small one, which he was continually taking off and shifting. His ears had no covering but his hair.

In all his actions could be detected not merely energy, but even more, it struck me, the desire to keep up his own energies. The further we went, the more and more frequently he jumped up and down on the box, shifted his position, slapped one leg against the other, and addressed remarks to me and Alyoshka. It seemed to me he was afraid of losing heart. And there was good reason; though we had good horses, the road became heavier and heavier at every step, and the horses unmistakably moved more unwillingly; he had to use the whip now, and the shaft-horse, a spirited, big, shaggy horse, stumbled twice, though at once taking fright, he darted forward and flung up his shaggy head almost to the very bells. The right trace-horse, whom I could not help watching, noticeably kept the traces slack, together with the long leather tassel of the breech, that shifted and shook up and down on the offside. He needed the whip, but, like a good, spirited horse, he seemed vexed at his own feebleness, and angrily dropped and flung up his head, as though asking for the rein. It certainly was terrible to see the blizzard getting more and more violent, the horses growing weaker, and the road getting worse, while we hadn’t a notion where we were and whether we should reach the station, or even a shelter of any sort. And ludicrous and strange it was to hear the bells ringing so gaily and unconcernedly, and Ignashka calling so briskly and jauntily, as though we were driving at midday in sunny, frosty Christmas weather, along some village street on a holiday; and strangest of all it was to think that we were going on all the while and going quickly, anywhere to get away from where we were. Ignashka sang a song, in the vilest falsetto, but so loudly and with breaks in it, filled in by such whistling, that it was odd to feel frightened as one listened to him.

“Hey, hey, what are you splitting your throat for, Ignashka?” I heard the voice of the counsellor. “Do stop it for an hour.”

“What?”

“Shut up!”

Ignat ceased. Again all was quiet, and the wind howled and whined, and the whirling snow began to lie thicker on our sledge. The counsellor came up to us.

“Well, what is it?”

“What, indeed; which way are we to go?”

“Who knows?”

“Why, are your feet frozen, that you keep beating them together?”

“They’re quite numb.”

“You should take a run. There’s something over yonder; isn’t it a Kalmuck encampment? It would warm your feet, anyway.”

“All right. Hold the horses⁠ ⁠… there.”

And Ignat ran in the direction indicated.

“One must keep looking and walking round, and one will find something; what’s the sense of driving on like a fool?” the counsellor said to me. “See, what a steam the horses are in!”

All the time Ignat was gone⁠—and that lasted so long that I began to be afraid he was lost⁠—the counsellor told me in a calm, self-confident tone, how one must act during a blizzard, how the best thing of all was to unyoke a horse and let it go its own way; that as God is holy, it would lead one right; how one could sometimes see by the stars, and how if he had been driving the leading sledge, we should have been at the station long ago.

“Well, is it?” he asked Ignat, who was coming back, stepping with difficulty almost knee-deep in the snow.

“Yes, it’s an encampment,” Ignat answered, panting, “but I don’t know what sort of a one. We must have come right out to Prolgovsky homestead, mate. We must bear more to the left.”

“What nonsense!⁠ ⁠… That’s our encampment, behind the village!” retorted the counsellor.

“But I tell you it’s not!”

“Why, I’ve looked, so I know. That’s what it will be; or if not that, then it’s Tamishevsko. We must keep more to the right, and we shall get out on the big bridge, at the eighth verst, directly.”

“I tell you it’s not so! Why, I’ve seen it!” Ignat answered with irritation.

“Hey, mate, and you call yourself a driver!”

“Yes, I do.⁠ ⁠… You go yourself!”

“What should I go for? I know as it is.”

Ignat unmistakably lost his temper; without replying, he jumped on the box and drove on.

“I say, my legs are numb; there’s no warming them,” he said to Alyoshka, clapping his legs together more and more frequently, and knocking off and scraping at the snow, that had got in above his boot-tops.

I felt awfully sleepy.

VIII

“Can I really be beginning to freeze?” I wondered sleepily. “Being frozen always begins by sleepiness, they say. Better be drowned than frozen⁠—let them drag me out in the net; but never mind, I don’t care whether it’s drowning or freezing, if only that stick, or whatever it is, wouldn’t poke me in the back, and I could forget everything.”

I lost consciousness for a second.

“How will it all end, though?” I suddenly wondered, opening my eyes for a minute and staring at the white expanse of snow; “how will it end, if we don’t come across any stacks, and the horses come to a standstill, which I fancy will happen soon? We shall all be frozen.” I must own that, though I was a little frightened, the desire that something extraordinary and rather tragic should happen to us was stronger than a little fear. It struck me that it would not be bad if, towards morning, the horses should reach some remote, unknown village with us half-frozen, some of us indeed completely frozen. And dreams of something like that floated with extraordinary swiftness and clearness before my imagination. The horses stop, the snow drifts higher and higher, and now nothing can be seen of the horses but their ears and the yoke; but suddenly Ignashka appears on the top of the snow with his three horses and drives past us. We entreat him, we scream to him to take us with him; but the wind blows away our voice, there is no voice heard. Ignashka laughs, shouts to his horses, whistles, and vanishes from our sight in a deep ravine filled with snow. The old man is on horseback, his elbows jogging up and down, and he tries to gallop away, but cannot move from the spot. My old driver with his big cap rushes at him, drags him to the ground and tramples him in the snow. “You’re a sorcerer,” he shouts, “you ’re abusive, we will be lost together.” But the old man pops his head out of a snowdrift; he is not so much an old man now as a hare, and he hops away from us. All the dogs are running after him. The counsellor, who is Fyodor Filippitch, says we must all sit round in a ring, that it doesn’t matter if the snow does bury us; we shall be warm. And we really are warm and snug; only we are thirsty. I get out a case of wine; I treat all of them to rum with sugar in it, and I drink it myself with great enjoyment. The storyteller tells us some tale about a rainbow⁠—and over our heads there is a ceiling made of snow and a rainbow. “Now let us make ourselves each a room in the snow and go to sleep!” I say. The snow is soft and warm like fur; I make myself a room and try to get into it, but Fyodor Filippitch, who has seen my money in the wine-case, says, “Stop, give me the money⁠—you have to die anyway!” and he seizes me by the leg. I give him the money, and only beg him to let me go; but they will not believe it is all the money, and try to kill me. I clutch at the old man’s hand, and with inexpressible delight begin kissing it; the old man’s hand is soft and sweet. At first he snatches it away, but then he gives it me, and even strokes me with the other hand. But Fyodor Filippitch approaches and threatens me. I run into my room; now it is not a room, but a long, white corridor, and someone is holding me by the legs. I pull myself away. My boots and stockings, together with part of my skin, are left in the hands of the man who held me. But I only feel cold and ashamed⁠—all the more ashamed as my aunt with her parasol and her homoeopathic medicine-chest is coming to meet me, arm in arm with the drowned man. They are laughing, and do not understand the signs I make to them. I fling myself into a sledge, my legs drag in the snow; but the old man pursues me, his elbows jogging up and down. The old man is close upon me, but I hear two bells ringing in front of me, and I know I am safe if I can reach them. The bells ring more and more distinctly; but the old man has overtaken me and fallen with his body on my face, so that I can hardly hear the bells. I snatch his hand again, and begin kissing it, but he is not the old man but the drowned man, and he shouts, “Ignashka, stop, yonder are the Ahmetkin stacks, I do believe! Run and look!” That is too dreadful. No, I had better wake up.

I open my eyes. The wind has blown the skirt of Alyoshka’s coat over my face; my knee is uncovered; we are driving over a bare surface of ice, and the chime of the bells with its jangling fifth rings out more distinctly in the air.

I look to see where there is a stack; but instead of stacks, I see now with open eyes a house with a balcony and a turreted wall like a fortress. I feel little interest in examining this house and fortress. I want most to see again the white corridor, along which I was running, to hear the church bell ringing and to kiss the old man’s hand. I close my eyes again and fall asleep.

IX

I slept soundly; but the chime of the bells was audible all the while, and came into my dreams; at one time in the form of a dog barking and rushing at me, then an organ, of which I am one of the pipes, then French verses which I am composing. Then it seemed that the chime of the bell is an instrument of torture with which my right heel is being continually squeezed. This was so vivid that I woke up and opened my eyes, rubbing my foot. It was beginning to get frostbitten. The night was as light, as dim, as white as ever. The same movement jolted me and the sledge; Ignashka was sitting sideways as before, clapping his legs together. The trace-horse, as before, craning his neck and not lifting his legs high, ran trotting over the deep snow; the tassel bobbed up and down on the breech, and lashed against the horse’s belly. The shaft-horse’s head, with his mane flying, swayed regularly up and down, tightening and loosening the reins that were fastened to the yoke. But all this was more than ever covered, buried in snow. The snow whirled in front of us, buried the runners on one side, and the horses’ legs up to the knees, and was piled up high on our collars and caps. The wind blew first on the right, then on the left, played with my collar, with the skirt of Ignashka’s coat, and the trace-horses’ mane, and whistled through the yoke and the shafts.

It had become fearfully cold, and I had hardly peeped out of my fur collar when the dry, frozen, whirling snow settled on my eyelashes, my nose and my mouth, and drifted down my neck. I looked round⁠—all was white, and light and snowy; nowhere anything but dim light and snow. I felt seriously alarmed. Alyoshka was asleep at my feet, right at the bottom of the sledge; his whole back was covered by a thick layer of snow. Ignashka was not depressed; he was incessantly tugging at the reins, shouting and clapping his feet together. The bells rang as strangely as ever. The horses were panting, but they still went on, though rather more slowly, and stumbling more and more often. Ignashka jumped up and down again, brandished his gloves, and began singing a song in his shrill, strained voice. Before he had finished the song, he pulled up, flung the reins on the forepart of the sledge, and got down. The wind howled ruthlessly; the snow simply poured as it were in shovelfuls on the skirts of my fur cloak. I looked round; the third sledge was not there (it had been left behind somewhere). Beside the second sledge I could see in the snowy fog the old man hopping from one leg to the other. Ignashka walked three steps away from the sledge, sat down on the snow, undid his belt and began taking off his boots.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I must take my boots off; or my feet will be quite frostbitten!” he answered, going on with what he was about.

It was too cold for me to poke my neck out of my fur collar to see what he was doing. I sat up straight, looking at the trace-horse, who stood with one leg outstretched in an attitude of painful exhaustion, shaking his tied-up, snowy tail. The jolt Ignashka gave the sledge in jumping up on the box waked me up.

“Well, where are we now?” I asked. “Shall we go on till morning?”

“Don’t you worry yourself, we’ll take you all right,” he answered. “Now my feet are grandly warm since I shifted my boots.”

And he started; the bells began ringing; the sledge began swaying from side to side; and the wind whistled through the runners. And again we set off floating over the boundless sea of snow.

X

I slept soundly. When I was waked up by Alyoshka kicking me, and opened my eyes, it was morning. It seemed even colder than in the night. No snow was falling from above; but the keen, dry wind was still driving the fine snow along the ground and especially under the runners and the horse’s hoofs. To the right the sky in the east was a heavy, dingy blue colour; but bright, orange-red, slanting rays were becoming more and more clearly marked in it. Overhead, behind the flying white clouds, faintly tinged with red, the pale blue sky was visible; on the left the clouds were light, bright, and moving. Everywhere around, as far as the eye could see, the country lay under deep, white snow, thrown up into sharp ridges. Here and there could be seen a greyish hillock, where the fine, dry snow had persistently blown by. Not a track of sledge, or man, or beast was visible. The outlines and colours of the driver’s back and the horses could be seen clearly and distinctly against the white background.⁠ ⁠… The rim of Ignashka’s dark blue cap, his collar, his hair, and even his boots were white. The sledge was completely buried. The grey shaft-horse’s head and forelock were covered with snow on the right side; my right trace-horse’s legs were buried up to the knee, and all his back, crisp with frozen sweat, was coated with snow on the offside. The tassel was still dancing in time to any tune one liked to fancy, and the trace-horse stepped to the same rhythm. It was only from his sunken belly, that heaved and fell so often, and his drooping ears that one could see how exhausted he was. Only one new object caught my attention. That was a verst post, from which the snow was falling to the ground, and about which the wind had swept up quite a mountain on the right and kept whirling and shifting the powdery snow from one side to the other. I was utterly amazed to find that we had been driving the whole night with the same horses, twelve hours without stopping or knowing where we were going, and yet had somehow arrived. Our bells chimed more gaily than ever. Ignat kept wrapping himself round and shouting; behind us we heard the snorting of the horses and the ringing of the bells of the sledge in which were the old man and the counsellor; but the man who had been asleep had gone completely astray from us on the steppe. When we had driven on another half-verst, we came upon fresh tracks of a sledge and three horses, not yet covered by the snow, and here and there we saw a red spot of blood, most likely from a horse that had been hurt.

“That’s Filip. Why, he’s got in before us!” said Ignashka.

And now a little house with a signboard came into sight near the roadside, in the middle of the snow, which buried it almost to the roof and windows. Near the little inn stood a sledge with three grey horses, with their coats crisp with sweat, their legs stiffly stretched out, and their heads drooping. The snow had been cleared about the door, and a spade stood there; but the droning wind still whirled and drifted the snow from the roof.

At the sound of our bells there came out from the door a big, red-faced, red-haired driver, holding a glass of vodka in his hand, and shouting something to us. Ignashka turned to me and asked my permission to stop here; then, for the first time, I saw his face.

XI

His face was not swarthy, lean, and straight-nosed, as I had expected, judging from his hair and figure. It was a merry, round face, with quite a pug nose, a large mouth, and round, bright, light blue eyes. His face and neck were red, as though they had been rubbed with a polishing cloth; his eyebrows, long eyelashes, and the down that covered all the lower part of his face were stiffly coated with snow and perfectly white. It was only half a verst from the station, and we stopped.

“Only make haste,” I said.

“One minute,” answered Ignashka, jumping off the box and going towards Filip.

“Give it here, mate,” he said, taking the glove off his right hand and flinging it with the whip on the snow, and throwing back his head, he tossed off the glass of vodka at one gulp.

The innkeeper, probably an old Cossack, came out of the door with a pint bottle in his hand.

“To whom shall I take some?” said he.

Tall Vassily, a thin, flaxen-headed peasant with a goat’s beard, and the counsellor, a stout man with light eyebrows and a thick light beard framing his red face, came up, and drank a glass each. The old man, too, was approaching the group, but they did not offer him any, and he moved away to his horses, that were fastened at the back of the sledge, and began stroking one of them on the back.

The old man was just as I had imagined him to be⁠—a thin little man, with a wrinkled, bluish face, a scanty beard, a sharp nose, and decayed, yellow teeth. His cap was a regular driver’s cap, perfectly new, but his greatcoat was shabby, smeared with tar, and torn about the shoulders and skirts. It did not cover his knees, and his coarse, hempen undergarment, which was stuffed into his huge, felt boots. He was bent and wrinkled, his face quivering, and his knees trembling. He bustled about the sledge, apparently trying to get warm.

“Why, Mitritch, have a drop; it would warm you finely,” the counsellor said to him.

Mitritch gave a shrug. He straightened the breech on his horse, set the yoke right, and came up to me.

“Well, sir,” said he, taking his cap off his grey hair, and bowing low, “we’ve been lost all night along with you, and looking for the road; you might treat me to a glass. Surely, your excellency! Else I’ve nothing to warm me up,” he added with a deprecating smile.

I gave him twenty-five kopecks. The innkeeper brought out a glass, and handed it to the old man. He took off his glove with the whip, and put his black, horny little hand, blue with cold, to the glass; but his thumb was not under his control; he could not hold the glass, and let it drop, spilling the vodka in the snow.

All the drivers laughed.

“I say, Mitritch is so frozen, he can’t hold the vodka.”

But Mitritch was greatly mortified at having spilt the drink.

They poured him out another glass, however, and put it to his lips. He became more cheerful at once, ran into the inn, lighted a pipe, began grinning, showing his decayed, yellow teeth, and at every word he uttered an oath. After drinking a last glass, the drivers got into their sledges, and we drove on.

The snow became whiter and brighter, so that it made one’s eyes ache to look at it. The orange-red streaks spread higher and higher, and grew brighter and brighter in the sky overhead. The red disc of the sun appeared on the horizon through the dark blue clouds. The blue became deeper and more brilliant. Along the road near the station there was a distinct yellowish track, with here and there deep ruts in it. In the tense, frozen air there was a peculiar, refreshing lightness.

My sledge flew along very briskly. The head of the shaft-horse, with his mane floating up on the yoke above, bobbed up and down quickly under the sportsman’s bell, the clapper of which did not move freely now, but somehow grated against the sides. The gallant trace-horses, pulling together at the twisted, frozen traces, trotted vigorously, and the tassel danced right under the belly and the breech. Sometimes a trace-horse slipped off the beaten track into a snowdrift, and his eyes were all powdered with snow as he plunged smartly out of it. Ignashka shouted in a cheerful tenor; the dry frost crunched under the runners; behind us we heard the two bells ringing out with a clear, festive note, and the drunken shouts of the drivers. I looked round. The grey, crisp-haired trace-horses, breathing regularly, galloped over the snow with outstretched necks and bits askew. Filip cracked his whip and set his cap straight. The old man lay in the middle of the sledge with his legs up as before.

Two minutes later the sledge was creaking over the swept boards of the approach to the posting-station, and Ignashka turned his merry face, all covered with frost and snow, towards me.

“We’ve brought you safe after all, sir,” said he.

I

Prince Nekhliudof was nineteen years of age when, at the end of his third term at the university, he came to spend his summer vacation on his estate. He was alone there all the summer.

In the autumn he wrote in his unformed, boyish hand, a letter to his aunt, the Countess Biéloretskaïa, who, according to his notion, was his best friend, and the most genial woman in the world. The letter was in French, and was to the following effect:⁠—

“Dear Auntie⁠—I have adopted a resolution upon which must depend the fate of my whole existence. I have left the university in order to devote myself to a country life, because I feel that I was born for it. For God’s sake, dear auntie, don’t make sport of me. You say that I am young. Perhaps I am still almost a child; but this does not prevent me from feeling sure of my vocation, from wishing to accomplish it successfully, and from loving it.

“As I have already written you, I found our affairs in indescribable confusion. Wishing to bring order out of chaos, I made an investigation, and discovered that the principal trouble was due to the most wretched miserable condition of the peasants, and that this trouble could be remedied only by work and patience.

“If you could only see two of my peasants, David and Iván, and the way that they and their families live, I am convinced that one glance at these two unfortunates would do more to persuade you than all that I can tell you in justification of my resolve. Is not my obligation sacred and clear, to labor for the welfare of these seven hundred human beings for whom I must be responsible to God? Would it not be a sin to leave them to the mercy of harsh elders and overseers, so as to carry out plans of enjoyment or ambition? And why should I seek in any other sphere the opportunity of being useful, and doing good, when such a noble, brilliant, and paramount duty lies right at hand?

“I feel that I am capable of being a good farmer;125 and in order to make myself such an one as I understand the word to mean, I do not need my diploma as B.A., nor the rank which you so expect of me. Dear auntie, do not make ambitious plans for me: accustom yourself to the thought that I am going on an absolutely peculiar path, but one that is good, and, I think, will bring me to happiness. I have thought and thought about my future duties, have written out some rules of conduct, and, if God only gives me health and strength, I shall succeed in my undertaking.

“Do not show this letter to my brother Vásya: I am afraid of his ridicule. He generally dictates to me, and I am accustomed to give way to him. Whilst Vanya may not approve of my resolve, at least he will understand it.”

The countess replied to her nephew in the following letter, also written in French:⁠—

“Your letter, dear Dmitri, showed nothing else to me than that you have a warm heart; and I have never had reason to doubt that. But, my dear, our good tendencies do us more harm in life than our bad ones. I will not tell you that you are committing a folly, that your behavior annoys me; but I will do my best to make one argument have an effect upon you. Let us reason together, my dear.

“You say you feel that your vocation is for a country life; that you wish to make your serfs happy, and that you hope to be a good farmer.

“In the first place, I must tell you that we feel sure of our vocation only when we have once made a mistake in one; secondly, that it is easier to win happiness for ourselves than for others; and thirdly, that, in order to be a good master, it is necessary to be a cold and austere man, which you will never in this world succeed in being, even though you strive to make believe that you are.

“You consider your arguments irresistible, and go so far as to adopt them as rules for the conduct of life; but at my age, my dear, people don’t care for arguments and rules, but only for experience. Now, experience tells me that your plans are childish.

“I am now in my fiftieth year, and I have known many fine men; but I have never heard of a young man of good family and ability burying himself in the country under the pretext of doing good.

“You have always wished to appear original, but your originality is nothing else than morbidly developed egotism. And, my dear, choose some better-trodden path. It will lead you to success; and success, if it is not necessary for you as success, is at least indispensable in giving you the possibility of doing good which you desire. The poverty of a few serfs is an unavoidable evil, or, rather, an evil which cannot be remedied by forgetting all your obligations to society, to your relatives, and to yourself.

“With your intellect, with your kind heart, and your love for virtue, no career would fail to bring you success; but at all events choose one which would be worth your while, and bring you honor.

“I believe that you are sincere, when you say that you are free from ambition; but you are deceiving yourself. Ambition is a virtue at your age, and with your means it becomes a fault and an absurdity when a man is no longer in the condition to satisfy this passion.

“And you will experience this if you do not change your intention. Goodbye, dear Mitya. It seems to me that I have all the more love for you on account of your foolish but still noble and magnanimous plan. Do as you please, but I forewarn you that I shall not be able to sympathize with you.”

The young man read this letter, considered it long and seriously, and finally, having decided that his genial aunt might be mistaken, sent in his petition for dismissal from the university, and took up his residence at his estate.

II

The young proprietor had, as he wrote his aunt, devised a plan of action in the management of his estate; and his whole life and activity were measured by hours, days, and months.

Sunday was reserved for the reception of petitioners, domestic servants, and peasants, for the visitation of the poor serfs belonging to the estate, and the distribution of assistance with the approval of the Commune, which met every Sunday evening, and was obliged to decide who should have help, and what amount should be given.

In such employments passed more than a year, and the young man was now no longer a novice either in the practical or theoretical knowledge of estate management.

It was a clear July Sunday when Nekhliudof, having finished his coffee and run through a chapter of Maison Rustique, put his notebook and a packet of banknotes into the pocket of his light overcoat, and started out of doors. It was a great country-house with colonnades and terraces where he lived, but he occupied only one small room on the ground floor. He made his way over the neglected, weed-grown paths of the old English garden, toward the village, which was distributed along both sides of the highway.

Nekhliudof was a tall, slender young man, with long, thick, wavy auburn hair, with a bright gleam in his dark eyes, a clear complexion, and rosy lips where the first down of young manhood was now beginning to appear.

In all his motions and gait, could be seen strength, energy, and the good-natured self-satisfaction of youth.

The serfs, in variegated groups, were returning from church: old men, maidens, children, mothers with babies in their arms, dressed in their Sunday best, were scattering to their homes; and as they met the bárin they bowed low and made room for him to pass.

After Nekhliudof had walked some distance along the street, he stopped, and drew from his pocket his notebook, on the last page of which, inscribed in his own boyish hand, were a number of names of his serfs with memoranda. He read, “Iván Churis asks for aid;” and then, proceeding still farther along the street, entered the gate of the second hut126 on the right.

Churis’s domicile consisted of a half-decayed structure, with musty corners; the sides were rickety. It was so buried in the ground, that the banking, made of earth and dung, almost hid the two windows. The one on the front had a broken sash, and the shutters were half torn away; the other was small and low, and was stuffed with flax. A boarded entry with rotting sills and low door, another small building still older and still lower-studded than the entry, a gate, and a barn were clustered about the principal hut.

All this had once been covered by one irregular roof; but now only over the eaves hung the thick straw, black and decaying. Above, in places, could be seen the framework and rafters.

In front of the yard were a well with rotten curb, the remains of a post, and the wheel, and a mud-puddle stirred up by the cattle where some ducks were splashing.

Near the well stood two old willows, split and broken, with their whitish-green foliage. They were witnesses to the fact that someone, some time, had taken interest in beautifying this place. Under one of them sat a fair-haired girl of seven summers, watching another little girl of two, who was creeping at her feet. The watchdog gambolling about them, as soon as he saw the bárin, flew headlong under the gate, and there set up a quavering yelp expressive of panic.

“Iván at home?” asked Nekhliudof.

The little girl seemed stupefied at this question, and kept opening her eyes wider and wider, but made no reply. The baby opened her mouth, and set up a yell.

A little old woman, in a torn checkered skirt, belted low with an old red girdle, peered out of the door, and also said nothing. Nekhliudof approached the entry, and repeated his inquiry.

“Yes, he’s at home,” replied the little old woman in a quavering voice, bowing low, and evincing timidity and agitation.

After Nekhliudof had asked after her health, and passed through the entry into the little yard, the old woman, resting her chin in her hand, went to the door, and, without taking her eyes off the bárin, began gently to shake her head.

The yard was in a wretched condition, with heaps of old blackened manure that had not been carried away: on the manure were thrown in confusion a rotting block, pitchforks, and two harrows.

There were penthouses around the yard, under one side of which stood a wooden plough, a cart without a wheel, and a pile of empty good-for-nothing beehives thrown one upon another. The roof was in disrepair; and one side had fallen in so that the covering in front rested, not on the supports, but on the manure.

Churis, with the edge and head of an axe, was breaking off the wattles that strengthened the roof. Iván was a peasant, fifty years of age. In stature, he was short. The features of his tanned oval face, framed in a dark auburn beard and hair where a trace of gray was beginning to appear, were handsome and expressive. His dark blue eyes gleamed with intelligence and lazy good-nature, from under half-shut lids. His small, regular mouth, sharply defined under his sandy thin mustache when he smiled, betrayed a calm self-confidence, and a certain bantering indifference toward all around him.

By the roughness of his skin, by his deep wrinkles, by the veins that stood out prominently on his neck, face, and hands, by his unnatural stoop and the crooked position of his legs, it was evident that all his life had been spent in hard work, far beyond his strength.

His garb consisted of white hempen drawers, with blue patches on the knees, and a dirty shirt of the same material, which kept hitching up his back and arms. The shirt was belted low in the waist by a girdle, from which hung a brass key.

“Good day,” said the bárin, as he stepped into the yard. Churis glanced around, and kept on with his work; making energetic motions, he finished clearing away the wattles from under the shed, and then only, having struck the axe into the block, he came out into the middle of the yard.

“A pleasant holiday, your excellency!” said he, bowing low and smoothing his hair.

“Thanks, my friend. I came to see how your affairs127 were progressing,” said Nekhliudof with boyish friendliness and timidity, glancing at the peasant’s garb. “Just show me what you need in the way of supports that you asked me about at the last meeting.”

“Supports, of course, sir, your excellency, sir.128 I should like it fixed a little here, sir, if you will have the goodness to cast your eye on it: here this corner has given way, sir, and only by the mercy of God the cattle didn’t happen to be there. It barely hangs at all,” said Churis, gazing with an expressive look at his broken-down, ramshackly, and ruined sheds. “Now the girders and the supports and the rafters are nothing but rot; you won’t see a sound timber. But where can we get lumber nowadays, I should like to know?”

“Well, what do you want with the five supports when the one shed has fallen in? the others will be soon falling in too, won’t they? You need to have everything made new⁠—rafters and girders and posts; but you don’t want supports,” said the bárin, evidently priding himself on his comprehension of the case.

Churis made no reply.

“Of course you need lumber, but not supports. You ought to have told me so.”

“Surely I do, but there’s nowhere to get it. Not all of us can come to the manor-house. If we all should get into the habit of coming to the manor-house and asking your excellency for everything we wanted, what kind of serfs should we be? But if your kindness went so far as to let me have some of the oak saplings that are lying idle over by the threshing-floor,” said the peasant, making a low bow and scraping with his foot, “then, maybe, I might exchange some, and piece out others, so that the old would last some time longer.”

“What is the good of the old? Why, you just told me that it was all old and rotten. This part has fallen in today; tomorrow, that one will; the day after, a third. So, if anything is to be done, it must be all made new, so that the work may not be wasted. Now tell me what you think about it. Can your premises129 last out this winter, or not?”

“Who can tell?”

“No, but what do you think? Will they fall in, or not?”

Churis meditated for a moment. “Can’t help falling in,” said he suddenly.

“Well, now you see you had better have said that at the meeting, that you needed to rebuild your whole place,130 instead of a few props. You see, I should be glad to help you.”

“Many thanks for your kindness,” replied Churis, in an incredulous tone and not looking at the bárin. “If you would give me four joists and some props, then, perhaps, I might fix things up myself; but if anyone is hunting after good-for-nothing timbers, then he’d find them in the joists of the hut.”

“Why, is your hut so wretched as all that?”

“My old woman and I are expecting it to fall in on us any day,” replied Churis indifferently. “A day or two ago, a girder fell from the ceiling, and struck my old woman.”

“What! struck her?”

“Yes, struck her, your excellency: whacked her on the back, so that she lay half dead all night.”

“Well, did she get over it?”

“Pretty much, but she’s been ailing ever since; but then she’s always ailing.”

“What, are you sick?” asked Nekhliudof of the old woman, who had been standing all the time at the door, and had begun to groan as soon as her husband mentioned her.

“It bothers me here more and more, especially on Sundays,” she replied, pointing to her dirty lean bosom.

“Again?” asked the young master in a tone of vexation, shrugging his shoulders. “Why, if you are so sick, don’t you come and get advice at the dispensary? That is what the dispensary was built for. Haven’t you been told about it?”

“Certainly we have, but I have not had any time to spare; have had to work in the field, and at home, and look after the children, and no one to help me; if I weren’t all alone⁠ ⁠…”

III

Nekhliudof went into the hut. The uneven smoke-begrimed walls of the dwelling were hung with various rags and clothes; and, in the living-room, were literally covered with reddish cockroaches clustering around the holy images and benches.

In the middle of this dark, fetid apartment, not fourteen feet square, was a huge crack in the ceiling; and in spite of the fact that it was braced up in two places, the ceiling hung down so that it threatened to fall from moment to moment.

“Yes, the hut is very miserable,” said the bárin, looking into the face of Churis, who, it seems, had not cared to speak first about this state of things.

“It will crush us to death; it will crush the children,” said the woman in a tearful voice, attending to the stove which stood under the loft.

“Hold your tongue,” cried Churis sternly; and with a slight smile playing under his mustaches, he turned to the master. “And I haven’t the wit to know what’s to be done with it, your excellency⁠—with this hut and props and planks. There’s nothing to be done with them.”

“How can we live through the winter here? Okh, okh! Oh, oh!” groaned the old woman.

“There’s one thing⁠—if we put in some more props and laid a new floor,” said the husband, interrupting her with a calm, practical expression, “and threw over one set of rafters, then perhaps we might manage to get through the winter. It is possible to live; but you’d have to put some props all over the hut, like that: but if it gets shaken, then there won’t be anything left of it. As long as it stands, it holds together,” he concluded, evidently perfectly contented that he appreciated this contingency.

Nekhliudof was both vexed and grieved that Churis had got himself into such a condition, without having come to him long before; since he had more than once, during his sojourn on the estate, told the peasants, and insisted upon it, that they should all apply directly to him for whatever they needed.

He now felt some indignation against the peasant; he angrily shrugged his shoulders, and frowned. But the sight of the poverty in the midst of which he found himself, and Churis’s calm and self-satisfied appearance in contrast with this poverty, changed his vexation into a sort of feeling of melancholy and hopelessness.

“Well, Iván, why on earth didn’t you tell me about this before?” he asked in a tone of reproach, as he took a seat on the filthy, unsteady bench.

“I didn’t dare to, your excellency,” replied Churis with the same scarcely perceptible smile, shuffling with his black, bare feet over the uneven surface of the mud floor; but this he said so fearlessly and with such composure, that it was hard to believe that he had any timidity about going to his master.

“We are mere peasants; how could we be so presuming?” began the old woman, sobbing.

“Hush up,” said Churis, again addressing her.

“It is impossible for you to live in this hut: it’s all rotten,” cried Nekhliudof after a brief silence. “Now, this is how we shall manage it, my friend⁠ ⁠…”131

“I am listening.”

“Have you seen the improved stone cottages that I have been building at the new farm⁠—the one with the undressed walls?”

“Indeed I have seen them,” replied Churis, with a smile that showed his white teeth still unimpaired. “Everybody’s agog at the way they’re built. Fine cottages! The boys were laughing and wondering if they wouldn’t be turned into granaries; they would be so secure against rats. Fine cottages,” he said in conclusion, with an expression of absurd perplexity, shaking his head, “just like a jail!”

“Yes, they’re splendid cottages, dry and warm, and no danger of fire,” replied the bárin, a frown crossing his youthful face as he perceived the peasant’s involuntary sarcasm.

“Without question, your excellency, fine cottages.”

“Well, then, one of these cottages is just finished. It is twenty-four feet square, with an entry, and a barn, and it’s entirely ready. I will let you have it on credit if you say so, at cost price; you can pay for it at your own convenience,” said the bárin with a self-satisfied smile, which he could not control, at the thought of his benevolence. “You can pull down this old one,” he went on to say; “it will make you a granary. We will also move the pens. The water there is splendid. I will give you enough land for a vegetable-garden, and I’ll let you have a strip of land on all three sides. You can live there in a decent way. Now, does not that please you?” asked Nekhliudof, perceiving that as soon as he spoke of moving, Churis became perfectly motionless, and looked at the ground without even a shadow of a smile.

“It’s as your excellency wills,” he replied, not raising his eyes.

The old woman came forward as though something had stung her to the quick, and began to speak; but her husband anticipated her.

“It’s as your excellency wills,” he repeated resolutely, and at the same time humbly glancing at his master, and tossing back his hair. “But it would never do for us to live on a new farm.”

“Why not?”

“Nay, your excellency, not if you move us over there: here we are wretched enough, but over there we could never in the world get along. What kind of peasants should we be there? Nay, nay, it is impossible for us to live there.”

“But why not, pray?”

“We should be totally ruined, your excellency.”

“But why can’t you live there?”

“What kind of a life would it be? Just think! it has never been lived in; we don’t know anything about the water, no pasture anywhere. Here we have had hemp-fields ever since we can remember, all manured; but what is there there? Yes, what is there there? A wilderness! No hedges, no corn-kilns, no sheds, no nothing at all! Oh, yes, your excellency; we should be ruined if you took us there; we should be perfectly ruined. A new place, all unknown to us,” he repeated, shaking his head thoughtfully but resolutely.

Nekhliudof tried to point out to the peasant that the change, on the contrary, would be very advantageous for him; that they would plant hedges, and build sheds; that the water there was excellent, and so on: but Churis’s obstinate silence exasperated him, and he accordingly felt that he was speaking to no purpose.

Churis made no objection to what he said; but when the master finished speaking, he remarked with a crafty smile, that it would be best of all to remove to that farm some of the old domestic servants, and Alyósha the fool, so that they might watch over the grain there.

“That would be worthwhile,” he remarked, and smiled once more. “This is foolish business, your excellency.”

“What makes you think the place is not inhabitable?” insisted Nekhliudof patiently. “This place here isn’t inhabitable, and hasn’t been, and yet you live here. But there, you will get settled there before you know it; you will certainly find it easy⁠ ⁠…”

“But, your excellency, kind sir,132 how can it be compared?” replied Churis eagerly, as though he feared that the master would not accept a conclusive argument. “Here is our place in the world; we are happy in it; we are accustomed to it, and the road and the pond⁠—where would the old woman do her washing? where would the cattle get watered? And all our peasant ways are here; here from time out of mind. And here’s the threshing-floor, and the little garden, and the willows; and here my parents lived, and my grandfather; and my father gave his soul into God’s keeping here, and I too would end my days here, your excellency. I ask nothing more than that. Be good, and let the hut be put in order; we shall be always grateful for your kindness: but no, not for anything, would we spend our last days anywhere else. Let us stay here and say our prayers,” he continued, bowing low; “do not take us from our nest, kind sir.”133

All the time that Churis was speaking, there was heard in the place under the loft, where his wife was standing, sobs growing more and more violent; and when the husband said “kind sir,” she suddenly darted forward, and with tears in her eyes threw herself at the bárin’s feet.

“Don’t destroy us, benefactor; you are our father, you are our mother! Where are you going to move us to? We are old folks; we have no one to help us. You are to us as God is,” lamented the old woman.

Nekhliudof leaped up from the bench, and was going to lift the old woman; but she, with a sort of passionate despair, beat her forehead on the earth floor, and pushed aside the master’s hand.

“What is the matter with you? Get up, I beg of you. If you don’t wish to go, it is not necessary. I won’t oblige you to,” said he, waving his hand, and retreating to the door.

When Nekhliudof sat down on the bench again, and silence was restored in the room, interrupted only by the sobs of the old woman, who was once more busy under the loft, and was wiping away her tears with the sleeves of her shirt, the young proprietor began to comprehend what was meant for the peasant and his wife by the dilapidated little hut, the crumbling well with the filthy pool, the decaying stalls and sheds, and the broken willows which could be seen before the crooked window; and the feeling that arose in him was burdensome, melancholy, and touched with shame.

“Why didn’t you tell the Commune last Sunday, Iván, that you needed a new hut? I don’t know, now, how to help you. I told you all at the first meeting, that I had come to live in the country, and devote my life to you, that I was ready to deprive myself of everything to make you happy and contented; and I vowed before God, now, that I would keep my word,” said the young proprietor, not knowing that such a manner of opening the heart is incapable of arousing faith in anyone, and especially in the Russian, who loves not words but deeds, and is reluctant to be stirred up by feelings, no matter how beautiful they may be.

But the simple-hearted young man was so pleased with this feeling that he experienced, that he could not help speaking.

Churis leaned his head to one side, and slowly blinking, listened with constrained attention to his master, as to a man to whom he must needs listen, even though he says things not entirely good, and absolutely foreign to his way of thinking.

“But you see I cannot do all that everybody asks of me. If I did not refuse some who ask me for wood, I myself should be left without any, and I could not give to those who really needed. When I made this rule, I did it for the regulation of the peasants’ affairs; and I put it entirely in the hands of the Commune. This wood now is not mine, but yours, you peasants’, and I cannot any longer dispose of it; but the Commune disposes of it, as you know. Come to the meeting tonight. I will tell the Commune about your request: if they are disposed to give you a new hut, well and good; but I haven’t any more wood. I wish with all my soul to help you; but if you aren’t willing to move, then it is no longer my affair, but the Commune’s. Do you understand me?”

“Many thanks for your kindness,” replied Churis in some agitation. “If you will give me some lumber, then we can make repairs. What is the Commune? It’s a well-known fact that⁠ ⁠…”

“No, you come.”

“I obey. I will come. Why shouldn’t I come? Only this thing is sure: I won’t ask the Commune.”

IV

The young proprietor evidently desired to ask some more questions of the peasants. He did not move from the bench; and he glanced irresolutely, now at Churis, now at the empty, unlighted stove.

“Well, have you had dinner yet?” he asked at last.

A mocking smile arose to Churis’s lips, as though it were ridiculous to him for his master to ask such foolish questions; he made no reply.

“What do you mean⁠—dinner, benefactor?” said the old woman, sighing deeply. “We’ve eaten a little bread; that’s our dinner. We couldn’t get any vegetables today so as to boil some soup,134 but we had a little kvass⁠—enough for the children.”

“Today was a fast-day for us, your excellency,” remarked Churis sarcastically, taking up his wife’s words. “Bread and onions; that’s the way we peasants live. Howsomever, praise be to the Lord, I have a little grain yet, thanks to your kindness; it’s lasted till now; but there’s plenty of our peasants as ain’t got any. Everywheres there’s scarcity of onions. Only a day or two ago they sent to Mikháïl the gardener, to get a bunch for a farthing: couldn’t get any anywheres. Haven’t been to God’s church scarcely since Easter. Haven’t had nothing to buy a taper for Mikóla [St. Nicholas] with.”

Nekhliudof, not by hearsay nor by trust in the words of others, but by the evidence of his own eyes, had long known the extreme depth of poverty into which his peasantry had sunken: but the entire reality was in such perfect contrast to his own bringing-up, the turn of his mind, and the course of his life, that in spite of himself he kept forgetting the truth of it; and every time when, as now, it was brought vividly, tangibly, before him, his heart was torn with painful, almost unendurable melancholy, as though some absolute and unavoidable punishment were torturing him.

“Why are you so poor?” he exclaimed, involuntarily expressing his thought.

“How could such as we help being poor, sir,135 your excellency? Our land is so bad, you yourself may be pleased to know⁠—clay and sand-heaps; and surely we must have angered God, for this long time, ever since the cholera, the corn won’t grow. Our meadows and everything else have been growing worse and worse. And some of us have to work for the farm, and some detailed for the manor-lands. And here I am with no one to help me, and I’m getting old. I’d be glad enough to work, but I hain’t no strength. And my old woman’s ailing; and every year there’s a new girl born, and I have to feed ’em all. I get tired out all alone, and here’s seven dependent on me. I must be a sinner in the eyes of the Lord God, I often think to myself. And when God takes me off sudden-like, I feel it would be easier for me; just as it’s better for them than to lead such a dog’s life here⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, okh!” groaned the old woman, as a sort of confirmation of her husband’s words.

“And this is all the help I have,” continued Churis, pointing to the white-headed, unkempt little boy of seven, with a huge belly, who at this moment, timidly and quietly pushing the door open, came into the hut, and, resting his eyes in wonder and solemnity on the master, clung hold of Churis’s shirt-band with both hands.

“This is all the assistance I have here,” continued Churis in a sonorous voice, laying his shaggy hand on the little lad’s white hair. “When will he be good for anything? But my work isn’t much good. When I reach old age I shall be good for nothing; the rupture is getting the better of me. In wet weather it makes me fairly scream. I am getting to be an old man, and yet I have to take care of my land.136 And here’s Yermilof, Demkin, Zabref, all younger than I am, and they have been freed from their land long ago. Well, I haven’t anyone to help me with it; that’s my misfortune. Have to feed so many; that’s where my struggle lies, your excellency.”

“I should be very glad to make it easier for you, truly. But how can I?” asked the young bárin in a tone of sympathy, looking at the serf.

“How make it easier? It’s a well-known fact, if you have the land you must do enforced labor also;137 that’s the regulation. I expect something from this youngster. If only you’d be good enough to let him off from going to school. But just a day or two ago, the officer138 came and said that your excellency wanted him to go to school. Do let him off; he has no capacity for learning, your excellency. He’s too young yet; he won’t understand anything.”

“No, brother, you’re wrong there,” said the bárin. “Your boy is old enough to understand; it’s time for him to be learning. Just think of it! How he’ll grow up, and learn about farming; yes, and he’ll know his A.B.C.s, and know how to read; and read in church. He’ll be a great help to you if God lets him live,” said Nekhliudof, trying to make himself as plain as possible, and at the same time blushing and stammering.

“Very true, your excellency. You don’t want to do us an injury, but there’s no one to take care of the house; for while I and the old woman are doing the enforced labor, the boy, though he’s so young, is a great help, driving the cattle and watering the horses. Whatever he is, he’s a true muzhik;” and Churis, with a smile, took the lad’s nose between his fat fingers, and deftly removed the mucus.

“Nevertheless, you must send him to school, for now you are at home, and he has plenty of time⁠—do you hear? Don’t you fail.”

Churis sighed deeply, and made no reply.

V

“There’s one other thing I wished to speak to you about,” said Nekhliudof. “Why don’t you haul out your manure?”

“What manure, sir,139 your excellency? There isn’t any to haul out. What cattle have I got? One mare and colt; and last autumn I sold my heifer to the porter⁠—that’s all the cattle I’ve got.”

“I know you haven’t much, but why did you sell your heifer?” asked the bárin in amazement.

“What have I got to feed her on?”

“Didn’t you have some straw for feeding the cow? The others did.”

“The others have their fields manured, but my land’s all clay. I can’t do anything with it.”

“Why don’t you dress it, then, so it won’t be clay? Then the land would give you grain, and you’d have something to feed to your stock.”

“But I haven’t any stock, so how am I going to get dressing?”

“That’s an odd cercle vicieux,” said Nekhliudof to himself; and he actually was at his wits’ ends to find an answer for the peasant.

“And I tell you this, your excellency, it ain’t the manure that makes the corn grow, but God,” continued the peasant. “Now, one summer I had six sheaves on one little unmanured piece of land, and only a twelfth as much on that which was manured well. No one like God,” he added with a sigh. “Yes, and my stock are always dying off. Five years past I haven’t had any luck with ’em. Last summer one heifer died; had to sell another, hadn’t anything to feed her on; and last year my best cow perished. They were driving her home from pasture; nothing the matter, but suddenly she staggered and staggered. And so now it’s all empty here. Just my bad luck!”

“Well, brother, since you say that you have no cattle to help you make fodder, and no fodder for your cattle, here’s something towards a cow,” said Nekhliudof, reddening, and fetching forth from his pocket a packet of crumpled banknotes and untying it. “Buy you a cow at my expense, and get some fodder from the granary: I will give orders. See to it that you have a cow by next Sunday. I shall come to see.”

Churis hesitated long; and when he did not offer to take the money, Nekhliudof laid it down on the end of the table, and a still deeper flush spread over his face.

“Many thanks for your kindness,” said Churis, with his ordinary smile, which was somewhat sarcastic.

The old woman sighed heavily several times as she stood under the loft, and seemed to be repeating a prayer.

The situation was embarrassing for the young prince: he hastily got up from the bench, went out into the entry, and called to Churis to follow him. The sight of the man whom he had been befriending was so pleasant that he found it hard to tear himself away.

“I am glad to help you,” said he, halting by the well. “It’s in my power to help you, because I know that you are not lazy. You will work, and I will assist you; and, with God’s aid, you will come out all right.”

“There’s no hope of coming out all right, your excellency,” said Churis, suddenly assuming a serious and even stern expression of countenance, as though the young man’s assurance that he would come out all right had awakened all his opposition. “In my father’s time my brothers and I did not see any lack; but when he died, we broke all up. It kept going from bad to worse. Perfect wretchedness!”

“Why did you break up?”

“All on account of the women, your excellency. It was just after your grandfather died; when he was alive, we should not have ventured to do it: then the present order of things came in. He was just like you, he took an interest in everything; and we should not have dared to separate. The late master did not like to look after the peasants; but after your grandfather’s time, Andréï Ilyitch took charge. God forgive him! he was a drunken, careless man. We came to him once and again with complaints⁠—no living on account of the women⁠—begged him to let us separate. Well, he put it off, and put it off; but at last things came to such a pass, the women kept each to their own part; we began to live apart; and, of course, what could a single peasant do? Well, there wasn’t no law or order. Andréï Ilyitch managed simply to suit himself. ‘Take all you can get.’ And whatever he could extort from a peasant, he took without asking. Then the poll-tax was raised, and they began to exact more provisions, and we had less and less land, and the grain stopped growing. Well, when the new allotment was made, then he took away from us our manured land, and added it to the master’s, the villain, and ruined us entirely. He ought to have been hung. Your father140⁠—the kingdom of heaven be his!⁠—was a good bárin, but it was rarely enough that we ever had sight of him: he always lived in Moscow. Well, of course they used to drive the carts in pretty often. Sometimes it would be the season of bad roads,141 and no fodder; but no matter! The bárin couldn’t get along without it. We did not dare to complain at this, but there wasn’t system. But now your grace lets any of us peasants see your face, and so a change has come over us; and the overseer is a different kind of man. Now we know for sure that we have a bárin. And it is impossible to say how grateful your peasants are for your kindness. But before you came, there wasn’t any real bárin: everyone was bárin. Ilyitch was bárin, and his wife put on the airs of a lady,142 and the scribe from the police-station was bárin. Too many of em! ukh! the peasants had to put up with many trials.”

Again Nekhliudof experienced a feeling akin to shame or remorse. He put on his hat, and went on his way.

VI

“Yukhvanka the clever143 wants to sell a horse,” was what Nekhliudof next read in his notebook; and he proceeded along the street to Yukhvanka’s place.144 Yukhvanka’s hut was carefully thatched with straw from the threshing-floor of the estate; the framework was of new light-gray aspen-wood (also from stock belonging to the estate), had two handsome painted shutters for the window, and a porch with eaves and ingenious balustrades cut out of deal planks.

The narrow entry and the cold hut were also in perfect order; but the general impression of sufficiency and comfort given by this establishment was somewhat injured by a barn enclosed in the gates, which had a dilapidated hedge and a sagging pent roof, appearing from behind it.

Just as Nekhliudof approached the steps from one side, two peasant women came up on the other carrying a tub full of water. One was Yukhvanka’s wife, the other his mother.

The first was a robust, healthy-looking woman, with an extraordinarily exuberant bosom, and wide fat cheeks. She wore a clean shirt embroidered on the sleeves and collar, an apron of the same material, a new linen skirt, peasant’s shoes, a string of beads, and an elegant four-cornered headdress of embroidered red paper and spangles.

The end of the water-yoke was not in the least unsteady, but was firmly settled on her wide and solid shoulder. Her easy forcefulness, manifested in her rosy face, in the curvature of her back, and the measured swing of her arms and legs, made it evident that she had splendid health and rugged strength.

Yukhvanka’s mother, balancing the other end of the yoke, was, on the contrary, one of those elderly women who seem to have reached the final limit of old age and decrepitude. Her bony frame, clad in a black dilapidated shirt and a faded linen skirt, was bent so that the water-yoke rested rather on her back than on her shoulder. Her two hands, whose distorted fingers seemed to clutch the yoke, were of a strange dark chestnut color, and were convulsively cramped. Her drooping head, wrapped up in some sort of a clout, bore the most monstrous evidences of indigence and extreme old age.

From under her narrow brow, perfectly covered with deep wrinkles, two red eyes, unprotected by lashes, gazed with leaden expression to the ground. One yellow tooth protruded from her sunken upper lip, and, constantly moving, sometimes came in contact with her sharp chin. The wrinkles on the lower part of her face and neck hung down like little bags, quivering at every motion.

She breathed heavily and hoarsely; but her bare, distorted legs, though it seemed as if they would have barely strength to drag along over the ground, moved with measured steps.

VII

Almost stumbling against the prince, the young wife precipitately set down the tub, showed a little embarrassment, dropped a courtesy, and then with shining eyes glanced up at him, and, endeavoring to hide a slight smile behind the sleeve of her embroidered shirt, ran up the steps, clattering in her wooden shoes.

“Mother,145 you take the water-yoke to aunt Nastásia,” said she, pausing at the door, and addressing the old woman.

The modest young proprietor looked sternly but scrutinizingly at the rosy woman, frowned, and turned to the old dame, who, seizing the yoke with her crooked fingers, submissively lifted it to her shoulder, and was about to direct her steps to the adjacent hut.

“Your son at home?” asked the prince.

The old woman, her bent form bent more than usual, made an obeisance, and tried to say something in reply, but, suddenly putting her hand to her mouth, was taken with such a fit of coughing, that Nekhliudof without waiting went into the hut.

Yukhvanka, who had been sitting on the bench in the “red corner,”146 when he saw the prince, threw himself upon the oven, as though he were anxious to hide from him, hastily thrust something away in the loft, and, with mouth and eyes twitching, squeezed himself close to the wall, as though to make way for the prince.

Yukhvanka was a light-complexioned fellow, thirty years of age, spare, with a young, pointed beard. He was well proportioned, and rather handsome, save for the unpleasant expression of his hazel eyes, under his knitted brow, and for the lack of two front teeth, which immediately attracted one’s attention because his lips were short and constantly parted.

He wore a Sunday shirt with bright red gussets, striped print drawers, and heavy boots with wrinkled legs.

The interior of Vanka’s hut was not as narrow and gloomy as that of Churis’s, though it was fully as stifling, as redolent of smoke and sheepskin, and showing as disorderly an array of peasant garments and utensils.

Two things here strangely attracted the attention⁠—a small damaged samovar standing on the shelf, and a black frame near the icon, with the remains of a dirty mirror and the portrait of some general in a red uniform.

Nekhliudof looked with distaste on the samovar, the general’s portrait, and the loft, where stuck out, from under some rags, the end of a copper-mounted pipe. Then he turned to the peasant.

“How do you do, Yepifán?” said he, looking into his eyes.

Yepifán bowed low, and mumbled, “Good morning, ’slency,”147 with a peculiar abbreviation of the last word, while his eyes wandered restlessly from the prince to the ceiling, and from the ceiling to the floor, and not pausing on anything. Then he hastily ran to the loft, dragged out a coat, and began to put it on.

“Why are you putting on your coat?” asked Nekhliudof, sitting down on the bench, and evidently endeavoring to look at Yepifán as sternly as possible.

“How can I appear before you without it, ’slency? You see we can understand⁠ ⁠…”

“I have come to ask you why you need to sell a horse? Have you many horses? What horse do you wish to sell?” said the prince without wasting words, but propounding questions that he had evidently pre-considered.

“We are greatly beholden to you, ’slency, that you do not think it beneath you to visit me, a mere peasant,” replied Yukhvanka, casting hasty glances at the general’s portrait, at the stove, at the prince’s boots, and everything else except Nekhliudof’s face. “We always pray God for your ’slency.”

“Why sell the horse?” repeated Nekhliudof, raising his voice, and coughing.

Yukhvanka sighed, tossed back his hair (again his glance roved about the hut), and noticing the cat that lay on the bench contentedly purring, he shouted out to her, “Scat, you rubbish!” and quickly addressed himself to the bárin. “A horse, ’slency, which ain’t worth anything. If the beast was good for anything, I shouldn’t think of selling him, ’slency.”

“How many horses have you in all?”

“Three horses, ’slency.”

“No colts?”

“Of course, ’slency. There is one colt.”

VIII

“Come, show me your horses. Are they in the yard?”148

“Indeed they are, ’slency. I have done as I was told, ’slency. Could we fail to heed you, ’slency? Yakof Ilyitch told me not to send the horses out to pasture. ‘The prince,’ says he, ‘is coming to look at them,’ and so we didn’t send them. For, of course, we shouldn’t dare to disobey you, ’slency.”

While Nekhliudof was on his way to the door, Yukhvanka snatched down his pipe from the loft, and flung it into the stove. His lips were still drawn in with the same expression of constraint as when the prince was looking at him.

A wretched little gray mare, with thin tail, all stuck up with burrs, was sniffing at the filthy straw under the pent roof. A long-legged colt two months old, of some nondescript color, with bluish hoofs and nose, followed close behind her.

In the middle of the yard stood a potbellied brown gelding with closed eyes and thoughtfully pendent head. It was apparently an excellent little horse for a peasant.

“So these are all your horses?”

“No, indeed, ’slency. Here’s still another mare, and here’s the little colt,” replied Yukhvanka, pointing to the horses, which the prince could not help seeing.

“I see. Which one do you propose to sell?”

“This here one, ’slency,” he replied, waving his jacket in the direction of the somnolent gelding, and constantly winking and sucking in his lips.

The gelding opened his eyes, and lazily switched his tail.

“He does not seem to be old, and he’s fairly plump,” said Nekhliudof. “Bring him up, and show me his teeth. I can tell if he’s old.”

“You can’t tell by one indication, ’slency. The beast isn’t worth a farthing. He’s peculiar. You have to judge both by tooth and limb, ’slency,” replied Yukhvanka, smiling very gayly, and letting his eyes rove in all directions.

“What nonsense! Bring him here, I tell you.”

Yukhvanka stood still smiling, and made a deprecatory gesture; and it was only when Nekhliudof cried angrily, “Well, what are you up to?” that he moved toward the shed, seized the halter, and began to pull at the horse, scaring him, and getting farther and farther away as the horse resisted.

The young prince was evidently vexed to see this, and perhaps, also, he wished to show his own shrewdness.

“Give me the halter,” he cried.

“Excuse me. It’s impossible for you, ’slency⁠—don’t⁠ ⁠…”

But Nekhliudof went straight up to the horse’s head, and, suddenly seizing him by the ears, threw him to the ground with such force, that the gelding, who, as it seems, was a very peaceful peasant steed, began to kick and strangle in his endeavors to get away.

When Nekhliudof perceived that it was perfectly useless to exert his strength so, and looked at Yukhvanka, who was still smiling, the thought most maddening at his time of life occurred to him⁠—that Yukhvanka was laughing at him, and regarding him as a mere child.

He reddened, let go of the horse’s ears, and, without making use of the halter, opened the creature’s mouth, and looked at his teeth: they were sound, the crowns full, so far as the young man had time to make his observations. No doubt the horse was in his prime.

Meantime Yukhvanka came to the shed, and, seeing that the harrow was lying out of its place, seized it, and stood it up against the wattled hedge.

“Come here,” shouted the prince, with an expression of childish annoyance in his face, and almost with tears of vexation and wrath in his voice. “What! call this horse old?”

“Excuse me, ’slency, very old, twenty years old at least. A horse that⁠ ⁠…”

“Silence! You are a liar and a good-for-nothing. No decent peasant will lie, there’s no need for him to,” said Nekhliudof, choking with the angry tears that filled his throat.

He stopped speaking, lest he should be detected in weeping before the peasant. Yukhvanka also said nothing, and had the appearance of a man who was almost on the verge of tears, blew his nose, and slowly shook his head.

“Well, how are you going to plough when you have disposed of this horse?” continued Nekhliudof, calming himself with an effort, so as to speak in his ordinary voice. “You are sent out into the field on purpose to drive the horses for ploughing, and you wish to dispose of your last horse? And I should like to know why you need to lie about it.”

In proportion as the prince calmed down, Yukhvanka also calmed down. He straightened himself up, and, while he sucked in his lips constantly, he let his eyes rove about from one object to another.

“Lie to you, ’slency? We are no worse off than others in going to work.”

“But what will you go on?”

“Don’t worry. We will do your work, ’slency,” he replied, starting up the gelding, and driving him away. “Even if we didn’t need money, I should want to get rid of him.”

“Why do you need money?”

“Haven’t no grain, ’slency; and besides, we peasants have to pay our debts, ’slency.”

“How is it you have no grain? Others who have families have corn enough; but you have no family, and you are in want. Where is it all gone?”

“Ate it up, ’slency, and now we haven’t a bit. I will buy a horse in the autumn, ’slency.”

“Don’t for a moment think of selling your horse.”

“But if we don’t then what’ll become of us, ’slency? No grain, and forbidden to sell anything,” he replied, turning his head to one side, sucking in his lips, and suddenly glancing boldly into the prince’s face. “Of course we shall die of starvation.”

“Look here, brother,” cried Nekhliudof, paling, and experiencing a feeling of righteous indignation against the peasant. “I can’t endure such peasants as you are. It will go hard with you.”

“Just as you will, ’slency,” he replied, shutting his eyes with an expression of feigned submission: “I should not think of disobeying you. But it comes not from any fault of mine. Of course, I may not please you, ’slency; at all events, I can do as you wish; only I don’t see why I deserve to be punished.”

“This is why: because your yard is exposed, your manure is not ploughed in, your hedges are broken down, and yet you sit at home smoking your pipe, and don’t work; because you don’t give a crust of bread to your mother, who gave you your whole place,149 and you let your wife beat her, and she has to come to me with her complaints.”

“Excuse me, ’slency, I don’t know what you mean by smoking your pipe,” replied Yukhvanka in a constrained tone, showing beyond peradventure that the complaint about his smoking touched him to the quick. “It is possible to say anything about a man.”

“Now you’re lying again! I myself saw⁠ ⁠…”

“How could I venture to lie to you, ’slency?”

Nekhliudof made no answer, but bit his lip, and began to walk back and forth in the yard. Yukhvanka, standing in one place, and not lifting his eyes, followed the prince’s legs.

“See here, Yepifán,” said Nekhliudof in a childishly gentle voice, coming to a pause before the peasant, and endeavoring to hide his vexation, “it is impossible to live so, and you are working your own destruction. Just think. If you want to be a good peasant, then turn over a new leaf, cease your evil courses, stop lying, don’t get drunk anymore, honor your mother. You see, I know all about you. Take hold of your work; don’t steal from the crown woods, for the sake of going to the tavern. Think how well off you might be. If you really need anything, then come to me; tell me honestly, what you need and why you need it; and don’t tell lies, but tell the whole truth, and then I won’t refuse you anything that I can possibly grant.”

“Excuse me, ’slency, I think I understand you, ’slency,” replied Yukhvanka smiling as though he comprehended the entire significance of the prince’s words.

That smile and answer completely disenchanted Nekhliudof so far as he had any hope of reforming the man and of turning him into the path of virtue by means of moral suasion. It seemed to him hard that it should be wasted energy when he had the power to warn the peasant, and that all that he had said was exactly what he should not have said.

He shook his head gravely, and went into the house. The old woman was sitting on the threshold and groaning heavily, as it seemed to the young proprietor as a sign of approbation of his words which she had overheard.

“Here’s something for you to get bread with,” said Nekhliudof in her ear, pressing a banknote into her hand. “But keep it for yourself, and don’t give it to Yepifán, else he’ll drink it up.”

The old woman with her distorted hand laid hold of the doorpost, and tried to get up. She began to pour out her thanks to the prince; her head began to wag, but Nekhliudof was already on the other side of the street when she got to her feet.

IX

“Davidka Byélui150 asks for grain and posts,” was what followed Yukhvanka’s case in the notebook.

After passing by a number of places, Nekhliudof came to a turn in the lane, and there fell in with his overseer Yakof Alpátitch, who, while the prince was still at a distance, took off his oiled cap, and pulling out a crumpled bandanna handkerchief began to wipe his fat red face.

“Cover yourself, Yakof! Yakof, cover yourself, I tell you.”

“Where do you wish to go, your excellency?” asked Yakof, using his cap to shield his eyes from the sun, but not putting it on.

“I have been at Yukhvanka’s. Tell me, pray, why does he act so?” asked the prince as he walked along the street.

“Why indeed, your excellency!” echoed the overseer as he followed behind the prince in a respectful attitude. He put on his cap, and began to twist his mustache.

“What’s to be done with him? He’s thoroughly good for nothing, lazy, thievish, a liar; he persecutes his mother, and to all appearances he is such a confirmed good-for-nothing that there is no reforming him.”

“I didn’t know, your excellency, that he displeased you so.”

“And his wife,” continued the prince, interrupting the overseer, “seems like a bad woman. The old mother is dressed worse than a beggar, and has nothing to eat; but she wears all her best clothes, and so does he. I really don’t know what is to be done with them.”

Yakof knit his brows thoughtfully when Nekhliudof spoke of Yukhvanka’s wife.

“Well, if he behaves so, your excellency,” began the overseer, “then it will be necessary to find some way to correct things. He is in abject poverty like all the peasants who have no assistance, but he seems to manage his affairs quite differently from the others. He’s a clever fellow, knows how to read, and he’s far from being a dishonest peasant. At the collection of the poll-taxes he was always on hand. And for three years, while I was overseer he was bailiff, and no fault was found with him. In the third year the warden took it into his head to depose him, so he was obliged to take to farming. Perhaps when he lived in town at the station he got drunk sometimes, so we had to devise some means. They used to threaten him, in fun, and he came to his senses again. He was good-natured, and got along well with his family. But as it does not please you to use these means, I am sure I don’t know what we are to do with him. He has really got very low. He can’t be sent into the army, because, as you may be pleased to remember, two of his teeth are missing. Yes, and there are others besides him, I venture to remind you, who absolutely haven’t any⁠ ⁠…”

“Enough of that, Yakof,” interrupted Nekhliudof, smiling shrewdly. “You and I have discussed that again and again. You know what ideas I have on this subject; and whatever you may say to me, I still remain of the same opinion.”

“Certainly, your excellency, you understand it all,” said Yakof, shrugging his shoulders, and looking askance at the prince as though what he saw were worthy of no consideration. “But as far as the old woman is concerned, I beg you to see that you are disturbing yourself to no purpose,” he continued. “Certainly it is true that she has brought up the orphans, she has fed Yukhvanka, and got him a wife, and so forth; but you know that is common enough among peasants. When the mother or father has transferred the property151 to the son, then the new owners get control, and the old mother is obliged to work for her own living to the utmost of her strength. Of course they are lacking in delicate feelings, but this is common enough among the peasantry; and so I take the liberty of explaining to you that you are stirred up about the old woman all for nothing. She is a clever old woman, and a good housewife;152 is there any reason for a gentleman to worry over her? Well, she has quarrelled with her daughter-in-law; maybe the young woman struck her: that’s like a woman, and they would make up again while you torment yourself. You really take it all too much to heart,” said the overseer looking with a certain expression of fondness mingled with condescension at the prince, who was walking silently with long strides before him up the street.

“Will you go home now?” he added.

“No, to Davidka Byélui’s or Kazyól’s⁠—what is his name?”

“Well, he’s a good-for-nothing, I assure you. All the race of the Kazyóls are of the same sort. I haven’t had any success with him; he cares for nothing. Yesterday I rode past the peasant’s field, and his buckwheat wasn’t even sowed yet. What do you wish done with such people? The old man taught his son, but still he’s a good-for-nothing just the same; whether for himself or for the estate, he makes a bungle of everything. Neither the warden nor I have been able to do anything with him: we’ve sent him to the station-house, and we’ve punished him at home, because you are pleased now to like⁠ ⁠…”

“Who? the old man?”

“Yes, the old man. The warden more than once has punished him before the whole assembly, and, would you believe it? he would shake himself, go home, and be as bad as ever. And Davidka, I assure your excellency, is a law-abiding peasant, and a quick-witted peasant; that is, he doesn’t smoke and doesn’t drink,” explained Yakof; “and yet he’s worse than the other who gets drunk. There’s nothing else to do with him than to make a soldier of him or send him to Siberia. All the Kazyóls are the same; and Matriushka who lives in the village belongs to their family, and is the same sort of cursed good-for-nothing. Don’t you care to have me here, your excellency?” inquired the overseer, perceiving that the prince did not heed what he was saying.

“No, go away,” replied Nekhliudof absentmindedly, and turned his steps toward Davidka Byélui’s.

Davidka’s hovel153 stood askew and alone at the very edge of the village. It had neither yard, nor cornkiln, nor barn. Only some sort of dirty stalls for cattle were built against one side. On the other a heap of brushwood and logs was piled up, in imitation of a yard.154

Tall green steppe-grass was growing in the place where the courtyard should have been.

There was no living creature to be seen near the hovel, except a sow lying in the mire at the threshold, and grunting.

Nekhliudof tapped at the broken window; but as no one made answer, he went into the entry and shouted, “Holloa there!”155

This also brought no response. He passed through the entry, peered into the empty stalls, and entered the open hut.

An old red cock and two hens with ruffs were scratching with their legs, and strutting about over the floor and benches. When they saw a man they spread their wings, and, cackling with terror, flew against the walls, and one took refuge on the oven.

The whole hut, which was not quite fourteen feet156 square, was occupied by the oven with its broken pipe, a loom, which in spite of its being summertime was not taken down, and a most filthy table made of a split and uneven plank.

Although it was a dry situation, there was a filthy puddle at the door, caused by the recent rain, which had leaked through roof and ceiling. Loft there was none. It was hard to realize that this was a human habitation, such decided evidence of neglect and disorder was impressed upon both the exterior and the interior of the hovel; nevertheless, in this hovel lived Davidka Byélui and all his family.

At the present moment, notwithstanding the heat of the June day, Davidka, with his head covered by his sheepskin,157 was fast asleep, curled up on one corner of the oven. The panic-stricken hen, skipping up on the oven, and growing more and more agitated, took up her position on Davidka’s back, but did not awaken him.

Nekhliudof, seeing no one in the hovel, was about to go, when a prolonged humid sigh betrayed the sleeper.158

“Holloa! who’s there?” cried the prince.

A second prolonged sigh was heard from the oven.

“Who’s there? Come here!”

Still another sigh, a sort of a bellow, and a heavy yawn responded to the prince’s call.

“Well, who are you?”

Something moved slightly on the oven. The skirt of a torn sheepskin159 was lifted; one huge leg in a dilapidated boot was put down, then another, and finally Davidka’s entire figure emerged. He sat up on the oven, and rubbed his eyes drowsily and morosely with his fist.

Slowly shaking his head, and yawning, he looked down into the hut, and, seeing the prince, began to make greater haste than before; but still his motions were so slow, that Nekhliudof had time to walk back and forth three times from the puddle to the loom before Davidka got down from the oven.

Davidka Byélui or David White was white in reality: his hair, and his body, and his face all were perfectly white.

He was tall and very stout, but stout as peasants are wont to be, that is, not in the waist alone, but in the whole body. His stoutness, however, was of a peculiar flabby, unhealthy kind. His rather comely face, with pale-blue good-natured eyes, and a wide trimmed beard, bore the impress of ill health. There was not the slightest trace of tan or blood: it was of a uniform yellowish ashen tint, with pale livid circles under the eyes, quite as though his face were stuffed with fat or bloated.

His hands were puffy and yellow, like the hands of men afflicted with dropsy, and they wore a growth of fine white hair. He was so drowsy that he could scarcely open his eyes or cease from staggering and yawning.

“Well, aren’t you ashamed of yourself,” began Nekhliudof, “sleeping in the very best part of the day,160 when you ought to be attending to your work, when you haven’t any corn?”

As Davidka little by little shook off his drowsiness, and began to realize that it was the prince who was standing before him, he folded his arms across his stomach, hung his head, inclining it a trifle to one side, and did not move a limb or say a word; but the expression of his face and the pose of his whole body seemed to say, “I know, I know; it is an old story with me. Well, strike me, if it must be: I will endure it.”

He evidently was anxious for the prince to get through speaking and give him his thrashing as quickly as possible, even if he struck him severely on his swollen cheeks, and then leave him in peace.

Perceiving that Davidka did not understand him, Nekhliudof endeavored by various questions to rouse the peasant from his vexatiously obstinate silence.

“Why have you asked me for wood when you have enough to last you a whole month here, and you haven’t had anything to do? What?”

Davidka still remained silent, and did not move.

“Well, answer me.”

Davidka muttered something, and blinked his white eyelashes.

“You must go to work, brother. What will become of you if you don’t work? Now you have no grain, and what’s the reason of it? Because your land is badly ploughed, and not harrowed, and no seed put in at the right time⁠—all from laziness. You asked me for grain: well, let us suppose that I gave it to you, so as to keep you from starving to death, still it is not becoming to do so. Whose grain do I give you? whose do you think? Answer me⁠—whose grain do I give you?” demanded Nekhliudof obstinately.

“The Lord’s,” muttered Davidka, raising his eyes timidly and questioningly.

“But where did the Lord’s grain come from? Think for yourself, who ploughed for it? who harrowed? who planted it? who harvested it? The peasants, hey? Just look here: if the Lord’s grain is given to the peasants, then those peasants who work most will get most; but you work less than anybody. You are complained about on all sides. You work less than all the others, and yet you ask for more of the Lord’s grain than all the rest. Why should it be given to you, and not to the others? Now, if all, like you, lay on their backs, it would not be long before everybody in the world died of starvation. Brother, you’ve got to labor. This is disgraceful. Do you hear, David?”

“I hear you,” said the other slowly through his teeth.

X

At this moment, the window was darkened by the head of a peasant woman who passed carrying some linen on a yoke, and presently Davidka’s mother came into the hovel. She was a tall woman, fifty years old, very fresh and lively. Her ugly face was covered with pockmarks and wrinkles; but her straight, firm nose, her delicate, compressed lips, and her keen gray eyes gave witness to her mental strength and energy.

The angularity of her shoulders, the flatness of her chest, the thinness of her hands, and the solid muscles of her black bare legs, made it evident that she had long ago ceased to be a woman, and had become a mere drudge.

She came hurrying into the hovel, shut the door, set down her linen, and looked angrily at her son.

Nekhliudof was about to say something to her, but she turned her back on him, and began to cross herself before the black wooden icon, that was visible behind the loom.

When she had thus done, she adjusted the dirty checkered handkerchief which was tied around her head, and made a low obeisance to the prince.

“A pleasant Lord’s day to you, excellency,” she said. “God spare you; you are our father.”

When Davidka saw his mother he grew confused, bent his back a little, and hung his head still lower.

“Thanks, Arína,” replied Nekhliudof. “I have just been talking with your son about your affairs.”161

Arína or Aríshka Burlák,162 as the peasants used to call her when she was a girl, rested her chin on the clinched fist of her right hand, which she supported with the palm of the left, and, without waiting for the prince to speak further, began to talk so sharply and loud that the whole hovel was filled with the sound of her voice; and from outside it might have been concluded that several women had suddenly fallen into a discussion.

“What, my father, what is then to be said to him? You can’t talk to him as to a man. Here he stands, the lout,” she continued contemptuously, wagging her head in the direction of Davidka’s woebegone, stolid form.

“How are my affairs, your excellency? We are poor. In your whole village there are none so bad off as we are, either for our own work or for yours. It’s a shame! And it’s all his fault. I bore him, fed him, gave him to drink. Didn’t expect to have such a lubber. There is but one end to the story. Grain is all gone, and no more work to be got out of him than from that piece of rotten wood. All he knows is to lie on top of the oven, or else he stands here, and scratches his empty pate,” she said, mimicking him.

“If you could only frighten him, father! I myself beseech you: punish him, for the Lord God’s sake! send him off as a soldier⁠—it’s all one. But he’s no good to me⁠—that’s the way it is.”

“Now, aren’t you ashamed, Davidka, to bring your mother to this?” said Nekhliudof reproachfully, addressing the peasant.

Davidka did not move.

“One might think that he was a sick peasant,” continued Arína, with the same eagerness and the same gestures; “but only to look at him you can see he’s fatter than the pig at the mill. It would seem as if he might have strength enough to work on something, the lubber! But no, not he! He prefers to curl himself up on top of the oven. And even when he undertakes to do anything, it would make you sick even to look at him, the way he goes about the work! He wastes time when he gets up, when he moves, when he does anything,” said she, dwelling on the words, and awkwardly swaying from side to side with her angular shoulders.

“Now, here today my old man himself went to the forest after wood, and told him to dig a hole; but he did not even put his hand to the shovel.”

She paused for a moment.

“He has killed me,” she suddenly hissed, gesticulating with her arms, and advancing toward her son with threatening gesture. “Curse your smooth, bad face!”

She scornfully, and at the same time despairingly, turned from him, spat, and again addressed the prince with the same animation, still swinging her arms, but with tears in her eyes.

“I am the only one, benefactor. My old man is sick, old: yes, and I get no help out of him; and I am the only one at all. And this fellow hangs around my neck like a stone. If he would only die, then it would be easier; that would be the end of it. He lets me starve, the poltroon. You are our father. There’s no help for me. My daughter-in-law died of work, and I shall too.”

XI

“How did she die?” inquired Nekhliudof, somewhat sceptically.

“She died of hard work, as God knows, benefactor. We brought her last year from Baburin,” she continued, suddenly changing her wrathful expression to one of tearfulness and grief. “Well, the woman163 was young, fresh, obliging, good stuff. As a girl, she lived at home with her father in clover, never knew want; and when she came to us, then she learned to do our work⁠—for the estate and at home and everywhere.⁠ ⁠… She and I⁠—that was all to do it. What was it to me? I was used to it. She was going to have a baby, good father; and she began to suffer pain; and all because she worked beyond her strength. Well, she did herself harm, the poor little sweetheart. Last summer, about the time of the feast of Peter and Paul, she had a poor little boy born. But there was no bread. We ate whatever we could get, my father. She went to work too soon: her milk all dried up. The baby was her firstborn. There was no cow, and we were mere peasants. She had to feed him on rye. Well, of course, it was sheer folly. It kept pining away on this. And when the child died, she became so down-spirited⁠—she would sob and sob, and howl and howl; and then it was poverty and work, and all the time going from bad to worse. So she passed away in the summer, the sweetheart, at the time of the feast of St. Mary’s Intercession. He brought her to it, the beast,” she cried, turning to her son with wrathful despair. “I wanted to ask your excellency a favor,” she continued after a short pause, lowering her voice, and making an obeisance.

“What?” asked Nekhliudof in some constraint.

“You see he’s a young peasant still. He demands so much work of me. Today I am alive, tomorrow I may die. How can he live without a wife? He won’t be any good to you at all. Help us to find someone for him, good father.”

“That is, you want to get a wife for him? What? What an idea!”

“God’s will be done! You are in the place of parents to us.”

And after making a sign to her son, she and the man threw themselves on the floor at the prince’s feet.

“Why do you stoop to the ground?” asked Nekhliudof peevishly, taking her by the shoulder. “You know I don’t like this sort of thing. Marry your son, of course, if you have a girl in view. I should be very glad if you had a daughter-in-law to help you.”

The old woman got up, and began to rub her dry eyes with her sleeves. Davidka followed her example, and, rubbing his eyes with his weak fist, with the same patiently-submissive expression, continued to stand, and listen to what Arína said.

“Plenty of brides, certainly. Here’s Vasiutka Mikheïkin’s daughter, and a right good girl she is; but the girl would not come to us without your consent.”

“Isn’t she willing?”

“No, benefactor, she isn’t.”

“Well, what’s to be done? I can’t compel her. Select someone else. If you can’t find one at home, go to another village. I will pay for her, only she must come of her own free will. It is impossible to marry her by force. There’s no law allows that; that would be a great sin.”

“E‑e‑kh! benefactor! Is it possible that anyone would come to us of her own accord, seeing our way of life, our wretchedness? Not even the wife of a soldier would like to undergo such want. What peasant would let us have his daughter?164 It is not to be expected. You see we’re in the very depths of poverty. They will say, ‘Since you starved one to death, it will be the same with my daughter.’ Who is to give her?” she added, shaking her head dubiously. “Give us your advice, excellency.”

“Well, what can I do?”

“Think of someone for us, kind sir,” repeated Arína urgently. “What are we to do?”

“How can I think of anyone? I can’t do anything at all for you as things are.”

“Who will help us if you do not?” said Arína, drooping her head, and spreading her palms with an expression of melancholy discontent.

“Here you ask for grain, and so I will give orders for some to be delivered to you,” said the prince after a short silence, during which Arína sighed, and Davidka imitated her. “But I cannot do anything more.”

Nekhliudof went into the entry. Mother and son with low bows followed the prince.

XII

“O-okh! alas for my wretchedness!” exclaimed Arína, sighing deeply.

She paused, and looked angrily at her son. Davidka immediately turned around, and, clumsily lifting his stout leg encased in a huge dirty boot over the threshold, took refuge in the opposite door.

“What shall I do with him, father?” continued Arína, turning to the prince. “You yourself see what he is. He is not a bad man;165 doesn’t get drunk, and is peaceable; wouldn’t hurt a little child. It’s a sin to say hard things of him. There’s nothing bad about him, and God knows what has taken place in him to make him so bad to himself. You see he himself does not like it. Would you believe it, father,166 my heart bleeds when I look at him, and see what suffering he undergoes. You see, whatever he is, he is my son. I pity him. Oh, how I pity him!⁠ ⁠… You see, it isn’t as though he had done anything against me or his father or the authorities. But, no: he’s a bashful man, almost like a child. How can he bear to be a widower? Help us out, benefactor,” she said once more, evidently desirous of removing the unfavorable impression which her bitter words might have left upon the prince. “Father, your excellency, I”⁠—She went on to say in a confidential whisper, “My wit does not go far enough to explain him. It seems as though bad men had spoiled him.”

She paused for a moment.

“If we could find the men, we might cure him.”

“What nonsense you talk, Arína! How can he be spoiled?”

“My father, they spoil him so that they make him a no-man forever! Many bad people in the world! Out of ill-will they take a handful of earth from out of one’s path, or something of that sort; and one is made a no-man forever after. Isn’t that a sin? I think to myself, Might I not go to the old man Danduk, who lives at Vorobyevka? He knows all sorts of words; and he knows herbs, and he can make charms; and he finds water with a cross. Wouldn’t he help me?” said the woman. “Maybe he will cure him.”

“What abjectness and superstition!” thought the young prince, shaking his head gloomily, and walking back with long strides through the village.

“What’s to be done with him? To leave him in this situation is impossible, both for myself and for the others and for him⁠—impossible,” he said to himself, counting off on his fingers these reasons.

“I cannot bear to see him in this plight; but how extricate him? He renders nugatory all my best plans for the management of the estate. If such peasants are allowed, none of my dreams will ever be realized,” he went on, experiencing a feeling of despite and anger against the peasant in consequence of the ruin of his plans. “To send him to Siberia, as Yakof suggests, against his will, would that be good for him? or to make him a soldier? That is best. At least I should be quit of him, and I could replace him by a decent peasant.”

Such was his decision.

He thought about this with satisfaction; but at the same time something obscurely told him that he was thinking with only one side of his mind, and not wholly right.

He paused.

“I will think about it some more,” he said to himself. “To send him off as a soldier⁠—why? He is a good man, better than many; and I know.⁠ ⁠… Shall I free him?” he asked himself, putting the question from a different side of his mind. “It wouldn’t be fair. Yes, it’s impossible.”

But suddenly a thought occurred to him that greatly pleased him. He smiled with the expression of a man who has decided a difficult question.

“I will take him to the house,” he said to himself. “I will look after him myself; and by means of kindness and advice, and selecting his employment, I will teach him to work, and reform him.”

XIII

“That’s the way I’ll do,” said Nekhliudof to himself with a pleasant self-consciousness; and then, recollecting that he had still to go to the rich peasant Dutlof, he directed his steps toward a lofty and ample establishment, with two chimneys, standing in the midst of the village.

As he passed a neighboring hut on his way thither, he stopped to speak with a tall, disorderly-looking peasant-woman of forty summers, who came to meet him.

“A pleasant holiday, father,”167 she said, with some show of assurance, stopping at a little distance from him with a pleased smile and a low obeisance.

“Good morning, my nurse. How are you? I was just going to see your neighbor.”

“Pretty well, your excellency, my father. It’s a good idea. But won’t you come in? I beg you to. My old man would be very pleased.”

“Well, I’ll come; and we’ll have a little talk with you, nurse. Is this your house?”

“It is, sir.”168

And the nurse led the way into the hut. Nekhliudof followed her into the entry, and sat down on a tub, and began to smoke a cigarette.

“It’s hot inside. It’s better to sit down here, and have our talk,” he said in reply to the woman’s invitation to go into the hut.

The nurse was a well-preserved and handsome woman. In the features of her countenance, and especially in her big black eyes, there was a strong resemblance to the prince himself. She folded her hands under her apron, and looking fearlessly at him, and incessantly moving her head, began to talk with him.

“Why is it, father? why do you wish to visit Dutlof?”

“Oh, I am anxious for him to take thirty desiatins169 of land of me, and enlarge his domain; and moreover I want him to buy some wood from me also. You see, he has money, so why should it be idle? What do you think about it, nurse?”

“Well, what can I say? The Dutlofs are strong people: he’s the leading peasant in the whole estate,” replied the nurse, shaking her head. “Last summer he built another building out of his own lumber. He did not call upon the estate at all. He has horses, and yearling colts besides, at least six troikas, and cattle, cows, and sheep; so that it is a sight worth seeing when they are driven along the street from pasture, and the women of the house come out to get them into the yard. There is such a crush of animals at the gate that they can scarcely get through, so many of them there are. And two hundred beehives at the very least. He is a strong peasant, and must have money.”

“But what do you think⁠—has he much money?” asked the prince.

“Men say, out of spite of course, that the old man has no little money. But he does not go round talking about it, and he does not tell even his sons, but he must have. Why shouldn’t he take hold of the woodland? Perhaps he is afraid of getting the reputation for money. Five years ago he went into a small business with Shkalik the porter. They got some meadow-land; and this Shkalik, some way or other, cheated him, so that the old man was three hundred rubles out of pocket. And from that time he has sworn off. How can he help being forehanded, your excellency, father?” continued the nurse. “He has three farms, a big family, all workers; and besides, the old man⁠—it is hard to say it⁠—is a capital manager. He is lucky in everything; it is surprising⁠—in his grain and in his horses and in his cattle and in his bees, and he’s lucky in his children. Now he has got them all married off. He has found husbands for his daughters; and he has just married Ilyushka, and given him his freedom. He himself bought the letter of enfranchisement. And so a fine woman has come into his house.”

“Well, do they live harmoniously?” asked the prince.

“As long as there’s the right sort of a head to the house, they get along. Yet even the Dutlofs⁠—but of course that’s among the women. The daughters-in-law bark at each other a little behind the oven, but the old man generally holds them in hand; and the sons live harmoniously.”

The nurse was silent for a little.

“Now, the old man, we hear, wants to leave his eldest son, Karp, as master of the house. ‘I am getting old,’ says he. ‘It’s my business to attend to the bees.’ Well, Karp is a good peasant, a careful peasant; but he doesn’t manage to please the old man in the least. There’s no sense in it.”

“Well, perhaps Karp wants to speculate in land and wood. What do you think about it?” pursued the prince, wishing to learn from the woman all that she knew about her neighbors.

“Scarcely, sir,”170 continued the nurse. “The old man hasn’t disclosed his money to his son. As long as he lives, of course, the money in the house will be under the old man’s control; and it will increase all the time too.”

“But isn’t the old man willing?”

“He is afraid.”

“What is he afraid of?”

“How is it possible, sir, for a seignorial peasant to make a noise about his money? And it’s a hard question to decide what to do with money anyway. Here he went into business with the porter, and was cheated. Where was he to get redress? And so he lost his money. But with the proprietor he would have any loss made good immediately, of course.”

“Yes, hence⁠ ⁠…” said Nekhliudof, reddening. “But goodbye, nurse.”

“Goodbye, sir, your excellency. Greatly obliged to you.”

XIV

“Hadn’t I better go home?” mused Nekhliudof, as he strode along toward the Dutlof enclosure, and felt a boundless melancholy and moral weariness.

But at this moment the new deal gates were thrown open before him with a creaking sound; and a handsome, ruddy fellow of eighteen in wagoner’s attire appeared, leading a troika of powerful-limbed and still sweaty horses. He hastily brushed back his blonde hair, and bowed to the prince.

“Well, is your father at home, Ilya?” asked Nekhliudof.

“At the bee-house, back of the yard,” replied the youth, driving the horses, one after the other, through the half-opened gates.

“I will not give it up. I will make the proposal. I will do the best I can,” reflected Nekhliudof; and, after waiting till the horses had passed out, he entered Dutlof’s spacious yard.

It was plain to see that the manure had only recently been carried away. The ground was still black and damp; and in places, particularly in the hollows, were left red fibrous clots.

In the yard and under the high sheds, many carts stood in orderly rows, together with ploughs, sledges, harrows, barrels, and all sorts of farming implements. Doves were flitting about, cooing in the shadows under the broad solid rafters. There was an odor of manure and tar.

In one corner Karp and Ignát were fitting a new crossbar to a large iron-mounted, three-horse cart.

All three of Dutlof’s sons bore a strong family resemblance. The youngest, Ilya, who had met Nekhliudof at the gate, was beardless, of smaller stature, ruddier complexion, and more neatly dressed, than the others. The second, Ignát, was rather taller and darker. He had a wedge-shaped beard; and though he wore boots, a driver’s shirt, and a lamb’s-skin cap, he had not such a festive, holiday appearance as his brother had.

The eldest, Karp, was still taller. He wore clogs, a gray kaftan, and a shirt without gussets. He had a reddish beard, trimmed; and his expression was serious, even to severity.

“Do you wish my father sent for, your excellency?” he asked, coming to meet the prince, and bowing slightly and awkwardly.

“No, I will go to him at the hives: I wish to see what he’s building there. But I should like a talk with you,” said Nekhliudof, drawing him to the other side of the yard, so that Ignát might not overhear what he was about to talk about with Karp.

The self-confidence and degree of pride noticeable in the deportment of the two peasants, and what the nurse had told the young prince, so troubled him, that it was difficult for him to make up his mind to speak with them about the matter proposed.

He had a sort of guilty feeling, and it seemed to him easier to speak with one brother out of the hearing of the other. Karp seemed surprised that the prince took him to one side, but he followed him.

“Well, now,” began Nekhliudof awkwardly⁠—“I wished to inquire of you if you had many horses.”

“We have about five troikas, also some colts,” replied Karp in a free-and-easy manner, scratching his back.

“Well, are your brothers going to take out relays of horses for the post?”

“We shall send out three troikas to carry the mail. And there’s Ilyushka, he has been off with his team; but he’s just come back.”

“Well, is that profitable for you? How much do you earn that way?”

“What do you mean by profit, your excellency? We at least get enough to live on and bait our horses, thank God for that!”

“Then, why don’t you take hold of something else? You see, you might buy wood, or take more land.”

“Of course, your excellency: we might rent some land if there were any convenient.”

“I wish to make a proposition to you. Since you only make enough out of your teaming to live on, you had better take thirty desiatins of land from me. All that strip behind Sapof I will let you have, and you can carry on your farming better.”

And Nekhliudof, carried away by his plan for a peasant farm, which more than once he had proposed to himself, and deliberated about, began fluently to explain to the peasant his proposition about it.

Karp listened attentively to the prince’s words.

“We are very grateful for your kindness,” said he, when Nekhliudof stopped, and looked at him in expectation of his answer. “Of course here there’s nothing very bad. To occupy himself with farming is better for a peasant than to go off as a whip. He goes among strangers; he sees all sorts of men; he gets wild. It’s the very best thing for a peasant, to occupy himself with land.”

“You think so, do you?”

“As long as my father is alive, how can I think, your excellency? It’s as he wills.”

“Take me to the beehives. I will talk with him.”

“Come with me this way,” said Karp, slowly directing himself to the barn back of the house. He opened a low gate which led to the apiary, and after letting the prince pass through, he shut it, and returned to Ignát, and silently took up his interrupted labors.

XV

Nekhliudof, stooping low, passed through the low gate, under the gloomy shed, to the apiary, which was situated behind the yard.

A small space, surrounded by straw and a wattled hedge, through the chinks of which the light streamed, was filled with beehives symmetrically arranged, and covered with shavings, while the golden bees were humming around them. Everything was bathed in the warm and brilliant rays of the July sun.

From the gate a well-trodden footway led through the middle to a wooden side-building, with a tinfoil image on it gleaming brightly in the sun.

A few orderly young lindens lifting, above the thatched roof of the neighboring courtyard, their bushy tops, almost audibly rustled their dark-green, fresh foliage, in unison with the sound of the buzzing bees. All the shadows from the covered hedge, from the lindens, and from the hives, fell dark and short on the delicate curling grass springing up between the planks.

The bent, small figure of the old man, with his gray hair and bald spot shining in the sun, was visible near the door of a straw-thatched structure situated among the lindens. When he heard the creaking of the gate, the old man looked up, and wiping his heated, sweaty face with the flap of his shirt, and smiling with pleasure, came to meet the prince.

In the apiary it was so comfortable, so pleasant, so warm, so free! The figure of the gray-haired old man, with thick wrinkles radiating from his eyes, and wearing wide shoes on his bare feet, as he came waddling along, good-naturedly and contentedly smiling, to welcome the prince to his own private possessions, was so ingenuously soothing that Nekhliudof for a moment forgot the trying impressions of the morning, and his cherished dream came vividly up before him. He already saw all his peasants just as prosperous and contented as the old man Dutlof, and all smiling soothingly and pleasantly upon him, because to him alone they were indebted for their prosperity and happiness.

“Would you like a net, your excellency? The bees are angry now,” said the old man, taking down from the fence a dirty gingham bag fragrant of honey, and handing it to the prince. “The bees know me, and don’t sting,” he added, with the pleasant smile that rarely left his handsome sunburned face.

“I don’t need it either. Well, are they swarming yet?” asked Nekhliudof, also smiling, though without knowing why.

“Yes, they are swarming, father, Mitri Mikolayévitch,”171 replied the old man, throwing an expression of peculiar endearment into this form of addressing his bárin by his name and patronymic. “They have only just begun to swarm; it has been a cold spring, you know.”

“I have just been reading in a book,” began Nekhliudof, defending himself from a bee which had got entangled in his hair, and was buzzing under his ear, “that if the wax stands straight on the bars, then the bees swarm earlier. Therefore such hives as are made of boards⁠ ⁠… with cross-b⁠—”

“You don’t want to gesticulate; that makes it worse,” said the little old man. “Now don’t you think you had better put on the net?”

Nekhliudof felt a sharp pain, but by some sort of childish egotism he did not wish to give in to it; and so, once more refusing the bag, continued to talk with the old man about the construction of hives, about which he had read in Maison Rustique, and which, according to his idea, ought to be made twice as large. But another bee stung him in the neck, and he lost the thread of his discourse and stopped short in the midst of it.

“That’s well enough, father, Mitri Mikolayévitch,” said the old man, looking at the prince with paternal protection; “that’s well enough in books, as you say. Yes; maybe the advice is given with some deceit, with some hidden meaning; but only just let him do as he advises, and we shall be the first to have a good laugh at his expense. And this happens! How are you going to teach the bees where to deposit their wax? They themselves put it on the crossbar, sometimes straight and sometimes aslant. Just look here!” he continued, opening one of the nearest hives, and gazing at the entrance-hole blocked by a bee buzzing and crawling on the crooked comb. “Here’s a young one. It sees; at its head sits the queen, but it lays the wax straight and sideways, both according to the position of the block,” said the old man, evidently carried away by his interest in his occupation, and not heeding the prince’s situation. “Now, today, it will fly with the pollen. Today is warm; it’s on the watch,” he continued, again covering up the hive and pinning down with a cloth the crawling bee; and then brushing off into his rough palm a few of the insects from his wrinkled neck.

The bees did not sting him; but as for Nekhliudof, he could scarcely refrain from the desire to beat a retreat from the apiary. The bees had already stung him in three places, and were buzzing angrily on all sides around his head and neck.

“You have many hives?” he asked as he retreated toward the gate.

“What God has given,” replied Dutlof sarcastically. “It is not necessary to count them, father; the bees don’t like it. Now, your excellency, I wanted to ask a favor of you,” he went on to say, pointing to the small posts standing by the fence. “It was about Osip, the nurse’s husband. If you would only speak to him. In our village it’s so hard to act in a neighborly way; it’s not good.”

“How so?⁠ ⁠… Ah, how they sting!” exclaimed the prince, already seizing the latch of the gate.

“Every year now, he lets his bees out among my young ones. We could stand it, but strange bees get away their comb and kill them,” said the old man, not heeding the prince’s grimaces.

“Very well, by and by; right away,” said Nekhliudof. And having no longer strength of will to endure, he hastily beat a retreat through the gate, fighting his tormentors with both hands.

“Rub it with dirt. It’s nothing,” said the old man, coming to the door after the prince. The prince took some earth, and rubbed the spot where he had been stung, and reddened as he cast a quick glance at Karp and Ignát, who did not deign to look at him. Then he frowned angrily.

XVI

“I wanted to ask you something about my sons, your excellency,” said the old man, either pretending not to notice, or really not noticing, the prince’s angry face.

“What?”

“Well, we are well provided with horses, praise the Lord! and that’s our trade, and so we don’t have to work on your land.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you would only be kind enough to let my sons have leave of absence, then Ilyushka and Ignát would take three troikas, and go out teaming for all summer. Maybe they’d earn something.”

“Where would they go?”

“Just as it happened,” replied Ilyushka, who at this moment, having put the horses under the shed, joined his father. “The Kadminski boys went with eight horses to Romen. Not only earned their own living, they say, but brought back a gain of more than three hundred percent. Fodder, they say, is cheap at Odest.”

“Well, that’s the very thing I wanted to talk with you about,” said the prince, addressing the old man, and anxious to draw him shrewdly into a talk about the farm. “Tell me, please, if it would be more profitable to go to teaming than farming at home?”

“Why not more profitable, your excellency?” said Ilyushka, again putting in his word, and at the same time quickly shaking back his hair. “There’s no way of keeping horses at home.”

“Well, how much do you earn in the summer?”

“Since spring, as feed was high, we went to Kiev with merchandise, and to Kursk, and back again to Moscow with grits; and in that way we earned our living. And our horses had enough, and we brought back fifteen rubles in money.”

“There’s no harm in taking up with an honorable profession, whatever it is,” said the prince, again addressing the old man. “But it seems to me that you might find another form of activity. And besides, this work is such that a young man goes everywhere. He sees all sorts of people⁠—may get wild,” he added, quoting Karp’s words.

“What can we peasants take up with, if not teaming?” objected the old man with his sweet smile. “If you are a good driver, you get enough to eat, and so do your horses; but, as regards mischief, they are just the same as at home, thank the Lord! It isn’t the first time that they have been. I have been myself, and never saw any harm in it, nothing but good.”

“How many other things you might find to do at home! with fields and meadows⁠—”

“How is it possible?” interrupted Ilyushka with animation. “We were born for this. All the regulations are at our fingers’ ends. We like the work. It’s the most enjoyable we have, your excellency. How we like to go teaming!”

“Your excellency, will you not do us the honor of coming into the house? You have not yet seen our new domicile,” said the old man, bowing low, and winking to his son.

Ilyushka hastened into the house, and Nekhliudof and the old man followed after him.

XVII

As soon as he got into the house, the old man bowed once more; then using his coattail to dust the bench in the front of the room, he smiled, and said⁠—

“What do you want of us, your excellency?”

The hut was bright and roomy, with a chimney; and it had a loft and berths. The fresh aspen-wood beams, between which could be seen the moss, scarcely faded, were as yet not turned dark. The new benches and the loft were not polished smooth, and the floor was not worn. One young peasant woman, rather lean, with a serious oval face, was sitting on a berth, and using her foot to rock a hanging cradle that was suspended from the ceiling by a long hook. This was Ilya’s wife.

In the cradle lay at full length a suckling child, scarcely breathing, and with closed eyes.

Another young woman, robust and rosy-cheeked, with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows, showing strong arms and hands red even higher than her wrists, was standing in front of the oven, and mincing onions in a wooden dish. This was Karp’s wife.

A pockmarked woman, showing signs of pregnancy, which she tried to conceal, was standing near the oven. The room was hot, not only from the summer sun, but from the heat of the oven; and there was a strong smell of baking bread.

Two flaxen-headed little boys and a girl gazed down from the loft upon the prince, with faces full of curiosity. They had come in, expecting something to eat.

Nekhliudof was delighted to see this happy household; and at the same time he felt a sense of constraint in presence of these peasants, men and women, all looking at him. He flushed a little as he sat down on the bench.

“Give me a crust of hot bread: I am fond of it,” said he, and the flush deepened.

Karp’s wife cut off a huge slice of bread, and handed it on a plate to the prince. Nekhliudof said nothing, not knowing what to say. The women also were silent, the old man smiled benevolently.

“Well, now why am I so awkward? as though I were to blame for something,” thought Nekhliudof. “Why shouldn’t I make my proposition about the farm? What stupidity!” Still he remained silent.

“Well, father Mitri Mikolayévitch, what are you going to say about my boys’ proposal?” asked the old man.

“I should advise you absolutely not to send them away, but to have them stay at home, and work,” said Nekhliudof, suddenly collecting his wits. “You know what I have proposed to you. Go in with me, and buy some of the crown woods and some more land⁠—”

“But how are we going to get money to buy it, your excellency?” he asked, interrupting the prince.

“Why, it isn’t very much wood, only two hundred rubles’ worth,” replied Nekhliudof.

The old man gave an indignant laugh.

“Very good, if that’s all. Why not buy it?” said he.

“Haven’t you money enough?” asked the prince reproachfully.

“Okh! Sir, your excellency!” replied the old man, with grief expressed in his tone, looking apprehensively toward the door. “Only enough to feed my family, not enough to buy woodland.”

“But you know you have money⁠—what do you do with it?” insisted Nekhliudof.

The old man suddenly fell into a terrible state of excitement: his eyes flashed, his shoulders began to twitch.

“Wicked men may say all sorts of things about me,” he muttered in a trembling voice. “But, so may God be my witness!” he said, growing more and more animated, and turning his eyes toward the icon, “may my eyes crack, may I perish with all my family, if I have anything more than the fifteen silver rubles which Ilyushka brought home; and we have to pay the poll-tax, you yourself know that. And we built the hut⁠—”

“Well, well, all right,” said the prince, rising from the bench. “Goodbye, friends.”172

XVIII

“My God! my God!” was Nekhliudof’s mental exclamation, as with long strides he hastened home through the shady alleys of his weed-grown garden, and, absentmindedly, snapped off the leaves and branches which fell in his way.

“Is it possible that my dreams about the ends and duties of my life are all idle nonsense? Why is it hard for me, and mournful, as though I were dissatisfied with myself because I imagined that having once begun this course I should constantly experience the fullness of the morally pleasant feeling which I had when, for the first time, these thoughts came to me?”

And with extraordinary vividness and distinctness he saw in his imagination that happy moment which he had experienced a year before.

He had arisen very early, before everyone else in the house, and feeling painfully those secret, indescribable impulses of youth, he had gone aimlessly out into the garden, and from there into the woods; and, amid the energetic but tranquil nature pulsing with the new life of Maytime, he had wandered long alone, without thought, and suffering from the exuberance of some feeling, and not finding any expression for it.

Then, with all the allurement of what is unknown, his youthful imagination brought up before him the voluptuous form of a woman; and it seemed to him that was the object of his indescribable longing. But another, deeper sentiment said, Not that, and impelled him to search and be disturbed in mind.

Without thought or desire, as always happens after extra activity, he lay on his back under a tree, and looked at the diaphanous morning-clouds drifting over him across the deep, endless sky.

Suddenly, without any reason, the tears sprang to his eyes, and God knows in what way the thought came to him with perfect clearness, filling all his soul and giving him intense delight⁠—the thought that love and righteousness are the same as truth and enjoyment, and that there is only one truth, and only one possible happiness, in the world.

The deeper feeling this time did not say, Not that. He sat up, and began to verify this thought.

“That is it, that is it,” said he to himself, in a sort of ecstasy, measuring all his former convictions, all the phenomena of his life, by the truth just discovered to him, and as it seemed to him absolutely new.

“What stupidity! All that I knew, all that I believed in, all that I loved,” he had said to himself. “Love is self-denying; this is the only true happiness independent of chance,” he had said over and over again, smiling and waving his hands.

Applying this thought on every side to life, and finding in it confirmation both of life and that inner voice which told him that this was it, he had experienced a new feeling of pleasant agitation and enthusiasm.

“And so I ought to do good if I would be happy,” he thought; and all his future vividly came up before him, not as an abstraction, but in images in the form of the life of a proprietor.

He saw before him a huge field, conterminous with his whole life, which he was to consecrate to the good, and in which really he should find happiness. There was no need for him to search for a sphere of activity; it was all ready. He had one out-and-out obligation: he had his serfs.⁠ ⁠…

And what comfortable and beneficent labor lay before him! “To work for this simple, impressionable, incorruptible class of people; to lift them from poverty; to give them pleasure; to give them education which, fortunately, I will turn to use in correcting their faults, which arise from ignorance and superstition; to develop their morals; to induce them to love the right.⁠ ⁠… What a brilliant, happy future! And besides all this, I, who am going to do this for my own happiness, shall take delight in their appreciation, shall see how every day I shall go farther and farther toward my predestined end. A wonderful future! Why could I not have seen this before?

“And besides,” so he had thought at the same time, “who will hinder me from being happy in love for a woman, in enjoyment of family?”

And his youthful imagination portrayed before him a still more bewitching future.

“I and my wife, whom I shall love as no one ever loved a wife before in the world, we shall always live amid this restful, poetical, rural nature, with our children, maybe, and with my old aunt. We have our love for each other, our love for our children; and we shall both know that our aim is the right. We shall help each other in pressing on to this goal. I shall make general arrangements; I shall give general aid when it is right; I shall carry on the farm, the savings bank, the workshop. And she, with her dear little head, and dressed in a simple white dress, which she lifts above her dainty ankle as she steps through the mud, will go to the peasants’ school, to the hospital, to some unfortunate peasant who in truth does not deserve help, and everywhere carry comfort and aid.⁠ ⁠… Children, old men, women, will wait for her, and look on her as on some angel, as on Providence. Then she will return, and hide from me the fact that she has been to see the unfortunate peasant, and given him money; but I shall know all, and give her a hearty hug, and rain kisses thick and fast on her lovely eyes, her modestly-blushing cheeks, and her smiling, rosy lips.”

XIX

“Where are those dreams?” the young man now asked himself as he walked home after his round of visits. “Here more than a year has passed since I have been seeking for happiness in this course, and what have I found? It is true, I sometimes feel that I can be contented with myself; but this is a dry, doubtful kind of content. Yet, no; I am simply dissatisfied! I am dissatisfied because I find no happiness here; and I desire, I passionately long for, happiness. I have not experienced delight, I have cut myself off from all that gives it. Wherefore? for what end? Does that make it easier for anyone?

“My aunt was right when she wrote that it is easier to find happiness than to give it to others. Have my peasants become any richer? Have they learned anything? or have they shown any moral improvement? Not the least. They are no better off, but it grows harder and harder every day for me. If I saw any success in my undertakings, if I saw any signs of gratitude⁠ ⁠… but, no! I see falsely directed routine, vice, untruthfulness, helplessness. I am wasting the best years of my life.”

Thus he said to himself, and he recollected that his neighbors, as he heard from his nurse, called him “a mere boy;” that he had no money left in the counting-room; that his new threshing-machine, which he had invented, much to the amusement of the peasants, only made a noise, and did not thresh anything when it had been set in motion for the first time in presence of numerous spectators, who had gathered at the threshing-floor; that from day to day he had to expect the coming of the district judge for the list of goods and chattels, which he had neglected to make out, having been engrossed in various new enterprises on his estate.

And suddenly there arose before him, just as vividly as, before, that walk through the forest and his ideal of rural life had arisen⁠—just as vividly there appeared his little university room at Moscow, where he used to sit half the night before a solitary candle, with his chum and his favorite boy friend.

They used to read for five hours on a stretch, and study such stupid lessons in civil law; and when they were done with them, they would send for supper, open a bottle of champagne, and talk about the future which awaited them.

How entirely different the young student had thought the future would be! Then the future was full of enjoyment, of varied occupation, brilliant with success, and beyond a peradventure sure to bring them both to what seemed to them the greatest blessing in the world⁠—to fame.

“He will go on, and go on rapidly, in that path,” thought Nekhliudof of his friend; “but I⁠ ⁠…”

But by this time he was already mounting the steps to his house; and near it were standing a score of peasants and house-servants, waiting with various requests to the prince. And this brought him back from dreams to the reality.

Among the crowd was a ragged and bloodstained peasant-woman, who was lamenting and complaining of her father-in-law, who had been beating her. There were two brothers, who for two years past had been going on shares in their domestic arrangements, and now looked at each other with hatred and despair. There was also an unshaven, gray-haired domestic serf, with hands trembling from the effects of intoxication; and this man was brought to the prince by his son, a gardener, who complained of his disorderly conduct. There was a peasant, who had driven his wife out of the house because she had not worked any all the spring. There was also the wife, a sick woman, who sobbed, but said nothing, as she sat on the grass by the steps⁠—only showed her inflamed and swollen leg, carelessly wrapped up in a filthy rag.

Nekhliudof listened to all the petitions and complaints; and after he had given advice to one, blamed others, and replied to still others, he began to feel a sort of whimsical sensation of weariness, shame, weakness, and regret. And he went to his room.

XX

In the small room occupied by Nekhliudof stood an old leather sofa decorated with copper nails, a few chairs of the same description, an old-fashioned inlaid extension-table with scallops and brass mountings, and strewn with papers, and an old-fashioned English grand with narrow keys, broken and twisted.

Between the windows hung a large mirror with an old carved frame gilded. On the floor, near the table, lay packages of papers, books, and accounts.

This room, on the whole, had a characterless and disorderly appearance; and this lively disorder presented a sharp contrast with the affectedly aristocratic arrangement of the other rooms of the great mansion.

When Nekhliudof reached his room, he flung his hat angrily on the table, and sat down in a chair which stood near the piano, crossed his legs, and shook his head.

“Will you have lunch, your excellency?” asked a tall, thin, wrinkled old woman, who entered just at this instant, dressed in a cap, a great kerchief, and a print dress.

Nekhliudof looked at her for a moment or two in silence, as though collecting his thoughts.

“No: I don’t wish anything, nurse,” said he, and again fell into thought.

The nurse shook her head at him in some vexation, and sighed.

“Eh! Father, Dmitri Nikolayévitch, are you melancholy? Such tribulation comes, but it will pass away. God knows⁠ ⁠…”

“I am not melancholy. What have you brought, Malanya Finogenovna?” replied Nekhliudof, endeavoring to smile.

“Ain’t melancholy! can’t I see?” the old woman began to say with warmth. “The whole livelong day to be all sole alone! And you take everything to heart so, and look out for everything; and besides, you scarcely eat anything. What’s the reason of it? If you’d only go to the city, or visit your neighbors, as others do! You are young, and the idea of bothering over things so! Pardon me, little father, I will sit down,” pursued the old nurse, taking a seat near the door. “You see, we have got into such a habit that we lose fear. Is that the way gentlemen do? There’s no good in it. You are only ruining yourself, and the people are spoiled. That’s just like our people: they don’t understand it, that’s a fact. You had better go to your auntie. What she wrote was good sense,” said the old nurse, admonishing him.

Nekhliudof kept growing more and more dejected. His right hand, resting on his knee, lazily struck the piano, making a chord, a second, a third.

Nekhliudof moved nearer, drew his other hand from his pocket, and began to play. The chords which he made were sometimes not premeditated, were occasionally not even according to rule, often remarkable for absurdity, and showed that he was lacking in musical talent; but the exercise gave him a certain indefinable melancholy enjoyment.

At every modification in the harmony, he waited with muffled heartbeat for what would come out of it; and when anything came, he, in a dark sort of way, completed with his imagination what was missing.

It seemed to him that he heard a hundred melodies, and a chorus, and an orchestra simultaneously joining in with his harmony. But his chief pleasure was in the powerful activity of his imagination; confused and broken, but bringing up with striking clearness before him the most varied, mixed, and absurd images and pictures from the past and the future.

Now it presents the puffy figure of Davidka Byélui, timidly blinking his white eyelashes at the sight of his mother’s black fist with its network of veins; his bent back, and huge hands covered with white hairs, exhibiting a uniform patience and submission to fate, sufficient to overcome torture and deprivation.

Then he saw the brisk, presuming nurse, and, somehow, seemed to picture her going through the villages, and announcing to the peasants that they ought to hide their money from the proprietors; and he unconsciously said to himself, “Yes, it is necessary to hide money from the proprietors.”

Then suddenly there came up before him the fair head of his future wife, for some reason weeping and leaning on his shoulder in deep grief.

Then he seemed to see Churis’s kindly blue eyes looking affectionately at his potbellied little son. Yes, he saw in him a helper and savior, apart from his son. “That is love,” he whispered.

Then he remembered Yukhvanka’s mother, remembered the expression of patience and conciliation which, notwithstanding her prominent teeth and her irregular features, he recognized on her aged face.

“It must be that I have been the first during her seventy years of life, to recognize her good qualities,” he said to himself, and whispered “Strange;” but he continued still to drum on the piano, and to listen to the sounds.

Then he vividly recalled his retreat from the bees, and the expressions on the faces of Karp and Ignát, who evidently wanted to laugh though they made believe not look at him. He reddened, and involuntarily glanced at the old nurse, who still remained sitting by the door, looking at him with silent attention, occasionally shaking her gray head.

Here, suddenly, he seemed to see a troika of sleek horses, and Ilyushka’s handsome, robust form, with bright curls, gayly shining, narrow blue eyes, fresh complexion, and delicate down just beginning to appear on lip and chin.

He remembered how Ilyushka was afraid that he would not be permitted to go teaming, and how eagerly he argued in favor of the work that he liked so well. And he saw the gray early morning, that began with mist, and the smooth paved road, and the long lines of three-horse wagons, heavily laden and protected by mats, and marked with big black letters. The stout, contented, well-fed horses, thundering along with their bells, arching their backs, and tugging on the traces, pulled in unison up the hill, forcefully straining on their long-nailed shoes over the smooth road.

As the train of wagons reached the foot of the hill, the postman had quickly dashed by with jingling bells, which were echoed far and wide by the great forest extending along on both sides of the road.

“A‑a‑aï!” in a loud, boyish voice, shouts the head driver, who has a badge on his lambskin cap, and swings his whip around his head.

Beside the front wheel of the front team, the redheaded, cross-looking Karp is walking heavily in huge boots. In the second team Ilyushka shows his handsome head, as he sits on the driver’s seat playing the bugle. Three troika-wagons loaded with boxes, with creaking wheels, with the sound of bells and shouts, file by. Ilyushka once more hides his handsome face under the matting, and falls off to sleep.

Now it is a fresh, clear evening. The deal gates open for the weary horses as they halt in front of the tavern yard; and one after the other, the high mat-covered teams roll in across the planks that lie at the gates, and come to rest under the wide sheds.

Ilyushka gayly exchanges greetings with the light-complexioned, wide-bosomed landlady, who asks, “Have you come far? and will there be many of you to supper?” and at the same time looks with pleasure on the handsome lad, with her bright, kindly eyes.

And now, having unharnessed the horses, he goes into the warm house173 crowded with people, crosses himself, sits down at the generous wooden bowl, and enters into lively conversation with the landlady and his companions.

And then he goes to bed in the open air, under the stars which gleam down into the shed. His bed is fragrant hay, and he is near the horses, which, stamping and snorting, eat their fodder in the wooden cribs. He goes to the shed, turns toward the east, and after crossing himself thirty times in succession on his broad brawny chest, and throwing back his bright curls, he repeats “Our Father” and “Lord have mercy” a score of times, and wrapping himself, head and all, in his cloak, sleeps the healthy, dreamless sleep of strong, fresh manhood.

And here he sees in his vision the city of Kiev, with its saints and throngs of priests; Romen, with its merchants and merchandise; he sees Odest, and the distant blue sea studded with white sails, and the city of Tsar-grad,174 with its golden palaces, and the white-breasted, dark-browed Turkish maidens; and thither he flies, lifting himself on invisible wings.

He flies freely and easily, always farther and farther away, and sees below him golden cities bathed in clear effulgence, and the blue sky with bright stars, and a blue sea with white sails; and smoothly and pleasantly he flies, always farther and farther away.⁠ ⁠…

“Splendid!” whispers Nekhliudof to himself; and the thought, “Why am I not Ilyushka?” comes to him.

I

Five rich young men went at three o’clock in the morning to a ball in Petersburg to have a good time.

Much champagne was drunk; a majority of the gentlemen were very young; the girls were pretty; a pianist and a fiddler played indefatigably one polka after another; there was no cease to the noise of conversation and dancing. But there was a sense of awkwardness and constraint; everyone felt somehow or other⁠—and this is not unusual⁠—that all was not as it should be.

There were several attempts made to make things more lively, but simulated liveliness is much worse than melancholy.

One of the five young men, who was more discontented than anyone else, both with himself and with the others, and who had been feeling all the evening a sense of disgust, took his hat, and went out noiselessly on purpose, intending to go home.

There was no one in the anteroom, but in the next room at the door he heard two voices disputing. The young man paused, and listened.

“It is impossible, there are guests in there,” said a woman’s voice.

“Come, let me in, please. I will not do any harm,” urged a man in a gentle voice.

“Indeed I will not without madame’s permission,” said the woman. “Where are you going? Oh, what a man you are!”

The door was flung open, and on the threshold appeared the figure of a stranger. Seeing a guest, the maid ceased to detain the man; and the stranger, timidly bowing, came into the room with a somewhat unsteady gait.

He was a man of medium stature, with a lank, crooked back, and long dishevelled hair. He wore a short paletot, and tight ragged pantaloons over coarse dirty boots. His necktie, twisted into a string, exposed his long white neck. His shirt was filthy, and the sleeves came down over his lean hands.

But, notwithstanding his thoroughly emaciated body, his face was attractive and fair; and a fresh color even mantled his cheeks under his thin dark beard and side-whiskers. His dishevelled locks, thrown back, exposed a low and remarkably pure forehead. His dark, languid eyes looked unswervingly forward with an expression of serenity, submission, and sweetness, which made a fascinating combination with the expression of his fresh, curved lips, visible under his thin moustache.

Advancing a few steps, he paused, turned to the young man, and smiled. He found it apparently rather hard to smile. But his face was so lighted up by it, that the young man, without knowing why, smiled in return.

“Who is that man?” he asked of the maid in a whisper, as the stranger walked toward the room where the dancing was going on.

“A crazy musician from the theatre,” replied the maid. “He sometimes comes to call upon madame.”

“Where are you going, Delesof?” someone at this moment called from the drawing-room.

The young man who was called Delesof returned to the drawing-room. The musician was now standing at the door; and, as his eyes fell on the dancers, he showed by his smile and by the beating of his foot how much pleasure this spectacle afforded him.

“Won’t you come, and have a dance too?” said one of the guests to him. The musician bowed, and looked at the hostess inquiringly.

“Come, come. Why not, since the gentlemen have invited you?” said the hostess. The musician’s thin, weak face suddenly assumed an expression of decision; and smiling and winking, and shuffling his feet, he awkwardly, clumsily went to join the dancers in the drawing-room.

In the midst of a quadrille a jolly officer, who was dancing very beautifully and with great liveliness, accidentally hit the musician in the back. His weak, weary legs lost their equilibrium; and the musician, making ineffectual struggles to keep his balance, measured his length on the floor.

Notwithstanding the sharp, hard sound made by his fall, almost everybody at the first moment laughed.

But the musician did not rise. The guests grew silent, even the piano ceased to sound. Delesof and the hostess were the first to reach the prostrate musician. He was lying on his elbow, and gloomily looking at the ground. When he had been lifted to his feet, and set in a chair, he threw back his hair from his forehead with a quick motion of his bony hand, and began to smile without replying to the questions that were put.

“Mr. Albert! Mr. Albert!” exclaimed the hostess. “Were you hurt? Where? Now, I told you that you had better not try to dance.⁠ ⁠… He is so weak,” she added, addressing her guests. “It takes all his strength.”

“Who is he?” someone asked the hostess.

“A poor man, an artist. A very nice young fellow; but he’s a sad case, as you can see.”

She said this without paying the least heed to the musician’s presence. He suddenly opened his eyes as though frightened at something, collected himself, and remarked to those who were standing about him, “It’s nothing at all,” said he suddenly, arising from the chair with evident effort.

And in order to show that he had suffered no injury, he went into the middle of the room, and was going to dance; but he tottered, and would have fallen again, had he not been supported.

Everybody felt constrained. All looked at him, and no one spoke. The musician’s glance again lost its vivacity; and, apparently forgetting that anyone was looking, he put his hand to his knee. Suddenly he raised his head, advanced one faltering foot, and, with the same awkward gesture as before, tossed back his hair, and went to a violin-case, and took out the instrument.

“It was nothing at all,” said he again, waving the violin. “Gentlemen, we will have a little music.”

“What a strange face!” said the guests among themselves.

“Maybe there is great talent lurking in that unhappy creature,” said one of them.

“Yes: it’s a sad case⁠—a sad case,” said another.

“What a lovely face!⁠ ⁠… There is something extraordinary about it,” said Delesof. “Let us have a look at him.⁠ ⁠…”

II

Albert by this time, not paying attention to anyone, had raised his violin to his shoulder, and was slowly crossing over to the piano, and tuning his instrument. His lips were drawn into an expression of indifference, his eyes were almost shut; but his lank, bony back, his long white neck, his crooked legs, and disorderly black hair presented a strange but somehow not entirely ridiculous appearance. After he had tuned his violin, he struck a quick chord, and, throwing back his head, turned to the pianist who was waiting to accompany him. “Melancholie, G Sharp,” he said, turning to the pianist with a peremptory gesture. And immediately after, as though in apology for his peremptory gesture, he smiled sweetly, and with the same smile turned to his audience again.

Tossing back his hair with the hand that held the bow, Albert stood at one side of the piano, and, with a flowing motion of the bow, touched the strings. Through the room there swept a pure, harmonious sound, which instantly brought absolute silence.

At first, it was as though a ray of unexpectedly brilliant light had flashed across the inner world of each hearer’s consciousness; and the notes of the theme immediately followed, pouring forth abundant and beautiful.

Not one discordant or imperfect note distracted the attention of the listeners. All the tones were clear, beautiful, and full of meaning. All silently, with trembling expectation, followed the development of the theme. From a state of tedium, of noisy gayety, or of deep drowsiness, into which these people had fallen, they were suddenly transported to a world whose existence they had forgotten.

In one instant there arose in their souls, now a sentiment as though they were contemplating the past, now of passionate remembrance of some happiness, now the boundless longing for power and glory, now the feelings of humility, of unsatisfied love, and of melancholy.

Now bittersweet, now vehemently despairing, the notes, freely intermingling, poured forth and poured forth, so sweetly, so powerfully, and so spontaneously, that it was not so much that sounds were heard, as that some sort of beautiful stream of poetry, long known, but now for the first time expressed, gushed through the soul.

At each note that he played, Albert grew taller and taller. At a little distance, he had no appearance of being either crippled or peculiar. Pressing the violin to his chin, and with an expression of listening with passionate attention to the tones that he produced, he convulsively moved his feet. Now he straightened himself up to his full height, now thoughtfully leaned forward.

His left hand, curving over spasmodically on the strings, seemed as though it had swooned in its position, while it was only the bony fingers that changed about spasmodically; the right hand moved smoothly, gracefully, without effort.

His face shone with complete, enthusiastic delight; his eyes gleamed with a radiant, steely light; his nostrils quivered, his red lips were parted in rapture.

Sometimes his head bent down closer to his violin, his eyes almost closed, and his face, half shaded by his long locks, lighted up with a smile of genuine blissfulness. Sometimes he quickly straightened himself up, changed from one leg to the other, and his pure forehead, and the radiant look which he threw around the room, were alive with pride, greatness, and the consciousness of power. Once the pianist made a mistake, and struck a false chord. Physical pain was apparent in the whole form and face of the musician. He paused for a second, and with an expression of childish anger stamped his foot, and cried, “Moll, ce moll!” The pianist corrected his mistake; Albert closed his eyes, smiled, and, again forgetting himself and everybody else, gave himself up with beatitude to his work. Everybody who was in the room while Albert was playing preserved an attentive silence, and seemed to live and breathe only in the music.

The gay officer sat motionless in a chair by the window, with his eyes fixed upon the floor, and drawing long heavy sighs. The girls, awed by the universal silence, sat along by the walls, only occasionally exchanging glances expressive of satisfaction or perplexity.

The fat smiling face of the hostess was radiant with happiness. The pianist kept his eyes fixed on Albert’s face, and while his whole figure from head to foot showed his solicitude lest he should make some mistake, he did his best to follow him. One of the guests, who had been drinking more heavily than the rest, lay at full length on the sofa, and tried not to move lest he should betray his emotion. Delesof experienced an unusual sensation. It seemed as though an icy band, now contracting, now expanding, were pressed upon his head. The roots of his hair seemed endued with consciousness; the cold shivers ran down his back, something rose higher and higher in his throat, his nose and palate were full of little needles, and the tears stole down his cheeks.

He shook himself, tried to swallow them back and wipe them away without attracting attention, but fresh tears followed and streamed down his face. By some sort of strange association of impressions, the first tones of Albert’s violin carried Delesof back to his early youth.

Old before his time, weary of life, a broken man, he suddenly felt as though he were a boy of seventeen again, self-satisfied and handsome, blissfully dull, unconsciously happy. He remembered his first love for his cousin who wore a pink dress, he remembered his first confession of it in the linden alley; he remembered the warmth and the inexpressible charm of the fortuitous kiss; he remembered the immensity and enigmatical mystery of Nature as it surrounded them then.

In his imagination as it went back in its flight, she gleamed in a mist of indefinite hopes, of incomprehensible desires, and the indubitable faith in the possibility of impossible happiness. All the priceless moments of that time, one after the other, arose before him, not like unmeaning instants of the fleeting present, but like the immutable, full-formed, reproachful images of the past.

He contemplated them with rapture, and wept⁠—wept not because the time had passed and he might have spent it more profitably (if that time had been given to him again he would not have spent it any more profitably), but he wept because it had passed and would never return. His recollections evolved themselves without effort, and Albert’s violin was their mouthpiece. It said, “They have passed, forever passed, the days of thy strength, of love, and of happiness; passed forever, and never will return. Weep for them, shed all thy tears, let thy life pass in tears for these days; this is the only and best happiness that remains to thee.”

At the end of the next variation, Albert’s face grew serene, his eyes flushed, great clear drops of sweat poured down his cheeks. The veins swelled on his forehead; his whole body swayed more and more; his pale lips were parted, and his whole figure expressed an enthusiastic craving for enjoyment. Despairingly swaying with his whole body, and throwing back his hair, he laid down his violin, and with a smile of proud satisfaction and happiness gazed at the bystanders. Then his back assumed its ordinary curve, his head sank, his lips grew set, his eyes lost their fire; and as though he were ashamed of himself, timidly glancing round, and stumbling, he went into the next room.

III

Something strange came over all the audience, and something strange was noticeable in the dead silence that succeeded Albert’s playing. It was as though each desired, and yet dared not, to acknowledge the meaning of it all.

What did it mean⁠—this brightly lighted, warm room, these brilliant women, the dawn just appearing at the windows, these hurrying pulses, and the pure impressions made by the fleeting tones of music? But no one ventured to acknowledge the meaning of it all; on the contrary, almost all, feeling incapable of throwing themselves completely under the influence of what the new impression concealed from them, rebelled against it.

“Well, now, he plays mighty well,” said the officer.

“Wonderfully,” replied Delesof, stealthily wiping his cheek with his sleeve.

“One thing sure, it’s time to be going, gentlemen,” said the gentleman who had been lying on the sofa, straightening himself up a little. “We’ll have to give him something, gentlemen. Let us make a collection.”

At this time, Albert was sitting alone in the next room, on the sofa. As he supported himself with his elbows on his bony knees, he smoothed his face with his dirty, sweaty hand, tossed back his hair, and smiled at his own happy thoughts.

A large collection was taken up, and Delesof was chosen to present it. Aside from this, Delesof, who had been so keenly and unwontedly affected by the music, had conceived the thought of conferring some benefit upon this man.

It came into his head to take him home with him, to feed him, to establish him somewhere⁠—in other words, to lift him from his vile position.

“Well, are you tired?” asked Delesof, approaching him. Albert replied with a smile. “You have creative talent; you ought seriously to devote yourself to music, to play in public.”

“I should like to have something to drink,” exclaimed Albert, as though suddenly waking up.

Delesof brought him some wine, and the musician greedily drained two glasses.

“What splendid wine!” he exclaimed.

“What a lovely thing that Melancholie is!” said Delesof.

“Oh, yes, yes,” replied Albert with a smile. “But pardon me, I do not know with whom I have the honor to be talking; maybe you are a count or a prince. Couldn’t you let me have a little money?” He paused for a moment. “I have nothing⁠—I am a poor man: I couldn’t pay it back to you.”

Delesof flushed, grew embarrassed, and hastened to hand the musician the money that had been collected for him.

“Very much obliged to you,” said Albert, seizing the money. “Now let us have some more music; I will play for you as much as you wish. Only let me have something to drink, something to drink,” he repeated, as he started to his feet.

Delesof gave him some more wine, and asked him to sit down by him.

“Pardon me if I am frank with you,” said Delesof. “Your talent has interested me so much. It seems to me that you are in a wretched position.”

Albert glanced now at Delesof, now at the hostess, who just then came into the room.

“Permit me to help you,” continued Delesof. “If you need anything, then I should be very glad if you would come and stay with me for a while. I live alone, and maybe I could be of some service to you.”

Albert smiled, and made no reply.

“Why don’t you thank him?” said the hostess. “It seems to me that this would be a capital thing for you.⁠—Only I would not advise you,” she continued, turning to Delesof, and shaking her head warningly.

“Very much obliged to you,” said Albert, seizing Delesof’s hand with both his moist ones. “Only now let us have some music, please.”

But the rest of the guests were already making their preparations to depart; and as Albert did not address them, they came out into the anteroom.

Albert bade the hostess farewell; and having taken his worn hat with wide brim, and a last summer’s alma viva, which composed his only protection against the winter, he went with Delesof down the steps.

As soon as Delesof took his seat in his carriage with his new friend, and became conscious of that unpleasant odor of intoxication and filthiness exhaled by the musician, he began to repent of the step that he had taken, and to curse himself for his childish softness of heart and lack of reason. Moreover, all that Albert said was so foolish and in such bad taste, and he seemed so near a sudden state of beastly intoxication, that Delesof was disgusted. “What shall I do with him?” he asked himself.

After they had been driving for a quarter of an hour, Albert relapsed into silence, took off his hat, and laid it on his knee, then threw himself into a corner of the carriage, and began to snore.⁠ ⁠… The wheels crunched monotonously over the frozen snow, the feeble light of dawn scarcely made its way through the frosty windows.

Delesof glanced at his companion. His long body, wrapped in his mantle, lay almost lifeless near him. It seemed to him that a long head with large black nose was swaying on his trunk; but on examining more closely he perceived that what he took to be nose and face was the man’s hair, and that his actual face was lower down.

He bent over, and studied the features of Albert’s face. Then the beauty of his brow and of his peacefully closed mouth once more charmed him. Under the influence of nervous excitement caused by the sleepless hours of the long night and the music, Delesof, as he looked at that face, was once more carried back to the blessed world of which he had caught a glimpse once before that night; again he remembered the happy and magnanimous time of his youth, and he ceased to repent of his rashness. At that moment he loved Albert truly and warmly, and firmly resolved to be a benefactor to him.

IV

The next morning when Delesof was awakened to go to his office, he saw, with an unpleasant feeling of surprise, his old screen, his old servant, and his clock on the table.

“What did I expect to see if not the usual objects that surround me?” he asked himself.

Then he recollected the musician’s black eyes and happy smile; the motive of the Melancholie and all the strange experiences of the night came back into his consciousness. It was never his way, however, to reconsider whether he had done wisely or foolishly in taking the musician home with him. After he had dressed, he carefully laid out his plans for the day: he took some paper, wrote out some necessary directions for the house, and hastily put on his cloak and galoshes.

As he went by the dining-room he glanced in at the door. Albert, with his face buried in the pillow and lying at full length in his dirty, tattered shirt, was buried in the profoundest slumber on the saffron sofa, where in absolute unconsciousness he had been laid the night before.

Delesof felt that something was not right: it disturbed him. “Please go for me to Boriuzovsky, and borrow his violin for a day or two,” said he to his man; “and when he wakes up, bring him some coffee, and get him some clean linen and some old suit or other of mine. Fix him up as well as you can, please.”

When he returned home in the afternoon, Delesof, to his surprise, found that Albert was not there.

“Where is he?” he asked of his man.

“He went out immediately after dinner,” replied the servant. “He took the violin, and went out, saying that he would be back again in an hour; but since that time we have not seen him.”

“Ta, ta! how provoking!” said Delesof. “Why did you let him go, Zakhár?”

Zakhár was a Petersburg lackey, who had been in Delesof’s service for eight years. Delesof, as a single young bachelor, could not help entrusting him with his plans; and he liked to get his judgment in regard to each of his undertakings.

“How should I have ventured to detain him?” replied Zakhár, playing with his watch-charms. “If you had intimated, Dmitri Ivánovitch, that you wished me to keep him here, I might have kept him at home. But you only spoke of his wardrobe.”

“Ta! how vexatious! Well, what has he been doing while I was out?”

Zakhár smiled.

“Indeed, he’s a real artist, as you may say, Dmitri Ivánovitch. As soon as he woke up he asked for some madeira: then he began to keep the cook and me pretty busy. Such an absurd⁠ ⁠… However, he’s a very interesting character. I brought him some tea, got some dinner ready for him; but he would not eat alone, so he asked me to sit down with him. But when he began to play on the fiddle, then I knew that you would not find many such artists at Izler’s. One might well keep such a man. When he played ‘Down the Little Mother Volga’ for us, why, it was enough to make a man weep. It was too good for anything! The people from all the floors came down into our entry to listen.”

“Well, did you give him some clothes?” asked the bárin.

“Certainly I did: I gave him your dress-shirt, and I put on him an overcoat of mine. You want to help such a man as that, he’s a fine fellow.” Zakhár smiled. “He asked me what rank you were, and if you had had important acquaintances, and how many souls of peasantry you had.”

“Very good: but now we must send and find him; and henceforth don’t give him anything to drink, otherwise you’ll do him more harm than good.”

“That is true,” said Zakhár in assent. “He doesn’t seem in very robust health: we used to have an overseer who, like him⁠ ⁠…”

Delesof, who had already long ago heard the story of the drunken overseer, did not give Zakhár time to finish, but bade him make everything ready for the night, and then go out and bring the musician back.

He threw himself down on his bed, and put out the candle; but it was long before he fell asleep, for thinking about Albert.

“This may seem strange to some of my friends,” said Delesof to himself, “but how seldom it is that I can do anything for anyone beside myself! and I ought to thank God for a chance when one presents itself. I will not send him away. I will do everything, at least everything that I can, to help him. Maybe he is not absolutely crazy, but only inclined to get drunk. It certainly will not cost me very much. Where one is, there is always enough to satisfy two. Let him live with me awhile, and then we will find him a place, or get him up a concert; we’ll help him off the shoals, and then there will be time enough to see what will come of it.” An agreeable sense of self-satisfaction came over him after making this resolution.

“Certainly I am not a bad man: I might say I am far from being a bad man,” he thought. “I might go so far as to say that I am a good man, when I compare myself with others.”

He was just dropping off to sleep when the sound of opening doors, and steps in the anteroom, roused him again. “Well, shall I treat him rather severely?” he asked himself; “I suppose that is best, and I ought to do it.”

He rang.

“Well, did you find him?” he asked of Zakhár, who answered his call.

“He’s a poor, wretched fellow, Dmitri Ivánovitch,” said Zakhár, shaking his head significantly, and closing his eyes.

“What! is he drunk?”

“Very weak.”

“Had he the violin with him?”

“I brought it: the lady gave it to me.”

“All right. Now please don’t bring him to me tonight: let him sleep it off; and tomorrow don’t under any circumstances let him out of the house.”

But before Zakhár had time to leave the room, Albert came in.

V

“You don’t mean to say that you’ve gone to bed at this time,” said Albert with a smile. “I was there again, at Anna Ivánovna’s. I spent a very pleasant evening. We had music, told stories; there was a very pleasant company there. Please let me have a glass of something to drink,” he added, seizing a carafe of water that stood on the table, “only not water.”

Albert was just as he had been the night before⁠—the same lovely smiling eyes and lips, the same fresh inspired brow, and weak features. Zakhár’s overcoat fitted him as though it had been made for him, and the clean, tall, stiffly-starched collar of the dress-shirt picturesquely fitted around his delicate white neck, giving him a peculiarly childlike and innocent appearance.

He sat down on Delesof’s bed, smiling with pleasure and gratitude, and looked at him without speaking. Delesof gazed into Albert’s eyes, and suddenly felt himself once under the sway of that smile. All desire for sleep vanished from him, he forgot his resolution to be stern: on the contrary, he felt like having a gay time, to hear some music, and to talk confidentially with Albert till morning. Delesof bade Zakhár bring a bottle of wine, cigarettes, and the violin.

“This is excellent,” said Albert. “It’s early yet, we’ll have a little music. I will play whatever you like.”

Zakhár, with evident satisfaction, brought a bottle of Lafitte, two glasses, some mild cigarettes such as Albert smoked, and the violin. But, instead of going off to bed as his bárin bade him, he lighted a cigar, and sat down in the next room.

“Let us talk instead,” said Delesof to the musician, who was beginning to tune the violin.

Albert sat down submissively on the bed, and smiled pleasantly.

“Oh, yes!” said he, suddenly striking his forehead with his hand, and putting on an expression of anxious curiosity. The expression of his face always foretold what he was going to say. “I wanted to ask you,”⁠—he hesitated a little⁠—“that gentleman who was there with you last evening.⁠ ⁠… You called him N⁠⸺. Was he the son of the celebrated N⁠⸺?”

“His own son,” replied Delesof, not understanding at all what Albert could find of interest in him.

“Indeed!” he exclaimed, smiling with satisfaction. “I instantly noticed that there was something peculiarly aristocratic in his manners. I love aristocrats. There is something splendid and elegant about an aristocrat. And that officer who danced so beautifully,” he went on to ask. “He also pleased me very much, he was so gay and noble looking. It seems he is called Adjutant N⁠⸺ N⁠⸺.”

“Who?” asked Delesof.

“The one who ran into me when we were dancing. He must be a splendid man.”

“No, he is a silly fellow,” replied Delesof.

“Oh, no! it can’t be,” rejoined Albert hotly. “There’s something very, very pleasant about him. And he’s a fine musician,” added Albert. “He played something from an opera. It’s a long time since I have seen anyone who pleased me so much.”

“Yes, he plays very well; but I don’t like his playing,” said Delesof, anxious to bring his companion to talk about music. “He does not understand classic music, but only Donizetti and Bellini; and that’s no music, you know. You agree with me, don’t you?”

“Oh, no, no! Pardon me,” replied Albert with a gentle expression of vindication. “The old music is music; but modern music is music too. And in the modern music there are extraordinarily beautiful things. Now, Somnambula, and the finale of Lucia, and Chopin, and Robert! I often think,”⁠—he hesitated, apparently collecting his thoughts⁠—“that if Beethoven were alive, he would weep tears of joy to hear Somnambula. It’s so beautiful all through. I heard Somnambula first when Viardot and Rubini were here. That was something worthwhile,” he said, with shining eyes, and making a gesture with both hands, as though he were casting something from his breast. “I’d give a good deal, but it would be impossible, to bring it back.”

“Well, but how do you like the opera nowadays?” asked Delesof.

“Bosio is good, very good,” was his reply, “exquisite beyond words; but she does not touch me here,” he said, pointing to his sunken chest. “A singer must have passion, and she hasn’t any. She is enjoyable, but she doesn’t torture you.”

“Well, how about Lablache?”

“I heard him in Paris, in The Barber of Seville. Then he was the only one, but now he is old. He can’t be an artist, he is old.”

“Well, supposing he is old, still he is fine in morceaux d’ensemble,” said Delesof, still speaking of Lablache.

“Who said that he was old?” said Albert severely. “He can’t be old. The artist can never be old. Much is needed in an artist, but fire most of all,” he declared with glistening eyes, and raising both hands in the air. And, indeed, a terrible inner fire seemed to glow throughout his whole frame. “Ah, my God!” he exclaimed suddenly. “You don’t know Petrof, do you⁠—Petrof, the artist?”

“No, I don’t know him,” replied Delesof with a smile.

“How I wish that you and he might become acquainted! You would enjoy talking with him. How he does understand art! He and I often used to meet at Anna Ivánovna’s, but now she is vexed with him for some reason or other. But I really wish that you might make his acquaintance. He has great, great talent.”

“Oh! Does he paint pictures?” asked Delesof.

“I don’t know. No, I think not; but he was an artist of the Academy. What thoughts he had! Whenever he talks, it is wonderful. Oh, Petrof has great talent, only he leads a very gay life!⁠ ⁠… It’s too bad,” said Albert with a smile. The next moment he got up from the bed, took the violin, and began to play.

“Have you been at the opera lately?” asked Delesof.

Albert looked round, and sighed.

“Ah, I have not been able to!” he said, clutching his head. Again he sat down by Delesof. “I will tell you,” he went on to say, almost in a whisper. “I can’t go: I can’t play there. I have nothing, nothing at all⁠—no clothes, no home, no violin. It’s a wretched life⁠—a wretched life!” he repeated the phrase. “Yes, and why have I got into such a state? Why, indeed? It ought not to have been,” said he, smiling. “Akh! Don Juan.”

And he struck his head.

“Now let us have something to eat,” said Delesof.

Albert, without replying, sprang up, seized the violin, and began to play the finale of the first act of Don Juan, accompanying it with a description of the scene in the opera.

Delesof felt the hair stand up on his head, when he played the voice of the dying commander.

“No, I cannot play tonight,” said Albert, laying down the instrument. “I have been drinking too much.” But immediately after he went to the table, poured out a brimming glass of wine, drank it at one gulp, and again sat down on the bed near Delesof.

Delesof looked steadily at Albert. The latter occasionally smiled, and Delesof returned his smile. Neither of them spoke, but the glance and smile brought them close together into a reciprocity of affection. Delesof felt that he was growing constantly fonder and fonder of this man, and he experienced an inexpressible pleasure.

“Were you ever in love?” he asked suddenly. Albert remained sunk in thought for a few seconds, then his face lighted up with a melancholy smile. He bent over toward Delesof, and gazed straight into his eyes.

“Why did you ask me that question?” he whispered. “But I will tell you all about it. I like you,” he added, after a few moments of thought, and glancing around. “I will not deceive you, I will tell you all, just as it was, from the beginning.” He paused, and his eyes took on a strange wild appearance. “You know that I am weak in judgment,” he said suddenly. “Yes, yes,” he continued. “Anna Ivánovna has told you about it. She tells everybody that I am crazy. It isn’t true, she says it for a joke; she is a good woman, but I really have not been quite well for some time.” Albert paused again, and stood up, gazing with wide-opened eyes at the dark door. “You asked me if I had ever been in love. Yes, I have been in love,” he whispered, raising his brows. “That happened long ago; it was at a time when I still had a place at the theatre. I went to play second violin at the opera, and she came into a parquet box at the left.”

Albert stood up, and bent over to Delesof’s ear. “But no,” said he, “why should I mention her name? You probably know her, everybody knows her. I said nothing, but simply looked at her: I knew that I was a poor artist, and she an aristocratic lady. I knew that very well. I only looked at her, and had no thoughts.”

Albert paused for a moment, as though making sure of his recollections.

“How it happened I know not, but I was invited once to accompany her on my violin.⁠ ⁠… Now I was only a poor artist!” he repeated, shaking his head and smiling. “But no, I cannot tell you, I cannot!” he exclaimed, again clutching his head. “How happy I was!”

“What? did you go to her house often?” asked Delesof.

“Once, only once.⁠ ⁠… But it was my own fault; I wasn’t in my right mind. I was a poor artist, and she an aristocratic lady. I ought not to have spoken to her. But I lost my senses, I committed a folly. Petrof told me the truth: ‘It would have been better only to have seen her at the theatre.’ ”

“What did you do?” asked Delesof.

“Ah! wait, wait, I cannot tell you that.”

And, hiding his face in his hands, he said nothing for some time.

“I was late at the orchestra. Petrof and I had been drinking that evening, and I was excited. She was sitting in her box, and talking with some general. I don’t know who that general was. She was sitting at the very edge of the box, with her arm resting on the rim. She wore a white dress, with pearls on her neck. She was talking with him, but she looked at me. Twice she looked at me. She had arranged her hair in such a becoming way! I stopped playing, and stood near the bass, and gazed at her. Then, for the first time, something strange took place in me. She smiled on the general, but she looked at me. I felt certain that she was talking about me; and suddenly I seemed to be not in my place in the orchestra, but was standing in her box, and seizing her hand in that place. What was the meaning of that?” asked Albert, after a moment’s silence.

“A powerful imagination,” said Delesof.

“No, no⁠ ⁠… I cannot tell,” said Albert frowning. “Even then I was poor. I hadn’t any room; and when I went to the theatre, I sometimes used to sleep there.”

“What, in the theatre?” asked Delesof.

“Ah! I am not afraid of these stupid things. Ah! just wait a moment. As soon as everybody was gone, I went to that box where she had been sitting, and slept there. That was my only pleasure. How many nights I spent there! Only once again did I have that experience. At night many things seemed to come to me. But I cannot tell you much about them.” Albert contracted his brows, and looked at Delesof. “What did it mean?” he asked.

“It was strange,” replied the other.

“No, wait, wait!” he bent over to his ear, and said in a whisper⁠—

“I kissed her hand, wept there before her, and said many things to her. I heard the fragrance of her sighs, I heard her voice. She said many things to me that one night. Then I took my violin, and began to play softly. And I played beautifully. But it became terrible to me. I am not afraid of such stupid things, and I don’t believe in them, but my head felt terribly,” he said, smiling sweetly, and moving his hand over his forehead. “It seemed terrible to me on account of my poor mind; something happened in my head. Maybe it was nothing; what do you think?”

Neither spoke for several minutes.

“Und wenn die Wolken sie verhüllen,
Die Sonne bleibt doch ewig klar.”176

hummed Albert, smiling gently. “That is true, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Ich auch habe gelebt und genossen.”177

“Ah, old man Petrof! how this would have made things clear to you!”

Delesof, in silence and with dismay, looked at his companion’s excited and colorless face.

“Do you know the Juristen waltzes?” suddenly asked Albert in a loud voice, and without waiting for an answer, jumped up, seized the violin, and began to play the waltz. In absolute self-forgetfulness, and evidently imagining that a whole orchestra was playing for him, Albert smiled, began to dance, to shuffle his feet, and to play admirably.

“Hey, we will have a good time!” he exclaimed, as he ended, and waved his violin. “I am going,” said he, after sitting down in silence for a little. “Won’t you come along too?”

“Where?” asked Delesof in surprise.

“Let us go to Anna Ivánovna’s again. It’s gay there⁠—bustle, people, music.”

Delesof for a moment was almost persuaded. However, coming to his senses, he promised Albert that he would go with him the next day.

“I should like to go this minute.”

“Indeed, I wouldn’t go.”

Albert sighed, and laid down the violin.

“Shall I stay, then?” He looked over at the table, but the wine was gone; and so, wishing him a good night, he left the room.

Delesof rang. “Look here,” said he to Zakhár, “don’t let Mr. Albert go anywhere without asking me about it first.”

VI

The next day was a holiday. Delesof, on waking, sat in his parlor, drinking his coffee and reading a book. Albert, who was in the next room, had not yet moved. Zakhár discreetly opened the door, and looked into the dining-room.

“Would you believe it, Dmitri Ivánovitch, there he lies asleep on the bare sofa. I would not send him away for anything, God knows. He’s like a little child. Indeed, he’s an artist!”

At twelve o’clock, there was a sound of yawning and coughing on the other side of the door.

Zakhár again crept into the dining-room; and the bárin heard his wheedling voice, and Albert’s gentle, beseeching voice.

“Well, how is he?” asked Delesof, when Zakhár came out.

“He feels blue, Dmitri Ivánovitch. He doesn’t want to get dressed. He’s so cross. All he asks for is something to drink.”

“Now, if we are to get hold of him, we must strengthen his character,” said Delesof to himself. And, forbidding Zakhár to give him any wine, he again devoted himself to his book; in spite of himself, however, listening all the time for developments in the dining-room.

But there was no movement there, only occasionally were heard a heavy chest cough and spitting. Two hours passed. Delesof, after dressing to go out, resolved to look in upon his guest. Albert was sitting motionless at the window, leaning his head on his hands.

He looked round. His face was sallow, morose, and not only melancholy but deeply unhappy. He tried to welcome his host with a smile, but his face assumed a still more woebegone expression. It seemed as though he were on the point of tears.

With effort he stood up and bowed. “If I might have just a little glass of simple vodka,” he exclaimed with a supplicating expression. “I am so weak. If you please!”

“Coffee will be more strengthening, I would advise you.”

Albert’s face lost its childish expression; he gazed coldly, sadly, out of the window, and fell back into the chair.

“Wouldn’t you like some breakfast?”

“No, thank you, I haven’t any appetite.”

“If you want to play on the violin, you will not disturb me,” said Delesof, laying the instrument on the table. Albert looked at the violin with a contemptuous smile.

“No, I am too weak, I cannot play,” he said, and pushed the instrument from him.

After that, in reply to all Delesof’s propositions to go to walk, to go to the theatre in the evening, or anything else, he only shook his head mournfully, and refused to speak.

Delesof went out, made a few calls, dined out, and before the theatre hour, he returned to his rooms to change his attire and find out how the musician was getting along.

Albert was sitting in the dark anteroom, and, with his head resting on his hand, was gazing at the heated stove. He was neatly dressed, washed and combed; but his eyes were sad and vacant, and his whole form expressed even more weakness and debility than in the morning.

“Well, have you had dinner, Mr. Albert?” asked Delesof.

Albert nodded his head, and, after looking with a terrified expression at Delesof, dropped his eyes. It made Delesof feel uncomfortable.

“I have been talking today with a manager,” said he, also dropping his eyes. “He would be very glad to make terms with you, if you would like to accept an engagement.”

“I thank you, but I cannot play,” said Albert, almost in a whisper; and he went into his room, and closed the door as softly as possible. After a few minutes, lifting the latch as softly as possible, he came out of the room, bringing the violin. Casting a sharp, angry look at Delesof, he laid the instrument on the table, and again disappeared.

Delesof shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

“What am I to do now? Wherein am I to blame?” he asked himself.

“Well, how is the musician?” was his first question when he returned home late that evening.

“Bad,” was Zakhár’s short and ringing reply. “He sighs all the time, and coughs, and says nothing at all, only he has asked for vodka four or five times, and once I gave him some. How can we avoid killing him this way, Dmitri Ivánovitch? That was the way the overseer⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, hasn’t he played on the fiddle?”

“Didn’t even touch it. I took it to him, twice⁠—Well, he took it up slowly, and carried it out,” said Zakhár with a smile. “Do you still bid me refuse him something to drink?”

“Don’t give him anything today; we’ll see what’ll come of it. What is he doing now?”

“He has shut himself into the parlor.”

Delesof went into his library, took down a few French books, and the Testament in German. “Put these books tomorrow in his room; and look out, don’t let him get away,” said he to Zakhár.

The next morning Zakhár informed his bárin that the musician had not slept a wink all night. “He kept walking up and down his rooms, and going to the sideboard to try to open the cupboard and door; but everything, in spite of his efforts, remained locked.”

Zakhár told how, while he was going to sleep, he heard Albert muttering to himself in the darkness and gesticulating.

Each day Albert grew more gloomy and taciturn. It seemed as though he were afraid of Delesof, and his face expressed painful terror whenever their eyes met. He did not touch either book or violin, and made no replies to the questions put to him.

On the third day after the musician came to stay with him, Delesof returned home late in the evening, tired and worried. He had been on the go all day, attending to his duties. Though they had seemed very simple and easy, yet, as is often the case, he had not made any progress at all, in spite of his strenuous endeavors. Afterwards he had stopped at the club, and lost at whist. He was out of spirits.

“Well, God be with him,” he replied to Zakhár, who had been telling him of Albert’s pitiable state. “Tomorrow I shall be really worried about him. Is he willing or not to stay with me, and follow my advice? No? Then it’s idle. I have done the best that I could.”

“That’s what comes of trying to be a benefactor to people,” said he to himself. “I am putting myself to inconvenience for him. I have taken this filthy creature into my rooms, which keeps me from receiving strangers in the morning; I work and trot; and yet he looks upon me as some enemy who, against his will, would keep him in pound. But the worst is, that he is not willing to take a step in his own behalf. That’s the way with them all.”

That word all referred to people in general, and especially to those with whom he had been associated in business that day. “But what is to be done for him now? What is he contemplating? Why is he melancholy? Is he melancholy on account of the debauch from which I rescued him? on account of the degradation in which he has been? the humiliation from which I saved him? Can it be that he has fallen so low that it is a burden for him to look on a pure life?⁠ ⁠…

“No, this was a childish action,” reasoned Delesof. “Why should I undertake to direct others, when it is as much as I can do to manage my own affairs?”

The impulse came over him to let him go immediately, but after a little deliberation he postponed it till the morning.

During the night Delesof was aroused by the noise of a falling table in the anteroom, and the sound of voices and stamping feet.

“Just wait a little, I will tell Dmitri Ivánovitch,” said Zakhár’s voice; Albert’s voice replied passionately and incoherently.

Delesof leaped up, and went with a candle into the anteroom. Zakhár in his nightdress was standing against the door; Albert in cap and alma viva was trying to pull him away, and was screaming at him in a pathetic voice.

“You have no right to detain me; I have a passport; I have not stolen anything from you. You must let me go. I will go to the police.”

“I beg of you, Dmitri Ivánovitch,” said Zakhár, turning to his bárin, and continuing to stand guard at the door. “He got up in the night, found the key in my overcoat-pocket, and he has drunk up the whole decanter of sweet vodka. Was that good? And now he wants to go. You didn’t give me orders, and so I could not let him out.”

Albert, seeing Delesof, began to pull still more violently on Zakhár. “No one has the right to detain me! He cannot do it,” he screamed, raising his voice more and more.

“Let him go, Zakhár,” said Delesof. “I do not wish to detain you, and I have no right to, but I advise you to stay till tomorrow,” he added, addressing Albert.

“No one has the right to detain me. I am going to the police,” screamed Albert more and more furiously, addressing only Zakhár, and not heeding Delesof. “Guard!” he suddenly shouted at the top of his voice.

“Now, what are you screaming like that for? You see you are free to go,” said Zakhár, opening the door.

Albert ceased screaming. “How did they dare? They were going to murder me! No!” he muttered to himself as he put on his galoshes. Not offering to say goodbye, and still muttering something unintelligible, he went out of the door. Zakhár accompanied him to the gate, and came back.

“Thank the Lord, Dmitri Ivánovitch! Any longer would have been a sin,” said he to his bárin. “And now we must count the silver.”

Delesof only shook his head, and made no reply. There came over him a lively recollection of the first two evenings which he and the musician had spent together; he remembered the last wretched days which Albert had spent there; and above all he remembered the sweet but absurd sentiment of wonder, of love, and of sympathy, which had been aroused in him by the very first sight of this strange man; and he began to pity him.

“What will become of him now?” he asked himself. “Without money, without warm clothing, alone at midnight!” He thought of sending Zakhár after him, but now it was too late.

“Is it cold outdoors?” he asked.

“A healthy frost, Dmitri Ivánovitch,” replied the man. “I forgot to tell you that you will have to buy some more firewood to last till spring.”

“But what did you mean by saying that it would last?”

VII

Out of doors it was really cold; but Albert did not feel it, he was so excited by the wine that he had taken and by the quarrel.

As he entered the street, he looked around him, and rubbed his hands with pleasure. The street was empty, but the long lines of lights were still brilliantly gleaming; the sky was clear and beautiful. “What!” he cried, addressing the lighted window in Delesof’s apartments; and then thrusting his hands in his trousers pockets under his coat, and looking straight ahead, he walked with heavy and uncertain steps straight up the street.

He felt an absolute weight in his legs and abdomen, something hummed in his head, some invisible power seemed to hurl him from side to side; but he still plunged ahead in the direction of where Anna Ivánovna lived.

Strange, disconnected thoughts rushed through his head. Now he remembered his quarrel with Zakhár, now something recalled the sea and his first voyage in the steamboat to Russia; now the merry night that he had spent with some friend in the wine-shop by which he was passing; then suddenly there came to him a familiar air singing itself in his recollections, and he seemed to see the object of his passion and the terrible night in the theatre.

But notwithstanding their incoherence, all these recollections presented themselves before his imaginations with such distinctness that when he closed his eyes he could not tell which was nearer to the reality: what he was doing, or what he was thinking. He did not realize and he did not feel how his legs moved, how he staggered and hit against a wall, how he looked around him, and how he made his way from street to street.

As he went along the Little Morskaya, Albert tripped and fell. Collecting himself in a moment, he saw before him some huge and magnificent edifice, and he went toward it.

In the sky not a star was to be seen, nor sign of dawn, nor moon, neither were there any streetlights there; but all objects were perfectly distinguishable. The windows of the edifice, which loomed up at the corner of the street, were brilliantly lighted, but the lights wavered like reflections. The building kept coming nearer and nearer, clearer and clearer, to Albert.

But the lights vanished the moment that Albert entered the wide portals. Inside it was dark. He took a few steps under the vaulted ceiling, and something like shades glided by and fled at his approach.

“Why did I come here?” wondered Albert; but some irresistible power dragged him forward into the depths of the immense hall.

There stood some lofty platform, and around it in silence stood what seemed like little men. “Who is going to speak?” asked Albert. No one answered, but someone pointed to the platform. There stood now on the platform a tall, thin man, with bushy hair and dressed in a variegated gown. Albert immediately recognized his friend Petrof.

“How strange! what is he doing here?” said Albert to himself.

“No, brethren,” said Petrof, pointing to something, “you did not appreciate the man while he was living among you; you did not appreciate him! He was not a cheap artist, not a merely mechanical performer, not a crazy, ruined man. He was a genius, a great musical genius, who perished among you unknown and unvalued.”

Albert immediately understood of whom his friend was speaking; but not wishing to interrupt him, he hung his head modestly. “He, like a sheaf of straw, was wholly consumed by the sacred fire which we all serve,” continued the voice. “But he has completely fulfilled all that God gave him; therefore he ought to be considered a great man. You may despise him, torture him, humiliate him,” continued the voice, more and more energetically, “but he has been, is, and will be immeasurably higher than you all. He is happy, he is good. He loved you all alike, or cared for you, it is all the same; but he has served only that with which he was so highly endowed. He loved one thing⁠—beauty, the only infinite good in the world. Oh, yes, what a man he is! Fall all of you before him. On your knees!” cried Petrof in a thundering voice.

But another voice mildly answered from another corner of the hall. “I do not wish to bow my knee before him,” said the voice.

Albert instantly recognized Delesof.

“Why is he great? And why should we bow before him? Has he conducted himself in an honorable and righteous manner? Has he brought society any advantage? Do we not know how he borrowed money, and never returned it; how he carried off a violin that belonged to a brother artist, and pawned it?”

“My God! how did he know all that?” said Albert to himself, drooping his head still lower.

“Do we not know,” the voice went on, “how he pandered to the lowest of the low, pandered to them for money? Do we not know how he was driven out of the theatre? How Anna Ivánovna threatened to hand him over to the police?”

“My God! that is all true, but protect me,” cried Albert. “You are the only one who knows why I did so.”

“Stop, for shame!” cried Petrof’s voice again. “What right have you to accuse him? Have you lived his life? Have you experienced his enthusiasms?”

“Right! right!” whispered Albert.

“Art is the highest manifestation of power in man. It is given only to the favored few, and it lifts the chosen to such an eminence that the head swims, and it is hard to preserve its integrity. In art, as in every struggle, there are heroes who bring all under subjection to them, and perish if they do not attain their ends.”

Petrof ceased speaking; and Albert lifted his head, and tried to shout in a loud voice, “Right! right!” but his voice died without a sound.

“That is not the case with you. This does not concern you,” sternly said the artist Petrof, addressing Delesof. “Yes, humble him, despise him,” he continued, “for he is better and happier than all the rest of you.”

Albert, with rapture in his heart at hearing these words, could not contain himself, but went up to his friend, and was about to kiss him.

“Get thee gone, I do not know you,” replied Petrof. “Go your own way, you cannot come here.”

“Here, you drunken fellow, you cannot come here,” cried a policeman at the crossing.

Albert hesitated, then collected all his forces, and, endeavoring not to stumble, crossed over to the next street.

It was only a few steps to Anna Ivánovna’s. From the hall of her house a stream of light fell on the snowy dvor, and at the gate stood sledges and carriages.

Clinging with both hands to the balustrade, he made his way up the steps, and rang the bell.

The maid’s sleepy face appeared at the open door, and looked angrily at Albert.

“It is impossible,” she cried; “I have been forbidden to let you in,” and she slammed the door. The sounds of music and women’s voices floated down to him.

Albert sat down on the ground, and leaned his head against the wall, and shut his eyes. At that very instant a throng of indistinct but correlated visions took possession of him with fresh force, mastered him, and carried him off into the beautiful and free domain of fancy.

“Yes! he is better and happier,” involuntarily the voice repeated in his imagination.

From the door were heard the sounds of a polka. These sounds also told him that he was better and happier. In a neighboring church was heard the sound of a prayer-bell; and the prayer-bell also told him that he was better and happier.

“Now I will go back to that hall again,” said Albert to himself. “Petrof must have many things still to tell me.”

There seemed to be no one now in the hall; and in the place of the artist Petrof, Albert himself stood on the platform, and was playing on his violin all that the voice had said before.

But his violin was of strange make: it was composed of nothing but glass, and he had to hold it with both hands, and slowly rub it on his breast to make it give out sounds. The sounds were so sweet and delicious, that Albert felt he had never before heard anything like them. The more tightly he pressed the violin to his breast, the more sweet and consoling they became. The louder the sounds, the more swiftly the shadows vanished, and the more brilliantly the walls of the hall were illuminated. But it was necessary to play very cautiously on the violin, lest it should break.

Albert played on the instrument of glass cautiously and well. He played things the like of which he felt no one would ever hear again.

He was growing tired, when a heavy distant sound began to annoy him. It was the sound of a bell, but this sound seemed to have a language.

“Yes,” said the bell, with its notes coming from somewhere far off and high up, “yes, he seems to you wretched; you despise him, but he is better and happier than you. No one ever will play more on that instrument!”

These words which he understood seemed suddenly so wise, so novel, and so true, to Albert, that he stopped playing, and, while trying not to move, lifted his eyes and his arms toward heaven. He felt that he was beautiful and happy. Although no one was in the hall, Albert expanded his chest, and proudly lifted his head, and stood on the platform so that all might see him.

Suddenly someone’s hand was gently laid on his shoulder; he turned around, and in the half light saw a woman. She looked pityingly at him, and shook her head. He immediately became conscious that what he was doing was wrong, and a sense of shame came over him.

“Where shall I go?” he asked her. Once more she gazed long and fixedly at him, and bent her head pityingly. She was the one, the very one whom he loved, and her dress was the same; on her round white neck was the pearl necklace, and her lovely arms were bare above the elbows.

She took him in her arms, and bore him away through the hall. At the entrance of the hall, Albert saw the moon and water. But the water was not below as is usually the case, and the moon was not above; there was a white circle in one place as sometimes happens. The moon and the water were together⁠—everywhere, above and below, and on all sides and around them both. Albert and his love darted off toward the moon and the water, and he now realized that she whom he loved more than all in the world was in his arms: he embraced her, and felt inexpressible felicity.

“Is not this a dream?” he asked himself. But no, it was the reality, it was more than reality: it was reality and recollection combined.

Then he felt that the indescribable pleasure which he had felt during the last moment was gone, and would never be renewed.

“Why am I weeping?” he asked of her. She looked at him in silence, with pitying eyes. Albert understood what she desired to say in reply. “Just as when I was alive,” he went on to say. She, without replying, looked straight forward.

“This is terrible! How can I explain to her that I am alive?” he asked himself in horror. “My God, I am alive! Do understand me,” he whispered.

“He is better and happier,” said a voice.

But something kept oppressing Albert ever more powerfully. Whether it was the moon or the water, or her embrace or his tears, he could not tell, but he was conscious that he could not say all that it was his duty to say, and that all would be quickly over.

Two guests coming out from Anna Ivánovna’s rooms stumbled against Albert lying on the threshold. One of them went back to Anna Ivánovna, and called her. “That was heartless,” he said. “You might let a man freeze to death that way.”

“Akh! why, that is my Albert. See where he was lying!” exclaimed the hostess. “Annushka, have him brought into the room; find a place for him somewhere,” she added, addressing the maid.

“Oh! I am alive, why do you bury me?” muttered Albert, as they brought him unconscious into the room.

I

“Well, never mind, the saloon will do,” said a young officer wearing a fur cloak and hussar’s cap, who had just got out of a post-sledge and was entering the best hotel in the town of K⁠⸺.

“The meeting, your excellency, is enormous,” said the boots, who had already managed to learn from the Orderly that the hussar’s name was Count Toúrbin, and therefore addressed him as “your excellency.”

“The proprietress of Afrémovo with her daughters has said she will leave this evening, so No. 11 will be at your disposal as soon as they go,” continued the boots, stepping softly before the Count along the passage, and continually looking back.

In the general saloon, at a little table under the blackened full-length portrait of the Emperor Alexander I, several men, probably belonging to the local nobility, sat drinking champagne, and at one side sat some travellers: tradesmen in blue, fur-lined cloaks.

Entering the room and calling in Blücher, a gigantic grey mastiff he had brought with him, the Count threw off his cloak, the collar of which was still covered with hoarfrost, called for vodka, sat down in his blue satin Cossack jacket at the table, and entered into conversation with the gentlemen sitting there.

The handsome, open countenance of the newcomer immediately predisposed them in his favour, and they offered him a glass of champagne. The Count first drank a glass of vodka, and then ordered another bottle of champagne to treat his new acquaintances. The sledge-driver came in to ask for a tip.

“Sáshka!” shouted the Count, “give him something.”

The driver went out with Sáshka, but came back again with the money in his hand.

“Look here, y’r ’xelence, haven’t I done my very best for y’r honour? Didn’t you promise me half a rouble, and he’s only given me a quarter!”

“Sáshka, give him a rouble.”

Sáshka cast down his eyes and looked at the driver’s feet.

“He’s had enough!” he said, in a bass voice. “And besides, I have no more money.”

The Count drew from his pocketbook the two five-rouble notes which were all that was in it, and gave one of them to the driver, who kissed his hand and went off.

“I’ve run it pretty close!” said the Count. “These are my last five roubles.”

“Real hussar fashion, Count,” said one of the nobles, who from his moustache, voice, and a certain energetic freedom about the legs, was evidently a retired cavalryman. “Are you staying here some time, Count?”

“I must get some money. I should not have stayed here at all but for that. And there are no rooms to be had, devil take them, in this cursed pub.”

“Permit me, Count,” said the cavalryman, “will you not join me? My room is No. 7.⁠ ⁠… If you do not mind, just for the night. And then you’ll stay a couple of days with us? It happens that the Maréchal de la Noblesse is just giving a ball tonight. You would make him very happy by going.”

“Yes, Count, do stay,” said another, a handsome young man. “You have surely no reason to hurry away! You know this only comes once in three years⁠—the elections, I mean. You should at least have a look at our young ladies, Count!”

“Sáshka, get my clean linen ready; I am going to the bath,” said the Count, rising, “and from there perhaps I may run in to the Marshal’s.”

Then, having called the waiter and whispered something to him, to which the latter answered with a smile, “That can all be managed,” he went out.

“So I’ll order my trunk to be taken to your room, old fellow,” shouted the Count from the passage.

“Please do, I shall be most happy,” replied the cavalryman, running to the door; “No. 7⁠—don’t forget.”

When the Count’s footsteps could no longer be heard, the cavalryman returned to his place, and sitting close to one of the group, a Government official, and looking him straight in the face with smiling eyes, he said⁠—

“It is the very man, you know.”

“No?”

“I tell you it is; it is the very same duellist hussar⁠—the famous Toúrbin. He knew me⁠—I bet you anything he knew me. Why, he and I went on the spree for three weeks without a break when I was at Lebedyáni184 for remounts. There was one thing⁠—he and I did together.⁠ ⁠… He’s a fine fellow, eh?”

“A splendid fellow. And so pleasant in his manner! Doesn’t show a grain of⁠—what d’you call it?” answered the handsome young man. “How quickly we became intimate.⁠ ⁠… He’s not more than twenty-five, is he?”

“Oh no, that’s what he looks, but he is more than that. One has to get to know him, you know. Who eloped with Migoúnova? He. It was he killed Sáblin. It was he dropped Matnyóf out of the window by the legs. He won 300,000 roubles of Prince Néstorof. He is a regular daredevil, you know: a gambler, a duellist, a seducer, but a jewel of an hussar⁠—a real jewel. The rumours that are afloat about us are nothing⁠—if anyone knew what a true hussar is! Ah yes, those were times!”

And the cavalryman told his interlocutor of such a spree with the Count in Lebedyáni, as not only never had, but never even could have taken place.

It could not have done so, first because he had never seen the Count till that day, and had left the army two years before the Count entered it; and secondly, because the cavalryman had never really served in the cavalry at all, but had for four years been the humblest of cadets in the Beléfsky Regiment, and had retired as soon as ever he became ensign. But ten years ago he had inherited some money and had really been in Lebedyáni, where he squandered 700 roubles with some officers who were there for remounts. He had even gone so far as to have an Uhlan uniform with orange facings made, meaning to enter an Uhlan regiment. This desire to enter the cavalry, and the three weeks spent with the remount officers at Lebedyáni, remained the brightest and happiest memories of his life; so that he transformed the desire, first into a reality and then into a reminiscence, and came to believe firmly in his past as a cavalry officer⁠—all of which did not hinder him from being, both as to gentleness and honesty, a most worthy man.

“Yes, those who have never served in the cavalry will never understand us fellows.”

He sat down astride a chair, and thrusting out his lower jaw began to speak in a bass voice. “One used to ride at the head of one’s squadron: under you not a horse, but the devil incarnate, prancing all about, and you just sit in devil-me-care style. The squadron commander rides up to review: ‘Lieutenant,’ he says, ‘if you please, we can’t get on without you⁠—lead the squadron to parade.’ ‘All right,’ you say, and there you are; you turn round, shout to your moustached fellows.⁠ ⁠… Ah, devil take it, those were times!”

The Count returned from the bath very red and with wet hair, and went straight to No. 7, where the cavalryman was already sitting in his dressing-gown, smoking a pipe and considering with pleasure, and not without some apprehension, the happiness that had befallen him of sharing a room with the celebrated Toúrbin. “Now, supposing,” he thought, “that he suddenly takes me, strips me naked, drives with me to the town gates and puts me in the snow, or⁠ ⁠… tars me, or simply⁠ ⁠… But no,” he consoled himself, “he won’t do it to a comrade.”

“Sáshka, feed Blücher!” shouted the Count.

Sáshka, who had taken a tumbler of vodka to refresh himself after the journey, and was decidedly tipsy, came in.

“What, already! You’ve been drinking, rascal!⁠ ⁠… Feed Blücher!”

“He won’t starve anyhow; see how sleek he is!” answered Sáshka, stroking the dog.

“Silence! Be off and feed him!”

“You want the dog to be fed, but when a man drinks a glass you reproach him.”

“Hey! I’ll thrash you!” shouted the Count, in a voice that made the window panes rattle and frightened even the cavalryman a bit.

“You should ask if Sáshka has yet had a bite today! Yes, beat me, if you think more of a dog than of a man,” muttered Sáshka.

But here he received such a terrible blow in the face from the Count’s fist, that he fell, knocked his head against the partition, and, clutching his nose, fled from the room and fell on a settee in the passage.

“He’s knocked my teeth out,” grunted Sáshka, wiping his bleeding nose with one hand, while with the other he scratched the back of Blücher, who was licking himself. “He’s knocked my teeth out, Bluchy, but still he’s my Count, and I’d go through fire for him⁠—I would! Because he⁠—is my Count; do you understand, Bluchy? Want your dinner, eh?”

After lying still for a while, he rose, fed the dog, and then, almost sobered, went in to wait on his Count, and to offer him some tea.

“I shall really feel hurt,” said the cavalryman meekly, as he stood before the Count, who was lying on the cavalryman’s bed with his legs up against the partition. “You see, I also am an old army man, and, I may say, a comrade. Why should you borrow from anyone else when I shall be delighted to lend you a couple of hundred roubles? I have not got them just now, only a hundred roubles, but I’ll get the rest today. You would really hurt my feelings, Count!”

“Thank you, old man,” said the Count, instantly discerning what kind of relations had to be established between them, and slapping the cavalryman on the shoulder: “Thanks! Well then, we’ll go to the ball if it must be so. But what are we to do now? Tell us what you have in your town. What pretty girls? What men game for a spree? What gaming?”

The cavalryman explained that there would be an abundance of pretty creatures at the ball, that Kólhof, who had been reelected Captain of Police, was the best hand at a spree, only he lacked the true hussar go⁠—otherwise he was a good sort of chap; that the Ilúshkin gipsy chorus had been singing in the town since the elections began, Styóshka leading, and that everybody meant to go to hear them after leaving the Marshal’s that evening.

“And there is a devilish lot of card-playing too,” he went on; “Loúhnof plays. He has money and is staying here to break his journey, and Ilyín, an Uhlan cornet, who has room No. 8, has lost a lot. They have already begun in his room. They play every evening. And what a fine fellow that Ilyín is! I tell you, Count, he’s not mean⁠—he’ll let his last shirt go.”

“Well then, let us go to his room. Let us see what sort of people they are,” said the Count.

“Yes, do, pray do. They will be devilish glad.”

II

The Uhlan cornet, Ilyín, had not been long awake. The evening before he had sat down to cards at eight o’clock, and had lost pretty steadily for fifteen hours on end⁠—till eleven in the morning. He had lost a considerable sum, but did not know exactly how much, because he had about 3000 roubles of his own, and 15,000 service-money which had long since got mixed up with it, and he feared to count lest he should find his forebodings confirmed that some of the Government money was already missing. It was nearly noon when he fell asleep, and he had slept that heavy, dreamless sleep which comes only to a very young man, and after a heavy loss. Waking at six o’clock (just at the time when Count Toúrbin arrived at the hotel), and seeing the floor all around strewn with cards and bits of chalk, and the chalk-marked tables in the middle of the room, he recalled with terror last night’s play, and the last card, a knave on which he lost 500 roubles; but not yet quite convinced of the reality of all this, he drew his money from under his pillow and began to count. He recognised some notes which had passed from hand to hand several times with “corners” and “transports,” and he recollected the whole course of the game. He had none of his own 3000 roubles left, and some 2500 Government money were also gone.

The Uhlan had been playing for four nights running.

He had come from Moscow, where the service-money had been entrusted to him, and he had been detained at K⁠⸺ by the superintendent of the post-house on the pretext that there were no horses, but really because the latter had an agreement with the hotel keeper to detain all travellers a day. The Uhlan, a bright young lad, who had just received 3000 roubles from his parents in Moscow for his equipment on entering his regiment, was glad to spend a few days in the town of K⁠⸺ at election time, and hoped to thoroughly enjoy himself. He knew one of the landed gentry there who had a family, and he was thinking of looking them up and flirting with the daughters, when the cavalryman turned up to make his acquaintance. That same evening, without any evil intent, the cavalryman introduced him to his other acquaintances, Loúhnof and other gamblers, in the general saloon, or common room, of the hotel. And ever since then the Uhlan had been playing cards, not asking at the station for horses, much less going to visit his acquaintance the landed proprietor, and not even leaving his room for four days.

Having dressed and had some tea, he went to the window. He felt he would like to go for a stroll, to get rid of the gaming recollections that haunted him. He put on his cloak and went out into the street. The sun was already hidden behind the white, red-roofed houses, and it was getting dusk. It was warm for winter. Large, wet snowflakes were slowly falling into the muddy street. Suddenly, at the thought that he had slept all through the day now ending, a feeling of intolerable sadness came over him.

“This day, now past, can never be brought back,” he thought.

“I have ruined my youth!” he suddenly said to himself, not because he really thought he had ruined his youth⁠—he did not even think about it⁠—but the phrase just happened to come into his head.

“And what am I to do now?” thought he: “borrow of someone and go away?” A lady passed him along the pavement. “There’s a stupid woman,” thought he, for some unknown reason. “There’s no one to borrow of⁠ ⁠… I have ruined my youth!” He came to the bazaar. A tradesman in a fox-fur cloak stood at the door of his shop touting for customers. “If I had not taken that eight I should have recovered my losses.” An old beggar-woman followed him whimpering. “There’s no one to borrow from.” Some man or other drove past in a bearskin cloak; a policeman was standing at his post. “What could one do that is unusual? Shoot at them? No, it’s dull.⁠ ⁠… I have ruined my youth!⁠ ⁠… Ah, there are fine horse-collars and trappings hanging there. There now, if one could get into a troika:185 ‘Gee-up, beauties!’⁠ ⁠… I’ll go back. Loúhnof will come soon, and we’ll play.”

He returned to the hotel and again counted his money. No, he had made no mistake when he first counted: there were still 2500 roubles of Government money missing. “I’ll stake 25 roubles on the first card, then make a ‘corner’⁠ ⁠… 7-fold it, 15-fold, 30, 60⁠ ⁠… 3000 roubles. Then I’ll buy the horse-collars and be off. He won’t give me a chance, the rascal! I have ruined my youth!”

That is what was going on in the Uhlan’s head when Loúhnof really entered the room.

“Well, have you been up long, Michael Vasílitch?” asked Loúhnof, slowly removing the gold spectacles from his skinny nose, and carefully wiping them with a red silk handkerchief.

“No, I’ve only just got up⁠—I slept uncommonly well.”

“Some hussar or other has arrived; he is staying with Zavalshévsky⁠—did you know?”

“No, I didn’t. But how’s it no one else has turned up?”

“They must have gone into Pryáhin’s. They’ll be here directly.”

And, sure enough, a little later the room was entered by a garrison officer who always followed Loúhnof, a Greek merchant with an enormous brown, hooked nose and sunken black eyes, and a fat, puffy squire and distiller, who played whole nights, always staking “simples” of half-a-rouble each.

They all wished to begin playing as soon as possible, but the principal players, and especially Loúhnof, who was telling about a robbery in Moscow in an exceedingly calm manner, said nothing about that subject.

“Just fancy,” he said, “a city like Moscow, the historic capital, the chief town, and men go about there with crooks, dressed up like devils, frighten stupid people and rob the passersby⁠—and there’s an end of it. What are the police about? That’s the question.”

The Uhlan listened attentively to the story about the robbers, but when a pause came he rose and quietly ordered cards to be brought. The fat squire was the first to speak out.

“I say, gentlemen, why lose precious time? If we mean business, let us begin.”

“Yes, you walked off with a pile of half-roubles last night, so you like it,” said the Greek.

“It is about time,” said the garrison officer.

Ilyín looked at Loúhnof. Loúhnof, looking him straight in the eyes, quietly continued his story about robbers dressed up as devils with claws.

“Will you take the bank?” asked the Uhlan.

“Is it not too early?”

“Belóf!” shouted the Uhlan, blushing for some unknown reason, “bring me some dinner⁠—I have not had anything to eat yet, gentlemen⁠—and a bottle of champagne and some cards.”

At this moment the Count and Zavalshévsky entered. It turned out that Toúrbin and Ilyín belonged to the same division. They took to one another at once, clinked glasses, drank champagne together, and were on intimate terms in five minutes. The Count seemed to like Ilyín very much; he looked smilingly at him and teased him about his youthfulness.

“There’s an Uhlan of the true sort!” said he. “What moustaches⁠—dear me, what moustaches!”

Even what little fluff there was on Ilyín’s lip was quite white.

“I suppose you are going to play?” said the Count: “Well, I wish you luck, Ilyín! I should think you are a master at it,” he added, with a smile.

“Yes, they mean to start,” said Loúhnof, tearing open a pack of cards, “and you, Count, won’t you join us?”

“No, not today. I should clear you all out if I did. When I begin ‘cornering’ in earnest the bank begins to crack! But I have nothing to play with⁠—I was cleaned out at a station near Volotchók. I met some infantry fellow there with rings on his fingers⁠—some sharper, I should think⁠—and he plucked me clean.”

“Why, how long were you at that station?” asked Ilyín.

“I sat there for twenty-two hours. I shall remember that cursed station! And the superintendent won’t forget me either⁠ ⁠…”

“How’s that?”

“I drive up, you know; out rushes the superintendent, with a regular brigand’s rascally phiz. ‘No horses,’ says he. Now, I must tell you, I make it a rule: if there are no horses I don’t take off my cloak, but go into the superintendent’s own room⁠—not into the public room, but into his private room⁠—and I have all the doors and windows opened, on the ground that it’s smoky. Well, that’s just what I did there. And you remember what frosts we had last week? Twenty degrees!186 The superintendent began to reason, I punched his head. There was an old woman there, girls and women; they kicked up a row, caught up their pots and pans and were rushing off to the village⁠ ⁠… I went to the door, and said, ‘Let me have horses and I’ll be off; if not, no one shall go out: I’ll freeze you all!’ ”

“That’s an infernally good plan!” said the puffy squire, rolling with laughter; “it’s the way they freeze out cockroaches⁠ ⁠…”

“But I did not watch carefully, and the superintendent made off with all the women. Only one old woman remained in pawn on the top of the stove; she kept sneezing and saying her prayers. Afterwards we began negotiating; the superintendent came and, from a distance, began persuading me to let the old woman go, but I set Blücher at him a bit. Blücher’s splendid at tackling superintendents! But the rascal did not let me have horses until the next morning. Then that infantry fellow came along. I joined him in the other room, and we began to play. You have seen Blücher?⁠ ⁠… Blücher!⁠ ⁠… Whew!”

Blücher rushed in. The players condescendingly paid him some attention, though it was evident they wished to attend to quite other matters.

“But why don’t you play, gentlemen? Please don’t let me prevent you. I am a chatterbox, you see,” said Toúrbin. “Play is play, whether one likes it or not.”

III

Loúhnof drew two candles nearer to himself, took out a large brown pocketbook full of paper money, and slowly, as if performing some rite, opened it on the table, drew forth two hundred-rouble notes and put them under the cards.

“Two hundred for the bank, the same as yesterday,” said he, arranging his spectacles and opening a pack of cards.

“Very well,” said Ilyín, continuing his conversation with Toúrbin without looking at Loúhnof.

The game187 started. Loúhnof dealt the cards with machine-like precision, stopping now and then and deliberately jotting something down, or looking severely over his spectacles and saying in low tones, “Pass up!” The fat squire spoke louder than anyone else, audibly deliberating with himself, and wetting his plump fingers as he bent down the corners of the cards. The garrison officer silently and neatly noted the amount of his stake on his card, and bent down small corners under the table. The Greek sat beside the “banker” and watched the game attentively with his black, sunken eyes, and seemed to be waiting for something. Zavalshévsky, standing by the table, would suddenly begin to fidget all over, take a red or blue banknote188 out of his trousers pocket, lay a card on it, slap it with his palm and say, “Little seven, pull me through!” Then he would bite his moustache, step from foot to foot, and keep fidgeting until his card was dealt. Ilyín sat eating veal and cucumbers, which were placed beside him on the horsehair sofa, and, hastily wiping his hands on his coat, laid down card after card. Toúrbin, who at first sat on the sofa, quickly saw how things stood. Loúhnof did not look at or speak to the Uhlan; only now and then his spectacles would turn for a moment towards the Uhlan’s hand, but most of the latter’s cards lost.

“There, now, I should like to beat that card,” said Loúhnof of a card the fat squire, who was staking half-roubles, had put down.

“You beat Ilyín’s, never mind me!” remarked the squire.

And, really, Ilyín’s cards lost more often than any of the others. He would tear up the losing card nervously under the table, and choose another with trembling fingers. Toúrbin rose from the sofa and asked the Greek to let him sit by the “banker.” The Greek moved to another place and gave his chair to the Count, who began watching Loúhnof’s hands attentively, not taking his eyes off them.

“Ilyín!” he suddenly said, in his usual voice, which quite unintentionally drowned all others, “why do you repeat the same card? You don’t know how to play.”

“It’s all the same how one plays.”

“That way you’ll be sure to lose. Let me play for you.”

“No, please excuse me. I always do it myself. Play for yourself if you like.”

“I said I should not play for myself, but I should like to play for you. I am vexed that you are losing.”

“I suppose it’s my fate.”

The Count was silent, but putting his elbows on the table, again gazed intently at the “banker’s” hands.

“Abominable!” he suddenly said, in a loud, long-drawn tone.

Loúhnof glanced at him.

“Abominable, quite abominable!” he repeated, still louder, looking straight into Loúhnof’s eyes.

The game continued.

“Very bad!” again said Toúrbin, just as Loúhnof “beat” a large card of Ilyín’s.

“What is it you don’t like, Count?” inquired the “banker,” with polite indifference.

“This!⁠—that you let Ilyín have his ‘simples,’ and beat his ‘corners.’ That’s what is bad.”

Loúhnof made a slight movement with his brows and shoulders, expressing the advisability of submitting to fate in everything, and continued to play.

“Blücher! Whew!” shouted the Count, rising. “At him!” he added quickly.

Blücher, bumping his back against the sofa as he leapt from under it and nearly knocking the garrison officer over, ran to his master and growled, looking round on everyone and moving his tail as if asking, “Who is misbehaving here, eh?”

Loúhnof laid down his cards and moved to one side with his chair.

“One can’t play like that,” he said. “I hate dogs. What kind of game is it when one brings in a whole pack of hounds?”

“And especially dogs like that. I believe they are called ‘leeches,’ ” chimed in the garrison officer.

“Well, are we going to play or not, Michael Vasílitch?” said Loúhnof to their host.

“Please don’t interfere with us, Count,” said Ilyín, turning to Toúrbin.

“Come here a minute,” said Toúrbin, taking Ilyín’s arm and stepping behind the partition with him.

The Count’s words, spoken in his usual tone, were distinctly audible from there. His voice always carried across three rooms.

“Are you daft, eh? Don’t you see that gentleman in spectacles is a sharper of the first water?”

“Oh, enough! What are you saying?”

“No enough about it! Just stop, I tell you. It’s nothing to me. Another time I’d pluck you myself, but somehow I’m sorry you should be fleeced. And maybe you have service-money too?”

“No⁠ ⁠… why do you invent such things?”

“Eh, my lad, I’ve been that way myself, so I know all those sharpers’ tricks. I tell you the chap with the spectacles is a sharper. Stop now! I ask you as a comrade.”

“Well then, I’ll only finish this one deal.”

“I know what ‘one deal’ means. Well, we’ll see.”

They went back. In this one deal Ilyín put down so many cards, and so many of them were beaten, that he lost a large sum.

Toúrbin put his hands in the middle of the table. “Now stop it! Come along.”

“No, I can’t. Leave me alone, do!” said Ilyín, irritably shuffling some bent cards without looking at Toúrbin.

“Well, go to the devil! Go and lose for certain, if that pleases you; it’s time for me to be off. Zavalshévsky, let’s go to the Marshal’s.”

They went out. All remained silent, and Loúhnof dealt no more cards until the sound of their steps and of Blücher’s claws on the passage floor had died away.

“What a devil of a fellow!” said the squire, laughing.

“Well, he’ll not interfere now,” remarked the garrison officer hastily and still in a whisper.

And the play continued.

IV

The band, composed of serfs of the Marshal’s, standing in the pantry (cleared out for the occasion), with their coat sleeves turned up ready, had, at a given signal, struck up the old polonaise, “Alexander-Elizabeth,” and by the bright, soft light of the wax-candles a Governor-General of Catherine’s days, with a star on his breast, arm-in-arm with the Marshal’s skinny wife, the Marshal arm-in-arm with the Governor’s wife, and the rest of the local grandees with their partners in various combinations and variations, had begun slowly gliding over the parquet floor of the large dancing-room, when Zavalshévsky entered, wearing a blue swallowtail coat with an enormous collar, puffs on the shoulders, stockings and pumps on his feet, and spreading a strong smell of the jasmine perfume with which his moustaches, the facings of his coat, and his handkerchief were abundantly sprinkled. The handsome hussar who came with him wore tight-fitting, light-blue riding breeches, and a gold-embroidered scarlet coat to which a Vladímir cross and a medal of 1812189 were fastened. The Count was not tall, but exceedingly well formed. His clear blue and wonderfully brilliant eyes, and rather large, tightly curled, light-brown head of hair, gave a remarkable character to his beauty. His arrival at the ball was expected; the handsome young man who had seen him at the hotel had already prepared the Marshal for it. The impressions created by the news were various, but generally not altogether pleasant.

“It’s not unlikely the youngster will hold one up to ridicule,” was the opinion of the old women and of the men. “What if he should run away with me?” was more or less in the minds of the younger ladies, married or unmarried.

As soon as the polonaise was over, and the couples, after bowing to one another, had separated⁠—the women to the women and the men to the men⁠—Zavalshévsky, proud and happy, introduced the Count to their hostess.

The Marshal’s wife, feeling an inner trepidation lest this hussar should treat her in some scandalous manner before everybody, turned away haughtily and contemptuously as she said: “Very pleased; I hope you will dance,” and then gave him a distrustful look that said, “Now, if you offend a woman it will show me that you are a perfect villain.” The Count, however, soon conquered her prejudices by his amiability, attentive manner, and handsome, gay appearance; so that five minutes later the face of the Marshal’s wife expressed to all present: “I know how to manage such gentlemen; he has at once understood with whom he has to deal. And now he’ll be charming to me for the rest of the evening.” However, at that moment the Governor of the town, who had known the Count’s father, came up to him and very affably took him aside to chat, and this still further calmed the provincial public and raised the Count in its estimation. After that Zavalshévsky introduced the Count to his sister, a plump young widow whose large black eyes had stared at the Count from the moment he entered. The Count asked her to dance the valse which the band had just commenced, and finally dispersed the general prejudice by the masterly way he danced.

“What a splendid dancer!” said a fat landed proprietress, watching the legs in the blue breeches as they fitted across the room, and mentally counting “one, two, three⁠—one, two, three”⁠—“splendid!”

“There he goes⁠—jig, jig, jig,” said another, a visitor in the town whom the local society did not consider genteel; “how does he manage not to entangle his spurs⁠—wonderfully clever!”

The Count eclipsed the three best dancers of the Government by his artistic dancing: the tall, fair Governor’s Adjutant, noted for the rapidity with which he danced, and for holding his partner very close to himself; the cavalryman, famous for the graceful, swaying motion with which he valsed, and for the frequent but light tapping of his heels; and, lastly, a civilian of whom everybody said that, though he was not very deep intellectually, he was a first-rate dancer and the soul of every ball. In fact, from the very beginning of a ball this civilian would ask each lady in turn, in the order in which they sat, to dance,190 and never stopped for a minute except occasionally to wipe, with a very wet cambric handkerchief, the perspiration from his weary but pleased face. The Count eclipsed them all, and danced with the three principal ladies: the tall one, rich, handsome, and stupid; the middle-sized one, thin and not very pretty, but splendidly dressed; and the little one, plain, but very clever. He danced with others too, with all the pretty ones, and there were many of them. But it was the little widow, Zavalshévsky’s sister, that pleased the Count best. With her he danced a quadrille, an ecossaise, and a mazurka. He began, when they were sitting down during the quadrille, by paying her many compliments and comparing her to Venus and to Diana, and to a rose and to some other flower. But all these compliments only made the widow bend her white neck, cast down her eyes and look at her white muslin dress, or pass her fan from hand to hand. When she said “Don’t, you are only joking, Count,” and other words to that effect, there was a note of such naive simple-mindedness and such funny silliness in her slightly guttural voice that, looking at her, it really seemed that this was not a woman but a flower, and not a rose, but some wild, rosy-white, gorgeous, scentless flower that had grown all alone out of a snowdrift in some very remote land.

The combination of naivete and absence of conventionality, with her fresh beauty, created such a peculiar impression on the Count that several times during the intervals of conversation, when gazing silently into her eyes or at the beautiful outline of her neck and arms, the desire to seize her in his arms and to cover her with kisses came into his mind with such force that he had to make a serious effort to resist it. The widow noticed with pleasure the effect she was producing; yet something in the Count’s behaviour began to frighten and excite her, though the young hussar, in spite of his insinuating amiability, was respectful to a degree which in our days would be considered maudlin. He ran to fetch almond-milk for her, picked up her handkerchief, snatched a chair⁠—to hand it her more quickly⁠—from the hands of a scrofulous young squire who was also dancing attendance on her, and so on.

When he noticed that the society attentions of the day had little effect on the lady, he tried to amuse her by telling her funny stories, and assured her that he was ready to stand on his head, to crow like a cock, to jump out of the window, or to plunge into the water through a hole in the ice, if she ordered him to do so. This proved quite a success. The widow brightened up and burst into peals of laughter, showing lovely white teeth, and was quite satisfied with her partner. The Count liked her more and more every minute, so that by the end of the quadrille, he was seriously in love with her.

When, after the quadrille was over, her eighteen year-old adorer of long standing came up to the widow (it was the same scrofulous young man from whom Toúrbin had snatched the chair, the son of the richest local landed proprietor, and not yet in government service), she received him with extreme coolness, and did not show one-tenth of the confusion she had experienced with the Count.

“Well, you are a fine fellow!” she said, looking all the time at Toúrbin’s back, and unconsciously considering how many yards of gold cord it had taken to trim his whole jacket. “You are a good one: you promised to call and fetch me for a drive and to bring me some comfits.”

“And I did come, Anna Fyódorovna, but you had already gone, and I left some of the very best comfits for you,” said the young man, who, despite his tallness, spoke in a very high-pitched voice.

“You’ll always find excuses!⁠ ⁠… I don’t want your bonbons. Please don’t imagine⁠—”

“I see, Anna Fyódorovna, that you have changed towards me, and I know why. But it’s not right,” he added, evidently unable to finish his speech because of some strong inward agitation which made his lips quiver in a very rapid and strange manner.

Anna Fyódorovna did not listen to him, but continued to follow Toúrbin with her eyes.

The Marshal, the master of the house, a stately, stout, toothless old man, came up to the Count, took him under the arm, and invited him into the study to smoke and have something to drink. As soon as Toúrbin left the room Anna Fyódorovna felt there was absolutely nothing to do there, and went out into the dressing-room arm-in-arm with a friend of hers, a bony, elderly maiden lady.

“Well, is he nice?” asked the maiden lady.

“Only he bothers so,” Anna Fyódorovna answered, walking up to the glass and looking at herself.

Her face brightened, her eyes laughed, she even blushed, and suddenly, imitating the ballet-dancers she had seen during these elections, she twirled round on one foot, then laughed her guttural but pleasant laugh, and even, bending her knees, gave a jump.

“Just fancy, what a man! He actually asked me for a keepsake,” she said to her friend; “but he will get no-o-o-thing.” She sang the last word, and held up one finger of the kid glove, which reached to her elbow.

In the study, where the Marshal had taken Toúrbin, stood bottles of different sorts of vodka, liqueurs, champagne, and zakoúska.191 The nobility, walking and sitting in a cloud of tobacco smoke, were talking about the elections.

“When the whole noble society of our aristocracy has honoured him with their choice,” said the newly-elected Captain of Police, who had already drunk a good deal, “he should on no account transgress in the face of the whole society⁠ ⁠…”

The Count’s entrance interrupted the conversation. Everyone wished to be introduced to him, and the Captain of Police especially kept pressing the Count’s hand with both his own for a long time, and repeatedly asked him not to refuse to accompany him (the Captain) to the new restaurant, where, after the ball, he was going to treat the gentlemen, and where the gipsies were going to sing. The Count promised to go without fail, and drank some glasses of champagne with him.

“But why are you not dancing, gentlemen?” said the Count, as he was about to leave the room.

“We are not dancers,” replied the Captain of Police, laughing, “wine is more in our line, Count.⁠ ⁠… And besides, I have seen them all grow up⁠—those young ladies, Count! But I can walk through an ecossaise now and then, Count.⁠ ⁠… I can do it, Count.”

“Then come and walk through one now,” said Toúrbin; “it will brighten us up before going to hear the gipsies.”

“Very well, gentlemen! let’s come and please our host.”

And three of the nobles, who had been drinking in the study since the commencement of the ball, put on black or silk knitted gloves, and with their red faces were just about to follow the Count into the ballroom, when they were stopped by the scrofulous young man, who, pale and hardly restraining his tears, accosted Toúrbin.

“You think that because you are a Count you can jostle people about as if at a fair,” he said, breathing hard, “because that is impolite.⁠ ⁠…”

And again, do what he would, his quivering lips stopped the flow of his words.

“What?” cried Toúrbin, suddenly frowning. “What?⁠ ⁠… You brat!” he cried, seizing him by the arms and squeezing them so that the blood rushed to the young man’s head, not so much from vexation as from fear. “What? Do you want to fight? I am at your service!”

Hardly had Toúrbin released the arms he had squeezed so hard when two nobles caught hold of them and dragged the young man towards the back door.

“What! are you out of your mind? You must be tipsy! There now, if one were to tell your papa! What is the matter with you?” said they to him.

“No, I’m not tipsy, but he jostles one and does not apologise. He’s a swine, there now!” squeaked the young man, now quite in tears.

They, however, did not listen to him, but someone drove home with him.

On the other hand, the Captain of Police and Zavalshévsky were exhorting Toúrbin. “Never mind, Count; he’s only a child. He gets flogged still; he’s only sixteen.⁠ ⁠… What can have happened to him? What bee has stung him? And his father such a respectable man⁠—a candidate of ours.”

“Well, let him go to the devil, if he does not wish⁠ ⁠…”

And the Count returned to the ballroom and danced the ecossaise with the pretty widow as gaily as before, laughed with all his heart as he watched the steps performed by the gentlemen who had come out of the study with him, and burst into peals of laughter that rang across the room when the Captain of Police slipped and measured his full length in the midst of the dancers.

V

While the Count was in the study, Anna Fyódorovna had approached her brother, and, imagining that she ought for some reason to pretend to be very little interested in the Count, began to ask:

“Who is that hussar who was dancing with me? Can you tell me, brother?”

The cavalryman explained to his sister as well as he could what a great man this hussar was, and told her at the same time that the Count was only stopping in K⁠⸺ because his money had been stolen on the way, that he himself had lent the Count a hundred roubles, but that that was not enough, so that perhaps “sister” might lend another couple of hundred. Only, Zavalshévsky asked her on no account to tell anyone, especially not the Count. Anna Fyódorovna promised to send him the money that night and to keep the affair secret, but somehow during the ecossaise she felt a great longing herself to offer the Count as much money as he wanted. She took a long time making up her mind, and blushed, but at last made a great effort, and set to work in the following manner:⁠—

“My brother tells me that a misfortune befell you on the road, Count, and that you have no money by you. If you want any, would you not take some of mine? I should be so glad.”

But having said this, Anna Fyódorovna suddenly felt frightened of something, and blushed. All gaiety instantly left the Count’s face.

“Your brother is a fool!” he said abruptly. “You know, when a man insults another man they fight; but when a woman insults a man, what does he do then⁠—do you know?”

Poor Anna Fyódorovna’s neck and ears grew red with confusion. She cast down her eyes and said nothing.

“He kisses the woman in public,” said the Count, in a low voice, leaning towards her ear. “Allow me to kiss at least your hand,” he added in a whisper, after a prolonged silence, taking pity on his partner’s confusion.